Disclaimer I own very little, especially not CSI NY.

Notes Chapter 26: THANK YOU for all reviews! Hope you enjoy this chapter. Please continue reviewing - I love to know what you think - welcome at any time, for any chapter, always replied to if logged. Thanks to everyone who's alerted and favourited.

Thanks to Fat Kat, Shadow Fox and autumngold for your reviews, sorry I couldn't send a proper review reply. Thanks to Blue Shadowdancer and iluvCSI4ever for discussion and reading.

Lost Letters: Chapter 26

29th July

… I have some good news for you: Joe and I've decided that at some point in the not too distant future we want to get an apartment together! It makes sense, as he spends most of his time here anyhow, and his place isn't exactly what you'd call comfortable, or even clean. Certainly not to my standards. He doesn't want to give his up just yet though, sharing with the guys and such, but it's a big step forward for him to at least agree to the idea. So I'm very happy for the future and wanted to share that with you…

………………………………...

It looked no different, the city that his life was inextricably bound with, whose pulse of life beat in his veins and whose lines, flaws and scars marked his person. There were no changes he could discern after an absence of eight days from the world beyond four walls; maybe just the faintest tinge of russet on the edges of leaves as the streets wound past; a scent of imminent Fall in the air as he had walked out of the hospital.

Sitting in the back of a cab, crowd scenes reeled past; a glimpse of lives, for a second part of his, and then gone; never to be seen again. Except, he knew, it was not improbable he would see some of these lives again at their end. The city lived on too many deaths.

The streets he had been away from teemed with life. Human dramas scrolled by beyond the window; visible in all their beauty and repugnance; love in age holding hands, coupled with youth's raised hand, screaming mouth and a slap to a face.

He thought of what one raised hand had done to his team.

His own invisible to them, he saw faces glide by; distant; approaching; there; passing; gone. Through glass stained polychrome as sunlight glanced off a window-armoured office block. He sat and watched life projected, saw himself reflected.

A ride without conversation; although he could see the driver's eyes flicking up to the mirror now and again. Red digits ticked up the fare and the smell of hundreds, of thousands of past passengers crept onto his clothes, undisguised by the wash of pine air freshener swinging above him.

The journey continued along with his thoughts, and little pieces of himself slipped away; replaced by the other lives that made up his own.

He thought of Stella and Danny.

He thought of justice.

He thought of Claire, and the silver sliver of her that had run itself into his heart bled a breath of pain suddenly.

He thought of injustice.

Thoughts of where he was going took the rest of him; why he was going; who he was going to find there; what he was going to do. And who he was going to find within himself when he arrived.

………………………………...

"What do I do now?" Lindsay faced her colleagues; joy, bewilderment and tears across her face. Her cell clattered onto the table, "I - I don't know what to do…"

Hawkes, still with a smile, looked at Adam, and back at Lindsay, "I think you should go and see him."

"But I can't, I mean, it's still the middle of my shift, and we're not even halfway through these letters, and I still got a heap of evidence to go through in the burglary, and I can't leave you guys here and expect you…"

Her eyes darted back and forth between the two men as the words babbled from her lips.

Hawkes handed her cell back, "Lindsay, go. We can manage here for an hour or so, and I know for sure you've had no lunch break today, or for the last week, so I think you can go and see Danny without any guilt whatsoever. Adam and I got it covered here, right?"

"Absolutely." Adam's head bobbed up and down, "We're good. Tell Danny we're waiting on him returning soon as."

She still hesitated, so Hawkes moved round the table and gently took hold of her shoulders, turning her towards the door, "The letters will still be here when you get back, take our regards to Danny."

Another tear wavered down her cheek, "Thanks. I… thanks."

She fled from the room.

………………………………...

The hospital had become almost as familiar as the lab, and more familiar certainly in the last eight days than her apartment. When she reached the room she was sure she would remember every particle of for years to come, there was no hesitation; her hand clasped the envelope she had snatched out of her locker before she left the lab and her feet took through the door and straight to the little family around the bed.

