Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or any of its characters.

Spoilers: 8X07

A/N: This is an angst fest. You have been warned.

An extra special deep and sincere thank you to Kristen Elizabeth…she was gently honest and helped me make this story much more than what it was. I am, more than ever, deeply in her debt.

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There was a cuckoo clock at the house I processed today.

I'm lying here in bed, should have been asleep hours ago, but I'm remembering the cuckoo chirping the hour and how I stood and stared at it until Ronnie asked me if I was okay.

My dad had a cuckoo clock…it was an antique, one of the few things he had left from his parents. He loved that clock. I was fascinated by it. And it changed my life forever.

I keep thinking I should be over this by now.

It's been almost twenty-five years since she killed him. And there are times I think I have moved beyond it, then there are times I realize I've spent two-thirds of my life running from my past only to discover it's chained to me and I've been dragging it with me everywhere I go.

The thing is…my dad? He wasn't a monster. He was a human being with some pretty serious faults but he had his good points too. I said that to Gil once and he looked at me as if I was completely out of my mind. How could I say that about an alcoholic and a physically and sexually abusive father?

I didn't waste a lot of breath trying to convince Gil, but my dad did a lot of stuff with and for me when I was little. I understand now that he was in a downward spiral with his alcoholism the last few years and that's part of what made it so bad. But before that, he was pretty cool. He taught me to fish and how to ride a bike. He played Monopoly with me and we built box kites together. I was his girl.

I loved him fiercely. But I lived in terror of him, too. My freshman year at Harvard, I took Religion 101 or something like it and I remember the professor talking about the Old Testament God…how He was terrible and wrathful and vengeful and people worshipped Him in both love and fear. I understood the feeling.

My father's righteous retribution came not in the form of floods, boils and plagues but frottage, belts and up until he broke it, the paddle.

It was made of pine, approximately two feet long from handle to tip, four inches wide, and a half inch thick. It was lightly stained a deep but golden yellow (for the rest of my life when someone would talk about something being honey colored, I'd tense) and finished to a high glossy shine. It bore the words "Never spank a child in the face, nature provides a better place" along with a rather ridiculous looking picture of two children, the male in overalls, the female in bloomers, bent over, presenting their backsides.

I didn't mean to break the clock…I just wanted to see how it worked, what made the numbers move and the cuckoo chirp. So, I took it apart. The wood was old and it smelled like Grandma's attic. The last time we went to visit her, he went on a violent bender and I hid in the attic. The wood smelled hot and I felt safe.

The clock smelled like that, the last time I really had a good place to hide, the last time I was able to hide. It was the last time I felt anything close to safe and I was still terrified, but there was still a comfort in the smell. I wanted to know if the smell was inside the clock, so I took it apart. But there was nothing that smelled safe in there. Just metal and old oil and dust, but the springs and coils and gears and chains were endlessly fascinating to me. How moving one would make others move as well, and if I moved this or wound that, different things would happen. I didn't know that it could all be wound so tight it would stop working…

I put it back together quickly and re-hung it. And it took him awhile to notice the cuckoo wasn't announcing the hour. That was actually worse than if he'd noticed right away because he was more than halfway through his fifth of Jack Daniels by then and if he had noticed earlier the beating wouldn't have been so bad.

I remember thinking it was done and I was done for. It didn't take him long to begin yelling my name; at the time I wondered how he knew it was me, what evidence I had left behind. I knew I needed to get better at covering my tracks because there wasn't any place for me for me to hide. Not anymore.

I had decided after the last time, I wasn't going to cry any more. I didn't think I could take it silently, it hurt so bad. But no more tears. Not ever again.

I stood in front of him, face blank, posture rigid, wondering if it was going to be the paddle or the belt. The belt hurt less, but I preferred the paddle. I had figured out a pattern: if I got the belt, I would have to sit on his lap later. Whenever I saw his hands reach for the buckle and saw him unfasten it and pull it through the loops of his pants in one crackling movement I knew he would be using me later and the feel of him hard beneath me even through his pants was worse than the beatings. The sticky feel of his pants against my skin when he was finished was the worst feeling in the world.

