Disclaimer I own very little, especially not CSI NY.

Notes Chapter 16: Many thanks to everyone for all previous reviews, and good wishes! I hope you enjoy this chapter! Please continue reviewing - I love to know what you think - welcome at any time, for any chapter, and always replied to if logged. Sorry some of my replies were a little delayed, and that this is later than planned.

Thank you very much to Blue Shadowdancer for reading, and to chrysalis escapist for extra thoughts on previous chapters.

Lost Letters: Chapter 16

8th August

… I'm almost out of food, I checked the cupboards this morning and we've got a can of soup, a scrape of peanut butter in a jar and a slice of bread. That's it. Yesterday at least we ate okay, Mrs Adams invited the both of us, Joe and me, down for dinner and fed us handsomely on salad and cold chicken. She sure has a lot of stuff in her apartment - every inch is just crammed with items of furniture and knick-knacks - crammed even fuller than my stomach was, I ate as much as I could, which pleased her as she kept on filling up my plate. And the closets! I couldn't see what was inside of them, but they line every wall and the doors were having trouble staying closed. I'm just desperate to know what she keeps hidden away…

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The light pressure of Stella's hand on his was beginning to restore him, at least a measure of him. The shot that had been fired at the crime scene, the bullet that had hit Stella - a single shot, a single bullet - had fired through his team and all the individuals who made the team. It was the pieces and the whole of his team that made and completed who Mac Taylor was. One bullet had nearly destroyed that. Take away his partner and the wholeness of his team from him, and what was left was all that he was now: incomplete and still unable to find all of himself. It had not escaped him how differently the others had looked at him since the events of nearly five days ago, not quite recognising him. He knew how they felt.

Five days since the crime scene. Hours and minutes easily calculated, but impossible to retrieve, for any of them. That time had been stolen from two people who never squandered a moment of it, and who never hesitated to give it generously to others, was the worst consequence. Danny and Stella would never have back the last five days and everything they could have done in that time, nor would they live again the days it would take to recover. Because they would recover. Even though Danny's time was still on hold. A stopped clock, waiting whilst all those around him ticked on.

It was a question of time. There was nothing else Mac could do, except give his to keep time with them.

He looked at Stella and cupped his other hand over hers, enclosing it. He looked and saw the visible marks that the last five days had left; the burn on her arm, the bruise yellowing on her forehead, crossed with a narrow scar that, even disguised under the thin strip of white tape, was dark against her too-pale face. A face that was thinned and taut with pain even as she slept. There was also the wound that would scar hidden under the sheets from the shot that had almost killed her, and had almost killed Danny in the ricochet of actions, reactions and consequences.

And, Mac knew, the invisible and often indelible scars were always a consequence too. For all of them. For a moment, he lifted his hand away and it hovered over Stella's, not quite touching, but then he let his palm and fingers press onto hers, knowing any marks he left would fade rapidly from her skin, but maybe not from her memory.

His eyes stayed on her, and he heard only the sounds that were in the room.

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Rich looked around him, scanning the faces that passed him in the reception area of the hospital. Not many, not at this time of night when it was past visiting time, and the daytime babble had died away; neither were there any faces that he knew. He knew hospitals though. Ever since adolescence when his father had married again and his step-mother Irene had come crashing through the front porch and into his life; bringing her fists and her razor-blade tongue to smash and slice her way through what had been his easygoing and comfortable life with a single parent young enough to be an older brother.

Weekdays had been long hours of high school, except when he missed the bus or his alarm call; when that happened his father would laugh, clap him on the back and challenge him to a game of hoops. Weekend hours were always too short. Then he played games down at the park on the scratched out baseball diamond with the other kids on the street, and hit home runs whilst his father flirted unselfconsciously with the mothers that congregated around the edges of the chalk lines, enjoying their own rough diamond.

Irene was not one of them. His father had met her out shopping in the seven eleven on the corner, when a dispute over who was entitled to the last can of peaches led in weeks to a proposal. Irene got what she wanted on both counts.

And with that, Rich saw his smoothly oiled world graunching and juddering to a halt. His father and Irene married and his mechanisms seized. She was the grit in the cogs, and worse. In only weeks, at her behest, his father had taken a job out of state, necessitating stays in motels overnights; one night, two nights, sometimes three. But, he decided, because Irene was now there to look after his only son, it was okay. It was not okay for Rich, and it was not okay for Irene (who had seen only the extra money, not the extra responsibility), and she let Rich know with her fists and her words. It was his fault.

His father, never acknowledging what was happening, gradually began to disappear from Rich's life and their hours at the park dwindled to minutes squashed between Irene's demands. There were no more home runs, no more cheers from the sidelines, and the mothers separated into low-murmuring groups with only themselves to talk to.

The previously unmeasured time to talk and argue and praise became clock-watched moments, with his father agitated and hurried, snapping out words, and gone again. Rich missed his father's sentences, and began to see him trapped in a life-sentence not of his own choosing. It was her fault.

