Title: Family Matters
By: crazywriter10
Pairing: Danny/Mac
Rating: PG
Note: Right, I don't own 'em, I'm just playin' with 'em. Oh, Mo. (Molly) Tanucci is an original character, so I do own her. The rest of them I'm just borrowing. This is my first fic so I really hope you guys like it.
Summary: Danny finds out that he has a niece that's going to come live with him and Mac.

***

Don Flack was not a morning person. He hated his alarm at least five days a week, didn't like his neighbors when they "accidentally" woke him up on the weekends, and he sure didn't like people knocking on his door before he had to get up and go to work. He figured he could just stay in bed and let whoever it was continue to hammer on his door, but that would be cruel, and whoever it was didn't seem to have the idea of moving on anytime soon.


Hauling himself out of bed, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and went to answer the door. He was expecting one of his neighbors, maybe the old lady two doors down, or the nosy guy next door. What he wasn't expecting was what he got; a girl of about sixteen in blue jeans, a windbreaker, sneakers, and a messenger bag-type purse thing. Her blue eyes were familiar looking even if he swore he'd never seen her before. And he hadn't. He had no clue who this girl was, but there was something that just didn't sit right.


"Who're you?" he asked, not really caring that it sounded rather rude or that a hurt look crossed the girl's face. "And what're you doing here at this time in the morning?"


"You Detective Flack?" she asked cautiously, as though he'd bite her head off again. She hadn't meant to make him angry, this was the place that her uncle had told her to come to find her other uncle, the one she was going to be staying with. Her family was complicated.


"Yeah. Who're you?" Flack asked again. His already thin patience (it was damn early) was beginning to fray even more.


"Do you know a Daniel Messer?" she asked, digging around in her bag for something while she tried to hold a conversation. She was normally good at multi-tasking, but he was really throwing her with his attitude. When she stopped and thought about it, if someone were waking her up at this hour in the morning, she'd be pissed, too.


"Yeah," Flack was getting suspicious and it showed in his tone. "Why? And who are you, you mind answering that one?"


"Molly Tanucci," she said, fishing out a piece of paper and unfolding it. "My Uncle Ray told me that if I wanted to find Daniel Messer I had to come here first. Actually, he said that it would be better for me to come here first than to go see Messer." She shrank under Flack's gaze. "All I know is that he works at some lab and that you work with him. I don't know how to get there so I kind of came to ask you for a ride."


Flack took the paper she was offering him and looked at it. He stared at her, and then back at the paper. His morning, crappy as it was, just got a whole lot more interesting.


*******


"Stella, have you seen Danny?" Flack asked the moment he walked through the door and spotted her.


"He's at his desk. Why?" she looked around the detective at the girl that was behind him, seeing something familiar in her eyes and face, yet she couldn't place it. It was also confusing to see Flack with a teenage girl walking into the lab. She kept her confusion to herself as Flack and the girl walked on, obviously intent on finding Danny.


Molly looked around the lab with curious eyes and a slight smile on her face. She'd never been inside a place where police officers worked, she'd only seen those things on TV, and it was awesome to her. The equipment that some of the people worked at was just cool, but all the walls were made of glass. That had to get annoying sometimes.


"Hey, Messer!" Flack opened a door and called. Gently grabbing the girl behind him and pulling her front and center he gave her a small, gentle shove into the same room as Danny. "Somebody here to see you."


Danny looked at the girl and his eyes widened. It was as though he was looking at Louie, only with his eyes, and in the body of a girl. Those blue eyes that held fear and uncertainty were looking at him as though he was going to make it all better. Standing, he walked over to her and Flack, looking at Flack for an explanation.


"Danny Messer meet Molly Tanucci," Flack said, holding out a folded piece of paper for Danny to take. "You might want to sit down when you read that."


"Why?" Danny asked, opening it. He read it a few times, scarcely looking at Molly. "You told Mac about this?"


"No, figure'd you want to do that," he said. "Sorry to say it, but she looks like him. With your eyes."

If Molly knew what they were talking about, she didn't show it. Instead, she looked at her sneakers and tried to feel invisible with glass walls. It wasn't working.


"I'll take her and go see Mac," Danny said, folding the paper once more. Taking off his white lab coat, he put the paper in his pocket, and brushed past Flack and Molly on his way out the door. Turning back when he didn't hear footsteps behind him, he said, "Well, come on."


She bit her lip and Flack put a comforting arm around her shoulders. She smiled at him and then jogged to catch up with Danny. She had the impression that he didn't want to make small talk on the way to Mac's office, wherever that was, so she didn't say anything. Her observation skills were in full as she looked at all the things she passed, all the people, too. She noticed that when people said "Hi" or "Hey, Danny" to Danny, he didn't respond. She had the notion that that was because of her. It wasn't a good feeling.


"Hey, Mac, you got a sec?" Danny asked as he opened the door. Mac was at his desk, and he looked up at the sight of one of his employees and a girl in his office.


"Sure, Danny," he said, motioning for them to have a seat.


Danny led Molly into the office and to the chair, pushing her gently into it to make her sit. That was the most gentlemanly thing anyone had done for her since she'd come back to the city, and it was the first nice thing Danny had done for her since she'd met him. It was making her feel special, but the feeling was short-lived as Danny handed Mac the folded piece of paper. Mac read it, looking from Danny to Molly and back again a few times. He folded it and handed it back to her. She smiled, putting it back in her bag.


"I'm assuming that's real?" Mac asked, looking at Molly.


"I wouldn't bring you a fake one," she said, swallowing hard. "I only have one birth certificate, and I brought it so that you would know I wasn't lying. It's got to be hard for Mr. Messer." She looked at Danny, unsure of how to address him.


"Danny," Danny said with a tight smile, looking at the top of her head. "Mr. Messer was my father. I'm Danny."


"Okay, I understand that," Mac said, bringing the conversation back where it needed to be. "Now, I know these are the types of questions that he'd normally ask, but Danny's a little tongue-tied. Why don't you tell us what happened."


"I was born here, in the city," she said, looking at her hands. They were twisting nervously in her lap. "My mom died when I was four, and he didn't want me for reasons he would never tell anyone, so I went to live with his cousins upstate. I got word that he'd died, and I knew that he'd left it that he wanted me to come and live with his brother, that his brother would take care of me. That's why I came to find Mr....Danny. I don't have anywhere else to go and I don't have anything with me except a small suitcase. Uncle Ray told me where I could find Detective Flack, so I bummed a ride here with him. I didn't want to...I didn't feel comfortable enough to go see Danny first."


Danny was silent for a moment. "Can I take a blood sample?"


"Danny!" Mac said warningly.


"It's fine. And, if you are actually going to say my name, I'd rather you call me Mo." She looked from Danny to Mac and back again a few times. "Where do I go to get my blood drawn?"


"I'll do it," Danny said with a tight smile. "Will you wait outside for me? I need to talk to my boss."


She nodded, looking slightly scared. Getting up, she opened the door very carefully, afraid she'd break it, and closed it behind her, waiting patiently on the other side of the glass.


"I can't believe you said that," Mac said as soon as the door was shut. "She's a sixteen-year-old girl without parents, just lost her father, who's left custody to his brother, and you greet her that way."


