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

A/N: Thank you to all who are reading and reviewing. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the wenches who listen to my moanings, and to PR, my wench-in-training, who has supported every step in this journey. I posted my first chapters on this site one year ago last week. It has been a wild ride since.

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

A Mother's Prayer

The Lord gave you into my keeping, a gift

That was mine to hold.

Mine to nourish and nurture.

For all the times I failed, I beg His forgiveness.

For the times I was impatient or tired,

For the times I forgot that your spirit

Could be as hungry as your little body.

For the times I could not keep the world

From stepping on your heart

No matter how many times I stood between you

And all that would hurt you.

God gave you to my keeping,

So that I could make you a man

So that I could make you a good man

So that I would no longer need to stand between you

And the world.

SMT2007

Chapter 47: A Cry in the Night

"Sheldon? What are you doing here, son?"

A shaft of light striking out into the dark Harlem streets.

"I just came … I wondered … got a bed for a tired man, Mama?" A weary grin.

The last time he had shown up on her doorstep he had been nursing a broken collarbone. The time before that, a broken heart.

Elaine Hawkes stood on the wide stairs of her building, where she had sat for years, watching children run through the streets after school until mothers' voices chorused through the streets, "Louise Rose! Mason Bowdey! John Connor! You all come home now, you hear me? Your dinner is on the table."

The sounds ringing to the heavens, the nightly call to table, to home, as regular as a muezzin's call to prayer.

She walked directly to the centre of the home, moving lightly on small feet which held her comfortable flesh easily, her hips swaying. He watched her with bemused wonder: this woman who had held his life together seamlessly, widowed before she was wived, a mother before she was a woman.

She had brought him up alone, worked two jobs at a time, held the tiny family together through the storms and doldrums of an ordinary life. When they had told her at the school he was testing in the genius level, she had been neither surprised nor worried, saying only, "God gave you that brain for a reason, Sheldon."

She added a third job to pay for his college education, at an age where other boys his age were leaving school and getting jobs to help support their families.

Hawkes would do anything to keep her from pain or worry.

Nearly anything.

"No bruises or cuts on you. What you comin' round for?"

"Just some of your cooking, Mama."

She had been silent for nearly ten minutes when he told her he was leaving the hospital to go to work for the morgue. Nearly twenty minutes when he told her he was applying to work as a Crime Scene Investigator.

It took him a long time to realize she had been praying through that seeming withdrawal, asking for guidance in how to help and support her son while dealing with her own fear and concern.

"Mama, what do you do when you need to make a difficult decision?" He sat at the table on which, like in fables of old, food magically appeared.

She stopped with the coffee pot in her hand and stared, surprised. "Why, Sheldon, you know what I do! I ask the good Lord for his guidance, to show me His will." She poured out the coffee and added the cream and sugar she knew he preferred.

"How do you know He has heard you?" Sheldon flushed a little as she sat down across from him.

"I just know. I feel a sense of peace, as if I have been filled with light. Whatever it is, Sheldon, you can take it to the Lord. He will never let you down or forsake you." Her face was filled with a confident stillness.

"I'm in trouble, Mama. And I know what I want to do. But I don't know what I ought to do." He stared down at his plate, filled with food he could not eat.

She sat silent. Waiting, he knew, for a word from God.

A God he could not believe in. A God he could not face. A God he could not even name. Not anymore.

And when she had cleared the table, putting away the untouched food, she pulled him into her warm embrace, into the strong arms that had held the world away from him his whole life, and said, "Let's see what the morning brings. Pray at night, wake up in the morning…"

"With your mind stayed on Jesus." Sheldon completed the lyric with a smile. "I love you, Mama." He hugged her back, and made his way to the bedroom he had grown up in, unchanged since he had left to go to university – a little too smart and a lot too young.

And while he slept in peaceful contemplation, although he would hesitate to call it prayer, Elaine Hawkes sat at the kitchen table that had seen its share of broken, angry, and hurting people, and read her Bible in the dim light, and sought answers from her God.

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

By the time they had emerged from the subway station, Adam was so confused he could hardly focus on where they were. When he finally realized it, he turned to Aisha in some shock.

