Show Me A Hero, a CSI: New York fanfic

Title: Show Me A Hero

Author: Bluehaven4220

Disclaimer: My name is not Anthony Zuiker, Carol Mendelsohn, Ann Donahue, or Jerry Bruikheimer. If it were, aliens would have woken me from sleep and handed me pieces of paper stating I was now the proud parent of a little franchise called CSI that was worth several millions. That way I wouldn't have to worry about college! And Danny and Lindsay would be knocking boots... so would Mac and Stella... AND I'd be married to Flack! but it's not meant to be, so you no sue, okay?

P.S. Tamara, Rachel, and Mackenzie are MINE. See that? MINE. M-I-N-E! MINE! So you no steal okay?

Reviews: Bluehaven4220 LOVES reviews. She is a review WHORE! Bluehaven4220 CRAVES reviews.

Summary: Lindsay Monroe watches her husband Mac Taylor closely the day his world collasped and rebuilt itself in one day. And when Don Flack arrives on her doorstep, can she change his mind? MeLty, with a little FlackMonroe thrown in for good measure.

Show me a hero, I’ll write you a tragedy

Show me love, I’ll push you away

Tell me a joke; I’ll laugh to make you happy

Invite me to dinner, I’ll refuse

You see, I am nothing but an empty shell. I have no life. When was the last time I was able to touch her, to see her, to love her?

I never had the chance.

No, she didn’t pass away. She was taken from me. I didn’t know what to do, all I could say was that I was better off alone. I didn’t deserve what she had to offer me, I wasn’t worth it.

My hero.

The one who showed me how to love

How to feel

He showed me what it was like to impress people

I never meant for any of this to happen

Lindsay Monroe here. Mac Taylor may tell you that I didn’t pass away, but here’s where he’s wrong. That or he just doesn’t want to admit it. But yes, I did die; so did his chances of becoming a father.

I was pregnant the day I died.

But no, that’s not completely true. When they wheeled me into the hospital they had to operate on me immediately to save the baby. Me… it was too late. Before I slipped away, Mac told me I had given him a beautiful little girl, and that her name was Mackenzie Tempestt Taylor.

Now I watch. I see how broken hearted my husband is. As I sit waiting, someone floats toward me.

“Claire?” I ask, bringing my legs up under my chin

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” she asks me. “To see him down there with your daughter?”

I hug my knees, feeling the tears sting my eyes. Of course it hurts! It hurts to have had her ripped so violently from my uterus to save her life. It hurts that I can’t be there to help him raise Mackenzie. “He’s a great father,” I mumble.

“He is,” Claire reiterates. “Mac and I had a daughter almost 20 years ago. Her name is Tamara.”

“Strange.” I answer, I’d never met Tamara. I reiterate that same statement.

“You wouldn’t have,” Claire answers me. “After September 11th, she stopped speaking to him.” She wiped her own tears from her eyes. “She blamed him for my death.”

But I notice something as I watch Mac feed Mackenzie. Just outside the door, there’s someone ready to knock on the door. It’s Tamara. I watch as she knocks, as Mac gives baby Mackenzie her pacifier in her bassinet, and goes to answer the door.

Claire and I watch as he stares at his 19 year old daughter. She is still, but it isn’t long before she asks if she can come in. Mac moves out of the way and closes the door behind her.

I see her blue eyes fill with tears as the old memories come flooding back to her. She turns to her father, and collapses in his arms. He is so shocked by her collapse that he is taken down to the floor with her. She’s curled in a fetal position as Mac’s arms drape around her shaking body.

“Daddy,” I hear her sob, “Daddy, I’m so sorry.”

“Shhhhh, my ’Mara. It’s okay,” he whispers as he kisses her hair. “Mara, it’s okay.”

I never expected this. I hadn’t spoken to Tamara, affectionally nicknamed Mara, and it’s pronounced Mair-a, in over 5 years. After Claire died she started to rebel, and I couldn’t deal with a rebellious teenager on top of all the homicides happening in New York just after. I sent her to live with her aunt, Claire’s sister, all because of one incident that happened just a few weeks after the Towers came down.

“Uh, Mac,” I heard on the other end of my cell phone line, it’s Flack. “I got Mara in the precinct.” Ever since Claire and I had introduced her a few weeks after she was born everyone had called her Mara.

“What did she do?” I could feel the vein in my temple throbbing. This was the fifth time in the same three weeks I’d been called for Tamara’s misbehaviour. Honestly, it was getting out of hand.

“Picked her up for fightin’ with one of her classmates. Gave the girl a pretty nasty shiner too.”

I was silent; the rage I’d been suppressing was slowly making its way up to the surface.

“Mac?” he prodded.

“I’M GONNA RING HER NECK!” I shouted into the mouthpiece.

“Whoa, whoa!” Flack sternly replied. “Mac, she’s your girl!”

