A/N: I haven't written a fic in...a REALLY long time, and this is for a fandom that is prettttty much gone, so I don't expect many eyes on this one, but the story's been sitting in my head for months, and I finally just had to put it to "paper." I'm scared to write this, because I don't want to get anything wrong. I don't want to offend, and speak to something I didn't myself experience. Well, not directly. I was 13 years old, and didn't even know it had happened. The powers that be in my school had decided that state standardized testing was more important, and opted not to let us know, so it wouldn't affect our test results. Some teachers rebelled, and told their students anyways, but not mine. We could tell something was wrong, but certainly not what. I had thought there may have been a bomb threat, because they wouldn't let us go outside for recess that day, and we stayed in the room instead with a free period. And the fact is, I had never heard of the World Trade Center. When I got in the car and my step-dad was listening to news radio, something he rarely did, I was perplexed by what I was hearing. Not only had I been taken away from the moment of it happening, it happened to a building in NYC that was a foreign concept to me. The whole thing was surreal, and for days afterwards, my conservative Christian upbringing had me convinced the rapture was going to happen at any moment, and I was living in terror of what was to come. Like everyone else, I got over it eventually, but I still wasn't there and I wasn't directly affected. And so, as I said in the beginning, I don't feel like I have a right to write this story, but I'm doing it anyways and just hoping against hope that I've done an OK job.

When he thinks back on it - which will over the years become nearly forbidden territory; even once a decade has passed - he knows the truth.

He knew it then as much as he knows it now.

Claire is dead.

He knew the very second their call disconnected.

Could've been falling shrapnel; a shard of glass. There are a thousand explanations, and Mac has had nightmares or stray thoughts to at least 573 of them. But the truth is the how of it doesn't really matter.

She's dead.

Still, even now, the little voice in the back of his mind says, "You don't know for sure." And that not knowing is what keeps him up at night. That not knowing is, sometimes, what keeps him alive.

He knows. But he doesn't. And that's the problem.

One moment, they're on the phone, "I'm Ok. I'm out. I got out." The next, the second plane hits and he's shouting her name over a disconnected line.

He did the only thing he could think of doing. The only useful thing left to do.

Forgetting about his suspect in interrogation; the casefile he's left sitting wide open on the table. Forgetting that he's a detective in the middle of an open investigation, he walks away.

Walks? Not really.

He ran down the stairs two at a time, heart hammering, adrenaline dulling all logic. He jumped in his car in a single motion of closing the door and cranking the motor, beginning his nearly futile trek south. The streets in absolute chaos. He didn't know what he thought he was going to do. But he had to do something.

Against all odds, he managed to get his car nearly to the Towers; just a few blocks away, within the barricade of FDNY. Calm, controlled Mac Taylor had managed to take over again by this time, and he was actually able to get out of his car in something resembling a normal manner.

There were onlookers everywhere: FDNY, EMS, Search and Rescue, refugees, and your plain every day New York rubbernecker. He joined them all in staring up at the scene before him, dread sinking into every muscle.

He had seen devastation before; of course he had. The bombing in Beirut, oil fields aflame in Iraq, but nothing like this. Not here. Not at Home.

Anxiety began to take over again and he jogged along with FDNY towards the towers, like he belonged there. Like he wasn't another desperate spouse...friend...relative...lover hoping and praying to find the person they cared about, now left behind.

And then, the moment everything ended.

The South Tower collapsed. Right there in front of him, and the hope he'd been clinging to crumbled with it.

Instinct took over. He grabbed the nearest person, shielded them with his own body, and pulled them into an alley, trying to protect them from the oncoming dust cloud.

The woman trembled in his arms.

For a moment, just a blink really, he let himself believe. Let himself think it might be Claire.

But smell can often be a crueler sense than sight, and his memory was too good. He knew it wasn't her. Knew what her perfume smelled like in a core part of his memory.

As the dust began to settle, just enough to see a few feet ahead, he helped the woman to safety. And then he went right back toward devastation. Toward the towers.

They wouldn't let him in, of course. He reminds himself: he wasn't FDNY. Wasn't Search and Rescue. But they redirect him to one of the many triage sites where they need volunteers. And Mac Taylor did what he always did, what came most naturally: He helped. To serve. To protect.