Danny's father pulling her into a quick, tight embrace; Danny's mother seizing her hands and kissing her cheek, pushing her towards the bed, and then… there was Danny himself.

Alive. Eyes open; the first shine of colour meeting hers for so long. Still not quite the Danny she sparred and sparked with; but the Danny she had stayed with, and would soon have back. His mother's hand alighted on her shoulder, and her voice whispered a few words. Lindsay nodded, and flashed a watery smile of thanks, then heard his parents' footsteps leaving the room.

Danny, still surrounded by machines and tubes, with wires latticing his body, but still Danny. She stroked his hand and played her fingers across his palm; the familiar surface with all its lines, scars and flaws.

"Hey." She murmured. Her lips could not stop trembling and her eyes dazzled with the water that slid down and hit the sheet with a silent splash, "I've missed you Danny Messer, you took your time."

He blinked and his hand stirred under her touch.

"But I forgive you, okay? And I got a lot of stuff to tell you." Lindsay smiled and her finger traced a heart over his palm. Her eyes drew towards the letter she had written him, only one in the end, that was at his side. She took it up, adding the one she had brought, and placed them both on her lap, "Well, I've already told you a lot of it, so you're going to have to get yourself better real quick so you can read everything I've written down for you…"

Danny's fingers wrapped round hers suddenly and Lindsay held her breath as his lips parted.

"But if you want, I can read them to you." She said softly.

A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes and a sandpaper dry croak came from his throat, followed by words that were unmistakably his, "Nice… Montana…"

The black lines of his name glimmered and an ink tear rolled down the envelope in Lindsay's hand. She opened what she had closed and began where he had finished.

………………………………...

They were waiting. The sky draped like white sail cloth over the city, with not a hint of breeze to lift the heat; but at least the precinct was shaded and cool inside, and the ceiling fans turned a gasp of air. Angell sat with Flack in the spider web of shadows cast by the high windows, and watched the crepuscular rays creep across the floor. Waiting for Mac.

Unlike past days however, they had something to wait and hope on. Flack's phone was in his hand, having rung a short time before; Lindsay in a burst of near incoherence, telling them Danny had finally regained consciousness. It had lifted some of the crushing desperation off Flack; Angell could see for the first time since the crime scene, his back straighter and younger. A few of the years that had bowed him had fallen away with the news that there was hope at last for his friend's recovery. Almost immediately, lighting the beacons of communication, he had contacted Mac on his way from the hospital to the precinct. Angell had heard only Flack's half of the conversation, but had easily interpreted how the other man had received the news.

Now they waited for him.

Flack, quiet after his effervescent elation had bubbled down, sat tapping his cell phone. The look on his face showing he was anywhere but the present. Pulled, Angell guessed, by his priorities; wanting to see Danny; waiting for Mac; waiting for the day to be over and the man in their custody to be charged and served with justice. She shared his wishes; she wanted to know herself that Danny was really all right, not least because of what his recovery meant to Flack.

They waited.

Flack's hand and phone moved in a tattoo against the desk top, and out of synchronisation, his foot drummed an accompaniment on the floor;

tap… bang tap… tap, bang.

The sound hammered into Angell's brain, and after a few minutes spent clenching her hands in her pockets, trying to absorb the brool of conversation around them to deaden it, she could take it no longer.

"Don!"

"What?"

Bang… bang… tap.

Her hand dropped on top of his, and she pressed her foot onto his.

"Enough already. Please."

His hand and foot stilled under hers.

"Don't give me much choice, do you… sorry, bad habit."

"Yeah. Hating waiting?" She grinned, and moved her boot off his shoe.

"Yeah."

"Me too. It sucks." Her hand remained where it had landed; Flack did not pull away.

Angell sobered as she saw studied his appearance; his worry seemed to have cut him out at the edges with pinking shears; his outlines jagged and alien. His foot started its compulsive arrhythmia again.