"She looks just like Louie," Danny sighed, sinking into the chair Mo. had just left. "She looks like him but has my eyes. I can't do this, Mac. We can't do this. Our apartment's barely big enough for two, how are we going to fit three? And...Mac I just can't do this."


"She's your niece, Danny," Mac said sternly, staring into Danny's blue eyes. "Louie left her to you, and you need to take care of her. Imagine how she feels."


Danny sighed and looked at the floor. "I just lost my brother, Mac. Now I have a girl I have to take care of that looks just like him? It's a bit much."


"We'll figure this out, Danny," Mac assured him. "We'll figure this out. But right now, there's a girl out there, new to this city, who's uncle is in here complaining about her being here, and she's got to be scared. And if she woke Flack up earlier than he would have wanted, then she's still got be feeling that, too. Wing it."


"Wing it," he said, standing. "Right, Mac. Wing it while raising a sixteen-year-old. Right." He walked to the door and opened it, seeing Mo.'s shrunken posture, and the way that she was hugging herself around her middle. Her eyes were looking everywhere, trying to take everything in. "Hey."


She jumped. "Hi. Danny."


"I don't need a blood test to know we're related." He didn't know where that came from but it seemed like a good thing to say to calm her down a little.


"That's good," she smiled. "I don't really like needles. Hated getting shots."


Danny looked around the lab, watching his co-workers. "I have to get back to work, but you can come hang out at my desk, okay? I'll introduce you to people."


So she sat at his desk while he looked at fibers beneath his microscope. He'd given her the paper at her request and she'd been doing the Sudoku puzzle and the words in the crossword that she knew. If she had been at her Uncle Ray's house, she would have been bouncing questions for words off her relatives, but here in Danny's work environment, she didn't want to disturb him. She wasn't sure how much he liked her, or even if he did. Finally, when she was stuck on one of her boxes of nine, she looked up and just watched him for a while. She watched the way he had to put his glasses on the top of his head while he looked through the microscope, how he had to wear gloves. It was all professional and very sterile, almost like a hospital. She nearly shuddered; she didn't like hospitals and had the faint inkling that he didn't, either.


"Figure it out yet?" she asked softly.


"Not yet," he answered, not looking at her. She didn't mind that. What was under that microscope was more important at that moment than she was. "But I will." He took a step back and put his glasses back on his face. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was nearly noon. "Want to get some lunch?"


Mo. nodded, folding up the newspaper with careful precision. Some people got irritated if their paper wasn't in the right order and folded exactly the way it had come. It didn't bother her, but there was no telling if it didn't bother Danny. She didn't know; there were a lot of things she didn't know about him or his life. There were a lot of things he didn't know about her. She followed him through the halls of the lab to the break room. She hesitated at the door when she saw so many people in there, feeling like an outsider who didn't really want to intrude on the general day-to-day schedule.


"Don't be scared," Danny said softly so she was the only one to hear, gently taking her arm and pulling her into the room. "They don't bite."


"Hey, Danny," a pretty blonde woman said from behind a carton of Chinese. "Who's this?"


"This is Mo.," Danny said, putting his arm around Mo.'s shoulders in what he hoped was a comforting, supportive gesture. "She's my niece, and she's going to stay with me. Mo., this is Lindsay" he gestured to the blonde, "Stella" he moved on to a woman with brown, tight curling hair and a big smile, "Hawkes," he looked at a dark skinned guy with big eyes and a smile to match, "Mac," he gestured to the man that Mo. had seen in the office that she'd been in after she'd first gotten there, "and you already met Flack." Flack was the one who had given her the ride to the lab. She smiled as best she could despite her fear and insecurities, and waved.


"Hi," Mo. said in a small voice, looking at all of them. She stood there like an idiot while Danny got his lunch from the fridge. He set it on the table at the last available seat and then went back out into the lab to return with the rolling chair from his desk.


"If you're lucky, Mac will look the other way and you can ride this back down the hall to where it came from." She laughed with the rest of them when he wheeled it up the table. They all squeezed closer together so the two of them could be part of the group.


"Where did it come from?" Mo. asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.


"My desk," he said, unwrapping his sub. "If I'd been smart I'd have gotten it from Lindsay's because her desk is further away than mine."


Lindsay stuck her tongue out at him. "I remember what happened the last time I let you borrow my lab chair, Messer. That stain still hasn't come off, yet."


"Told you it was an accident," he said, giving Mo. half of his foot long sub. "If there's anything on there that you don't eat, just pick it off. I won't be offended."


"Uh huh," Lindsay said skeptically, digging into her Chinese box to get the stuff off the bottom. "Accidents don't leave six inch ink stains on the seat."


This got the ball rolling on the other stuff that Danny had apparently done at the lab when he thought nobody was looking, and pretty soon everybody was cracking up, including Mo. Too soon it seemed like it was over, but it had been a small step in the right direction for her. She didn't know a lot about Danny, but this was helping, and she had the feeling that things would get better, maybe easier as time went on.


******


After climbing five flights of stairs to get the floor Danny's apartment was on, Mo. was officially tired. It didn't seem like she'd only gotten there at six in the morning that morning, but more like she'd been there for nearly a week, and without sleeping. Maybe the trip up five flights of stairs did that to a person, or maybe it was because she was so tired (she didn't sleep on the flight down to the city, she couldn't, she was too excited, nervous, edgy, whatever) and didn't really care where she crashed.


"It's really small," Danny said as he wandered down the hall, a tired Mo. trailing behind him. He was still amazed that she didn't have anything, only a little, itty-bitty suitcase that looked as though it couldn't hold much of anything, let alone everything she'd need to make a move from one house to another. Then again, he was still reeling over the fact that he had a niece that he was going to have to take care of now.


"I don't care if you lived in a shoebox," she said, rolling her suitcase alongside her. "I just want someplace where I can sleep."


"That's pretty much all I do here," he said, sliding his key in. He opened the door with a grand sweep of his arm, entering to turn on a light or two before looking back at her. She was still standing in the doorway, almost afraid to come in. "Come on, don't be shy." Shy wasn't usually a word he associated with anyone in his family, but it really seemed to fit her.


She entered, shutting the door behind her. The place was small. To say one could sit on the couch and open the fridge door was only a slight exaggeration. The living room was nice, the blue carpet beneath her feet soft. She slipped off her Kangaroo sneakers and left them by Danny's by the door. The light, bright blue was a stark contrast to Danny's dark brown and black shoes already there, and it felt weird for her to enter this apartment and realize that it was a place she would call "home." She left her suitcase by her shoes and stepped a little bit further in, looking down a short hallway to the right to see only three doors. One had to be the bathroom, another the bedroom, and the third possibly a closet. There were dirty dishes stacked by the sink, a very small table with two chairs, and only a few glasses on the counter. Everything was set in twos and she had the immediate impression that he had a girlfriend. How was a girlfriend going to respond to the sudden appearance of a niece?


"Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked, feeling apprehensive.


"No. But I do have someone special I want you to meet."


"Here?"


"Not now," he said, wandering to the kitchen and getting another glass down. It was a stretch, since he wasn't very tall, but he really didn't want Mo. to have to find a chair to stand on if she wanted something to drink. He might have been short, but she was at least three inches shorter than he was. "You want some water, or soda, or something?"