He saved people. Pulled them from rubble. From fire. From grief.

Every time he lifted someone up, he let himself hope. Maybe this one would be her. Maybe this one would be Claire.

But it was never Claire.

The firefighters were the hardest to see. They kept going, pushing forward, even when they knew what it might cost them. They ran back into collapsing buildings because while many, in those moments after, were willing, they weren't trained for it. This was what they'd trained their working lives for. This was the moment they both most feared and were most prepared for.

Along with two other members of FDNY, Mac carried one of them out, lifeless, and brought him into a papered over coffee-shop-turned medical ward. The man was already gone—but he didn't deserve to lie in the street.

It was at that moment inside the café, that Mac finally saw someone he recognized. Sid Hammerback. Hawkes. People from the morgue, of course, it was only fitting.

For a fleeting second, he let himself feel something like safety. Like he wasn't alone.

They tried to convince him to stop. To go home. To rest. He wasn't ESU. He didn't have to be in this. And the quiet thing, the thing they wouldn't say: Mac, you just lost your wife, go home.

But Mac kept going. Hour after hour. He wouldn't leave. Even when he needed oxygen for the dust he'd breathed in and his hair had prematurely grayed with the ash that had settled on it, he stayed.

Hawkes and Sid tried again. Begged him. He refused.

After watching someone they considered a friend run him down so much that he looked like a shadow of the man they had known, they did the only thing they could think left to convince him.

They called Stella.

It was late into the evening of that first horrible day, and Sid could barely get through the message he left on her phone; both because of his own exhaustion and the tears he was trying to keep at bay. "Stella, we don't know what to do. Mac is down here. And there's nothing wrong, he's fine, and that's kind of the problem. He just keeps working, Stell. He's digging through the rubble, pulling out bodies. Saving those he can save, but he's completely gone. He won't eat; he's drinking at least, but I'm afraid he's going to collapse at any moment. I think...I think he thinks he can find her. Can save her himself." At this, Sid trails off. He doesn't have to say more, he knows Stella will understand. So, he hangs up and goes back to doing what he can for those who have survived, before allowing himself his own rest.

The message hardly surprises Stella. She had been trying to reach Mac for hours, of course with no success. Most of the East Coast was having cell trouble at that point, never mind New York City proper.

It had taken her maybe an hour to shake off the grief she was feeling. The eyes glued to the TV like the others. It had started as a forensics conference she'd been looking forward to for months, in some forgotten suburb of Columbus, Ohio of all places. Science was quickly forgotten in exchange for those TV screens. The lectures never spoken.

When she saw the South Tower collapse, she shook herself out of the fugue she was in and knew she should try to call Mac. Just to make sure everything was OK. Make sure he was OK; Claire was OK. Nothing on the cell. No way to get through to the crime lab. For an hour she tried unsuccessfully to speak to anyone. It was a miracle Sid got through to her voicemail later that day.

By then, she'd already been trying to find any way to get back to New York from Ohio. Flights were grounded; she couldn't return that way. It seemed like every rental car in the Greater Columbus area was spoken for. She went to the front desk to see if they could help, but the poor concierge was so overloaded with members of the conference trying to get home to loved ones, she couldn't bring herself to add another burden to his shoulders.

Finally, by that evening, she found a makeshift bulletin board that someone had set up, with people who were willing to offer shared rides back to NYC. As much as Stella tried to always be careful, avoiding men she didn't know especially, she couldn't pass up the opportunity when it presented itself, and shortly thereafter found herself in a silver Camry with two other crime scene investigators from New Jersey heading back home.

The drive would normally have taken about nine hours. Accounting for breaks, and there was traffic in every major city they passed, it took them almost ten. And Stella still had to actually find her way to Lower Manhattan, once her new friends had dropped her in Newark. Finding her way to the nearest precinct made finding transportation a lot easier with help from her badge.

It was just after noon on Wednesday that she found herself at "the pile."

There was so much ash. So much dust. She didn't even know where to begin. Looking into the eyes of the police and fire rescue around her, she had the ludicrous thought that everyone looked like they'd survived a bombing. And then she almost lost it to hysteria when she realized they had.

