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

A/N: As always, thanks to those who read my stories and send me their thoughts and encouragement. Thanks again to Prefect Rachel for creating Natalie Chance and keeping her in character.

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

Women's work

They said a woman's work was never done

That time and place were in her hands,

And while the home was woman's domain

The world outside was ruled by man.

But that changed.

And women moved from home to world

And back again.

And the work cannot be done

For the job of the day is that of the sun

And the task of the home is that of the moon –

The dark mysteries that govern a woman's mood

And power and gift of sight.

And no woman born can resist the need

To turn the darkness light.

SMT2007

Chapter 48: A Woman's Place

"I don't understand, babe. Your mother – why didn't she tell you or your dad about this?" 
 
The young girl's eyes were alive with curiosity and compassion. She was lying on Reed's bed, wrapped in his arms.

Natalie had listened to him talk from the time he had met her at the bus stop by his home, through a snack that would keep her from having to eat for the rest of the day, to a make-out session that had ended, a little guiltily, when Peter Garrett had slammed open the front door and shouted out cheerfully, "Hey ho, anybody home?"

Reed had talked. And talked. And talked. The fear, the anger, the guilt, the resentment, back to the anger, then the fear again: he had swung from emotion to emotion like a monkey through the trees. Natalie was exhausted just listening to him. He was revved so high she might have thought he was on drugs, except that she knew he did not do drugs.

Natalie snuggled closer, as if she could hold Reed together by sheer force of will, by the strength of her arms around him.

Reed closed his eyes and rubbed his head against Natalie's. "I don't know. She's funny, you know? She wants to be in the public eye – she likes that. But at the same time she doesn't seem to realize what it does to us. To Dad and me. He hates it, you know – the whole thing."

Natalie murmured, "What about you?"

Reed shrugged, "It's okay. She doesn't expect much of me. Just smile and don't say anything too crazy."

Natalie moved so she could look into Reed's face. "How do you feel about that? I know I sound like a bad psychology student, but I'm serious, sweetie. How do you feel about this – your mom getting you into this? I mean, you got kidnapped, Reed. You could have been killed." Her arms tightened around him again, holding him closer than should have been physically possible.

Reed shrugged again, "I got lucky. I know it." He shivered a little. He had not told Natalie about the construction site trailer, or how close to getting caught he had been. Some things were way too big for honesty. "Mac reamed me out already. Several times."

He turned on his side, resting his head on one hand and staring seriously into her eyes. "But if I want to do this, be a reporter who takes on the toughest cases, I'm going to have to deal with stuff like this. And Mom has given me some pretty good training. You should have seen her when that sleazeball hack went after her, though. I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of her."

It was Natalie's turn to shiver. She had been on the wrong side of Miranda Garrett, and the view was not pretty!

She heard the chimes of a clock downstairs, and looked at her own watch in horror. "Jesus, Reed, I gotta get going. I have a film class tonight, in like an hour."

He rolled over onto his back and grinned up lazily at her, hands behind his head. "What genre is it tonight: noir? Romance? Action?"

Natalie leaned over the bed and whispered wickedly in his ear, "Porn." She laughed as his eyes grew wide. "Sorry, babe, not really. We're watching examples of existential films from the 1950s: excerpts from Rashomon and In a Lonely Place. Then, I'm sure, we'll have to write about them."

"Well sweetheart, that's why they call it college," Reed said in his best Bogey voice.

She rolled her eyes, groaning, not bothering to answer.

Teasing and pushing each other, they ran down the stairs, Reed catching her in his arms at the door and kissing her lingeringly. "Hey, Nat? Thanks for coming to babysit me."

She hugged him hard and said, "Any time, babe. Seriously."

"You want me to walk you to the bus stop?"

"Reed? Dinner will be ready in a second," Peter called from the kitchen.

Reed looked at Natalie a little comically, and she laughed, "Oh, I get it. You'd rather eat than wait with me?"

"Well, Dad is making tacos. And it's hella-cold out there," he defended himself with a grin.

She wrapped her hands around his face and kissed him again. "Go! Pig out on tacos. I have to run or I'll be late and Professor Gupta will have locked the door. Jerk."

He waved her good bye and turned back into the house just as a figure all in black with ratty Converses and a backpack moved down the street.

He didn't notice.

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

They stopped in front of a small warehouse, large enough perhaps to house a small plane. Aisha pulled her set of keys out of her pocket again, and this time Adam asked, "Where did they all come from?"