"Coney Island? Aisha, it's freezing out here! And everything is shut down for the night – hell, probably for the season still." He pulled his jacket close around himself, shivering slightly.

Aisha stopped in front of him and insinuated herself into his arms. "It's not that cold, desert boy. And I promise you won't even notice it in a few minutes." She wrapped her arms around his waist, snaking her hands under his coat, and laughed when he yelped at the touch of her cold hands on his bare skin.

"Come here, you baby, let me warm you up a bit." Delicately, she smoothed the tip of her tongue over his upper lip, then sucked him into a passionate kiss that sent his senses reeling. She purred when she felt his body's instant response to the feel of her breasts pressed against him, and ran a teasing finger over the suddenly too-tight jeans.

"Down, boy. You have to wait for your pleasure." She grabbed his hand and led him away from the ornate main gate to a smaller one around the corner of the amusement park, a rusty gate in a chain link fence with an old padlock through a thick chain barring their way.

"Too bad, it's locked. I guess we'll have to come back another night, maybe a little earlier," Adam said with relief.

Aisha took a small set of keys out her pocket and started trying one after another, until finally one key rewarded her patience. She grinned over her shoulder at the young tech, and his eyes nearly crossed with lust as she stuck her tongue out playfully. "Are you going to come along quietly, or am I going to have to get rough with you?"

"Whatever you say, ma'am." He nearly stuttered, his heart pounding wildly as she pushed him through the gate and took his hand to lead him down darkened alleyways behind the booths he knew would be filled with people during the day. The scents of popcorn and hotdogs ghosted through the air; he could almost see, he thought fancifully, bright balloons being hawked by teenage kids, hear the screams of people on the rides.

Aisha turned to smile at him, stopping to lean up against a wall and pull him close to kiss him breathless. Her height made it easy for him to boldly trail his mouth down her throat to stop in the hollow between her breasts, licking the heated skin and shivering at her moan. She grabbed his hand and pulled him down yet another alleyway – he was now hopelessly lost in the Amusement Park, not even sure what direction he was going in any more.

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

"Danny?" She knocked only once, her voice almost too quiet to be heard over the sounds of the city below. She was throwing her fate to the hands of the gods; if he did not hear her, had already gone to sleep, or was not willing to talk, she would be absolved of the sin of asking too many questions, of prying into places she had not been invited.

The door opened swiftly, and he was there, a dark, almost menacing figure. She stepped back uncertainly, biting back a scream when he reached out and grabbed her arm.

When he wrapped her in his arms though, and sighed into her, she melted against him in relief. She tucked away the fear that she had overstepped in a tight corner of her mind.

"Montana. You okay?" Always his first thought. Ready tears came to her eyes.

"Yes. Are you?"

He nodded briefly, then drew her in the cold apartment. She rubbed her arms, and he turned to the thermostat, turning on the furnace as if he simply had not thought of it before.

"Food?"

She shook her head. Food could not fill the empty space. All she could taste was betrayal.

He had moved to the kitchen nonetheless, and was standing looking aimlessly into an almost empty fridge.

"Danny, are you sure you're okay?"

He turned to look at her, and was at her side in two long steps, his hands on her shoulders, eyes boring into hers. "What's happened now?"

She shook her head helplessly. "Not now," she wanted to say. "Not now, but your whole life."

Aloud, all she could say was, "I'm sorry."

He stooped and covered her mouth with his. When he raised his head, she was trembling slightly, her cheeks flushed.

"What could you possibly be sorry for?"

She bit her lip, agonizing over her next words.

Danny rubbed his hands over her arms comfortingly. "What is it, Montana? You know you can tell me anything, don't you?"

"Danny… come and sit down." She pulled him to the couch and sat in the corner, just out of his reach. She took a deep breath and turned away from him.

"Lindsay, you're scaring me here." His eyes were dark and wide, burned open as he watched her.

She got up restlessly, walking across the room to look out the window, look down on the still busy street below. Spring had been reluctant this year, her third in New York, and was still struggling to make it. She knew how Spring felt.

She turned and looked at Danny, sitting tense and unhappy on the couch, a bottle of water in his hands. Her Danny. He had overwhelmed her, not just in her apartment hallway the first time they had had sex, but over and over again: by coming to Montana, by standing up to and with her family, by facing the wilderness and overcoming it.

