Disclaimer I own very little, especially not CSI NY.

Notes Twelfth chapter: THANK YOU for all previous reviews! I hope this chapter can also live up to them. Please continue reviewing - I love to know what you think - all very welcome, and always replied to if logged. Sorry this is later than intended – it took a while to write.

Thank you to Fat Kat for your review.

Thank you for various discussions: Blue Shadowdancer (And for kindly reading this first), Lost in New York, Mellow Girl, sarramaks, chrysalis escapist, chickadee063, Shining Zephyr

Lost Letters: Chapter 12

12th August

… I'm just waiting today, there's really not much else to do until Joe gets back from seeing TJ about various matters. He tells me that they're going to be asking me to do something tomorrow. If I succeed, then both of us are safely in their employment. I don't know exactly yet what they're going to ask me to do, but I think it has something to do with some lost property. They're offering me a substantial amount if I succeed too - enough for me to get somewhere more permanent and maybe move out of the city. If that happens Joe and I have a plan for somewhere together. If I don't succeed, well then I guess I'll have to think of something else. And wait a little longer…

………………………………...

Still drifting, still waiting in a white space that could not quite be called anywhere as yet. There was no sound and no time; no movement and no sensation. Just being somewhere, being someone. Alone. Waiting.

………………………………...

"Lindsay?"

He saw her jump and jerk slightly in her chair, hands fluttering at her neck as he entered the room.

"Oh! Oh, Sheldon, I'm sorry. You…"

"Startled you? I'm sorry. Only stopping by briefly, Lindsay, to see how you're both doing."

He eased his way in fully, inching the door shut, but failing to close it without a squeal from the hinges, and apologised again with a grimace, "Sorry…"

Lindsay gave him a sad smile, "Doesn't matter. Danny's not going to complain about you making any noise, and neither am I."

That was what hit Hawkes then; the absence of noise. The absence of Danny's presence, always audible even if he wasn't visible - whether it was his shoes striking the corridors in the lab as he darted from one place to the next, his laugh as Adam entertained him, usually unintentionally, or his strident vocals as he called out to his colleagues. That was what was wrong. Danny was somewhere trapped inside the still form that lay on the bed under pristine sheets, living for the moment in reliance on machinery, tubes and equipment. In a hushed room. Not himself.

Hawkes looked away from his closed eyes and immobile face, and took up a seat across the bed from Lindsay. Her head had sunk down again, and her own eyes were invisible under lashes swept across pale cheeks. She did not speak, but instead plucked at a corner of the sheet. Leaving it up to him to break free from the silence.

"How is he? Have you been told anything more?"

Her lips barely moved as she answered, "Nothing more. They patched him up - his leg, the broken ribs and his wrist, and his doctors say they're mending. The internal injuries he got are healing too, they stopped the bleeding, and they took out his spleen. He's doing okay without that. Not something he's ever mentioned before as being important…" She gave a soft sniff of laughter, then twisted the corner of the sheet into a spiral, as her face returned to its sorrow, "But it's the fracture to his skull they're most worried about, Sheldon. The concussion's a bad one…" Tears beaded from under her lashes, "They don't know when he'll wake up. It could be tomorrow, it could be two weeks from now, two months, two years… They don't know. And… and I can't do anything about it. I can't do anything to help."

Her fingers had wrapped the sheet so tightly round themselves that her skin rivalled the colour of the material; white banded by red. Hawkes moved his chair round and set it down next to her, close enough for his shoulder to touch hers.

Gently, he unwrapped her fingers, "Your sitting here with Danny is as much help as he needs from you right now, Lindsay, and you're doing that, you're here with him. And when you go back on shift, the job you do there is going to help him and Stella too. And if I know Danny, I know he's not the guy to be waiting around in hospital for too long."

She crushed her lips together and swept her hand across her eyes, nodding mutely.

The movement of the lights on the monitor and the soft sigh of Danny's breathing lulled them both for a moment.

Until Hawkes roused himself and turned again to Lindsay, "You're here on your own?"

Her fingers nipped at the fabric again, "For now. I persuaded his parents to go get some sleep for a couple of hours, rest and freshen up. I've got a few more hours until my shift starts - I'm meeting Angell and we're going to have another try at interviewing Zee…"

The name triggered something, but he wanted confirmation, "He the guy who…?"

"Yeah." Her mouth and chin crinkled, eyes still not raised, "If we'd been any later…" She shook her head, "I can't think about that. I have to keep telling myself that we weren't too late. And that it really wasn't his fault."

Hawkes nodded, with the empathy of shared thoughts: he had seen the state Stella was in when Mac brought her out of the warehouse, as well as a glimpse of the man who had hidden in Lindsay's shadow before she and Angell took him away.

There was a brief silence, then finally, Lindsay lifted her head and let him see the grey smudges under her lashes and the red clouds in her eyes.

"Have you seen Stella?"

