demolished-soul: Thank you! And the whole 'past' thing in the show was…not what I wrote in here, obviously, but…we'll see if they develop it further, because her "secret" left much to be desired. Yeah, Aaron will probably be back here and there – whenever I feel like putting him into a chapter. Haha. Thank you for the review!

sparkyCSI: Yep. I watched "Silent Night"…wasn't too thrilled with it at all, but oh well. It gave me inspiration to write this chapter, so it's all good. Thanks for your comments, and I am glad that you enjoyed the chapter!

meadow567: Thanks.

lewiscentral: Thank you so much! I'm glad that you enjoyed the chapter, and I hope you like this one as well!

chili-peppers: Thank you for the review! I really liked switching back and forth between Anna and Lindsay just because their lives were and are so similar. Plus, I don't think that Lindsay and Anna get enough time together. Hope you like this chapter as well!

Well, here we are again: another chapter! Wow, we are nearing about 20 chapters, and "Stories" only had a total of 29 chapters…and trust me, this story still has a LONG way to go, so as long as you are enjoying it, hopefully you will continue to enjoy it! I'd like to thank everyone who is reviewing this story thus far, and even those who aren't reviewing, but who are reading: thanks so much. It's encouraging to get feedback from readers! And the synopsis for this chapter: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in NYC! Shopping, lights, Christmas trees, carols, parties, and the season of giving has New York's finest Detectives in festive moods. Well, almost everyone is…

SO sorry for the LONG delay in updating. I've worked 27-ish hours this week (granted, I am a minor) & wanted to get this chapter absolutely right before posting. Also, I know that we all know (if you saw "Silent Night") what Lindsay's ACTUAL dark secret is (as vague as they were about it…) but, for continuity's sake, we will continue to believe that the Lindsay in THIS story killed her boyfriend. Okay? Okay!

Disclaimer: I don't own the song, or lyrics, or Jamie Cullum. But I must give GIGANTIC kudos to one of my best friends Simi for helping me pick out lyrics that suited this chapter! Also, I must assume that by reading this, you saw Stella's ordeal in "All Access", as she will talk about it.

Chapter 17: All At Sea

But sometimes don't you just crave
To disappear within your mind?
You never know what you might find...

Please just leave me right here on my own
Later on you could spend some time with me
If you want to, all at sea.

The snow spiraled down onto the pavement as I walked towards the crime lab. I had to laugh to myself. It was ironic – every time that I desired to be alone, I was greeted by either rain or snow, as if seemingly the weather paralleled my thought process. Shoving my numb hands into the warmth of my coat pockets, I paused, and the steady stream of breath floated in front of me. I stared up at the building, took a deep breath, and walked inside.

It was the first day that I would have to face Flack again. I would have to face him after what happened at my apartment. And I would have to face Marty. And I would have to face my team, and put on a happy façade – of course, everything was right with the world. Of course. It was Christmastime after all. Nothing could ever be wrong at Christmas. No, I would act as if my life was perfect. I would smile and nod at all of the techs, and huddle over pieces of evidence. I would forget, for the day, that I had a decision to make. I had to choose between them. But I would forget that – I must forget that.

I smiled pleasurably at the receptionists and I opted for the stairs, rather than the elevator. I needed some few moments of peace and quiet before I began to enter the world of crime scene investigation.

As I ascended the stairs, I couldn't prevent my mind from wandering to thoughts about him – the one person who made my life so utterly complicated, and yet…so…wonderful at the same time. Shaking my head, I frowned. No, I couldn't think of him…but, my mind had other plans, and it began to revel in my promise.

"This isn't goodbye."

"So, what is it then?"

"Think of it as an 'I'll see you soon'. How about that?"

"See you soon."

I sighed and began to climb the stairs. As soothing as it was to know that I didn't have to face a harsh stare from Flack or Marty, I was nervous, anxious, and jittery – like a little school girl, all over again. Then, I thought to myself as I climbed up the tenth stair, what do I have to face? If they're not going to be upset with me, what do I do? What do I say to them? Do I pretend like nothing has ever happened? How can I do that?

The truth was, the day before, I was attempting to sort out my feelings for Flack and Marty, when the phone rang. I picked it up, and Lindsay was on the other line, choking back tears.

"Lindsay?" I asked tentatively. "Is everything alright? Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?"

There was a sniff on the other line. "No, but I…I needed someone to talk to, and Stella is coming over to my apartment in a few minutes…I was wondering if you could…"

"Say no more, Lindsay. I'll grab my things and be over there in a few minutes."

