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

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to those who make the hard decisions: to love, and to let go.

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


Small, Still Voice

It comes like the soft spring wind

Slipping through the cracks in the wall

Built so carefully over time,

Like a dandelion blazoning through the shattered cement

Of a sidewalk losing its battle with time.

It comes like the anarchistic scattering of crocuses –

Purple and yellow and white –

Across the trim and proper green of the formal lawn.

It comes like the high song of the peregrine

Floating on the wind above the busy world

Calling to its unexpected mate.

It comes like the scent of the rain

Like the scent of the sun

With the promise that spring is around the corner.

It comes.

SMT 2007

Chapter 14: Going Under, Coming Up

They hit the front door like a couple of horny teenagers, his mouth on hers hot and demanding, her body under his yielding and pliant. He fumbled his keys in his shaking hand, gasping when she ran her nails over his chest, down his flat abdomen to his hips.

"Hurry up," she whispered in his ear, laughing and breathless.

"I can't concentrate on this if you are going to keep doing that," he groaned as her hands wandered around his waist to stroke up his back, under the light sweater he was wearing.

"The great Mac Taylor, defeated by a simple Yale lock," she breathed out, smirking, as she pulled his head down for another shattering kiss.

He pulled her close against him, giving in to the feeling of her mouth under his. Then he firmly stepped away from her, and turned to the delicate task of opening his own damn door, a feat he had managed to perform countless times over the years without any particular difficulty.

Peyton did not touch him, tempting though it was to make him lose control on his own doorstep. She didn't want anything to force him to re-think this decision, and though she knew it was foolish, she was afraid that even such a little thing as being unable to unlock his door could change this evening, and their relationship, forever.

When the tumblers clicked sweetly into place, Mac pushed the door open, and turned to her with a triumphant grin on his face. She couldn't help but grin back: he looked as proud as if he had cracked the case of the century. She moved back into his arms and squealed as he lifted her off her feet, and stepped into the apartment.

In the shadows under the window, a slim figure moved further back, confident that he had not been seen.

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

Her name was Pepper. She was drinking Paralyzers, which she insisted Adam join her in. She was with three friends, who Adam could swear were called Sugar, Spice, and Mustard, but after two Paralyzers, he wasn't exactly sure of his own name. They danced until the club closed at 2:00 am, then poured Adam into a cab with them and ended up in a warehouse where the party had just started.

By the time Adam made his way home, he was already suffering from a hangover, and when his phone signaled the arrival of a text message, he groaned: even 'vibrate' was too loud under the circumstances. Blearily, he tried to focus on the tiny screen.

Text Message: A Blanco to A Ross

Where U been?

"No idea, babe," he muttered to himself as he fell into bed. He prayed that even though he was on call, God would be merciful and let him at least sleep off the worst of this before the next flood of trace hit the lab.

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

Stella woke up with the sun shining full on her face. With eyes scrunched up, she turned away from it with a groan, and bumped her nose hard against a solid and unexpected shoulder. Her eyes flew open as she realized the sun was high in the window.

She realized it wasn't her window.

She realized it wasn't her bed.

And finally, with a squeeze around her heart, she realized the shoulder belonged to Don, who grumbled and rolled over to trap her under his other arm.

Stella froze. She never spent the night. No matter where she started the evening, no matter who she started the evening with, she always ended it alone, in her own bed, in her own apartment. Aside from the days after the attack, and one vacation she had taken to Miami a year or so earlier, she slept in her own bed, waking in the morning in the room she had painted with light terra cotta walls, decorated with cool white and blue.

Carefully, she glanced around Don's bedroom. There were clothes lying on the floor and hanging off a chair; with a grimace, she recognized that half the clothes were hers. The rest of the room was tidy to a point; although most things were put away, there were piles of papers and books on nearly every flat surface except for the large stand on the wall opposite the windows, which had a big-screen TV rivaling the one in his living room she had teased him about the night before. Laundry was piled in a corner near the bathroom, and a towel was hung on the doorknob. Through the open cupboard door, she could see a pile of unmatched socks languishing in a cardboard box on the floor.

