Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY.

A/N: Thanks so much to all the people who have been in touch to let me know what is working for you in this story. In spite of this chapter, it will be a "team" story, so everyone will show up in some way. I'm calling it a 'flotilla' story, because there are so many 'ships sailing at once!

Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".

Chapter 4: Holding On

"Il dio lo protegge da tutti che cerchino di fare il danno a me."

"Danny? I'm here, Danny. It's all right. I'm here."

"Lindsay, you need to go to sleep yourself. You look like a ghost sitting there. Have you eaten anything?"

"I'm fine, Chris. Jamie brings me food every hour and when he isn't in trying to stuff me with sandwiches, Mick is sneaking in with coffee and chocolate. I just want Danny to wake up properly. Can you reduce the morphine he's on? It upsets him."

"I talked to Sheldon Hawkes. Do you know if Messer has a sensitivity to morphine?"

"How would I know that? He's never been hospitalized that I know of."

"Well, it might explain why it isn't helping him. We're changing him to a different pain medication; hopefully it will control the pain and reduce the agitation."

"Chris, is he going to be okay? Are you sure?"

"Honey, as long as he doesn't get an infection, and stays as quiet as possible for the next couple of days to let everything start to heal up, then yes, I think he will be okay."

"Thank God."

"What about you?"

"Me? I'm fine."

"Oh Lindsay, don't. In the past week, you've been shot at, hit by a truck, overdosed with morphine, watched him get shot, had to kill someone else, and have been sitting with John McKim every minute you're not in here."

"Well, yeah, you can make anything sound bad."

"Lindsay, you need to talk to someone. If not me, fine, but someone. You can't keep this up."

"Yes, actually. I can. Just as long as I have to."

-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-

Danny's eyes flickered. He could hear voices speaking, see people moving around him. He reached out a hand, a little frantically. "Lindsay? Where's Lindsay?"

"Detective Messer. Good, you're awake."

"Where's Lindsay?"

"She's just gone to see Officer McKim for a minute. She'll be right back."

Danny blinked his eyes furiously. He couldn't see anything clearly, and was startled and ashamed to feel tears run down the sides of his face. Shakily, he raised a hand to wipe them away before anyone noticed, but winced when the IV inserted in the vein in the back of his hand came into contact with his face. He dropped his hand, defeated.

"Who are you?" He knew he sounded ungracious.

"It's Cindy. Do you remember me? I was one of Detective Monroe's nurses?"

"Mmm. How long have I been out?"

"The doctor will be coming to speak to you in a few minutes, and he'll tell you everything." Cindy's voice was professionally soothing, and Danny was fed up. He grabbed her hand and held on.

"How long was I out?" Each word ground out between his teeth.

She stilled and answered him quietly, "Fifteen hours. You've been unconscious for about fifteen hours. You're hurting me, Detective."

Once more ashamed, Danny dropped her hand and turned his head away. "I'm sorry," he said gruffly.

"The doctor will be here in a minute." Her voice remained cool.

"Unforgiven," thought Danny, resigned.

"I have to check your dressing."

"Whatever," he sighed and closed his eyes. He'd lost fifteen fucking hours. And Lindsay had had to do it all alone: deal with the cops, with the Feds, with McKim. His stomach tightened at the thought of McKim. He wondered just how much comforting the former partner had been doing. He gasped as Cindy touched his side: no amount of medicine could control that kind of pain.

"I'm sorry, Detective. I have to check the exit wound. Can you roll over?"

At least this time she really did sound sorry.

Danny rolled over with her help, not bothering to try to hide the tears. Fuck, he hated feeling this weak, this dependent. He was cath'ed, IV'd, doped, and humiliated.

And Lindsay was with McKim.

Cindy helped him roll back, then wiped his face with a warm cloth.

This time, when he reached out to grab her hand, he was consciously gentle. "I am sorry."

"It's okay, Detective. You can have a full sponge bath later, I promise."

"Forgiven," he thought, with a hint of a grin.

She left the room, meeting the doctor just outside. They had a quick conversation, which Danny didn't even attempt to listen in on. Without his glasses, all his senses seemed a little foggy. That whole theory about losing one sense making the others stronger was a pile of crap as far as he could tell. He just lay in the crib-like bed, sides up to keep him from rolling over and falling out of bed, wires and tubes monitoring and controlling his basic bodily functions, consciousness floating somewhere above the tight ball of pain that was his body, and felt thoroughly, pathetically, disgustingly sorry for himself.

"So, Danny, how are you feeling today? Well, since it's after midnight, I guess I should say tonight." Chris Martens' cheerful voice rammed through Danny's head like a bus through a store window.

"Just peachy, Doc. How soon can I get outta here?" That was better; his voice was cool and flippant. No one needed to know his toes ached from clenching his feet instead of his fists.

Chris looked down at him with a laugh in his eyes. "Well, let's give you a couple more days, okay? You took a bullet through the abdomen. Luckily it didn't hit anything vital. You lost a lot of blood, and made things considerably worse by crawling to the cabin."

Danny shook his head, "I don't remember."

"I'll leave that story for someone else to tell, then. I can tell you that medically speaking you were fucking lucky. The snow helped slow the blood loss, which meant you didn't die on the scene. I don't know why you didn't bleed out before you got here, but you didn't. The wound was clean, although there are some signs of a minor infection, which we will treat immediately. You came through the surgery well, but suffered some complications from the morphine. We've changed your medication to pethidine, which may not give you the same reactions. As soon as we can, we'll drop you to acetaminophen or aspirin."