I ended the phone call, and gathered my things together before heading out the door and over to Lindsay's apartment.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

It was later in the afternoon, and I was working a case with Hawkes and Stella. There had been no sign of Flack all day, but I suspected that it was because he was working a case with Danny, Lindsay, and Mac.

"Anna? Did you get all of that?" Jen asked. I turned to see Detective Angell and nodded distractedly.

"Yeah, body was found by Nathan Alexander, the neighbor of the DB, around 10 o'clock this morning…apparently Nathan had a beef with the dead guy a few days ago. Is there anything I forgot Jen?" I asked.

Jennifer Angell nodded once. "The DB's name is Chance Vito. Kind of a weird name if you ask me…"

I raised my eyebrows at the Detective and nodded. "Lucky Life," I murmured. Jennifer looked at me curiously.

"Come again?" she asked.

"His name means 'Lucky Life'– Chance Vito."

Jennifer raised her eyebrows and looked at Chance, who was slumped over a chair, with a bullet wound to his head. "Oh, the irony."

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

When I arrived at Lindsay's the night before, I had found myself greeted at the door by a woman in sweatpants, a Montana State University sweatshirt, and tousled hair, who resembled – barely – a woman named Lindsay Monroe.

She smiled welcomingly, despite herself, and motioned me into her apartment. I had never seen the inside of Lindsay's apartment, but it suited her – pictures of Montana skies and wheat fields with various smiling faces were framed on her walls. There were assorted newspaper clippings – a birth announcement, a 4-H article, a photograph of a smiling woman – framed on the walls along side of the other pictures. Lindsay watched my eyes trail the apartment, and she forced a smile.

"Those were the younger years," she replied with sad reminiscence. I turned to face Lindsay. Her sparkling chocolate eyes were brimming with tears. "God, I was so stupid back then," she added, voice cracking. I wrapped my arms around the woman and enveloped her in a warm hug.

"Lindsay," I said gently, pulling her away from me. The older woman sniffed. "what's been going on with you lately?"

Lindsay shook her head and sat down on the couch. "God, Anna, I wish I knew…everything is coming back to me again, and I don't want it to. I don't want to think about…the past."

I sat down next to Lindsay and nodded my head. "I understand. You would be surprised what demons can haunt you when you least expect it," I said with a shudder. Lindsay looked at me curiously, but before she could ask anything, there was another knock on the door. The Montana native rose and allowed a concerned Stella in.

"Lindsay, does this have anything to do with what happened in the morgue?" Stella asked. She walked with Lindsay towards the couch and seemed to notice me for the first time. "Oh! Hi Anna," she replied with a slight wave of her hand. I waved back as the pair sat down. Lindsay took a deep breath.

"I was just telling Anna about…wait, Anna, you said that you knew all about demons from the past? How do you know so much about those?"

Stella and Lindsay both turned towards me, confusion etched on both of their faces. I sighed and looked at my hands. "It's not something that I'm proud of, necessarily, but I had to face a lot of demons before, and I know how you feel, Lindsay…trapped, confused, emotional, terrified – I felt all of those too, and God knows that I still feel that way sometimes."

The women continued to stare, urging me on. "I was…I was verbally abused when I was a teenager," I said, looking up from where I was fiddling with my hands. The women's eyes grew wider. "He was my first boyfriend…Abe…and I thought that he was just going through an angry phase because he was abused by his father…but, I was too young, too naïve, too dumb for my own good. And I let him tear me down time and time again."

Stella shook her head and placed a hand on my shoulder. "I never knew that about you, Anna."

I smiled sadly and looked at my hands. "It's not something that I'm proud of, or that I like to go around and brag about. It's just something that happened to me a long time ago, and helped to make me the person that I am today – a better person. I learned, through that experience, to really get to know someone before I trust them completely…I've had one too many broken hearts in my life."

Lindsay nodded, a tear slipping down her cheek. Stella wrapped her arms around the woman's shoulder and began to speak herself, her dark eyes fixed ahead of her. "It was awful, so…terrible," she said in a haunted whisper. Lindsay and I looked at each other. Stella was about to confront her own demons. I couldn't believe my eyes as I watched a stream of tears fall down Stella's face. She was always my rock, the "tough girl". But even tough girls break sometimes. She poured out to us the events of the night that she struggled for her life. "There comes a point in time," she explained to the still silent Lindsay Monroe, "where you have to make the toughest decision of your life – it will either be the toughest one you ever make, or it will be the last one you ever make. I could have died, Lindsay. And you could have too, and you and I both know that. But we made the decision to live, and it was the hardest decision that we will ever have to deal with."