She flicked her hair out of her way and replied idly, "I never turn in keys when I leave a job. And I've worked at lots of places."

"Isn't that illegal? I mean, you sign for them, don't you? Don't you have to pay to have everything re-keyed?" Adam frowned, his security-conscious nature, honed to a fine edge by Mac's patient tutelage, shocked to the core.

The key in Aisha's hand snicked over, and she laughed. "Do you know how seldom they bother to actually re-key? Stay here." She slipped inside the building and efficiently keyed in the alarm code, silencing the alarm before it had even started beeping its warning countdown. She stepped back and beckoned him to follow her. "Or change the alarm codes? People are just naturally lazy, Adam."

"I don't know, Aisha. We could get in big trouble if we get caught in here, and I think Mac would blow a gasket if I got caught breaking and entering… and I really don't need him on my case… and Danny would never let me forget about it and… why are we here anyway?"

She shut him up by kissing him hard on the mouth, then turned him around with her hands over his eyes. "Keep them closed until I tell you, Mr. Law and Order."

He felt her step away, leaving him in the dark warehouse. "Aisha?"

"Not yet."

He breathed in, feeling the flutterings of panic in the bottom of his stomach. "Aisha?"

"Give me a second."

He had to bite down on his cheek to keep himself from screaming when he heard a machine begin to move in front of him. All the terrible crime scene photos he had seen in his life flashed in front of his closed eyes, and he waited in terror for the pain he was sure would come.

"Open your eyes," a soft voice breathed in his ear, a warm body pressing up against his back, hands wrapping around his waist.

Heart still pounding madly, he opened his eyes to see the old Grand Carousel of Coney Island gleaming softly, the light from the canopy the only illumination in the dark building. Aisha breathed again, "The music will start in a moment. Come on."

She pulled him up on the platform as the music began, a tinkling jolly little piece, and the great carousel began to move, slowly at first, but then speeding up – some horses prancing merrily up and down, others pacing in stately procession, with the little carriages riding sedately behind.

Dazzled, Adam walked from animal to animal, rubbing his hands over gleaming wood smoothed by the tender ministrations of thousands of small hands over the generations. He found his favourite: a black charger fierce with flaring red nostrils and a proudly uplifted head, and, after searching out Aisha's permissive nod, he swung himself into the saddle and held on.

Aisha put back her head and laughed at the delight in his eyes, then so casually she might not have planned it, swung onto the horse so she was facing him, her back against the pole. Her jacket slid off her shoulders, leaving her scantily clad and shivering a bit in the cold air, her nipples puckering under the silky fabric. She placed her hands on either side of Adam's face, and kissed him, sliding her tongue into his mouth as he gasped and wrapped his arms around her hips, pulling her close.

He would never have believed how many ways there were to ride a merry-go-round.

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

"So, you and Father Tony? You're good, now, right?"

The only light in the room was over the old man's bed, a dim glow illuminating the gray hair, turning it silver above shadows etched across his face. Machines beeped and whirred domestically, monitoring every breath and shift.

In the corner by the window, two dark figures, chairs close together, knees touching, hands entwining, talked quietly, their words punctuated by the heavy breaths from the bed.

"Hmm. We're good, Stel."

She shook her head, hiding a smile. How like men. A word or two, a high five, and it was all over.

"What now?"

He sighed. He still had not made it to bed, and he could feel exhaustion like a pall weighing him down. "I don't know," he admitted. "What you've told me about the Sassone kid – sounds like Monroe is going to chase that down."

Stella nodded. John Monroe had the same steely determination his younger sister showed, with little of her spunk or customary light-heartedness. They could safely leave the Sassone-son mystery in his hands.

"And the Mob hits – Taglia and the other one, the one with the Tanglewood tat – let's face it, we may never figure those out. These guys aren't amateurs. They don't get caught."

"Not by us, anyway," she added grimly. The Mobs took care of their own 'law' enforcement, and while it wasn't always pretty, it was swift justice of a sort.

Flack nodded, worried that his head might just fall off his shoulders if he did it too hard.

"Mac put a tail on the Garretts. And on Natalie Chance, Reed's girlfriend." Stella had talked to Mac as he was leaving the lab for the first time in far too many hours. She was keeping a careful eye on Flack; as soon as he was too tired to resist her, he was on his way to bed too. She'd already worked a deal with one of the hospice nurses and a cot with his name on it was in the room next door.