"Water, please," she said, entering the kitchen and sliding slightly on the linoleum. "Which door is your bathroom?"


"Second on the left," he said, filling the glass with water. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she took her suitcase with her to the bathroom. He had the vague impression that eventually she was going to figure out how to take a running start and slide all the way across the linoleum to the carpet that led to the rest of the apartment. He sure wasn't going to show her how. Taking a beer out of the fridge, he turned on the TV to the baseball game and sat down. He almost didn't hear her come back to the living room, but he felt the other end of the couch dip as she sat. She was in a pair of sweatpants a size too big, an oversized T-shirt about soccer, and had her hair out of its ponytail.


"You a Yankees fan?" she asked, watching the screen.


"Yeah. Always try and catch the game when I get home," he said, setting his beer on the coffee table. Mac yelled at him for that, always leaving his near-full beers around the apartment for when he wanted to finish it, usually sometime during the night or maybe in the morning with breakfast. He got up, stretched, looked at her for a minute as she watched the game, and then went to the bathroom. Opening the mirrored cabinet, he didn't find anything out of the ordinary, nothing girly. The cupboard under the sink was different. There were two boxes next to the light bulbs, but other than that there wasn't anything. He had always had the impression that when a girl moved in, she moved nearly her entire house and her medicine cabinet. Apparently, that wasn't so with Mo.


"You know," he said as he walked back out, "that glass of water's still ? " he stopped at the sight of her curled on her side on the couch, asleep, while the game played on. "On the counter," he finished, letting out his breath. He considered for a moment letting her sleep there, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to forgive himself if he let her sleep on the couch her first night in New York. Gently, he went around and slid his hands underneath her, lifting her up. She stirred, but didn't wake, and he carried her through the apartment to the bedroom. It wasn't too messy in there, but it wasn't exactly spotless, either. He put her on his side of the bed, closest to the door if she needed to go the bathroom in the middle of the night, and then tucked the blankets up around her. He picked the room up a little, thankful that Mac had decided it might be better if he didn't stay there for a little while, so Mo. could adjust easier.


"You've changed my life in just one day," he said softly, crouching down to stroke stray strands of her hair away from her closed eyes. He kissed her forehead, made sure she was tucked in good, and then left the room, nearly closing the door all the way. Returning to the couch, he took another swig of his beer before putting it back in the fridge. Taking off his shoes, he lay down on his couch, the TV on mute, and went to sleep. Things were definitely going to be different from now on, and it was the adjustment time that was going to take a lot of work. Danny's own emotions needed work, too, and then there was his relationship with Mac that he was going to have to think about when to tell her. Things were definitely going to be different, that was for sure. He'd figure more of it out in the morning, like what they were going to eat for breakfast.


What did Mo. like to eat for breakfast?

***

Mo. woke when she felt sunlight on her back from the window. Opening her eyes, she found herself staring at an unfamiliar nightstand, and a digital clock with a very, very large readout. The bed itself was much bigger than she was used to, and it took her a moment to figure out where she was. Then it all came back. She was in New York City with her uncle, Danny, apparently sleeping in his bed, and currently wondering if now was a really good time to get up. Out of curiosity, she looked closer at the clock. It was the same exact one that she used to have in her own room at her other uncle's house, except with a bigger screen. Hitting the alarm button, she saw it was cued to go off in five minutes. Well, she could always wake Danny up in five minutes and save both of them the pain of having the alarm actually go off. So she flipped the switch for the alarm to "off."


Getting out of bed, she stared down at her feet for a minute and then opened the nearly closed door. She noticed that the room itself was kind of clean; there were a few odd pieces of clothing in some odd places, but that wasn't to be unexpected. She was, after all, now solely living with a guy. It was different than before because Danny wasn't married, and therefore she didn't have an Aunt Somebody to be girly. Not that Mo. was particularly girly herself; she was more of a Tomboy, or used to be. Things were going to be different in the city. She didn't know what she could or couldn't do anymore.


Walking softly through the rest of the apartment (there really wasn't much to walk through, the place was so small) she thought she saw a foot hanging over the edge of the couch. Upon investigation she looked over the back of the couch and had to smile. Danny was asleep, still in his work clothes and his glasses, on the couch. She could have swore she'd fallen asleep on the couch, and figured that he'd moved her. She felt herself blush at the fact that he'd picked her up and carried her all the way to the bedroom. She wasn't fat but she wasn't a pixie, either. In truth, she was an athlete who liked to run and play soccer. And she did kind of have abs. Looking down on him like that, she had to admit he looked kind of cute with his crazy blonde hair, and she found she had the insane urge to poke him and see if she could get away with it without waking him up.


Almost as if he knew someone were standing over him, Danny stirred and opened his eyes. Blinking furiously, he thought he was seeing Louie, his brother, with long hair, leaning over him. Well, that early in the morning and still half asleep, Danny took that as an omen to mean that it would soon be his turn to kick the bucket, that Louie was coming for him to take him away. So, Danny did the only thing he could think of to do: He screamed.


Mo. had seen Danny's eyes open and then had just really looked at the TV, watching some infomercial that happened to be on when Danny screamed. That made her jump and scream, too. She let go of the couch, afraid that she'd done something wrong, and backed toward the door. She tripped over her own two feet in her haste and fell backwards with a yelp, crawling until her back hit the door. Chewing her bottom lip, she watched Danny roll off the couch with a curse, and then peer at her over the back of it, his glasses askew.


After he'd screamed, Danny realized that it wasn't Louie he was looking at, but Mo., his niece. He'd probably scared the living dog meat out of her by the sound of it, and he really hadn't meant to do that. Looking at her hunched over on the floor by the door, her long hair hanging over her face, he felt guilty. With a sigh, he stood and walked around the couch over to where she sat huddled, and then sat in front of her. Very slowly, and very gently, he moved the hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ears. The part was off center, but that didn't matter to either of them.


"I'm sorry," he said quietly, "I didn't mean to scare you. I thought...I thought you were Louie."


Mo. wasn't ready to talk about the man that was her father that she didn't know. She wasn't ready to hear stories about him, or hear about his job, or hear about the people he loved. She was barely ready to live with Danny, really, and the excitement that she'd felt the day before was ebbing away. What she was beginning to think she wanted to do was go home, if she knew where home was. She wasn't ready for this. And she really wasn't ready for someone to say that she looked like Louie. She knew she looked like him, he was her father, but to have Danny mistake her for his brother...that was a little much.


"Hey, hey it's okay," he said as she began to cry. They weren't tears of sadness or grief; they were tears of frustration and confusion. Danny had never been faced with the situation of a crying sixteen-year-old girl at five-thirty in the morning, and he didn't have any idea how to handle this. "It's okay." He did the only thing that he thought made sense and wrapped his arms around her. "It's okay, everything's going to be okay." It was unnatural how easily those words of comfort and condolence rolled off his tongue, and if anyone were speaking those words to them, he'd have told them to stuff it. But Mo. didn't. She sat right there and soaked it up. She didn't lean into him at first, but then just sort of melted until he was really holding her.


"It's not okay," she said in a choked voice. "I don't know you, I don't know him, I don't know me..." The list went on until it trailed off somewhere around the third time she'd said, "I don't know you."