He didn't like the look on my face, so he started with a backhand to the cheek and I landed, surprised, on the floor. "Get me the paddle!" His voice was a bark and I remember trying as hard as I possibly could not to look relieved as I rose to my feet and headed to the kitchen.

I was tall for my age, but not tall enough to reach the top of the refrigerator, so I dragged the stepstool over and retrieved the highly polished piece of pine. He was already screaming at me to "Hurry the fuck up! You're not getting out of it this time, you useless little bitch."

I almost wanted to laugh, because really, when did I ever get out of it? But I slid the stepstool back into place quickly and walked back into the living room and handed him the paddle and he slapped my other cheek for taking too long and when my head snapped back, I reminded myself not to cry. I'd let myself scream if I had to, I'd try not to, but I'd allow it if I had to (and I knew I'd have to) but no tears. No tears.

"Chris…" Mom began in a hesitant voice from the doorway and he pointed the paddle in her direction.

"You let the little moron break my clock, so unless you want to be next, shut the fuck up, Laura." I watched her; slink back down the hall, stinking of fear and failure. I think I hated her more in that moment than I ever hated him. But I understood. Years later, I would imagine her huddled on the end of their bed listening to me scream and after the way it all turned out, I know each blow to me hurt her more than if she had been receiving them on her own flesh.

He grabbed my arm with brutal strength and jerked it far up over my head, pulled me up on my toes and pulled against the socket, but I forgot that discomfort as the first blow landed, followed quickly by a second. I gritted my teeth. No screams, no tears.

I knew he was angry and waiting for me to start crying. I didn't count the blows that time, instead I counted my breaths.

He gave an angry roar; I think it was pissing him off that I was silent, and the blows landed harder and faster. "Think you're better than me, don't you? Think you're so damned smart."

One strike landed high, against the small of my back and I've never felt anything like the stinging pain and I finally screamed. But I didn't cry. No tears. No tears.

I remember thinking all I had to do is get through this…he couldn't go on forever, he'd get tired soon. I told myself I could stand anything for a few minutes. I could endure any amount of pain for a minute or two and I listened to what I was saying to myself in my head and not the screams coming out of my throat.

"You'll never amount to anything, you stupid little bitch." A wild whack landed high on the back of my thighs and I knew it had to hurt but I couldn't even feel it anymore. All I could sense was his voice telling me I was useless, useless, useless. Useless and stupid and ugly and lazy. Not good enough, never would be. I'd never be anything but a waste of skin, a big fucking mistake on his part, but if he had to beat that arrogance out of me, he would, by god. He would.

It's odd. Before the drinking escalated, he never said anything bad about me or, to me, for that matter. Yes, he would yell and tell me to shut up or stop doing whatever I was doing, but this vile and vulgar verbal abuse only happened towards the end and when my logical brain is in control, I understand it was a fiery combination of anger and alcohol and I am not those things he said I was. I understand that in my head. But I know I don't believe it in my heart.

There was another blow to my back and I heard a crack and I wondered if he'd hit me hard enough to break my spine, but the next one landed where it was supposed to and I heard a deeper crack and felt the wood give slightly. The next hit caused the paddle to break against me but he didn't stop. There was only the handle and six inches of jagged pine left and that shattered against me in a hail of wood shards as he continued to scream, "Useless, stupid, ugly, lazy. Useless, stupid, ugly, lazy."

When he had nothing left to beat with, he released my arm and sent me flying with one last cuff to the side of my head. He snarled, "You will never amount to anything." And he threw the ruins of the paddle on the floor and staggered off for fresh ice.

