CSI:New York : Who Are You? (Don Flack/OFC fanfic)

Reaching Out

Mac silently nodded. He found himself thinking about Claire. He felt like a fraud sitting there trying to push through her barriers, to get her to talk, when five years on he still wasn't completely ready to talk about losing his wife. It reminded him of how much he understood Olivia, how in that one way they were completely alike. She let go of a breath and when she spoke her voice was so quiet, he was almost straining to hear the words.

'Do you ever feel like...like your life is in a holding pattern...stalled, almost?'

He went very still, and when she turned her head to look at him, her gaze was intent on his. 'Sometimes,' he admitted.

'I wonder about it...you know? If people can outgrow their life.'

'Maybe we only outgrow parts of it,' he said just as serious as she was. 'And maybe new pieces fall into place.'

'I discovered something today. It changes everything and I'm not sure how to deal with that.'

Her open admittance told him that she wanted to talk about whatever it was she had discovered, but she was struggling. He didn't push. He just waited to see if she would back out or if she was prepared to put her trust in him.

Olivia's mouth felt suddenly dry, she drained the last of the vodka and set the glass down. Running her hands through her hair, she felt scared and nervous and didn't have a clue what she was doing. She wanted to talk to someone. She wanted to talk to him. Needed it, because she knew he would understand. And maybe because he knew everything anyway, that was what made it easier for her. She didn't have to explain why she needed to talk. He knew why.

'For years now...I've felt like I'm on the outside looking in. That this is someone else's life and I'm just watching it unfold, chapter by chapter. I tell myself it has to be someone else's life, all of this...everything, it hasn't - it couldn't have all happened to one person.'

Mac saw the network of lines that tugged at her green eyes. She looked sad and tired and infinitely lonely. It was the loneliness that made him feel like they were partners somehow, victims of a similar war. He didn't offer advice or words of comfort he just let her talk.

'They say it gets easier over time. But it doesn't. You just learn to live with it. How can it get easier when how they were taken was so brutal and so wrong? It's been twelve years and I don't think there'll ever come a time when I stop missing them...feel them around me. I wake up most mornings and I have this warm feeling that everything's all right and then I remember it isn't, that they're all gone and the emptiness is all there is. That never really goes away. Not when you've lost someone...not when you've lost everyone.' Her voice cracked, and she sucked in a long steadying breath.

In that one moment, with tears of sadness shining in her eyes, Mac shared her pain. Knowing he had stumbled upon something important, knowing that she had offered it willingly. He wondered if she realized the extent of what she had done. If she knew the huge step she had just taken.

'I want to be back on the inside, Mac...but there's no one there,' she implored. 'There's just me and I'm lost. Wandering around lost in the middle of nowhere and I don't know how to get back.' Feeling the tears threatening to spill over, she turned away and shook her head bitterly.

Mac understood how it felt to be in a place where there was no one to care for you, to protect you...to look out for you.

'I cry for all of them every day. I cry for all the missed moments, the kisses at bedtime, the hugs, the fights...the laughter, the good times out on the Cape...the joy that'll never be as complete again. And every day...every single day, I blame myself.'

Mac lifted his head. 'What happened wasn't your fault,' he told her. But she wasn't listening.

'I should have gone to Portland. Swallowed my pride and gone with them. What did it matter if he didn't want me there...they were my family and I should have been there.' Her voice was cracking with emotion, but beneath the obvious pain there was anger. 'If I had...it would never have happened. They would still be alive. I could have stopped it.'

'Olivia, you were sixteen. No more than a child yourself.'

'I should have been there,' she implored, her voice breaking.

How many times had Mac blamed himself for losing Claire? He had promised to protect her and that would never leave his mind, it stayed like a splinter under the skin. He'd had no control whatsoever over what happened that gray day, nobody could have known what terror and tragedy lay ahead; yet just like Olivia was now, he blamed himself. He blamed himself for something that wasn't even his fault. And all because of a promise.

'You feel guilty...therefore the guilt prevents you from talking about the pain and by not allowing yourself to talk about it, the burden becomes greater,' he said quietly voicing his own thoughts and fears. 'You believe that you could have done something, anything, to prevent it from happening.' She turned to face him and he met her tear-filled eyes and felt something tug, deep and sharp inside of him. 'Truth is...you couldn't. No one could have stopped it. No one, Olivia. Least of all you. It happened...and it wasn't your fault.'

A floodgate opened inside of her. The guilt...yes, the guilt was what she had lived with for so long. Her father's sudden death...Charlie, Lily...and in some small way, even her mother. She couldn't stop herself from thinking that she could have stopped the nightmare. This was her doing. Because she felt so guilty. The guilt of how her father had died that wet and windy Thursday night and the guilt of not being there to protect her brother and sister from Hickey. The guilt of shutting her mother out afterwards. Realizing what she had done, what she had admitted, her body began to tremble and the tears fell unashamedly from her eyes as a choked sob escaped her lips.

She was broken. She was falling to pieces right before his very eyes. The deep abyss of pain that often threatened to drown her did just that. She had worked hard over the years to not let it win, to never let it drag her under. Knowing what would happen if it did. Knowing she would never claw her way back out. But she was tired, she was emotionally exhausted...and she was broken and she didn't want to fight anymore.

Oh God...she didn't want to fight any more.

Without thinking, Mac got to his feet and went to her. He reached for her, folded her shaking body into his arms. He expected her to pull away, but there was no fight in her. And that in itself made him ache for her. She was hovering on the brink of a breakdown and he wanted to help her, he wanted to help her more than he'd ever wanted to help any other human being.

The first tentative step had already been taken. One day at a time, wasn't that what they said? Mac knew she had done this, that she'd let him get close to her and he didn't know why, but it scared him. Because in the back of his mind he knew that because of that shared connection he could get close to her, too.

Olivia trembled against him, cried into his shoulder and still he held on. Needing it - but uncertain of its shape and meaning - as much as she did.

Case closed.

End of Part 2.

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COPYRIGHT. © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Debra Jay. 2006