A/N: Again, I have to give credit for a line, in this case Stella's line regarding Lindsay's and her situations at the end of the chapter: mercy4vr was the 200th reviewer of this story, and asked that this be included. Thanks, mercy4vr, for the line as well as the permission!

The Forest Primeval

The howl of the predator skirls through the night

Echoing off the buildings that tower above the street

Call to call, blood to blood, the pack gathers

To prey upon the weak, to strengthen the bond.

Some cower, some scatter, some find a place to hide

But some – the few – stand tall against the threat,

Stand shoulder to shoulder to face the menace

To hazard all against the forces that batter at the bastions.

SMT2007

Chapter 23: Fighting the Beast Within

"Mac? Mac, is that you?" The voice sounded younger than it usually did, and a little groggy, but definitely was Reed's.

"Reed? Where are you? Are you all right?" Mac was racing out the doors as he spoke, gathering up Stella in his wake.

"I don't know. I'm all right, I mean, but I don't know where I am. I think – ah! – I think I'm in a warehouse? Maybe? It's big, anyway?" Reed's exclamation of pain had Mac moving faster.

"Are you confined? Can you get to a window? Get outside? Find me a cross street, a landmark, Reed. Stay on the line with me, okay?"

Stella had her phone out, ordering a GPS trace on Reed's phone. Then she put in a call to the uniformed officers to assist as soon as they had a location.

Mac could hear Reed moving around, but he had stopped talking, "Reed, report. Tell me what you're doing. Keep talking."

As Stella and Mac passed the waiting room, the Garretts leaped to their feet. Miranda grabbed Stella's arm, "What's happening? Is it Reed? Please – tell us something!"

Stella stopped, trying to school her face not to show the impatience she felt. "He's phoned Mac; we're trying to get a location from his cell. As soon as we know anything, we'll tell you, I promise, but right now we have to move. Mrs. Garrett, he's talking, and seems to be okay. That's a good sign."

Miranda Garret collapsed into one of the visitors' chairs, and Stella saw that her husband was doing his best to comfort her. She had to run to catch up with Mac, who was still talking to Reed as he hit the stairs.

"What can you see out the window? No, don't climb up, Reed, you could get hurt and then it will be harder for you to report to me. Move back and see if there is anything you recognize in the skyline."

Mac kept talking him through a cursory examination of the place he had woken up in, but personally, Mac was counting on technology to locate the boy.

"Got it!" Stella directed Mac to the nearest car as she hung up on Adam and sent out a radio call to the uniforms, giving them the address of the deserted warehouse down by the port where Reed's signal had been tracked. Sirens blaring, lights flashing, the police cars muscled their way through the grudging New York streets, arriving at the warehouse some fifteen minutes after Reed's call had come through.

Mac was still talking, although Reed had stopped responding when they were still a few minutes from the warehouse. Stella hoped his phone had just lost battery power; she could tell from Mac's strained face that he hoped that too. His voice remained calm, with a slight hint of command stiffening it, and Stella knew that, if he could hear it, Reed would feel better for it – would feel Mac was treating him as an adult in a serious situation and not as a child who had got into trouble.

Police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck all arrived at the warehouse at virtually the same time, and Mac quickly deployed the men to search the warehouse. "He's on an upper level, he thought," Mac said, "He could see just the tops of buildings. Be careful; we have no idea what else is in there."

Teams of armed men swept through the building, Mac leading the way. It seemed like an eternity, but actually it was only about ten minutes before Mac's voice crackled through the communicator, "He's here, top floor. I need the EMTs and a stretcher."

"No, you don't," Stella could hear Reed's aggrieved voice start up, and she grinned. He sounded like every other man she had ever worked with; he was going to be okay.

Grabbing her phone, she moved away from the building a little to get a clear signal and call the station. Reed's parents needed to be told as soon as possible.

"Hi, Juarez? Tell the Garretts to meet us at Queen of Mercy's ER," she lifted her eyebrows inquiringly at the EMT with the nearby ambulance to check that was the destined hospital, and went on, reassured, "ETA fifteen minutes. And Juarez? Keep it under control, okay? We don't want a media circus out there."

She sighed. Put together Miranda Garrett, high-powered New York City Councilor, and Mac Taylor, highly decorated New York City Detective, in a bizarre struggle over an appealing 19 year old, add in the ever-thrilling hint of Mob activity, and she could feel the vultures circling overhead before she could turn around.

