Title: Here's the Water, Just Ankle-Deep High
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: R for explicit sex and language
Pairing: Mac/Danny & Danny/Claire
Summary: Lay back, get waterlogged, give us a kiss.
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.
Notes: I said: Name three fics that you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return, I will attempt to write a snippet of one of them. mybestexcuse said: Danny/Claire

***

The woman is sepia-toned, all the color leached out of her skin and hair and faded like an old photograph, and she flickers in and out of existence whenever Danny tries to look at her directly, out of focus just enough to hurt his eyes, out of reality just enough to hurt his mind, like staring into a strobe light. He wishes that his eyesight were better or worse, that he could slip his glasses off and have her blur just enough for him to be able to gaze directly at her, but he doesn't dare chance it. She stands and stares at him, head jerking back and forth, just a little, like a bird, a crane or some other thing that lives mostly in water. He looks at the wall behind her, over her shoulder -- not through it, Christ no -- and tries to talk to her.

"Do you know where you are?" he asks. She goes still, raising her hands in the air as if considering the question, and he bites his lip, waiting. His armpits and chest are slimy with sweat, and he can feel the beginnings of a headache in the back of his skull. This was only supposed to be a routine haunting investigation, a routine exorcism if necessary. What he's facing now, this wasn't ever supposed to be, wasn't ever supposed to happen. He doesn't look at her face, at the faded watercolor copy of features he's seen in photographs and that he dimly recalls from department dinners, six or seven years in the past.

"Know," she says, and her voice sends a new chill down his spine. It's not the right voice, not precisely, at least not as far as he can tell from his own dim and possibly inaccurate memory, but it's close. What had been the voice of the living woman is in there, but it's tangled up with something, some other tone or presence, and because he's still not looking at her head-on, he sees the pool of water on the wooden floor behind her. Not surprising, because the building is falling apart, and it would explain the rotting river swamp smell of the place, but once he sees it he can't stop thinking about it. It looks too deep for a puddle, the surface of the water too black and the edges too perfect; he thinks that he can see reeds and water ferns growing along the edges. He digs his fingers into the palm of his hand so that he'll stay focused.

"Know," she says again. "Know, of course I know." She shimmers once more and then seems to solidify a little. He chances another look at her face. "I know who you are," she says, and smiles. "What."

"You do?" he asks. He tries to keep his voice gentle, looks away from the shuddering water and reminds himself that this is only a ghost, only a dead woman who may not know she's dead.

"Daniel. Danny. Danny-boy," she says, and satisfaction coils through her voice like smoke. He almost takes a step back.

"That, um, that's good." She seems to have settled down; there's no more color in her than there was before, but she's no longer fading in and out. He can look at her now, but he's not sure that makes it any better. Now that he can look at her face, he thinks he can see another face beneath it, some shadow that's visible in the curve of her cheek and the twist of her mouth as she turns in the uncertain light. "Do you know who you are?" he asks.

She laughs. "My name's not the issue, boy." She reaches out to him then, and he tries to pull away, but he's too late; her nails slide across his chest, flicking at the buttons on his shirt. "Be a soldier, see the world."

"What does that -- "

"You stink of him," she says, voice rising and breaking, the slinky threat in the words all too apparent now. "Does he stink of you?" Her hand tightens on his shirt. "Does he call my name when you're in bed with him, when he's fucking you?"

"Claire," he says, wanting to see how she'll react to the name, and all she does is laugh again.

"Yes, that," she says. "Does he?" Something breaks the surface in the water behind them, then sinks back into the depths with a splash.

"No," Danny says, mouth gone dry. "No, he never has."

"Liar." Her fingers on his chest feel too sharp, too mobile. Like they won't be fingers at all if he looks down, and so he doesn't look down.

"I'm not lying. I'm sorry."

"Filthy liar," she hisses. "He thinks it. In his head. I've heard it. You're a liar just like he is."

"He's not -- "

"Danny," she says, and the sound of his name on her colorless lips makes him tremble. This is very bad, he realizes suddenly; this has gone so far beyond an angry ghost, or a confused one, and how he could have ignored all the signs, all his training...

He looks into her eyes. Black, pinwheels, depths to be lost in. He has to look away. He can't.

"He doesn't love you, you know," she murmurs. "But he does lie to you. Like everyone else. It's too much trouble for him to tell the truth, not to someone he doesn't respect."

"You don't -- "

"I do." Her hand slips lower down his chest, and he realizes that he's getting an erection. Sweat trickles down the side of his face, and when he tries to move, his hands are sluggish and slow and frozen. Cold tendrils begin to twine around him. He's going to drown in her eyes and not be able to stop it.

"He didn't love her, either."

"Who's her?" Danny says sharply, and if he thinks for a moment that he's caught her -- it -- in a mistake, the laughter proves him wrong.

"Her. Me. Claire. Soldiers under crosses." Something is digging sharply into his thigh, squeezing it. "He puts his hands on you, sticks his cock in you. Doesn't matter. I opened the door, but he knocked." She shoves him away suddenly and he goes skidding across the floor. The pool looms up in his vision and he can't control the skid, closes his eyes and thinks Hail Mary, and fetches up in a heap with his nose less than six inches from the water's edge. This has one benefit, at least: it's gotten him away from her eyes, and from whatever she was touching him with. He can think again, and, crouched on his hands and knees, he tries to reach into his jacket pocket without her noticing.

"Don't you forget that, boy," she says from behind him. "He knocked. None of this could happen otherwise. You ask him about that if you ever see him again."

The reeds and ferns in the water are moving, as if somewhere there's a breeze blowing, and the stink of the river is sharp in his nose as he kneels there and waits. She comes over and bends down to him, and she's just reaching out a hand to his hair when he turns in one quick motion and shoves the pocketknife up to her cheek.

She screams and the sound almost shatters his eardrums, and her face twists, and God, Christ, he thinks she should be melting or changing or something, showing what she really looks like under the just-for-show.

But she still looks like Claire.

She screams, and a furrow is opening up in her cheek, dark spilling out or being sucked in, and she cringes from the cold iron. "Ask him," she says again, and the voice, at least, holds no more glamour. "Ask him, you fucking bastard, fucking traitorous son of a bitch..."

Danny is just managing to drag himself to his feet, intending to go for his kit and for the rest of his supplies, when she leaps away, up and toward the window and into the shadows. There's a soft pop, like air rushing in to fill a sudden vacuum, and then he's alone in the room. He stands there, shaking, gasping for breath, and when he finally manages to make his legs work, it's only to stagger out into the hallway and vomit, gut roiling and tears, unbidden, running down his cheeks.

After awhile, when he thinks he can walk again, he makes himself go back in long enough to collect his things, and then he seals off the room and goes outside and makes a phone call.

"Stella," he says when she answers. He clutches the door handle on the car and spits into the street. "Stella, listen, you gotta help me. I found this -- I don't know what -- "

"Danny -- " she begins.

"You can't tell Mac," he says, and it comes out in a near-shout. "Help me, but promise me, you can't tell him any of this. He can't -- he can't know, okay?"

"All right, Danny," Stella says after a pause. "No one has to know anything. Just -- just tell me. What's going on?"

Danny takes a deep breath. He knocked, the thing from the room whispers in his memory.

"Okay," he says to Stella. "Here's the situation."

***