"You think it's a good idea, Mac being here?" It was a question she had asked herself and had answered several ways.

Flack's eyebrows met his hair, "You think my life would have been worth preventing him being here? I tell you something else, Jess, given even a whisper of a chance, Stella would be here too; I'd be more than willing to bet on that. But Mac not being part of putting this bastard away? Never going to happen."

He rubbed his face, and Angell saw the mesh of exhaustion pressed into his features that had still not lifted. Almost unconsciously, her thumb rubbed the back of his hand.

"You're concerned about what might happen in that room. What might happen with Mac…"

She saw vulnerability in his eyes, and it sent a chill veining through her; she felt helpless to help him.

"I'm not only concerned about Mac, I'm concerned about what…"

"About what you might do. I understand, Don. But you have to remember we're here to do a job, and as personal as it's gotten, it has to be done by the book, maybe even more so than usual. And I know you know that as well as I do."

A wry smile appeared, "So you've not only taken to finishing my sentences, you're reading my thoughts as well?"

"My bad habit." Angell returned the smile briefly, "Seriously, Don, I can understand some of what you're feeling and what Mac's feeling; you've both known Danny and Stella a long time, and you both care about them on a personal as well as a professional level. I can make a pretty good guess at how you feel over all that's happened…"

Blue eyes with glacier ice in them met hers, "I can't even tell you how I feel, Jess, never mind how Mac feels. His team's everything to him; you know how he is, still waters on the surface, but any attack against his team and the people he's close to and you've roused a tiger. When I was with him at the hospital after Danny'd been taken there, and when we found Stella… before we found her… I didn't know the man in front of me then, I didn't even know myself ."

She opened her mouth to try and form a reassurance, but her tongue was paralysed. Danny's friendship with Flack was something she took as part and parcel of him. The continuing uncertainty of his condition was in large part responsible for the lines she had never noticed before on Flack's face and the lack of laughter that had previously been the lines she smiled at. She also knew well the friendship he shared with Mac and Stella, what they meant to him, and how he had suffered alongside them.

Even without those connections the memory of the crime scene still appalled her and tore across the professional distance she had tried to create: the horrifying bang and blam of the car hitting Danny; the sound as it screamed out of their reach and he crashed onto the concrete, equally out of reach. Those time-frozen seconds of unreality as she seemed to be running through molasses towards him seeing him falling and falling and landing and everything was too slow and too late and he was on the ground and the car was gone…

He was awake; he was recovering. But the memory remained eidetic.

Flack's hand slid from under hers and curved over it, "What are you…?"

"Thinking?" Angell swept a loose lock of hair away from her cheek where the strands had irritated her nerve endings. Every cell of her skin felt hyper-sensitized; not with the heat, but with apprehension that felt like fire ants dancing over it. Even as she stretched her mouth into what she hoped would pass for a smile, her lips felt tight and dry, "Seems I can't help myself with the sentences, hey? If you want the truth, I was thinking about Danny. I guess I'm not alone in that, and I didn't even need to use my mind reading powers to figure that."

"You got me figured out, detective."

His smile was not enough to melt his eyes, and Angell sighed, "Don, if this is going to help at all, you know Danny's got this far, he's not going to give up now." She kept her hand under his, "He's going to be okay."

"Yeah, I know, I know..." He drew his eyebrows together, "Knowing that doesn't make me feel any more lenient towards our perp though."

"I know."

As she wondered how to continue, the doors at the other end of the room swung open and Mac walked through.

She and Flack stood with a glance at each other, and made their way amongst the maze of desks to meet him, Flack grabbing up a folder first. To Angell's eyes, having not seen him since the night they found Stella, Mac looked as if only the vestiges of the man she had known before then were left. His voice, as they exchanged a cursory greeting, sounded full of splinters, and his skin was drained to the colour of milk and water. A large bruise, darkly purple and cranberry coloured, stood out on his neck. As he walked, his stride seemed to falter on each step, even as he tried to disguise it.