"Hey, it'll be okay," he said, trying for all the world to sound reassuring. "We'll make it okay. Right after breakfast."


She smiled and laughed a little. Then she sat back and dried her eyes. She looked at him, he looked at her, and then they just sort of both cracked up. Still laughing, he helped her up off the floor, and sat her at the kitchen table. With a smile, he began rummaging through cupboards to try and find something edible in his kitchen. He and Mac didn't eat there a lot so there really wasn't much of anything anywhere.


"Hey, kid, what do you eat?" he asked, looking at boxes of macaroni and cheese and instant rice.


"Anything," she said, opening the door to the fridge. "When was the last time you cleaned this out or bought anything new?"


Danny had to think a long time on that one. Meanwhile, Mo. had dubbed his milk, cheese, and potato salad not suitable for consumption, and not even recognizable. She told him she only knew what the salad was because it was on a price sticker on the outside.


"You know, unless we want macaroni and cheese or instant rice for breakfast, we might just want to go out to eat," he suggested, closing the cupboards. "There's this nice little Italian place on the corner."


"Do they have Cannolis?" she asked brightly. She was hoping she could flatten Danny into letting her have a Cannoli for breakfast. Not the healthiest thing in the world, but very, very good.


"They might, which is not saying I'm going to let you eat one for breakfast," he said, trying to sound like a responsible parent figure.


"We're Italian, Danny, you need to know these things," she said, heading for her suitcase. "Can I be in the bathroom first?"


"Are you going to be the first of the two of us to get there?"


"Uh, yeah."


"Then you're first in the bathroom," he said, taking a look at his rumpled shirt. When he took a closer look, he didn't think it looked that wrinkled. But, while Mo. was in the shower, he did change his clothes in the bedroom, taking the time to move some of his and Mac's things from separate drawers to one drawer. Some days it was still a shock to the system to see some of Mac's clothes mixed in with his, but he found he liked it more and more as time went on. He wasn't going to rush Mo. into anything, but he was intending on giving her a drawer or two, and maybe some closet space. Then he'd really have to think about where people were going to sleep because there was no way they were fitting three people in that bed. And that really wasn't even an option that he found appealing.


"Bathroom's yours!" she called, heading for her suitcase. While she decided what to wear for the day, he brushed his teeth, ran a comb through his hair, went to the bathroom, and then considered himself ready for the day. He came out and found her still in her sweats and T-shirt, running a hand through her damp hair.


"You can change in the bedroom," he told her, looking around for his good pair of black shoes. He found them by the door, near a pair of blue sneakers, and he wrinkled his nose. "What the hell are those?"


She looked over at him to see him pointing to her shoes. "My sneakers."


"Aren't they supposed to be pink or somethin'?" he asked, pulling his shoes on.


"I don't do pink," she said, heading for the bedroom. "I've never done pink. I'll never do pink. You do pink very nicely, I might add." She'd finally noticed his light, pale pink shirt with his dark, pinstriped pants.


He only had to wait for her to put clothes on; she could French braid her own hair while walking, and soon they were on their way down five flights of stairs, and the onto the busy street toward a corner café. She glanced, wide-eyed and tourist-like at the buildings, sights, and some of the sounds she heard. At one point, Danny put his hands over her ears when they passed a cab driver and a disgruntled customer; those words weren't something a nice girl should have to hear, and he considered Mo. a nice girl. She was his niece, after all.

***

"Morning Danny, Mo.," Stella said when they entered the lab. "Danny, you've got a new case with Lindsay downtown. Mac's in his office with back paperwork and wants you to leave her with him today."


Trying to ignore the fact that they were talking about her like she was five and weren't even there, Mo. folded her hands in front of her and attempted to look like she wasn't listening. It wasn't working well, but it was something she could work on. She was getting the feeling it would be a good skill to have.


"I guess you're going to have to chill with Mac today, Mo.," Danny said as Stella walked away. "He's got a newspaper so you can do your puzzle things, and then probably the puzzle things from the past month and a half."


"He has that many newspapers?" she asked, half believing him. She couldn't tell if he was joking or not.


"He's got a lot of them," he said, pushing open the door to Mac's office. Mac's desk was swamped in files and papers. "Morning, Mac."


"Morning Danny," he said with a slight smile. "Hi, Mo."


"Hi, Mr...." she faltered, unsure of how to address him.


"Mac." Mac said, motioning for her to sit either on the couch (the man had a couch in his office, how cool was that?) or in the chair. She chose the chair, for now. "Just Mac." He wasn't going to tell her just how personally he knew Danny, not yet at least. "You have a case, Messer, get moving."


Danny kissed Mo. on the cheek, a little hesitatingly, but the intention was there, and she smiled. "Have fun." Then he was gone. She sat there with very good posture, watching as he read through report after report. She must have spent at least a half an hour watching him before he silently handed her the most current newspaper and cleaned a corner of his desk. With a smile, she moved her chair over, took a pen from his penholder on his desk, and ruffled through it until she found the Sudoku puzzle and the crossword.


"I could never do those," he said after a while.


"Sudoku or crosswords?" she asked for clarification. She wrote a few more numbers in the box and then looked up at him. "I can't do a lot of the crossword words because I don't know them. I used to ask whoever was in the kitchen at my uncle's house for help, but I don't know if I can do that here."


"If I can help, just ask," Mac said, flipping another report closed. "If you need help with anything, just ask. Though, you are a Messer and Messers don't ask for help a lot of the times when they need it."


Mo. was curious. This was about Danny, not Louie, so it would be easier on her to process. "Really? How?"


So, while Mac read through his reports and she did her puzzles, he told her stories about Danny and some of the stuff that had happened at the lab over the past few years. He left out Tanglewood and Louie since those were for Danny to explain if he ever got around to it or she asked or it just came up, and he talked about Danny and Aidan's friendship. He also talked about how Danny had found somebody he really loved, how they really connected. She was genuinely curious about that, and since Mac knew Danny hadn't told her, he wasn't going to bring it up. He was the second party in that one, and the discussion was best left to Danny. Then somehow they got around to music.


"I like most anything, except rap and some country," she said, filling in the last square in her Sudoku puzzle. "Whatever's on the radio is what I listen to. I don't like it, I change the channel." Mac thought that sounded a lot like Danny. "The last song on my iPod was 'Defying Gravity' from the Wicked soundtrack. I like musicals."


Mac was reminded of Claire when Mo. said she liked musicals. He couldn't begin to remember how many musicals he'd seen on Broadway with Claire, but he could tell that when Mo. found out about his and Danny's relationship, he'd be taking her to see some shows. There were a lot of possibilities for them when Danny told her and about him and Mac. This wasn't something to rush, though, and they really needed to be careful.


"My wife liked musicals," he said softly. She looked at him a little funnily, picking up on the past tense of the word. "She died on September 11."


"I'm sorry." It was genuine. Mo. wore her heart on her sleeve and didn't have half emotions when it came right down to the heart of the matter. "I bet she was a wonderful woman." She gave him a small smile and if he hadn't liked her already, that last part would have kicked him in gear. "Not to change the subject, but where can I find a vending machine?"


"The break room," he said as she stood. "Do you need help finding it?"