His father spent more and more time away working, and not working, and the home that he and his son had shared fell silent in the gaps between Irene's screams and tantrums. Rich lay awake the nights his father was due home, until sleep dragged him under to peaceless dreams, waking again when the lithographed figure of his father appeared in the bedroom doorway with an apologetic goodnight in the shrunken hours of the morning. Unreal, whilst Irene's rock and metal anger became reality, every day. His father's fault.

Anger that swung into him and cracked bones, bruised skin and haemorrhaged blood vessels. It wasn't long before she stopped taking him to the Emergency Room and became more careful where she hit him - there were too many questions, and not enough explanations left on the theme of soccer and baseball injuries. It was no good telling the truth, Rich had decided. There was no point, not when she took the words and everyone else's eyes away from him. Like a tank, she trammelled over the questions, over anyone's doubt and judgements. And, he decided, he was partly to blame for not being smart enough to find a way out and for not being strong enough to stand up to her because he never hit back, never spoke up. That was his fault.

Not until one Tuesday afternoon in the middle of May, during his senior year at high school. Late home, Irene had sent him straight out to the store, and he had returned with the wrong kind of apples.

The next thing he realised, there were apples all over the kitchen floor, all over the walls and counters, bursting, popping and exploding pulp, pips and juice everywhere. Well-aimed bruised and bruising missiles that turned flesh green and yellow. They were sour smelling, slippery and treacherous under his feet, as he stumbled and dodged, then fell. Fireworks in front of his eyes and his eyelashes clumped with something sticky, and continuing like a saw through his brain the voice that would not stop. On and on. Not stopping. He staggered to his feet. Irene was still screeching at him. He flailed for something, grabbed something. She still didn't stop.

Stupid, stupid, damn stupid kid, stupid, stupid… Can't even get the damn grocery order right, can you? Stupid, lazy, worthless, stupid…

And then she had stopped. The sound stopped. Replaced by the sound of the knife in his hand clattering to the floor, and suddenly something else was mingling into a lurid, viscous mess on the floor, and he was slithering and skidding and running and running, and never stopping.

He had never stopped running and no one had ever caught him, but he had never quite lost who he was and what he had done. And from that moment he always hit back. Even when he became everyone but himself, what he had done still clung to every cell of his body, fretting away at the real person he had been until there was only a clutch of memories left, of before.

Only the present mattered now, and his future. Everything else was time that had passed and gone for ever, except for the trace of remembrance. Rich walked on slowly through the reception area hearing his sneakers on the floor and the brush of his arms against his shirt and the stolen white coat as he moved unhindered by anyone. The newspaper in his back pocket rustled with each step, and he felt the reassuring presence of his weapon tucked behind it. He knew who he was looking for. He knew he had to find them. He knew he did not have much time to do what he had to.

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Mac's eyes were drawn again to the sheets on the bed, and their colour. White, always white to cover the damage. He remembered Danny and the white bandages around him, holding his broken edges together, but swaddling and imprisoning him. White hid red, but revealed it starkly. Danny's blood spattered across the white concrete canvas of the scene. A painted figure on a painted ground. And Stella when they had found her; blood in the white moonlight, painted on his hands. Leaving its mark.

A sigh and movement broke Mac out of his reflections.

"Stella?"

She was awake. As she turned her head towards him, there was recognition brighter in her eyes, and he smiled as the pressure on his hand from hers increased. For a moment, there was nothing else that intruded on his awareness. The world passed by outside.

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Rich walked on, keeping to the middle of the corridor, away from the walls. People noticed you against the walls. Walking purposefully and confidently in the middle space, one foot placed neatly in front of the other rendered you almost invisible. That was how it worked for him, and certainly no one looked at him as he passed. He kept walking along parallel lines of cream and blue; past the posters that hung in places by only three corners, curled over in the corners; past doors that opened and ejected blue-gowned clones from operating theatres. Left, right, keep walking, eyes straight ahead, just a glance to the side and another. Keep walking.

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Lindsay looked up at the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor and her fingers arrested on the rose petals that she had been stroking almost unconsciously. Their scent filled the room, fresh and sweet, hiding the medical smell. Her eyes jumped across to Danny, but no movement enlivened him. He had noticed nothing; his eyelashes stayed drawn across his powder-white cheeks.

She checked her watch; it was still too early for his parents to be returning. Flack maybe? He had promised to call in again as soon as he could, and relieve her for at least a couple of hours, which this time she knew she would have to concede to; exhaustion was beginning to overpower her. It was unlikely to be a nurse as one had only recently been in to check on Danny. The footsteps slowed, and stopped just outside the door. Lindsay waited for whoever it was to enter. If it wasn't a nurse, then it was probably Flack…

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Flack was in the crime lab. Walking along the almost-deserted corridors, glancing from side to side into empty rooms that were navy blue in the spartan night lighting, speckled with firefly flashes from the equipment. The rooms still emitted invisible heat, radiating from the glass and enfolding him. He loosened his tie as he walked, and shrugged his shoulders to try and move some air around his body.