"I killed him," Lindsay replied with a shake of her head and a soft whisper – the whisper from a ghost in her past. Stella squeezed Lindsay's hand and I watched the pair with silent awe and admiration, tears running down my face. They were both so amazingly brave. They had looked death in the face, and instead of yielding to him, they fought and overcame their dire circumstances. I choked a sob. These women had endured some of the harshest repercussions for what they had done – in self-defense they had killed two men – their boyfriends. "I didn't want to kill Frankie, Lindsay, just as you never wanted to kill your boyfriend," Stella assured the younger woman. Lindsay nodded and wiped her eyes with a Kleenex. "But we made the right decisions. And I know that in the morgue, you probably saw the entire event unfold before your eyes." Lindsay nodded and Stella continued. "I know, Lindsay, I've been there. I can't even tell you how many nights I have lost sleep over the nightmares."

"How do you deal with them?" I asked Stella. Lindsay's eyes begged Stella to continue. Stella's mouth turned into a small smile, and she dug in her purse for something. She handed Lindsay and me business cards.

"I talked to Dr. Jensen Merriman. She's not our department psychiatrist, but she was recommended to me by a friend, and she's awesome." Lindsay looked at the card skeptically. Stella let out a quiet laugh, and Lindsay looked up at her companion.

"Yeah, I thought the same thing too at first," she explained, staring out the darkened window. "I thought it was absurd when Mac suggested that I go see a shrink. And I thought it was even more absurd when Flack suggested that I do it."

A pang shot through me at the mention of Flack, but I ignored it.

Lindsay looked at the card for a moment and appeared to be contemplating what to do with it. Stella placed a hand atop Lindsay's. "You should talk to her," she urged. "Dr. Merriman is a wonderful woman who will be able to help you cope, I assure you." Stella turned to me, examining my tear-stained face and my downcast eyes. I looked at the card with the same expression that Lindsay had. "Anna," she said quietly. I looked up, blinking, startled. "Maybe you should consider talking to her too. It couldn't hurt, right?" she added with questioning glance. I sniffed and nodded my head, pocketing the card.

"Yeah, I, uh, might look into that," I said quietly. Lindsay rose from the couch and placed the card under a magnet on her fridge. She turned back towards me and Stella with a smile on her face.

"You have no idea how much better I feel right now, just talking…and listening."

Stella and I shared a glance with each other, and I wondered if Stella had been visited by an angel too, for she replied: "It's what our job is, Lindsay. We help each other out, right?"

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

It was the day before Christmas Eve, when one split second of stupidity finally knocked some sense into my thick head. I had been out on a case with Stella and had returned in a rush to try and Liam – the lab tech who apparently had some results for us – when what I must kindly refer to as "the incident" occurred. I was reading through my case file, in an attempt to find any thing unusual or inconsistent in a witness report or a clue in the crime scene photos. Needless to say, I was not watching where I was walking. I must have slipped on something, quite possibly water, and suddenly, I found myself preparing to fall forward and eat the tile. As I braced myself with one hand for this impact (my case file was not going to become confetti – that much I was determined of), I felt a strong arm fix around my waist, while the other found my shoulder blade, steadying me once more on my feet. I teetered for a moment, placing both of my hands on the man's shoulders with the folder dangling from one of the hands (miraculous as it was, I didn't drop anything from it), breathing heavily, and found myself staring up at – yes, you guessed it – Detective Donald Flack.

For a moment, I couldn't move – quite literally, because Don's hands were still in their previous positions. He had me pressed close to him and I tried a few times – quite unsuccessfully, might I add – to formulate a proper 'Thank you', or even a proper sentence. But, for some reason, I couldn't speak. All I could do was stare up at his blue eyes and blink. Why is my heart like a freaking river dance right now? I asked myself silently, for my heart was certainly about to burst from beating so fast. And I had a feeling that it wasn't entirely due to my almost-fall. After a moment more of silence, Don removed his hands and cleared his throat. I began to babble, and we started to talk at the same time.

"So, I – uh – "

"Well, I better go and get my, uh, results…"

"Yeah, and so I'll…"

"…I'll, uhm, see you around, I guess."

"Yeah…see you."

And with that, Flack and I walked down the hallway in opposite directions, and somewhere in Heaven, Aaron was laughing his butt off, because I am quite certain that he was the one who tripped me.

"Well," I muttered as I walked towards Trace, "I wanted a sign, and I guess that's about as clear as it gets."

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

It was unusually quiet in the Lab. So much so, that I could even hear myself think. What a concept.