"No, I think I can remember," she said, thinking, if not, I'll wander around aimlessly until somebody takes pity on me and helps me find my way. "Thanks, though." She left his office carefully, looking around and deciding to head to the left. She tried to be friendly, waving at some of the people in white lab coats who looked at her a little funny. It didn't take long for her to become completely lost. She really needed a map if she was going to be here until the rest of her life. It didn't help when Flack appeared behind her and scared her out of her skin for the second time that morning.


"Jeez, Mr. Flack," she said, her hand over her heart. "Give a girl a heart attack."


"You're funny, Mini Messer," he said, "almost like your counterpart. You look lost, kid."


"I'm trying find the vending machine."


He gave her a wane smile and walked her through the halls to the vending machines in the break room, walking back past Mac's office in the process. She waved cheerily at him through the glass walls and he shook his head with a smile. She bought a bottle of water and a back of potato chips, sitting at the empty table. She was mildly surprised when he sat down across from her, a can of soda in his hand.


"How was your first night in New York?" he asked, taking the potato chip she offered him. "Danny's place small?"


"It was nice," she said, "and yeah, his place his small. There's a lot of stuff set up for two, like he's got a girlfriend, but he says he doesn't. And he won't tell me who he's seeing. I'm beginning to think he's got a boyfriend."


"You okay with that sort of thing?" Flack asked, knowing all about Mac and Danny. He'd even helped bring the two of them together.


"I had a friend like that, back upstate," she said with a shrug. "He's still him, no matter who he loves. I don't have to be 'okay' with it, it's going to happen anyway if they really love each other." She ate her potato chips in silence, just watching Flack and the others through the glass walls. "Glass walls get annoying sometimes?"


"Yeah," Flack said.


"Um...what do you want me to call you?" she asked, seemingly out-of-the-blue. "You kind of cringed when I called you 'Mr. Flack' so I want to know what to call you. I really can't go, 'Hey, you, detective!' all the time."


"Flack, or Don," he said with a smile. The kid had guts and a sense of humor. She was more like Danny than she really knew. "Your choice, Mini Messer." He nearly laughed when she wrinkled her nose at his nickname for her but smiled anyway.


Mo. smiled and then looked over her shoulder when she Flack looking at somebody through the glass. It was Mac, and he didn't look entirely happy. In fact, he looked scared, angry, and slightly shocked all rolled into one. Flack excused himself and went to talk with Mac. Both of them looked back at her a few times and Mo. had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Whatever it was, it didn't seem like it was a good thing. She watched Flack come back over and crouch in front of her so they were eye to eye.


"I'm going to have to take you to Stella's desk," Flack said. "Mac and I need to go to the hospital. You have a cell phone?" He wasn't sure why he was asking her that, but then realized that he might need to get a hold of her.


"Yeah," she said, rattling off the number when Flack pulled out his phone. "Is everything okay?"


"Mac or I will call you when we know more, okay?" he said, not wanting to worry her with details. He wasn't about to tell her that there had been an accident at the crime scene that Danny and Lindsay were working on, and that both of them had to be rushed to the ER. Mo. didn't need that worry, not when she'd just lost her father and was getting to know her uncle, the man who would take care of her. No, instead he let her grab her bottle of water, put her empty bag of potato chips in the trash, get her bag from Mac's office, and then led her to Stella.


"Call us, you two," Stella said as Mac and Don departed. She turned to look at Mo. who had sat on a stool, newspaper in hand. "You read the newspaper?"


"I do the puzzles," she said, "like the Sudoku and the crossword. Sometimes I can't get them, but I just usually ask. Half the family used to sit in the kitchen in the morning for hours so I had a lot of people to bounce answers off of."


"You and Danny will get there," Stella said, smiling at Mo. She went back to her work and the hours seemed to melt away. Around five in the afternoon, Mo.'s cell phone went off, loud in the quietness of the lab. Stella watched her talk to whoever was on the other end for a few minutes, and then Mo. hung up, biting her lower lip. "What's up?"


"Don's coming back to pick me up and take me to the hospital," Mo. said slowly. "They have to keep Danny overnight, but Lindsay's okay. I-I have to go wait in the lobby. Thanks for letting me stay with you for today."


"You're welcome," Stella said, wondering what kind of effect Danny in the hospital was having on Mo. "He's a fighter, he'll be out of there in no time."


Mo. looked back at Stella on her way out the door, and smiled. Yeah, but it doesn't make it any easier to deal with.

***

It didn't take Mo. very long to remember why she didn't like hospitals. Everything was white and sterile, too clean for her taste, and there were sick, hurt, dying, or dead people all around, even if you couldn't see them from the hallway. She knew that her father had died in a hospital after he'd been beaten up for no reason. For all she knew, he had died in this very hospital where Danny was, maybe even the same room. Mo. didn't know, and she didn't want to know yet. She wasn't ready to learn about Louie or the life he'd had that he couldn't share with her.


"You okay, kid?" Don asked her, slightly worried that she was so quiet.


"Yeah," she said quietly, looking up at Flack's blue eyes. "I don't like hospitals." When they rounded the corner and saw two rooms with police officers outside, she knew they were in the right spots. Don gently pushed her through the open doorway of one of the rooms, and shut the door behind her, leaving her with Danny in the bed, and Mac in one of the chairs. Mac? Wow, he must really be a good boss if he was there for Danny. But why wasn't he with Lindsay?


Then it clicked. Everything in Danny's apartment set for two, the little looks he shared with Mac...Mac was the person that Danny loved. She smiled. Mac was a very nice, good person (from what she could see so far) and when she looked at him together with Danny, the two of them looked great. Then she knew that while Danny was making space for her in his apartment and life, he was also making space for her in the family that he had with Mac, even if that family had been just the two of them for a while. Part of her didn't want to intrude, but the other part of her loved the idea of having the two of them as family, even if Danny was really her uncle and Mac the man he loved.


"I take it you figured it out," Mac said softly when she finally sat in the chair next to him, looking at Danny's pale, sleeping/unconscious body in the bed.


"Yeah," she said, setting her bag on the floor by the leg of the chair and then looking at Mac. "He's got a lot of stuff for two in the apartment and I've seen the way he looks at you and the way you look at him. I think it's sweet."


"He's got a cracked rib, some bruises, and a nice lump on the back of his head," Mac said, looking at Danny. "He might not be so sweet when he wakes up and they're not letting him go home, which will make him mad. What do you think about the idea of going home with me for the night?"


"Do you live with Danny?" she asked, butterflies in her stomach. She was trying to get used to living with Danny, but if Mac lived with him, she might as well just get used to that while she was at it. She didn't care, but it was going to be a little weird for a while since they all needed time to get used to one another. She was also starting to think that if spending the night with just Danny was a bit interesting, who knew what it was going to be like with just Mac? But, if he lived with Danny, she needed to realize that they had a life together before she'd walked in, and she respected that. She just wanted to know there was a place for her there, too. With both of them.


"Yep," Mac said. "I have for a while. But I know there's room enough in that apartment for three. It's a squeeze, but it'll work."


"Oh, I know," she said, looking at Danny who had opened his eyes and was looking back at her. "Sleeping Beauty just woke up."


