Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY. Poetry not otherwise referenced is original.

A/N: Thanks to everyone who is reading and reviewing; I love to hear what you like and what you don't. Here, finally, is the answer to 'what is up with Danny and the drugs'?

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

Don't Feed the Animals

The man said, "Can't you read the sign?

Don't feed them. They're mine.

If you let them out at night,

They'll prowl and stray

They aren't tame, you know.

They'll try to get away."

I looked through the bars,

Met sad wild eyes with mine.

They begged for freedom –

Swore to toe the line.

I waited 'til the man left

Then flung the doors wide

They streamed out, joyful

Swept me up in the tide

And they were free

Smell of musk, snap of jaw

Breath of predator

Strength of claw.

I fed the animals; I feed them still.

No compassion: they live to kill.

SMT, 2007

Chapter 13: Taming the Animals

Lissa sat back with a sigh. "I could not eat another bite!" she said, emphasizing the last word with a snap of her strong teeth.

"Are you sure?" Sheldon teased her. "Because here comes the server with – it looks like – yes, I'm pretty sure – here he comes with a dessert cart!"

"No, no, no!" Lissa closed her eyes and covered her face. "You are evil." She uncovered her face to glare at the server. "Both of you. Totally evil."

"I'm sure I don't know what you are talking about, miss. I just came to clear away your plates and to see if you would like coffee, perhaps a liqueur?" The server's face was preternaturally solemn. Now that the evening rush was over, he seemed more relaxed.

Hawkes, however, did not even try to keep the laugh out of his voice. "I'd love a coffee, thank you. And is that a raspberry chocolate torte I see on the cart?"

"Cart, sir? Oh yes, I'm sorry, the cart. I was just taking it to that table over there. I will move it immediately. One coffee, and one raspberry torte. Coffee, miss?"

Lissa glared at him again. "Coffee, yes. Please. And leave the cart. Please. And if you say one word, Sheldon Hawkes, I will fillet you with your own scalpel."

"Me? Say anything? You know I would never say anything like I thought you were too full to eat another bite!" Sheldon laughed as she turned on him ferociously, grabbing her hand as it headed towards him. "Okay, okay, wildcat. Boy, try to save a girl from herself."

"Never, never interfere between a woman and her chocolate," Lissa said primly, tucking in the corners of her mouth and trying not to smile back him. As she turned back to peruse the dessert tray, though, the dimples betrayed her, flashing at him and making him catch his breath.

"Damn," he thought.

Lissa finally made her selection and the server returned with two cups of coffee to take her order. That most important piece of business done, she dug in her purse and found a crumpled piece of paper, which she pulled out and triumphantly handed to Sheldon.

"What's this?" he asked, taking it from her and trying to straighten it out.

"Your list of worthy causes that won't take up your whole life," she said casually.

Sheldon glared at her, though half-heartedly. "I don't know why you think this is so funny. I'm serious here."

"Then why aren't you coming back to real medicine?" It burst out of her: the frustration, the worry. "You hid away in that morgue like you were an inhabitant, not the doctor. No one saw you for nearly three years, Shel. Then suddenly you're Joe Hardy, crime scene investigator. Now you want to be Dr. S. Hawkes, medical activist. Come back and work at the hospital, Shel. Use your gifts to really help people."

Lissa stopped as suddenly as she had started, putting a hand over her mouth. When Sheldon started to speak, she put her other hand up, begging him with her eyes to remain silent.

Shrugging, he folded the paper in a neat square and shoved it into his back pocket.

The server arrived at that moment, bearing two large plates drizzled with chocolate and raspberry sauce, topped by respectable servings of the decadent desserts they had each chosen. With a flourish, he placed them in front of the now silent couple, preparing to make a facetious comment. It didn't take much to pick up on the strain between the two, however, and he simply said, "Enjoy, sir, miss."

As soon as he had left, Lissa reached out a hand and said, "I am sorry, Sheldon. I had no right to spew all over you like that. You need to do what makes you happy. I know you are good at any job you take on. I didn't mean to make you feel like you have defend yourself."

"Damn it, Lissa. You always do that," Sheldon took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "You make me so mad, and then before I can do anything about it, you apologize."

Lissa's lips lifted in a depreciating grin, "Youngest in a large family, Hawkes. I learned young that a well-placed apology may save an ass-kicking."

"Consider your ass kicked," Sheldon dropped her hand and stole a bite of her mocha cheesecake before she could take her first forkful. "Didn't that big family also teach you to keep your eye on your food?"

