Disclaimer: I do not own the song (Property of Cascada) or the series (Property of Alliance Atlantis and CBS). If I did, I would have made Eric and Calleigh get together. Screw Stetler's rules. Lyrics from azlyrics (dot) com.

A/N (Aly's Note): First Songfic! Also, I'm only going to write the chorus twice, one after the first verse and once at the end.

Song: "What Hurts the Most"- Cascada.

Pairing: HoratioMarisol

He's there on the two-year anniversary of her death. He takes off his shades and kneels down at her grave, silent tears falling down his face.

There are days
Every now and again I pretend I'm OK but that's not what gets me

He pretends that he's okay, sometimes hiding his emotion behind his ever-present shades. Whenever a case that has a familiar-looking MO comes up, he tries to solve it as best as he can while looking away, for fear of those memories might come up again.

What hurts the most, was being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away

He still didn't understand why this had to happen. He finally had a shot at a happy life with someone truly special, but it was all shattered. They were so close but yet so far.

He still has so much that he wants to say to her. Too many unsaid things that are too late to be said. He was there when she slipped away. The pain that he felt at that moment was indescribable.

Never knowing, what could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was trying to do

He wants to know how it feels, a happily married life with the woman he loves. He loved her, and he knows that she knew it. But sometimes he wondered if she really did see it.

He shakes his head. No. She did know it, and she did love him. They had a connection that he had with no one else.

It's hard to deal with the pain of losing you everywhere I go
But I'm doing it
It's hard to force that smile when I see our old friends and I'm alone

Eric was her brother. Now he was his brother too. Sometimes when he showed up for work, he reminded him of Marisol. But, the pain was getting easier and easier to bear.

Then there were the lab parties. Calleigh usually came with Eric and Ryan asked Natalia. Alexx came alone, but he knew she was happily married. He fakes a smile some of the time, wishing that she was there too, laughing along.

Still harder gettin' up, gettin' dressed, living with this regret
But I know if I could do it over
I would trade, give away all the words that I saved in my heart
That I left unspoken

He gets up, gets dressed, and goes to work, prepared for another day as head of the Miami-Dade Crime Lab. He still misses her, but he knows that if he would do it over, he would tell her everything that he wanted to tell her and leave nothing out.

I'm not afraid to cry
Every once in a while even though goin on with you gone still upsets me

He wipes a lone tear from his eyes. No, he was not afraid to cry. Not if the crying involved someone he cared about deeply.

There are days
Every now and again I pretend I'm OK but that's not what gets me

He knows that tomorrow he'd have to pretend that this never happened, let the tough-yet-caring side of him show, instead of the emotional person he was now.

What hurts the most, was being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away

It hurts, hurts more than any pain he'd ever felt. He wants to be beside her again, to breathe in her scent, and see her radiant smiling face. He wants to hear her melodic laugh just one more time.

Never knowing, what could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was trying to do

His finger traces over the indentations of the letters in her marble headstone. Marisol Delko Caine, 1978-2006.

Horatio Caine stands up and smiles sadly. Maybe, just maybe, he could deal with the hurt.