"Funny," Danny croaked, closing his eyes tiredly. He moved over a little on the bed and patted the space he'd made with his hand. Mo. took the hint and moved cautiously to sit on the bed. "You know?" he asked her, squinting at her slightly because he didn't have his glasses on.


"Yeah, I know," she said, taking his hand in hers. "And I have to say congratulations on a great person to fall in love with." She smiled back at Mac who'd flushed a little, and then looked at Danny with the same color eyes that looked at her. "You should stay here, tonight. Just to make sure you're all there upstairs."


"Well, we all know that's never going to happen," Mac said softly from the chair and Mo. giggled, openly laughing when Danny glared at the pair of them.


"Damn right," Danny growled, squeezing Mo.'s hand. "I'm not leavin' the two of you alone in my apartment. Ever. I like it the way it is."


"We wouldn't change anything drastic," Mac protested, "just the wallpaper, some of the furniture, and maybe clean out the closet a little."


Danny snorted and Mo. nearly fell off the bed she was laughing so hard. The look on Danny's face, the horror, surprise, and uneasiness in his eyes was just too much to handle. And he was horribly overreacting.

Life's about to get fun, Mo. thought with a smile, eyeing the two men in her life that were going to become the equivalent of parents. Real fun. She looked forward to every minute of it.

***

Mo. felt a little uneasy as she got into the passenger seat of Mac's SUV. She didn't know him as well as she knew Danny, and she barely knew her uncle. Yet, Danny couldn't come home with them that night because he was in the hospital. This was going to be slightly awkward, probably more so than she figured, but she would do her best to grind her way through it. After all, the man in the drivers' seat was the man her uncle loved. She could do this.

"I know this great place to get burgers," Mac said as he pulled out into traffic. "That okay?"

She looked over at him and nodded once before returning to stare out the window at the NYC streets as they passed. There were so many people; she knew it was going to take a while before she got used to the vast amount of people she shared the city with. Going from a rural, upstate town to the biggest city in U.S. was a little daunting. Sometimes, sheer numbers intimidated her, since she didn't know who was her next-door neighbor, or the rest of the people living in the building where Danny had his apartment. Where she used to live, she knew every person. Strangers were easy to pick out. Here, it was difficult to pick out the people she knew.

Mac hadn't known Mo. long (none of them had, truthfully), but he did get the feeling she was being exceptionally quiet. Maybe she was thinking, or maybe she was uncertain how the behave with Mac. She'd probably gotten a little used to Danny, the two of them had probably settled into a slight routine, and then Mac was thrown into the mix.

"How was your night with Danny?" It was the only thing he could think of as a conversation starter, and he hoped it would lead to other things, like her talking freely. They were, after all, going to be living together. Sometimes, it was just that first ice that was tough to break.

"It was okay," she said, looking through the windshield and glancing occasionally in Mac's direction. She fidgeted with her hands in her lap.

Mac didn't know where to continue since she hadn't really left him anything to continue with, so he let it drop until they were all the way in the diner, at a table, and had ordered with drinks in front of them. His CSI training picked up that she ordered water and stayed away from French fries. Odd, considering she was in the peak of her teenage prime and in modern day America. She fumbled with her straw and then looked at the table, the coffee pot on the next table, the napkin holder, pretty much anywhere else except him.

"Shy is not something we normally consider a Messer trait," he said softly and to his relief, she cracked a smile.

"I get the feeling that Danny's not shy with anything," she said, finally looking at him with the same eyes that he'd been looking at with Danny for the month and a half of their relationship and since they'd met.

"There are some pictures in the apartment, would it help if you looked at them?" Mac suggested, knowing that Danny might be a little mad that they brought out that album just so Mo. could get to know everybody better. Some of the rest of the team might not like those photos coming into light, but they wouldn't mind. "It might explain a bit more about Danny and the rest of us."

"Photos?" she asked nearly incredulously, looking at Mac as if he were going to grow an extra appendage. "We didn't really photos back at my Uncle Ray's. Nobody was really...nobody carried a camera to family events. There's not a lot of...I don't have many pictures of when I was growing up, but I did bring those. What I've got, anyway."

"We can add them, then," he said, nodding to the waitress as she brought their food.

Mo. smiled slightly better than before and was actually more chatty when they got back in the car the second time, heading for Danny's apartment. And while it was a little weird to not have Danny there when she entered the door, Mac's encouraging smile at her made her feel a little better. He sat her on the couch, pulled the coffee table over, and then went to retrieve something. She looked around the place that had become slightly familiar, reminding herself that this was her home now, and the man there with her was one of the men that was about to become a parent figure that her Uncle Ray and upstate family couldn't ever hope to achieve. She just had to keep that in mind and she'd make it through everything, she was sure of it.

"Took me a little longer to find it because Danny tried to hide it," Mac said when he returned carrying a large album. He set it on the coffee table. "We went through a phase when everybody thought we should have pictures of everything. I think this was right after we got together. We went through another phase of it, making sure we knew that we were family with the team after Louie was in the hospital."

Mo. didn't say anything at that. The subject of her father, a man she didn't really know, brother to an uncle she didn't really know, was slightly sore.

"Here we go." Mac opened the album and the first picture at the top was one of Danny, beer bottle in one hand, dish-strainer on his head, eyes wide, tongue out, and just having a grand old time. "This was shortly after I moved in. I had brought some of my kitchen things and, well...this was just too good an opportunity to pass up." He flipped through a few pages until he found one that made him smile. It was a photo of him that Danny had taken. He was in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, buried up to his elbows in suds at the kitchen sink. He was looking over his shoulder with a slightly startled expression and the smile that Mo. had quickly come to realize was all Mac.

"Cute," she said, looking at the man beside her and trying to imagine him doing dishes. "What the heck?" She pointed to a picture of Danny and Flack, Danny in Flack's arms like Scooby-Doo in Shaggy's, both of them smiling.

"Department Christmas party," was all Mac would say. There were a few more colorful photos from that event that Mac wouldn't go into detail about. Then they got to some where it became apparent that neither man had been in control of the camera. One of these included a picture of Mac curled around a sleeping Danny, both covered in the blue sheet from the bed. Mac had one eyebrow raised as if to suggest that the photographer might want to take a hike.

"That's a little...uh," Mo. didn't know what to say and felt the blush rise in her cheeks. This was a little awkward.

"Stella." Was all Mac said and Mo. understood. Stella seemed the like the type of person to take those photos, and how she got in, she wasn't about to ask.

They flashed through a few more pages, pausing at some of the more interesting ones, like the one of Mac after he'd just come through the door of the apartment, taking off his shoes and looking up with a slight smile at the camera. She had a feeling that Danny had taken that one from over the back of the couch. Another one made her smile; it was Danny in the act of sliding across the linoleum from the edge of the kitchen to the living room. There was another picture that followed that showed Danny on his ass on said linoleum. That one was a little tilted so she figured that both of them had been laughing pretty hard.

When they reached the end of the album, she looked at Mac and then got up, heading for her suitcase. She retrieved the plastic baggie that had her own photos in it that Uncle Ray had given her to take with her, and brought them back to the living room. There weren't as many candid ones as with Mac and Danny, but there were a few, including when she held a plunger in her hand and covered in toilet paper. That had been on Halloween and was therefore excusable.