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

Lindsay had waited until Danny was finally sleeping deeply before sneaking out from under him and going downstairs to talk to her mother. She felt a little disloyal, as if she was breaking trust with Danny, but she knew better than to try to handle this on her own. Whatever was happening with him was more than she understood.

She found Diane in the kitchen holding something in her hand, staring out the kitchen window with a worried look on her face.

"Mom?" Lindsay touched her mother's arm, making her jump and swing around, putting her hand behind her back.

"Lindsay, why aren't you sleeping?" Diane scolded, pulling a chair out for her daughter to sit down on and pushing her towards it gently.

Lindsay caught her mother's arm and pulled her hand forward. "Mom, what are you doing with Danny's pill bottle?"

"It was on the counter. Lindsay, did he take some earlier today?"

"I gave him the bottle when he came in to phone his parents before you fed us. Why? What's wrong?" Lindsay took the bottle from Diane's hand and shook it. "It's empty?"

"It wasn't nearly empty when you gave it to him?" Diane's face was calm, but she could not mask the concern in her eyes.

"Of course not." Lindsay looked at the side of the bottle, on the label. "It says here there were 20 Demerol tablets prescribed this morning."

"Did he take any earlier, before he left the hospital, perhaps?" Diane said.

"I don't know. Mom, I'm not monitoring Danny. He's a big boy; he can manage his own medication."

Diane took the bottle and shook it gently. "It's empty, Lindsay. I'm not sure what kind of managing that is."

Lindsay say down in the chair, looking into her mother's face, then said abruptly, "Tell me the withdrawal symptoms for morphine."

Diane started to demur, to tell Lindsay that he couldn't have been on the drug long enough to get addicted, but then closed her mouth in the face of her daughter's implacability. "Restlessness, twitching, muscle spasms, hot and cold flashes … any of those sound familiar?"

Lindsay smiled, "Well, the restlessness – edginess – pretty much all the time." She shrugged, worry clouding her eyes. "He didn't want morphine in the hospital."

"Is he sleeping?"

"He was."

"Go, ask him." Diane's eyes hardened when Lindsay opened her mouth to argue. "Lindsay, he could be in trouble. Either he took them all and he's ODing, or he's dumped them. Can you think of any alternative?"

Numbly, Lindsay shook her head. "He's not ODing. I was with him a few minutes ago."

Diane nodded. "Then he dumped them. Go find out why."

Lindsay raised a woebegone face to her mother, "What if he won't tell me?"

"Find that out now, little girl. Secrets will kill you fast or kill you slow. That's the only difference."

Lindsay sat beside Jamie's bed and watched Danny sleep. He was restless, turning from side to side, muttering under his breath. She could see the dried sweat on the sides of his face; he'd kicked the quilt off himself again, and was starting to shiver. Gently, she pulled the quilt over him, and put a cool hand on his face.

"Danny?"

He could hear her voice, and if he could only open his eyes, he would see her face. He tried, but there was no opening his eyes. Or maybe they were open and he had finally gone blind. He reached out a hand to her, but it wouldn't move. He was paralyzed; his body would not obey him.

"Forget it, Messer. Just give it up. What do you have to offer her anyway? A dangerous past, a tarnished reputation. She doesn't need you; she proved that. You couldn't even protect yourself – got yourself shot, didn't you?"

"She cares about me."

"Yeah. You're real lovable, Messer. Your mother, your father, your brother … they all love you to death."

"The Monroes – they care about me."

"Until you screw it up. Then they'll take you apart. It'd be like eating fried chicken for Mick."

"Stella, Flack, Hawkes, Adam, Mac, Aiden…"

"You think they care about you? They'd forget about you a week after they buried you."

"Nonna. Sono amavo dalla mia nonna."

"Danny. Danny, please wake up. Please? You're scaring me." Lindsay was almost whispering, afraid to raise her voice, afraid that if she didn't, he wouldn't wake up. She reached for his hand and was relieved beyond measure when he grasped it. His eyes fluttered and he gasped as he came to. His other hand came up to cup her cheek, his thumb wiping tears from under her eyes.

"Montana? What's the matter?"

"Danny, what happened to your meds?"

"Huh?" His eyes were unfocused, the blue almost swallowed by the black of his pupils.

Lindsay handed him his glasses, waiting a minute while he blinked and rubbed his eyes. He avoided looking at her, but she was not accepting that. Diane was right: secrets were not going to keep them apart. She put her hands on either side of his face and asked again.