Otherwise, the walls were white, the blinds were dusty, the sheets were clean, and the bed coverings looked like they had belonged to Don when he was sixteen. The only thing that told her for sure that this was his bedroom was the smell – the clean scent of his soap and something spicy underlying it that she thought she should be able to identify but couldn't. It just smelled like Don.

Don sighed as he pulled her closer, and she closed her eyes against the sweetness of that act. They had come to his apartment after dinner, not yet ready for the evening to end, and had moved seamlessly from drinking coffee, to cuddling on the couch watching the end of an old movie on television, to the bedroom on a wave of heat in natural progression. Stella couldn't remember a time when passion matched so perfectly with friendship, with humour, with genuine liking for another person's company.

Stella stared at Don, trying to see into his mind through his dreaming face. He had opened up to her so easily, she mused, offering her a glimpse into his heart that she had neither expected nor asked for.

She wished she had known about his grandmother. He must have carried that hurt in his heart like a burning scar the first time she'd met him, only a year after he had joined the force, when he was still on the beat trying to carve out a place for himself that owed nothing to his father, the famous Lieutenant Don Flack Sr, son himself of a famous – maybe infamous – New York cop, Detective John "Jack" Flack.

The stories that were told about the Flack family were New York legend. Not for the first time, she wondered what it would be like to be so identified with family. Any family.

She eased out from under his arm, gathering up her clothes quietly as Don rolled over, sprawling out across the bed. She stood and watched him, clutching her clothes to her chest, simply breathing with him until she was dizzy.

She didn't know what to do: her head was warning her to get out before she couldn't; her heart was begging her to stay and find out what it was like to abandon her fears.

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

"I find no merit to the appeal, Mr. Gregson. Your client may not have been the only shooter, but he certainly did shoot two of the young people he was convicted of killing. The evidence provided by the Bozeman Police Department is unequivocal. And as his youth was taken in account in the original sentencing I find no merit to your claim that his sentence should be changed. He was sentenced to serve four life sentences concurrently, with no chance of parole for at least 25 years. I see no reason in law to change the length of time now that he is serving two life sentences concurrently."

The judge brought down his gavel on the lawyer's protest, and said curtly, "Court is adjourned."

Lindsay stood up with a sigh. This time it really was over. Most questions had been answered, and those that remained had no answer. She turned to see John McKim's father standing behind her, his face drawn and grey.

"Mr. McKim. I am so sorry about John." She hugged him gently.

"Thank you. I know John would want me to tell you how proud he was of you, Lindsay; sorry, Detective Monroe. He always said that you were the best work he ever did." Mr. McKim wiped a hand over his eyes and added, in a ragged voice, "Could you come to the hospital with me? Could you … be there when …?" He could not continue.

"Yes, of course. Now?" She ignored Danny standing behind her, shoulder to shoulder with her brother John.

"Please. They say the sooner it is done, the sooner he can help other people." Mr. McKim's voice gained a little strength as Lindsay put her hand in his.

"I'll drive with you."

John Monroe and Danny Messer glanced at each other, but said nothing, just swinging into step behind her, for all the world like an honour guard. They said nothing as McKim helped her into his car, simply getting into Monroe's rental to follow her to the hospital.

"Y'okay?" Danny asked John Monroe when they turned into the hospital parking lot, his accent strong.

"I can think of a hundred snake pits I'd rather be in than this one at the moment." John said roughly.

Danny nodded briefly. "Service is set for Wednesday morning."

"I know you had hoped to be gone by then."

Danny shrugged. "She needs to do this."

John chanced a quick look at the other man's set face, "You don't."

"Yeah. I do."

Together they sat in the waiting room until Lindsay came out of John McKim's room. Her face was white, and her eyes were set wide and unblinking, as if she was afraid closing her eyes would open the floodgates. She walked straight into Danny's arms, and he held her tightly, rubbing her back and whispering nonsense words of comfort until she pulled a few inches away from him, reaching a hand out to her brother.

"Thanks for coming, John. Mr. McKim needed some support."

"You too."

"I said goodbye that first morning. I knew he was gone."

"I called Stella. She's sending our dress blues by express. They'll be here for Wednesday morning," Danny said quietly.