What felt even better was the idea that she was getting to know Mac and Danny through their photos, through the little moments of their lives they had knowingly and unknowingly captured. Then, she knew it was going to be easy to get to know them all personally because of this.

At around nine, she changed into her pajamas and, after putting up a fight, crashed in Danny's bed. She didn't want to, because Mac was there, but he wouldn't let her sleep on the couch. So ended her second day in the city, the first official day with her new family members. She smiled, drifting off, thinking that it could only get better.

***

Three weeks after Mo had first moved back into the city to stay with Danny (and Mac), Mo lay on the couch in the living room, staring at the ceiling. The couch was her bed since Danny and Mac had the only real bed in the apartment in their bedroom, and she wasn't going to take that away from them, no matter how many times Danny tried to get her to sleep in there at least once a week. She didn't want to do that because she didn't know where that would leave Danny and Mac. The couch wasn't big enough for Danny's slim frame, and add Mac, and you had an all-out laugh-out-loud situation worthy of America's Funniest Home Videos. She tried not to think about that option a lot. Her mental functions didn't need that at seven-something in the morning.


She heard the coffee maker kick on and she smiled. It had to be around seven-fifteen, because that was the oddball time that Danny had programmed the thing to turn on and start to percolate. None of them could survive the morning without coffee. It was a basic necessity, as much as food was, and the three of them needed it; badly, some days, especially when Danny rolled out of bed, stumbled down the hallway to the kitchen, nearly scalded himself trying to pour two cups, and then made his way tipsily back down the hallway to Mac. Eventually she was going to tape that and send it in for prize money. Mac might have a conniption, but Danny would think it was mildly funny.


Sure enough, she heard the bedroom door open and somebody come down the hallway. The footsteps were different from what she was used to hearing, so it was a mild surprise when Mac looked at her over the back of the couch. He had on a plain white T-shirt and he had a bad case of bed head, but his eyes were awake. In that apartment, that was what counted the most. It was how awake you looked even if you actually weren't. She smiled up at him, and he gave her a half smirk, the smile that she was used to.


"You and Danny are going on a field trip today," he said in a low voice, his eyes slightly worried. "You might want to start getting ready. It might take him a little while to get it together, and promise me you two will make it home in one piece."


"Okay," she said, not understanding why she was going to promise this, and then it hit her. Danny was going to talk about Louie. This was the conversation she'd been hoping for yet dreading at the same time. It was going to be hard to talk to him about his brother, her father, and she wasn't entirely sure she could do it without tearing up or losing it completely. Then again she wasn't sure if Danny would be able keep it together. "I'll try."


"Good. Coffee?" he asked, heading for the kitchen.


"Please," Mo said, sitting up, feeling more wide-awake than she had been. She stood, folded her blanket, grabbed her pillow, and put everything back in its place so that the couch could go back to its original job of being a place to put your butt. Pulling her hair back in a low pony, she headed for the kitchen and sat down at the table, smiling at Mac when he put a full cup of coffee and the container of French Vanilla creamer in front of her. Then, unusual for him, he sat down in the chair next to her, his own coffee with him, and they didn't say anything. They didn't talk, or strike up a conversation; they just sat there and waited for Danny.


Danny appeared ten minutes later in jeans and a New York Yankees T-shirt that he put his jacket over, and he took her seat as she got up and headed for the bathroom. He added a little more creamer to her coffee and then took a sip. It was something they did; one of them would start a cup, and if left unattended, the other would finish it. He looked over at Mac and smiled. Mac had been so helpful in filling the gaps in Danny's life, especially after Louie's death, that it had been hard for him to fully accept Mo. She was a girl with limited memories and knowledge on her actual family, Danny's family. It had been such a struggle for both of them to adjust to each other, for Mo to adjust to city life, and for Danny to realize that he had another person that really cared for him, that loved him (and he loved back) other than Mac and the rest of the lab that he considered his family. Together, they'd overcome that, and the three of them were close.


Mo came out fifteen minutes later in the same clothes that she'd worn when she'd first met Danny after bumming a ride off of Flack to the lab the morning she'd come back to the city. She had half her head in French braids, and the hurriedly did the other half as Danny stood up. Grabbing her bag, they said goodbye to Mac and then went out the door. It was a quiet trip down five flights of stairs, and even if they'd been talking, it would have been lost in the commotion of the city once they hit the street. She got into the passenger side of Danny's pickup truck, buckled up, and the wondered if Danny drove like a true New Yorker: A maniac. When they really hit traffic, there were a few times she'd clutched at the door handle, prayed a short note to God to let her survive this, and even had the urge to swear at a few cabby drivers.


She must have fallen asleep sometime because when she opened her eyes they were outside the city, the hum of the traffic a faint background noise barely heard. Danny shut the truck off and she looked through the windshield at the old, wrought iron fencing that surrounded the cemetery. Silently, she unbuckled and got out of the truck, shutting the door softly behind her. Looking at the sight in front of her, she wasn't sure if she wanted to do this. She wasn't sure if she could. The feeling of apprehension wasn't helped when Danny took her hand and led her through the gates of the cemetery, up the path through the headstones. She had the feeling he'd done this a lot at one point, probably just after Louie passed. Mo hated the expression "passed away" or "lost." If something was lost, if you put forth enough effort you could usually find it again. Louie wasn't lost; he was dead.


"Louie and I were close, growin' up," Danny said, his Staten Island Italian voice thick. This was hard for him, to remember Louie in the past tense with no hope of ever having a new story to tell. "Played baseball, fooled around together, had fun. We were brothers." He continued to pick his way through the gravesites, still holding onto her hand. That contact was a lifeline for them, a way to stay connected when sadness wanted to tear them apart and latch onto them. "We got older. Then Sonny came along with Tanglewood, and the prospect of that. Louie joined the Boys, and it was like joinin' a mob, almost. I didn't join, but I did run with them for a while because of Sonny. And my pop, your grandpa. Sonny, his pop, and my pop were kind of in the same business together. I didn't want that, and when I made that known, I was alienated. My own family didn't like me." He paused, still walking. "I wanted to stay close to Louie. Somehow we got far apart. The last time I saw him was at Giants Stadium, and that was the night he was there when Sonny buried the dead body of one of the new guys, a guy who couldn't hack it."


Mo was really close to losing it completely. She'd tried to relax her breathing, but somehow she was still crying, silently, but she was still crying. She squeezed his hand when he stopped them in front of Louie's headstone, and he went behind her, putting his forehead on her shoulder and holding her. She could feel how hard it was for him to not really cry openly, and he put his chin on her shoulder, speaking softly next to her ear.


"Louie, my brother, your father, died to clear my name," Danny said, his voice breaking near the end. "He was a good man, and I know he would have loved you with all his heart, like I do. I miss him, and every time I see you, I see him. I see what he had, what he could have become, what could have developed, and I miss him so much. But in you, he's always going to be with me. And he'll be in my heart, and in yours."


Mo was practically sobbing by that point, wondering how she could miss someone she didn't even know. Then she knew that it wasn't that; she was sad because she couldn't know him. She didn't have the opportunity to get to know her father because he was gone from her world, like he was gone from Danny's. She was sad and angry because she didn't have the opportunity to love him the way she loved Danny. She was angry with him for not giving her the option to be with him; Mo knew Louie would have made a good father, and she wanted that chance so badly that it nearly tore her in two.