Hawkes paused for a moment before answering, well aware of Lindsay's fragility at present; he guessed that she was still finding it very hard to forgive herself for not calling in the car immediately after it had almost run her over, especially knowing now, as they all did, what difference it would have made, and still could make to Stella to have been found sooner. Then that had been followed by the news he had been forced to tell her over the phone about Danny's injuries, also caused by the driver of the car. His brown eyes met hers and wondered how much more she could take.

He chose his words carefully, "Yes, and I saw and spoke to Mac briefly, before I came up here…"

"How is she?" Her fingers stopped in the act of pulling up a pyramid of white sheet. She would see any lie in his eyes.

Another pause. He found himself running his hand over the sheets at the side of the bed leaving a rut from his fingertips, "Stella's holding on…"

Lindsay's eyes were filmed with tears, "What does 'holding on' really translate as, Sheldon? I need to know. I know little enough about Danny's prognosis as it is, so please don't keep me any more in the dark, okay?"

He sighed tiredly, "She got through surgery, which was almost more than they hoped for - it was probably only the fact it wasn't a through and through that stopped her from bleeding to death before she was found, and that the bullet didn't hit any major organs."

"That's good then, right?" Hope crept into her voice, and showed itself in her hands as they clutched the sheets, pulling them up, wrinkling the edges.

Hawkes smoothed the ridges he had made with his fingers in the soft cotton, "Partly. But she still lost a lot of blood which has left her very weak, and it's major trauma to recover from, with the added complication of the smoke and toxins she inhaled. That caused some damage and she's needing help breathing. It's going to take her time to recover, Lindsay. She's a long way from being out of danger yet."

He remembered Mac's face as he relayed Stella's condition and how there was almost nothing behind his eyes: Mac, it seemed to him, had become a negative quantity; with eyes that were not alive, skin that had no colour and a voice that had no emotion. The loss - temporary, only temporary, Hawkes told himself again - of two of his team had stolen life from him. The two people in his team who had most life, and who gave the most of it to Mac, were now hanging onto it by their fingertips.

Hawkes came back to the quiet in the room again. That had struck him too as he stood with Mac and had seen with sorrow that threatened to well and spill over, how still and silent and lacking in life Stella was lying in a room amongst the equipment that was helping to keep her alive. That was wrong. Where Stella was, where Danny was; it was never still and silent, and there was always life.

"But she will recover."

His hand found Lindsay's and covered it tightly, "You know how strong she is, and how fiercely she fights any battle. She won't give up. I told Mac that. And I'm telling you the same about Danny." A smile found its way to his lips, "You better tell him that, he'll take it better from you, Lindsay."

She placed her other hand on top of his and they shared the warmth of contact. Light glistened suddenly on her cheeks, "I hope so, Sheldon. I keep telling myself that."

There was no more to say. They sat for a few more minutes; three people in a room; two of them there for each other, and for the one who lay unknowing of their presence and of himself.

………………………………...

Sid had been in the morgue before the sun had broken free from the tops of the skyscrapers. It was always his favourite time of day when the air breathed its first, and night lightened to grey then blue then pale. He had barely left the lab for a couple of hours snatched sleep and a glimpse at his wife's sleeping shape under the bedclothes, before he had returned to work.

Now it was early afternoon and he was waiting again. Since the call he had received last night telling him that Stella had been found, he had heard no more details about how she was; other than that both she and Danny were in a critical condition. As soon as he was able to, he would visit and see them for himself.

The doors opened and the man he had been waiting for entered.

Hawkes pushed his way through the door and came to rest with his palms down on the edge of the autopsy table.

"Sid."

"How are you, Sheldon?"

Hawkes's eyebrow's flashed upwards at his question, "How am I? Well, I've not been hit by a car or shot so I'd say I'm doing pretty good in comparison…" He rubbed the back of his head, "Man. Sid, I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time believing how we've been turned upside down in a day; how from one crime scene, we end up with two of our team fighting for their lives in hospital."

He had voiced exactly how Sid was feeling, "Neither can I. Neither can any of us."

As he had entered the building and as he rode up in the elevators, Sid had noted the looks of sympathy, and curiosity people who also worked in the building had given him. Those who knew who he was and where he worked. And there were many as he often stopped and smiled and talked to people and started every morning with at least one greeting. But it seemed today as if they were somehow afraid to approach him, knowing what had happened to the team. For the first time that morning, no one had said so much as 'hello'. Eyes had turned his way, and had turned away again; mouths had opened and then closed, and their owners had hurried away. Afraid to ask.

He was not, "How are they both? Really." He knew Hawkes had been to the hospital that morning.

Hawkes, in the language of medicine they both spoke and understood, told him exactly, and it sent Sid's heart crashing to the ground again. The morgue became airless and turgid, and his body felt weighted by anchors of sadness. They both stood for a moment without speaking and Sid remembered two days ago Danny bouncing through the doors to ask him something; they had got into a conversation about sports, and Sid's lack of interest in them, and it had led Danny to offer a promise of an outing to a Yankees game. He determined there and then that, sooner rather than later, he was going to hold him to that promise.