Danny shook his head, "Too much, Doc. I can't follow you." His brow was furrowed with frustration, his hands shaking with concentration.

"He needs his glasses, Chris." Lindsay said quietly. She came around the curtain, and reached for Danny's glasses on the table beside his bed. Gently, she put them on him, smoothing her hands down his cheeks, and tried to move away. Danny's hand reached for hers and held on desperately.

"Okay, let's back up to essentials then. You should make a full recovery. It will take some time, but the damage done should heal."

Danny heard Lindsay's sigh of gratitude, and felt the relief flood through him. He held it in, though, asking, "How soon can I get back to work?"

Chris rolled his eyes, "Another couple days in hospital, then you should take at least five weeks off work. You've had major surgery, Detective. Rushing things at this stage will slow your recovery, not speed it up."

"But I'll recover? Fully? I can go back to work?"

"Eventually, yes. Not right away. I'll be talking to your captain, Detective. No rushing this."

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you, Doc. Thanks. Thanks a lot."

"I'll talk to you later, and see how the pethidine is working for you. Lindsay, you need to go home and get some rest, or I'll be booking you back in here next."

"Go away, Chris. Thank you." Her voice was polite and steady, but her eyes, locked with Danny's, were stormy.

Shaking his head, the doctor left the room and closed the door.

"I thought you were dead." It came out of her in a sigh, cold and remote.

"I thought you were next. I thought he would shoot you."

"I don't ever want to feel like that again."

"I'm sorry, Lindsay. I wanted to protect you. You didn't need me. You did it all yourself."

"Danny, I need you. I always needed you. I'm just so afraid of something going wrong. I can't deal with things going wrong."

Their voices murmured over and around each other, neither one fully hearing the other: hands clasped, eyes locked. She moved forward first, laying her mouth on his in an attempt to reconnect, give comfort, share warmth.

The blaze of heat shocked them both. There was little of comfort there: just an edgy, almost painful need.

Lindsay drew back, knees weak, finding her chair again blindly. "I don't know what to do about this, Danny."

"I'm not sure there's anything we can do. Why were you with McKim?"

"Smooth, Messer," that voice was back, the one that monitored his every thought and move, only to constantly point out his failings. "Just go on the attack. That's the way to deal with feelings too big to control."

He saw Lindsay's eyes grow big with shock, then narrow, and steeled himself for the blow-up he knew he deserved. He had no rights to her exclusive attention. He could see she hadn't slept; Chris' words still echoed in his head. He had no right to question how she spent her time. He started to speak, to take back what he had said, but it was too late. When she pulled her hand out of his, he dropped it to the bed, clenched.

Lindsay put her head in her hands and answered him with a cold weariness that tore at him, "John wasn't as lucky as I was, Danny. Ross ran him over. He's in a coma, and not expected to live."

"Fuck. Oh fuck it. Lindsay, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Danny's mind went blank with disbelief. All he could think of was Lindsay's grief and, he knew, guilt. He wanted to put his arms around her and protect her from anything else that could hurt her ever, but he couldn't even sit up, could hardly move with the monitors and tubes tying him to the bed. He had never felt so helpless in all his life.

"You couldn't know. He went to talk to Ross this morning – well – I guess yesterday morning. John thinks he might have spooked Ross into going after us, but he must have already worked out where we were. Turns out Ross had been monitoring the Monroes for years, keeping tabs on things. When the Feds raided his house, he had computer files on all of us. I guess with John in the FBI and me in the police, he knew we could be a danger to him."

Lindsay took a deep breath. As long as she could concentrate on the case, she could keep talking. As long as she didn't look Danny in the eyes again.

But when he reached out his hand for hers again, she couldn't deny the comfort it gave, and held on gratefully. Surreptitiously, she moved her fingers to monitor his pulse, as if to assure herself that he was staying with her.

"McKim showed up at Ross's house early. No one knows whether they spoke or not. No one knows what McKim had on Ross that led him there. Did he know more about this than people thought? I get why he didn't go to Evans or Olafsen: Evans was involved in the cover up, and Olafsen just went along with things he was told. But I don't know what was going on in McKim's head, Danny. If I'd been here, if I hadn't taken off, he could have talked to me. We might have figured it out."

Her eyes were full of tears now, but Lindsay would not let them fall. She had failed again, and that failure had cost yet another friend his life.

Danny blew out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. How like Lindsay to take this on herself. He could feel her going under, drowning in the guilt. "Lindsay. Lindsay? Listen to me. McKim made choices. We can't know why he made the ones he did. But he had a right to make those choices. And I don't think he would want you to take any responsibility for them. He cared about you, Lindsay. That much was obvious. He'd hate the thought that you were carrying this."

Lindsay squeezed his hand, and didn't answer. She was seeing John McKim's blank face, eyes closed, respirator breathing for him. Even when Danny had been unconscious, she had felt his presence in the room, an angry, impatient restlessness. When she sat beside McKim, she felt nothing. She knew he had gone; only his body remained tied to the machines.

"The undead," she thought with a shudder, and tightened her grip on Danny, vital and alive.