He turned to Flack, "Thanks for the call on Danny."

"Glad I could be the bearer of good news for a change. I'm going over to make sure of him myself later."

Mac nodded, "Soon as he's up to his boss visiting, I'll do the same."

"Stella okay?"

"She'd be here if she could." The first gleam of life Angell had seen appeared in Mac's face. She caught Flack's eye and their earlier discussion passed between them.

They stood in a lull for a moment. Flack shifted his weight, and handed the folder to Mac, "Called at the lab earlier, picked up what we needed. Everything's in here; statements, photographs, prints. We got him; evidence is incontrovertible. There's no way he's slipping through our fingers, Mac. Take a few minutes and look through it."

"Good work."

Angell pulled out a chair for him, "We're in room one. We'll see you in there."

Inclining his head, Mac sat without another word and opened the folder. Angell took Flack by the arm, and walked them both out of the bullpen to wait a little longer.

………………………………...

Tired as she was, although she did not want to admit it, Stella lay awake, propping herself up against the pillows. Her eyes drifted closed every few seconds, but she forced them open again before sleep filled her head. Mac had left a couple of hours ago, and she missed the presence of another's life with hers in a room she did not want to be in. Her gaze wandered to the walls and the door and the window, then back again. There was nothing and no one else. A nurse had come in briefly and Stella had welcomed the visit. But she was alone again now.

Her badge lay beside her in the narrow bed and she ran her fingers over the surface and the outline of the numbers, thinking back to all that had been said with Mac.

She felt the absence of her piece as she heard the sounds of the corridor just out of sight. An exchange, which had the beginnings of an altercation, was audible outside the door. Her body tensed, and her breath tightened in her chest as she listened. Then voices died down and the door opened a crack after a gentle knock.

Anyone wanting to do harm was unlikely to knock, she decided.

"Come in!"

A face appeared in the gap, a uniform visible behind it, peering in. Stella's face broke into a smile and she let herself relax, "Hey, Sid."

The uniform, seemingly reassured, disappeared.

"A slight disagreement between myself and the gentlemen outside over the item I was bringing to you, Stella." Sid explained as he came in and sat down next to her, "Understandably, but I persuaded them of my good intentions for carrying a weapon."

She titled her head, "Really?"

"Mac called me and asked me to bring you this." With a smile, he passed her the piece of herself she was missing, "And I have some good news to tell you as well about Danny."

………………………………...

Flack stood behind the glass and looked through into the room where the suspect who had given them no name sat with his head on the table: dressed in a grimy white T-shirt and ragged jeans; greasy dark hair flopping over arms which he had wrapped around his head. A pittance of a man.

Standing by the corner, looking straight ahead, a silent uniform stood with her face immobile. Angell waited rigidly by the door, her arms folded across her chest; gimlet stare fixed on the man in the chair.

No lawyer and no other representative was present. That refusal had been the only thing the man had said when his Miranda rights had been read. Nothing else since.

The door opened and Mac entered; jacket discarded, shirt sleeves pulled down, a button at the neck undone. Flack felt himself stiffen and his heart stammer at the sight of the man he had lost sight of since the crime scene. Every line of his demeanour and his body was blade edged, and his eyes, even through the detachment of the one-way glass, held no pity or mercy. Blind Justice, or Nemesis; Flack passed a hand over his eyes, wiping away a tear of perspiration from his temple. It remained to be seen.

Angell offered a chair again to Mac, which was declined. She sat, Mac stood. The tableau held for six seconds and then the folder in the CSIs hand came down hard on the table, photographs spilling out of it. A head raised slowly. The interview had begun.

I really hope that was okay, it took longer than I planned to get to the interview, but next chapter will focus on that. Characters may get angry :D Please review and let me know what you think! Thanks, Lily x