"You said you had something to show me?" Hawkes finally prompted, and Sid returned to the present, pressing his fists down on the table to move himself again.

"I do, yes. Several things actually. First of all, three bullets, one from each victim."

Sid moved over to the first of the three bodies laid out before him: the victim at the first crime scene of yesterday; the young woman with bobbed black hair and brown eyes that stared up at the light unblinking. A Jane Doe with possibilities - he knew as they all did about the letters.

"COD for our first vic was the shot to the forehead. I retrieved the bullet from deep inside the cerebral cortex. It would have killed her instantly. No other marks or injuries other than from the impact when she hit the concrete." He held out to Hawkes the first bullet in his collection. "Now to our second vic, our gentleman in the lake, more on which very shortly. COD also the shot to the forehead, same depth of penetration with the bullet, same lack of other injuries. However as I will come to, he did have one extra surprise inside him which I know you'll be fascinated by." Sid looked over the top of his glasses as he handed over the second bullet, and saw with satisfaction Hawkes's look of curiosity overcoming his gravity.

"Sid, whatever else you've got, give it up already and stop with the cryptic hints. What did you find inside him?"

He laid his coup de theatre in Hawkes's outstretched hand, and shared his theory.

"A post office box key?" The younger man's eyebrows all but disappeared into his close-cropped hair, "Inside a dead guy? You've got to be kidding me, right?"

Sid gave a soft chuckle and savoured the lighter moment, "I've taken some strange things out of corpses in my time, Sheldon, never a key before now though. Although there was one man who had, it seemed, a predilection for, shall we say, unusual activity in the bedroom, and who had managed to insert…"

"Please stop there, Sid. I only need the key. Really only the key." Hawkes cleared his throat, and Sid wondered again if he would ever manage to tell anyone the whole of that anecdote. At the time of trying to entertain Mac with it, the head of the lab had received an urgent page and had left the morgue rather hurriedly.

Hawkes had another question for him, "You get anywhere on the ID of the body in the car?"

"I did." Sid clipped his glasses back together, and withdrew the cover from the third body. The victim inside the car. "Male vic, approximately 6 feet tall, allowing for bone shrinkage from the heat of the fire. Age uncertain at present. Also shot in the forehead, and I was able to retrieve the remains of the bullet. Beyond that, I can't tell you much yet, other than that there were no other obvious injuries - no fractures for instance." He handed over the last bullet, and Hawkes took it. Three bullets, three bodies. "As you know, I can't get an ID from dental records unless it's for comparison. You may need to do a facial reconstruction." Seeing Hawkes's head droop onto his chest, he added as he clasped his arm for a moment, "But you know who it won't be, Sheldon."

Hawkes nodded, "I know, I know. With Aiden… and then last night when Adam and I got there and saw the car, all I could think was that it was happening again. And even when Stella was found I couldn't stop thinking, what if Mac hadn't been so stubborn and insistent that they searched for her…" The horror in his eyes matched Sid's, "We might never have found her."

The same thought had haunted Sid and had created nameless, formless nightmares that had woken him slathered in perspiration.

He opened his eyes wide to dispel the memory, "But she was found, Sheldon. That's all that matters."

"For now." Hawkes nodded with a sigh, "Thanks, Sid. For everything. I need to compare the striations on the bullets, see if I can get a match. Though I suspect the ones from the woman from the first scene, and the body in the car will likely match. As will the bullet they took out of Stella." He began to back towards the door, evidence raised in his hand to emphasise his words, "And the key. I'll ask Adam, and Lindsay when she gets here, to have a look at it and see if we can prove your theory, and see if there's any way to identify it. If we can, then it's a case of whether we have a chance in hell of finding one post office box amongst the thousands in the city."

"But that's what we do." Sid offered Hawkes, "We find things. We find things no one else can."

………………………………...

Mac waited. He sat and his breathing matched the measured rise and fall of Stella's; his for hers. And he sat and watched the shadows that waited in the corners of the room. Watched as they crept too close to where she lay. He would not leave her side until he knew she was safe from them. They had been there the moment they had found her; they had stayed with her all the way to the hospital; they had waited with him in the corridors and they still waited for her now and drained the light from both of them. He had seen them hovering round Danny too; but he had taken the hands his parents offered when he stepped into the room and said nothing at all about what he saw waiting for him. Shadows of too much damage, shadows of never waking, and shadows of letting go a too-fragile hold. They would come no closer though, to either of them, he would not let that happen.

His fingers twined more tightly around Stella's, pulling her back from the never after. Time was all she needed. Mac waited.

Thank you for reading, please review and let me know what you thought. I hope it was okay, I thought it would be good to catch up a bit more with the characters. Thank you, Lily x