"Danny. The bottle Chris gave you had twenty Demerol pills in it when I gave it to you. Now it's empty. What did you do?"

Danny glared at her resentfully. What the hell was it to do with her? Why did he have to explain himself to her?

A voice spoke in his head, not the usual voice, not the one that had held him hostage in his own body only a moment ago. But he knew it as well as he knew his own heartbeat.

"La ragazza li ama, il mio nipote."

Lindsay refused to step back, staring him down until he dropped his gaze to his hands. She could feel the struggle in him, and once she was sure he was not going to ignore her, she dropped her hands to her own lap, but did not turn her eyes away.

He made a move to sit up: be damned if he was going to do this lying on his back in her brother's bed like an invalid. She handed him one of the pillows that he had pushed onto the floor in his restless sleep. When she was sure that he was comfortable, she looked at him expectantly, perching on the side of the bed an arms' length away.

He could not meet her eyes, looking down at his hands, restlessly massaging the right hand with his left. "You know about the baseball thing, right?"

She nodded slowly, "You were playing for the minors when you broke your wrist."

"You left out the 'in a bar fight' part. I'm sure you were told that," he glanced at her quickly, in time to accept her nod. "Yeah, third favourite Messer story next to the one about how I shot an undercover cop." He looked at her defensively again. "Ya' heard that one?"

Lindsay shrugged, "Heard doesn't mean listened to."

A shaky grin flashed across his face. He held his hand out for her inspection. "I was this close, Lindsay. I'd worked at it since I was eight years old and I came this close. A hand's length away."

She ran her fingers over his hand: the long fingers and the muscles corded across the back. He shivered as he turned it over and clasped her hand.

"Like the Minhas story, it's not completely true. I was in a bar, and my wrist was broken, but it wasn't really a fight. More like an attempt at a jump-in, maybe, or a warning."

"A gang?" Lindsay kept her eyes on Danny's face, but brought her other hand up to wrap around his.

"Tanglewood Boys. It was a year or so after the night Louie …" Danny's voice broke, and he cleared his throat noisily. "The night that Louie sent me off. I guess they got worried about something, or maybe it was just a warning to Louie; he was trying to pull away at the time. I was out with some buddies from college and we made the mistake of going to the old neighbourhood. I hadn't been around much." He stopped talking for a minute.

Lindsay wanted to tell him it was okay, wanted to let him stop, but she wouldn't. It wasn't a test, she thought to herself, so much as a testimony. How much he told her was up to him. How far he let her in was up to him.

"So," Danny said on a sigh, "Long story short, one guy makes up an excuse to call me out, three guys're waiting for me outside: one sucker punch and I'm out. They gave me a stomping. I don't really know what they got out breaking my hand, but I hope it gave them some satisfaction. They left me in an alley – it took me a while to come to and get help. My buddies had run off – thought the Mafia had done a Houdini on me."

He looked at her briefly. "First favourite Messer story, hands down: that I'm connected, and I don't mean to Tanglewood."

She had been waiting for that one and simply nodded, not reacting to the bitterness in his voice. Betrayal seemed to have been burned into him young, she thought.

He sighed, almost let down by her non-reaction. "So I lie there in that alley for a while, then this kid, just barely out of high school, uniform so new it squeaks when he moves too fast – he picks me up and calls a bus. By the time I get to the hospital," he flexed his hand under hers, "The damage was too severe to fix."

This time, the silence went on longer. Lindsay sat patiently.

"The uniform came to see me once in the hospital, just to see how I was doing. He stood in the corner of the room, all spiffy and turned out, told me I'd been lucky and one day I'd find it out." Danny shook his head, and grinned as the light dawned in Lindsay's eyes.

"Flack. It was Don Flack!"

"You got it. Been a copper all of two weeks. Boots still all shiny from the academy." Danny sighed again, tightened his grip on Lindsay's hand as if to prove that he still could.

"They operated twice. No good. Nerve damage could be repaired enough for ordinary life, but not for a major-league shortstop. Dead end. My whole life stopped because I had a beer with some friends in the wrong place."

He looked her in the eye then. "I bet you can guess what happened next."

She nodded, "Vicodin? Percocet?"

"Kadian to start: a morphine compound. Then anything that would numb out the world. I fell fast and hard. Took me a year to get clean."

"You were addicted." Her voice was calm, non-judgmental.

"There's a fine line between addict and non-addict, Lindsay." His haunted eyes met hers squarely for the first time since he had woken up. "I'm never sure which side of that line I'll wake up on."