Flack raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "How'd he swing that? Ms. Garrett is a tough customer and she wasn't buying any of it when I tried."

"Mac showed her crime scene photos." Stella shrugged. She hadn't really approved, but the results were undeniable. A white-faced Miranda Garrett had caved instantly when she saw the pile of stained blankets her son had been kept on for hours, with the bloody tape from his wrists left artistically in the centre of the nest.

"Why on Chance? She in danger?" His words were starting to slur.

"You know Mac. Thorough." She watched him carefully, waiting for the next pause to lengthen. Five more minutes and he'd be out, she assured herself.

"I got guys on Messer Construction, following the top guys." The yawn nearly took his head off, but he controlled himself. His eyes fluttered closed and his breathing began to slow.

"Okay, Detective. Come with me." Her voice was soft and soothing and she put her arm around him to lead him through the door.

"What? I'm okay, Stella. I can't leave; I promised my mom…" his incoherent protests stopped as she gently helped him onto the cot, removing his shoes and covering him with the blanket the nurse had provided.

"He won't be alone, Don. I promise. Sleep now. Just for a few minutes. I'll wake you."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

His hand shot out and grabbed hers, turning it over to press a kiss on the palm. "I love you, Stella."

She froze, waiting for his breathing to steady, before gently releasing her hand and stepping to the door of the tiny room. She watched him for a minute, then glanced over to where his father lay before looking back at the young man who dwarfed the little cot, his feet hanging over the end. Somehow, it was absurdly touching.

"Shit." A whisper under her breath. "I love you too, Don."

She turned away before she saw the slow smile spread across his face.

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

It had taken everything in her not to beg. She had considered it seriously at one point, about the time he picked up the phone to make "Just one more call," then had sat staring at the phone as if he had no idea what this piece of technology had been designed to do. She had suggested and coaxed and prodded; she had sat silent, fetched him files, written up notes. She had done everything possible to make sure he could leave the office and go home to sleep. Finally, she had simply picked up his coat and helped him shrug into it, then had taken him by the hand and led him to the car, holding out her hand for the keys.

He had looked at her, a little shocked. Peyton did not drive. She had never explained to Mac why she did not drive; he knew she had a driver's license because he had seen it, although she preferred to use her ID card from the city when she needed to prove who she was. But in all the time he had known her, he had never seen her behind the wheel of a car.

She did not explain, simply unlocked the car doors and climbed into the driver's side, waiting for him silently. He shrugged and sat in the passenger seat, a little apprehensive.

She drove out of the parking garage, her strong surgeon's hands competent and sure on the wheel. When they hit the road, her foot hit the accelerator, and Mac began to get an inkling of why Peyton chose not to drive in New York City. She weaved in and out of the still full streets as if in hot pursuit. Luckily, she was out of the heavier traffic frighteningly quickly, and Mac thought he was going to be able to breath easy. Then she hit a long stretch of open road and Mac closed his eyes in horror.

When he opened his eyes next, Peyton was driving into the garage beside his brownstone. He looked cautiously to see if there was a speeding ticket tossed somewhere in his car, but couldn't see anything obvious. He was pretty sure he would have woken up if the car had been stopped for any length of time.

He pulled himself out of the car, muscles protesting wearily and head spinning a little. He could not remember the last time he had eaten or slept, but he knew it was long past time to do both.

By the time he had made his way into the house, Peyton was already in the kitchen, heating up soup and cooking eggs. She had swept through the house ahead of him as if she belonged for the first time since she had crossed the threshold, and Mac could feel his heart squeeze a little at the thought that she was feeling at home.

Silently, she placed the food in front of him, and watched him eat every bite while she sipped her tea. He knew she was angry, but he could not even begin to work out why and he knew anything he said or did was going to cause an explosion he had neither the energy nor the ability to deal with. He would have to trust her to say what she needed to when she needed to.

As soon as he swallowed the last bite, she had the dishes in the sink. "Go to sleep, Mac."

Her voice was cool, and Mac could only shrug and kiss her on the cheek. "Are you all right?" He had to ask, but he closed his eyes in anticipation of the inevitable discussion he could feel trembling on her lips.

"I'm fine. Sleep."

If he could have got up the energy, he would have gone down on his knees in gratitude for her restraint. As it was, he kissed her again, and disappeared up the stairs.

Peyton stood perfectly still over the sink, tears dripping off her cheeks into the warm water.