There would be no school the next day, too many bruises and at that point I was fairly sure I was bleeding (I was right). And it would be the belt from then on and I'd have to find a different way to figure out which belt nights are also a lap night. But it doesn't matter, because I never cried, never would cry under his hand again. I had proved I could withstand anything for a few minutes and I could listen to myself scream and promise myself I would prove him wrong.

I would.

I wake up to find Gil must have left work early and slipped silently into bed with me. The cool cotton of the sheets slide over my skin as I shift to watch him while he sleeps.

I know why he didn't wake me. He's worried about me; the worry has been non-stop since Natalie. It's not as obvious as it was at first, not quite as frantic, but I am slowly, day by day, hour by hour coming to understand he now has more reason to be worried about me than he did the day I came home from the hospital.

He presses his face into the pillow in that adorable way he has that reminds me of a toddler. I smile. This man is incredible. I knew it from the moment I set eyes on him. Yeah, yeah, I know, it doesn't take a psychologist to figure out a lot of my issues from my past have been wrapped up in him, older man, emotionally reticent, push me/pull you tendencies. The stoners that sit in the back row of the psych class at the high school down the street could map that one out for you.

And I can't honestly say how much of my first attraction to him was or wasn't comprised of those elements. I actually think that's why he was afraid of us for so long. But I know none of that is there now. I've grown; so has he. We have grown together. And he's so much more than that first glimpse. He is brilliant and loving and even nurturing.

He's spent two years telling me how beautiful I am, how smart I am, how amazing and wonderful I am. And I've tried to believe him. But sometimes, just sometimes, when he falls asleep against me warm and sated, smelling like sex and sweat, I still want to cry because I feel like a fraud, like an impostor, because I will never be good enough. Not for him. Not for myself.

And no matter how many hours he holds me and soothes me with words and caresses, I don't know how long it will be before he figures it out.

When I told Natalie I had lost my dad, too, I suddenly realized it was true. I lost him when the alcohol got him, and I lost him again when the knife got him. When he stopped caring and then when he died. The same thing happened to her: her biological father stopped caring and her foster father died. What was the difference between us? How did she become a killer and I become someone who catches them?

When I was staggering around the desert I kept thinking about the night Dad broke the paddle on me. About the thought that I could stand anything for a minute. Distract myself for a minute, think of something else, I could make it. I could survive anything for a minute or two.

When I said my dad wasn't a monster, I meant that. I accepted a long time ago I can't go back and change it and anger and hate were eating me alive. And I learned in the desert, I don't hate my dad any more. I can't. He made me strong.

I heard someone say once that who we are when we're twenty, we're allowed to blame on our parents; who we are when we're thirty we have to accept responsibility for. I think, just this once, I might be running behind.

I'm suddenly realizing my whole life, my career and all of my other major life choices have been based on insults hurled at me from a man who hated himself so much he couldn't live sober. And I am also realizing they were lies…if they weren't lies then, I've lived my life to make sure they never came true. I get it.

Before the desert I felt like I was a voice for the victim; I put the bad guys away, I did some good. But not anymore. There's just too much pain . Too much random hurt. And death is everywhere and I'm not sure I have ever learned how to live.

I get it.

Gil is the only thing I am sure of at this point. He has been incredibly patient with me and I have to say I am feeling fragile…like the inside of a clock…too much pressure in the wrong place and it's broken forever.

I watch him as he shifts and reaches out for me in his sleep. I move against him and press a kiss against his warm skin, loving him with a pure intensity. I know something is breaking or already broken within me and I know I'm going to have to leave to fix it or I might break us. I feel it coming; I don't know what it will be that sends me over the edge, but the abyss is in sight and inescapable.

I might be wound just a little too tight right now.

At this moment though, I am allowing myself the pleasure of sinking into my lover's embrace, however much I don't deserve him. Because he is brilliant and beautiful and he saved me.

And soon, soon, I'll have to save him by leaving him. Not forever. But for a little while.

Sleepily, half waking, he presses a kiss to the top of my head and I smile against him.

I am just so thankful today is not that day.