"And oh, look," she said brightly as Jared Cross of WNYW stuck a microphone in her face, "The vultures arrive."

"Detective Bonasera, we had a report of a shoot-out at this location, and a teenager dead or wounded in the building. Care to comment?"

"Statements will be made at the usual time and place, Mr. Cross. I recommend that you wait behind the Crime Scene tape and stay tuned for information when it becomes available."

"I understand that Detective Mac Taylor's son is in the warehouse. What do you know about that? Was he shot? Is he a suspect? Is the Mob involved?" Cross continued to shout questions as Stella walked away towards the building.

"Keep the kid out of sight of the cameras, could you?" she said quietly to the stretcher-bearers as they went into the building. "He's Councilwoman Garrett's son; you don't need her on your case for helping to splash his face all over the 6:00 news."

They nodded briskly; in a city where anybody could be somebody, they were used to taking precautions. The driver backed the bus up close to the warehouse doors, and Reed was moved swiftly and discreetly into it. Mac climbed in with him, nodding when Stella said, "Meet you there." His face, though still strained, had lost the grey look she had noticed earlier; Reed must be okay, and was already talking a blue streak, she thought with a laugh. Even over the siren, she could hear him voicing a loud opinion against needing to go to the hospital, against having his mother informed, against not being fed immediately.

Stella pulled out her phone, and went to hit speed dial for Flack; then she paused. She had already been pulled away from Lindsay; if Don were called in too, Danny would be left alone. Don wasn't on shift, and there were certainly enough detectives around to deal with the case. With a sigh, she closed up her phone and went through the doors to process the scene. They didn't need Flack.

It was a little worrying that she felt she did.

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

"I'm glad to hear that; tell Mac to take it easy on him, okay? He'll require nutrition and hydration, but it sounds like he'll recover quickly. Do you need me to call anyone? His girlfriend?" Peyton was quiet a moment, only nodding occasionally, but Lindsay could hear Stella's brisk tones. "All right then. I'll see you when you get here, Stella; there's no rush."

Lindsay finished washing the dishes; Peyton had whipped up a mound of scrambled eggs and a pot of tomato basil soup, and Lindsay had cleaned her plate in minutes, vaguely surprised at how hungry she actually was. Then Peyton had insisted on Lindsay having a shower while she placed a quick grocery order to be delivered. Lindsay had done what she was told, too drained to do anything else. She had fallen asleep on her bed, although she wasn't sure for how long, only waking up when she heard the phone ring.

Lindsay wandered into the kitchen, listening idly to Peyton's side of the conversation, and began to clean up the kitchen and prepare the dishes for washing, glad for a few minutes' space to think.

Everything had happened too fast, and yet it had been nearly three weeks since she had been in this apartment, nearly three since she had been in the lab. She could feel her hands itching to get back to work, to do more than uselessly wring themselves over things she could not control.

Montana had been a shock; it had all seemed oddly small, almost compressed. Too much had happened there, and she couldn't quite get a hold of anything. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to sleep. She wanted Danny.

Peyton walked into the kitchen in time to grab the plate just as it dropped from Lindsay's hand, "Whoa! I would have done that! Come on, let's sit down." Swiftly she guided Lindsay to a chair, pushing her head between her knees and grabbing a glass of water. "There we go, love, drink that slowly."

The doorbell rang, and Peyton, with a worried glance back at Lindsay, ran to open it, allowing Stella into the apartment.

"Peyton? Linds okay?"

Peyton shook her head, and led the way back into the kitchen. Stella sat down beside Lindsay, now leaning her head on her hands, while Peyton offered her the water again.

Lindsay sat up and took the glass, eyes wide and stunned. "I'm in love with Danny Messer."

Peyton watched her carefully, gauging the colour in her face, her fingers checking the rapid beating of her pulse. "Of course you are, love. You've been in love with him forever."

Lindsay shook her head a little frantically, "No. No. I wasn't. I mean, I liked him, but I told him we couldn't – I told I wasn't – I told him it wasn't him.…" her voice faded and she took another, bigger sip of water.

"That was before Montana?" Stella surmised. Poor Danny: of all the lines to throw at him, Lindsay had picked the one most calculated to strike to the heart, the one Danny could never believe. It was always him.