Lindsay looked at him in surprise. She hadn't even thought of honouring John McKim's death in the line of duty by joining in the procession in full uniform, but it was the only fitting tribute she had left to give. She felt the tears begin to choke her and when Danny handed her a handkerchief, she gave up and let them go.

Danny pulled her to a chair and sat down beside her, letting her cry against his shoulder. He looked up at John, daring him to say a word, but John just shook his head, a worried frown on his face, and walked over to the window, staring out it until Lindsay's sobs had slowed.

They all turned as Mr. McKim came down the hallway. He walked, Danny thought, like an old man: one whose hope had been lost. He had signed the papers, handing over pieces of his son to the surgeons like items at a garage sale: one liver, lightly pickled; two kidneys, gently used; two eyes, no crying; one heart, slightly bruised.

Danny shivered, holding Lindsay a little closer. It could have been her: it could have been Ted and Diane having to take that decision to make their daughter's death count for something in a world which suddenly made no sense at all. It could have been him.

He wondered who would have signed that form if Monroe and his Fed buddies hadn't dropped from the sky the way they did, whisking him off to the hospital. Who would have been asked to agree to the donation of whatever parts of him could live on without him?

He thought of the organ donor card in his wallet, now recovered from the truck where he had left it: every officer was given one at some point. Most guys he knew tossed them; it felt a little too much like tempting fate to be carrying that around in their wallets. Danny had signed his, and tucked it in behind everything else. After Louie's death, his parents had refused the request from the hospital to harvest his organs, Maureen Messer screaming that they only wanted to take Louie off life support in order to exploit him so their transplant surgeons could afford newer Mercedes.

Danny was pretty sure his mother wouldn't worry so much about his corpse being intact when he was buried.

"Messer." The sound of his name pulled him back to the corridor in the hospital. He rolled his eyes when he saw Chris Martens bearing down on him.

"What now, Doc?"

"Examining room. Now."

Danny shrugged, figuring it was easier to just give in. He kissed Lindsay on the temple, and handed her over to John before following the young doctor down the hallway.

"What's up?" Danny looked at the examining table he would normally pull himself up on without thinking. It hurt even to look at the table.

"What happened to your prescription?" Chris said abruptly.

Danny's eyes narrowed. He was sure Lindsay had told her mother some of his story; they'd spent enough time together while he spent most of Sunday sleeping. He hadn't figured on one of them grassing on him to Doc.

"You're pale, shivery, sweating. Your jaw is clenched; your pupils are dilated. It doesn't take a fucking diagnostician to work out that you're not taking your meds. You panicked every time we upped your dose …" Chris's voice, which had started fast and loud with frustration, slowed as he watched Danny's impassive face. He turned to the cupboards behind him, huffing out the air he had taken in for a good long lecture. He rifled through the cabinet until he found a bottle of acetaminophen, which he handed to Danny with a flourish.

"Non-addictive, remarkably effective. You don't get points in NarcAnon for being stupid, just clean."

Danny continued silent as he took the cap off and shook out a couple of pills, dry-swallowing them quickly.

"What do you take for a headache?" Chris asked curiously.

"A beer, a brunette, and a ball game," Danny answered dryly.

"How long you been clean?"

"Until you pumped that shit in me, over ten years." Ten years, nine months, seventeen days, to be exact. Recovering addicts were nothing if not exact.

"Still go to meetings?"

"Sometimes. I used drugs to escape. Then I found the place I wanted to be." Danny didn't want to go into all this again.

Chris nodded. "Let me look." He quickly and efficiently removed the bandages and checked both wounds, whistling under his breath at the purple and yellow marks. "The bruising is pretty, but the wounds look okay." He ran his hand over Danny's skin, probing carefully for inflammation or hot spots. "Healing is on track. You should be able to go on Wednesday, but you need to check in with your own doctor once you get back to New York, and no pushing to get back to the lab, okay? Give yourself a chance to heal properly."

Danny nodded, but said nothing, mouth set stubbornly.

Chris looked at him with resignation and played his trump card. "If you slow down, maybe she will. You both need to recover."

Danny shrugged and gave a short laugh, "Like always, Doc, I'm just trying to keep up with her."