Sid had given her a general location of where to find Mac, and if he had strayed from that area even a little, Stella may never have found him. But there he was, not at the lab, not at a crime scene, but here in the ashes and ruin of one of New York's shining landmarks.

Stella found him quietly hunched over near a woman, talking to her in the gentle way she'd seen him talk to witnesses on scenes that were in shock. Managed to get this woman, bleeding from an unseen wound somewhere on her scalp to accept the blanket he was wrapping around her and find a way to stand and walk to the triage site. He did it with an ease which made it appear as though he'd done it hundreds of times before. In the last 24 hours, he probably had.

Mac looked terrible. His rigid posture was gone. He was completely slumped with fatigue. His skin had taken on a completely different pigmentation from the ash that clung to every part of him. Few people would have recognized him as Mac Taylor at once, fewer still think him to be anything other than a ghost.

She let him finish what he was doing. Save one more person. But he can't save them all. Not alone. And so, she goes to him then, once the medics have the woman he was aiding. She placed a hand gently on his shoulder.

Mac thinks for a moment his salvation has finally arrived. He'd thought it so many times in this horrible march towards death he'd been on. Thought in so many ways. A strand of auburn hair. A wedding band on a hand just visible beneath debris. This hand on his shoulder, so gentle and so familiar, he allows himself again to think, yes, now it's finally her.

But the voice that gently called his name wasn't her.

"Mac," she says to him, and he turns; not to see sleek straight auburn hair, but brunette curls.

He hated himself for how much he hated seeing Stella at that moment.

But he blinked the hate away and manages to choke out something almost nonsensical, "you're back early?" Like she should still be sitting in a conference learning about the latest technology for processing epithelials.

"You needed me." She said back just as matter-of-factly.

He nods, barely perceptibly, but then starts to turn back to the rubble and the ash to find more bodies. Her hand on his shoulder puts just a bit of pressure on him, gently pleading with him to stop.

Mac wants to argue. Wants to tell her of all the reasons why he can't stop. How he knows that if he keeps digging, keeps saving, keeps finding, he'll get to Claire. That she's there waiting for him, and only he can save her. But maybe he's just too tired, or maybe the logic he's so used to relying on is finally managing to get a rein back onto his heart, because he only puts up a word or two of fight before Stella's got him shuffling away, half leaned against her slight frame.

Once they manage to track down a cab, Stella is surprised that he doesn't simply collapse into the seat. He's still poised. Still Mac. He's tired, he's quiet and he's clearly drained, but somehow, he is still putting on the show for anyone watching that he's in quiet command. Even in the silence of the vehicle, he doesn't begin to break down. To yell at her for taking him away from his mission to find his wife. To cry over the loss of that task he had to occupy thought. He simply sits, still, silent, that sentinel over New York he'd tried so hard to become.

Neither of them voiced it, but they didn't go to Mac's. Stella wasn't ready to see that empty monument to the friend now absent. There was no way she was letting Mac step foot in there, and he didn't protest, so they went to her place. Her own sanctuary, where she didn't bring her boyfriends or one-night stands, but she would allow Mac into.

Neither of them really said much of anything.

Stella wanted to hold his hand. Wanted to reach out and put a calming palm to his shoulder and let him know it was going to be OK. But it felt wrong, invasive to the stoic posture he had opted for.

Even arriving, Stella simply handed the cabbie more than the trip had cost, and they exited. Slowly making their way to her 3rd floor walk-up. She let him in, and he stepped inside with some hesitation, standing in her entryway like a lost dog who had no idea what was expected of him in these new surroundings. Where he was meant to go, how he was meant to behave. The gas tank on his facade of stoicism and strength had apparently only finally run out and he was just empty.

He looked at her pristine carpet, her furniture; kitchen. Looked at himself. His hands, his shoes. He didn't want to leave the stain of his agony on her home. With nothing left, he leaned against the wall and let gravity finally take its hold onto him, sliding down to the floor, his knees drawn to him like a scared child, arms wrapped around them. Nothing left to say. Nothing left to give. He was, at that moment, nothing.

Stella's heart broke for her friend's broken heart. She shut the door and let herself slip down beside him.