“The daughter of a New York City police officer, Flack!” I was surprised I wasn’t kicking in the door. “Fuck it, she should know better!” I collected myself as best I could,

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I drove from the lab to the precinct, where Flack greeted me with the sight of my 14 year old daughter in handcuffs.

“Cuffs?”

“Wasn’t my idea,” Tamara answered me. “Personally, I was all for the not cuffing me, not calling you and letting me go idea but Flack here didn’t seem too keen on it.”

“That’s Detective Flack, Tamara!” I scolded as I motioned for Flack to uncuff her. God, I hadn’t called her Tamara since I’d caught her with her hand in the cookie jar when she had first turned five. As soon as she was released I grabbed her by the wrist and lead her forcefully out to my car.

We got to the lab and I led her into my office. I was absolutely livid.

“Sit.” I practically shoved her into the chair across from my desk. I can see her eyes widen in surprise. She wasn’t expecting me to do that.

“What the hell are you thinking, Mara? You are 14 years old… far too old to be acting like this! What has gotten into you?”

She didn’t answer me at first, but soon I heard something.

“I… HATE…YOU!” she snarled at me, grabbing her backpack. “I called Nana, she’s picking me up.”

As she went out the door I sat down in my chair, defeated and rubbing my temples. Good God, what had I done?

“I remember that day so well,” Claire tells me, “it was that night I came to Mac in a dream and convinced him to tell Mara stay with my sister. It was the hardest decision I ever had to make, but look where it got them today.”

“Seems a bit harsh though,” I answer, “shouldn’t she have stayed with Mac? He was your next of kin.”

“That may be,” she says, “but I think she felt betrayed by the fact that I’d died. Plus, he started sleeping with Stella soon after.”

“That was a well known fact. Hell, he didn’t keep it a secret. When I got there from Montana he and Stella had broken it off. The two of them were on good terms, I’m sure you know that.”

Claire nodded her head.

So I continue to watch father and daughter still curled up together on the floor. Tamara is still quaking with loads of unshed tears. She’s crying in her father’s arms, sincerely apologizing for all she’d said to him that day.

When she wipes her eyes and gets up off the floor, I hear Mackenzie start to cry. Mac is in the kitchen boiling water, and is just about to go pick her up when Tamara comes out of the nursery holding my baby in her arms.

“Who’s this, Daddy?” she asks.

“This…” he answers, taking Mackenzie from her, “is Mackenzie Tempestt Taylor.” She seems confused. “Mara, she’s your sister…”

She’s stunned for a moment, until she shakes her head and realizes what had been said.

“On the mantle over there…” Mac tells her, “is a picture of her mother.”

Tamara goes over to the mantle, picks up my framed picture, studies it, and places it back down.

“She looks…”

Wait for it.

“Nice.”

I’ll take that as a compliment.

I’m surprised Mara doesn’t have harsher words for me. I know it’s been five years since I saw her and she hadn’t spoken a word to me since, but still… she was my daughter. As I watched her play with the baby, I realized just how much I’d missed.

And how much Lindsay would miss.

Damn it! I couldn’t look at Mackenzie without seeing Lindsay’s face, just like I couldn’t look at Mara without seeing Claire. As I watched my two daughters together, Mackenzie playfully grabbing at Mara’s teeth, I felt tears well in my eyes.

Their mothers were both gone, and there was nothing I could do to bring them back.

No matter how hard I tried.

“Hey Lindsay…” I hear a voice behind me. Its Rachel… she’s new here, just getting used to the place. She’s floated around for a couple of weeks now, trying to find her place among us other angels, and I must say, she’s fitting in quite nicely.

“Hi Rache,” I answer, smiling at her, “what’s new?”

“Other than me talking your friend Don out of offing himself again, nothing too much,” she sounded melancholy, “I love the guy, and he’s hurting so badly. I really feel for him.”

“Oh I know,” I tell her, putting my head on her shoulder, “my husband just reunited with his estranged daughter… actually, this is her mom right here. Claire, this is Rachel…” I introduce the two.

“I met Rachel yesterday,” Claire says, “but nice to see you again,” she shakes Rachel’s extended hand.

“Hi Claire…” she seems a little timid right now, but she’s smiling, I guess that’s a good thing.

“So Rachel,” I put my arm around her, “tell me what Donny tried now…”

I see her pull away.

“I gotta go…” she pulls away from me.

Mara goes off into the living room, her iPod headphones in her ears. Her music is so loud I can hear it, but I’m so happy she’s back I don’t care right now.

“Daddy,” she says over the music blaring in her ears.

“Yeah, Mara?” I answer her as I warm Mackenzie’s bottle and gently coax her into taking her the bottle’s nipple. I cradle my youngest as I go to sit with my 19 year old.

“Tell me… what was it like?”

“What was what like?” I’m not quite sure what she wants to know.

“What was it like hearing Mommy die?”

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