"I knew I was in love with him in Montana. You should have seen him, Stel. I saw him get shot – I was watching out the window and I saw the bullet go through him. I watched it hit the ground before he did. I could have walked out and picked it up from under him. There was so much blood. I knew he was dead. He had to be dead. I grabbed the gun, and sat in the chair. Then Ross walked into the cabin…"

Lindsay's voice was calm, even cold as she went through Ross's confession. She had said it so many times already that every word was etched into her brain like a song she could never forget. Peyton did not react, and Lindsay was as grateful for that as she was for Stella's hand wrapped warmly around hers.

"I shot him. I knew what I was doing. I could have just wounded him, but I shot him in the chest. I knew it was a kill shot. I just wanted it over. He'd killed Danny, killed my friends. I just had to end it." Lindsay stopped and put her hands over her face.

Peyton said nothing. She didn't know what to say, so contented herself with putting an arm around Lindsay's shoulders.

Stella said, "Lindsay. Look at me."

Lindsay looked up into Stella's clear green eyes and remembered. Stella had shot a man too, in a haze of pain, fear, and rage. If anyone could understand, it would be Stella.

"You did what you had to do." Stella took Lindsay's hands more firmly as she started to protest. "Yes, you did. You had no choice. You are not the one to blame here. He had killed your friends. He had shot your partner. He had a gun on you. You didn't know that Danny was alive. You didn't know that John was on his way. For all you knew, you were alone. You had to shoot to kill."

Lindsay stared at her piteously.

"Lindsay, you and I both were made to feel like victims, victims of madmen who controlled us. But they are wrong – everyone who said that was wrong. We survived, and we took care of ourselves. We can't always keep things from happening to us, Linds: bad things happen. But we can control how we see ourselves, how we deal with those bad things."

Stella took a deep breath and waited until Lindsay was looking her in the eye again, then said firmly, "Victimized, yes; victims, no. What they do to us is not our responsibility. How we deal with it is."

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

The game was over: the Sabres had lived down to Danny's low expectations and been knocked out of the playoffs by Ottawa. A couple of empty pizza boxes sat on the floor, with a couple of empty beer bottles beside them. Danny still lay on the couch, eyes closed against the pain that wouldn't quite go away. Don sat in the chair, flipping idly through the channels trying to find something on that didn't totally suck. Crime shows and reruns of Friends. Talk about drek.

He glanced over at Danny on the couch, whose arm was flung over his eyes. He felt like he should ask him how he was doing, get him to talk about what had happened in Montana, but the very thought made him wince with embarrassment. It just wasn't his style to go all head-shrink on a friend. He'd had to do it for team members, for men under his command when things went wrong. But that was different: that was the job. Danny – Danny went beyond the job. He'd always been beyond the job.

"What?" Danny said.

"What?" Flack answered.

"I can feel you looking at me over here, Flack. What's up?"

"I don't know. You want to talk about what happened?" Flack offered, feeling even more like an idiot.

Danny was silent so long Flack gave a sigh of relief. At least that was out of the way.

"I can hear coyotes," Danny said, finally.

"What? Like right now?" Flack glanced around the apartment.

"When I'm going to sleep. Or waking up. When I'm dreaming, sometimes."

"What do you think that means?" Flack asked carefully.

Danny shivered, "I know what it means. After the bullet hit me, I was lying in the snow – don't know how long. I could hear them, getting closer. Just one at first, then more. They were calling the pack in. If I hadn't made it out…" his voice trailed off.

Flack rolled a beer bottle between his hands before taking a drink. He decided there was nothing useful to offer here, so shutting up seemed the best choice.

"The first time I met Montana was at the zoo, remember?" Danny said it softly, almost dreamily. "She asked if I had ever seen what a full-grown black bear could do to a man. I knew I was in trouble from that moment on."

Flack snickered softly. It hadn't been hard to see, even with eyes and nose streaming from the allergy that evidently even jungle cats triggered in him. No one else had even had a look-in with Lindsay – she had been tagged the moment Messer gave her the nickname.

"You guys okay?" He said it carefully, not completely sure how much he wanted to hear. Danny and he had shared many things, including a girl or two on occasion, but he had to work with Lindsay. There were some images he didn't need in his head.

There was no answer from the couch. Flack got up and threw a blanket over Danny's sleeping form. Having spent a night or two on that couch in the past, Flack had no hesitation in taking the bed; of the two, the expensive couch was the more comfortable.

And when Danny woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of night to the fading sound of harsh voices and howling coyotes, he was grateful for the distraction provided by the television turned low and the city turned high.