And she had repaid him in treachery, going behind his back to find out things he could not have wanted her to know. Things maybe even he did not know.

For a moment, she thought again about not telling him. Just hiding it away, the way she had kept her past from him. The way she was still keeping things from him. This would be no different. It might be the best thing, her cowardice argued, quivering in a dark corner of her soul. He never had to know that she had pried into his family, into his torment.

She squared her shoulders and leaned forward a little, perched on the wide windowsill. "Danny. Stella and I went to see Gunter Mauser today."

Danny sat back, confusion in his eyes. "Mauser? Mouse Mauser? Flack's snitch?"

Lindsay shook her head, "His grandfather, Gunter."

"Why?'

Her heart bled at the familiar curiosity which underpinned his every thought, but she clasped her hands again and went on. "Mouse told Flack that there was another Sassone brother."

Danny nodded, finishing off his water. "Yeah, Flack told me. When him and Mac met with me."

"Well, Mauser, the grandfather, knows something about it. We took John with us."

He looked up at that, "Where is John? Why didn't he come with you?"

Lindsay flushed, "I gave him a key to my place. I needed to talk to you."

Danny stood up and moved towards her, "Lindsay, what is the matter? You're acting all weird."

She put her hands up, and he stopped moving towards her.

"You're scaring me."

"I don't mean to." Her voice was tight and unhappy.

"You found out something… about me. About my family." He said it with certainty, and a cold dark dread.

She nodded, and closed her eyes in shame. "We talked to Mrs. Mergetz. Ethel Mergetz."

Danny let out a long slow whistle, "Old Lady Mergetz? I didn't know she was still alive."

He narrowed his eyes and stepped away from her, saying coldly, "Why are you here, Lindsay? Whatever you found out, it couldn't have been good. The Mergetzes and people in the neighbourhood never had much good to say about us. I never lied to you. You knew about my family, that we were connected…"

Her eyes flew open and she reached for him. He ignored her, turning his back on her deliberately.

"I can't believe that you are going to turn on me now." His voice was harsh, as if he had to push it through a throat closed by despair.

"Danny, listen to me …" She could barely speak; a kind of terror had sucked the breath from her body.

He walked to the door and put his hand on the handle. "The door's open, Lindsay." He suited his actions to the words. "I can't keep you here. If you can't trust me, can't believe me … you should go now."

Lindsay stretched out her hand to him again, but he had turned his back to her, facing the door with a grim determination not to influence her in anyway.

He thought he had faced this despair and overcome it: when the Tanglewood mess had tripped him up, when Louie had been killed for him, when she had turned away from him again and again. He thought he had faced losing her.

But that was before he had held her in his arms, had felt her peak and fall apart in his arms, had woken to her warmth after a nightmare.

He didn't know how he was going to face the world without her. But he wouldn't hold her against her will, wouldn't bind her to him with obligation.

He felt her arms go around his waist, her body pressed up against him, sobs forcing their way through her, and turned to wipe the tears from her eyes. "Lindsay, it's okay. It's okay. I understand. I do. I should have known better… you deserve better."

His tortured whispers against her skin burned into her. "No… no… Danny… not you… me… I am so sorry. I knew better but I had to know. I'm sorry… so sorry…"

He went perfectly still, his arms around her, then slowly pushed her away so he could see her face. "What are you sorry for?"

"For going to see Mauser. For listening to Mrs. Mergetz talk about your …mother." Lindsay looked up into his face: not just still now, it looked carved out of marble. The only thing left alive were the deep blue eyes, and they were fiery hot.

He turned from her, moving back to the living room, where it was his turn to perch on the windowsill overlooking his city. When he was sure he could control himself, he said, "What did she tell you?"

Slowly, she closed the door, locking them in. She stepped carefully around the brittle tone and sank into the couch. She hadn't worked this out – how to tell him what she knew, what she had guessed, what she had learned. A piece of advice floated through her head, "Start at the beginning, and go on to the end, then stop."

And so she did, curled up in a corner of the couch, shivering from time to time as she spoke. And he huddled against the window, staring down into the slowing streets as the night took over, and listened silently to the story of his life.