All the smells of the lab that winkled into his nose reminded him of long past high school days when he had slumped on his stool in the school's chemistry labs, staring out of the window at everything beyond that was far more interesting. It often surprised that his job now involved so much time with science and scientists. Especially after his science teacher, a man who bore a faint physical resemblance to Mac, had delighted in marking his papers with an 'F' in a thick, red pencil. Handing them to him with a hand that lacked a tip on its forefinger, and always smelled of iodine and ethanol. Years ago now.

He was here to track down Hawkes, as he was hoping to update him on everything he and Angell had uncovered on their side of the cases, before he went to offer some respite to Lindsay. His hope was that Hawkes would have something to update him with as well.

There was some progress, if you squinted hard and allowed a powerful magnification of optimism. Flack sighed, and wondered how he could describe no more witness statements and no further information, yet, as progress. Although there were still a few leads that he and Jess had to follow, and slowly, agonisingly slowly, with Lindsay's help she was making progress with Zee.

It was indisputable too that, now Stella had returned to consciousness, they had a further chance to identify their suspect. The ever-practical detective, innate in him, hoped for that, even as the friend rejoiced simply at the hope for her full recovery.

The problem, however, that Detective Don Flack saw, was that Stella was still seriously ill, and unlikely to remember much of what had happened. The time she had been missing was lost time, with just a few minutes of knowledge retrieved so far from Zee. There were minutes, hours, that, unless they caught their suspect and thief of more than time, would remain unknown for ever. Also, he suspected, it was going to be a little time yet before she could be interviewed. And Danny… the time when he would be recovered was still out of sight.

Flack's thoughts continued bleakly as he walked past Lindsay and Danny's shared office, dimly lit, and saw Danny's jacket flung over the back of his chair. He walked on. No sign of Hawkes. Stella's office passed on his left and he glanced in at the complex rebus of pens, papers and pencils visible on her desk. He walked on and his thoughts walked alongside him.

"Hey, Don. How's it going?"

Coming towards him was Hawkes. As they stopped outside the door to Mac's office, Flack grunted, and decided to tell him the truth. Hawkes, however, gave him some solace with the progress he and Adam had made on the key to the post office box. Before departing, Flack made a brief call to Angell, and enjoyed the few moments of conversation, even as his eyes looked through the walls of Mac's office and saw two cups that had been left on the desk. He walked on and out of the building.

………………………………...

The door opened slowly, the handle turning down with an oiled squeak.

Lindsay called out, "Flack? That you?"

But it was Adam's face that appeared round the door.

"Hey, Lindsay. Hope… hope I'm not disturbing you?"

She smiled, "No you're not. Come on in."

"Thanks."

He curved his body round the door, and stood awkwardly on the other side of the bed, "Hey, Danny."

Lindsay gave him a lopsided look.

Adam shrugged, an embarrassed pink across his cheeks, "Didn't seem right to ignore him…"

She smiled sadly, "No, it's okay, you're right."

He cleared his throat, and held out his hand to her, "I, uh, got something for him. Didn't know what to get, then I figured he might appreciate this."

On his hand was a white leather sphere.

Lindsay took the baseball and didn't care that Adam could see the tears that slid down her cheeks. The sounds of the hospital and everyone inside it, and outside the room, passed them by.

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Miles and miles and miles of corridors. Rich walked along them at a constant pace, looking for who he wanted. No one stopped him, no one challenged him. His chameleon face and figure melted him into the faces and figures that passed him by. No one questioned one white coat in a hospital full of them. No one saw beyond the colour. He walked on.

………………………………...

Mac gave Stella time. They had time now. As soon as she opened her eyes the day before, her time had started up again; cautiously, tentatively, but stronger with each second. A faint smile appeared on her lips as she held onto his hand.

He waited to hear her voice. Her voice. The dread that he would never hear it again had still not disappeared, and he was suddenly stuck for words himself, the right words.

But he tried, even as he heard them hoarse and wrong in his throat, "How are you feeling?"

As soon as he spoke, he regretted the words, he should have thought more, should have said something else…

Stella closed her eyes and her face twisted in pain as she took in a deep breath. Mac heard the wheeze in her chest, and it caught at him.

"Stella…" He caught her hand more tightly, "It's okay, you don't have to try and say anything just yet…"

She shook her head and finally after she took a few sips of water with his help, he heard her voice for the first time in five days. A whispered echo of its usual clarion sound, but still her voice.

"Mac…" She drew in another breath, looked straight into his eyes, "How… how long?"

He told her. The world outside slowed and stopped.

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Through a door ahead, Rich heard voices: two voices, a male and a female; and heard names that he recognised. He stopped, and his hand crept round to his back pocket. He looked around covertly and stepped towards the door. The corridor was silent. Timing was everything.

They had not heard him inside the room. The conversation continued. Rich flexed his fingers and took his final step forwards. He reached for the door handle. And felt a hand fall onto his shoulder.

I hope that was okay, a bit less action this chapter. Please let me know what you think, any thoughts always welcome. Thanks, Lily x