The scratching of pen against paper was my only companion. It was Christmas Eve, and I was sitting in my office, filling out a pile of paperwork that was lying on my desk. There were few lab techs – primarily the night shift – and Detectives walking around. I heaved a sigh, and closed one manila envelope, only to open another one beside me. Thus, that is why I jumped nearly a foot in the air when I heard my name.

"Anna? What are you still doing here?"

I peered around the papers and saw a puzzled looking Mac Taylor standing, arms crossed in front of his chest in the doorway. I shrugged and motioned to the pile of papers with my hand.

"Paperwork doesn't know the term 'Christmas', I suppose," I replied back. Mac checked his watch and shook his head.

"Anna, it's nearly ten o'clock. Go home."

I looked at the paperwork and shook my head. "No, Mac, I have to…"

Mac walked into the room with a frown. "You're turning down the option to go home on Christmas Eve?" he asked with confusion. I avoided his eyes and pulled out another folder.

Mac looked at me and shrugged, before pulling up a chair and pen, and selecting a folder from the stack. I gaped and noted that he was wearing his leather coat. "Mac, you were about to go home…I can finish this up. I'll be alright."

Mac shook his head and studied me for a moment. "If I help you out, it'll get done faster, and we can get out of here sooner."

I sighed and placed my pen down. "You want to know the real reason that I am doing this paperwork, Mac?" I asked him. Mac nodded his head. I looked at the folders, not meeting my supervisor's gaze. "It's giving me something to do because…because I don't want to go home to an empty apartment on Christmas Eve."

I looked over at Mac for his reaction and he smiled sadly, eyes meeting mine. "I understand, Anna."

I blinked. "You do?"

Mac nodded and closed a folder, placing it on top of those that were already completed. "Sure. You're not the only one going home to an empty apartment tonight," he replied. I mentally kicked myself. Of course, this time of the year would have been hard for Mac, I thought. He doesn't have Claire anymore. It must be lonely.

"That, but also…" I took a deep breath and focused my eyes on the folders before continuing, "…also, it's my first…my first Christmas without Aaron," I finished, with glistening eyes.

Mac, once again, nodded slowly and continued to fill out paperwork, talking to me without meeting my eyes directly. "When Claire passed away, my first Christmas without her was…it was terrible. It had only been a little over three months from her death, and I had to celebrate her favorite holiday without her…"

I sniffed lightly, and felt so self-centered for only thinking about my problems, and my sorrows – I felt so awful for ignoring Mac's troubles. My supervisor was human too – he still suffered, and Christmas without a best friend was nothing compared to Christmas without his wife.

Mac smiled at me slightly, looking up from his paperwork. "If you want me to stick around, I could always show you the best coffee place in town. That way we both wouldn't have to be alone on Christmas Eve. But if you don't want to, and you'd rather be alone, I understand that too. I just needed to be alone for my first Christmas without Claire."

I looked at Mac and contemplated for a moment, before nodding my head. "I think that Aaron would want me to enjoy Christmas…just like Claire would want you to."

Mac and I smiled at each other – a secret understanding between those who had lost someone that they loved. We finished the paperwork within a half an hour and I rose, putting on my thick jacket and scarf.

Walking out to meet the cold winter air, I stared at Mac for a moment and we both smiled again.

"Claire always loved the snow," he replied quietly – reverently, almost. I placed a hand on Mac's shoulder and nodded. We both knew heartache, and we both new sorrow. Both of us had an unspoken bond – the bond of death, as ironic as it sounded. We were both learning, gradually, how to move on.

And Christmas was the season for new beginnings. It was time to be joyful, to be thankful, and to have peace.

And, staring up into the sky as I got into a cab with Mac, I couldn't help but smile at the twinkling stars in the sky. Somewhere, up there, Claire and Aaron were both smiling.

I had the idea in my head for a moment, and contemplated on whether or not I should have used it, but I finally decided that Mac and Anna needed to have a little interaction. No, I am not pairing them together (how did you like Anna's clumsy little accident? I thought you might. LOL) Anyway, I am apologizing again for the delay in updating, but I hope that you all enjoyed this anyway. Next chapter will cover a little bit of Christmas Day & then we'll get to some more Elsie/Anna interaction (I'll re-cover the part in "Stories" when Elsie told Anna all about the party she had planned) & then New Year's…and then we can get onto Anna's party soon! Woohoo!

Okay, well, just hit that button down there that says 'Reply' and I will be a happy camper. Have a great week y'all, and I will update as soon as I can.