Very tentatively, knowing that wherever Louie was he was listening, she said softly, "Hi, dad." Danny's face was still near her ear, his chin on her shoulder. "I-I miss you. I'm sad that we didn't have the opportunity to get to know each other, like I know Danny. I love him like I've known him all my life, but he's not you. He's not my father." She paused, pushing back her tears. "I love him, and I love you, too. I miss you. I miss you so much."

She turned around and buried her face in Danny's chest, sobbing. He was crying to because she could feet his tears on the top of her head. Mo clutched at his jacket to anchor herself in her grief, and he rubbed big, slow circles on her back to try and calm her down. Eventually she stopped crying, and he'd stopped, too, so he looked down at her and smiled.


"Everything okay?" he asked, wiping away her tears with his thumb.


"It will be," she whispered, resting her head on his chest. "Eventually it will be."




Mac was beginning to get worried when Mo and Danny hadn't turned up at eight that night. Slight worry turned to actual worry when the cluck struck nine. At nine-thirty he was nearly ready to call Flack and ask that he send some people to go out and look for them. At quarter to ten, the door opened and Mo and Danny stepped in, Mo carrying a bakery bag. Both looked tired and a little pale, but there was something that made them seem closer, made them seem right together. It wasn't the way they put their shoes by each other, one of Mo's bright blue sneakers between Danny's dress shoes, or his own sneakers between her flip flops. They had a connection between them now, something deeper. When Mac really looked, Mo looked more like Danny than she had previously.


"So, Louie gets the baseball outta the kitchen, stuffs it into the garbage cans outside, and then tries to blame it on the kids next door. When that didn't work, he blamed it on me," Danny said with a smile, obviously in the middle of one of his stories about his childhood with Louie. Mac noticed that both Danny and Mo seemed to have an easier time talking about Louie than they used to. "Mom and Pop came home, found the busted window, both their kids on the sofa in the living room like statues, and know what happened. Man did we run like hell to get outta there." They laughed, and Mo closed the door, waving to Mac who was standing near the couch looking oddly at the pair of them.


"We brought doughnuts home from the Italian place on the corner," she said, putting the bag on the kitchen table. "They're for breakfast tomorrow morning. I'm gonna go put my pajamas on, okay?"


"Yeah, then we can see what the ten o'clock movie is," Danny said, taking off his jacket. He looked at Mac when he heard the bedroom door close and sighed. "She took it better than I thought she would. We both cried a lot, and she talked to him, told him she missed him. She'll be okay. I'll be okay." He hugged Mac and then sat on one end of the couch. Mac sat on the opposite end, and the space between them was reserved for Mo.


"You guys want anything? Coffee, soda, water?" she asked, walking back into the kitchen.


"Just get in here, The Fantastic Four is about to start," Mac called, and Mo grabbed herself a glass of water and then plopped down in the space that the guys had left for her. Mac and Danny moved closer to her, touching each of her arms with one of theirs. It was a gesture that told her they were there for her with love and support, and she smiled. Not even halfway through the movie she had her head on Danny's shoulder, asleep, and her left hand curled around Mac's shirt. She had a grip on both of them, and not just physically.


"Somebody's tired," Mac said softly after a few minutes of just listening to Mo breathe.


"It's been a long day," Danny said, stifling his own yawn. He carefully took off his glasses, put them on the end table, and then put one arm around Mo With his other hand, he reached for Mac, who carefully put his own hand in Danny's, not wanting to move too much and wake up Mo. "A really, long day," he said, leaning his head back. "She did well, though. Both of us did well." He closed his eyes for a minute before opening them and looking over at Mac.


"You gonna sleep here?" Mac asked, noting the hold that Mo had on his shirt.


"I don't wanna wake her up," Danny said, using the hand on the arm that was around Mo to brush aside some stray hairs from her face. He could still see the faint tear marks from when she'd cried at the cemetery and then in the ride back into the city in the passenger seat of the truck. He really hadn't known what to do when she'd just kept on crying, and he'd just starting talking to her about his childhood, about Louie. He made her understand about the Tanglewood Boys, and how he didn't want that. He made damn sure that she knew that her father was a good man with people who loved him. She'd understood by the time they'd hit Times Square, and then he had her laughing with the funnier stories from his past. Then she surprised him; she shared some of her stories from growing up with Uncle Ray upstate with him. He hadn't asked her to, she'd just done it. It was almost inevitable in a way, but neither of them had pushed it. Danny was glad he hadn't pushed.


"Then I guess we'll all just stay here for the night," Mac said, settling back as much as he could without moving a lot. Mo had become sort of a daughter to him, like she had to Danny, and he had to admit that he was with Danny in the idea that he didn't want to wake her up. He'd also never really just watched her when she slept. She had this look of innocence to her, and she looked a lot like Louie. Yet, when she opened those eyes, the emotion in those eyes, and the color, was pure Danny.


"I guess we will," Danny murmured, and Mo slept on, oblivious.

***

Mac knew it wasn't a regular work day for him and Danny, so why the hell was the alarm going off at six? Before he could even attempt to reach over and shut it off, Danny flopped his arm a few times and the annoying beeping stopped. Usually, in the case of shutting the alarm off, Danny would snuggle back in for a few more minutes until Mac forced him to move and get started for the day. Amazingly, Danny was sitting up and fumbling for his glasses by the time that Mac had even cracked an eye open.

"Messer," Mac growled, knowing it sometimes irked Danny to be called by his last name only especially that early in the morning and still in their bed, "what the hell are you doing?"

"First day of school," Danny said cheerfully, locating his glasses and slipping them onto his face so fast that he nearly poked himself in the eye in the process. Throwing the sheets off, he grabbed a pair of sweats on the floor, pulling them on and then standing. The light from the window highlighted his pale skin and the muscles of his back as Mac watched him pull a T-shirt over his head.

"I thought you were in the working class now and not going to school?" Mac asked with a wry smile, looking for a pair of his own sweatpants.

"Mo's first day of school," he said brightly, heading for the door. "I bet she's all excited and ready to go."

I'll bet that she'll bite your head off when you wake her up, Mac thought, standing and stretching. He followed Danny through the small apartment, watching from a distance as Danny crouched near the couch, looking at Mo. With a smile, he watched Danny gently shake her awake, murmuring something that he couldn't hear. He could see Mo start to stir and probably answer Danny.

"Come on, time to get up," Danny said cheerfully and Mo groaned, covering her head with her pillow and attempting to ignore her uncle. Danny was more excited about her first day of school than she was. Then again, she had to remind herself that since she'd come and inserted herself in his and Mac's lives a little over a month ago, Danny had become more of a parent figure than Uncle Ray had been and more than her real parents had been. But she couldn't fault Louie and her mother, not when they were both dead, may they rest in peace.

"I don't wanna get up," she moaned through her pillow, curling into a ball when Danny yanked the blanket off her.

Danny looked back at Mac and then ruthlessly began to tickle his niece. Mo retaliated by thumping him with her pillow and trying not to laugh. When that didn't work, she threw her pillow at his head and rolled gracelessly off the couch to the floor with a thump and a yelp. Standing, she gave her uncle the most venomous look she could muster and went to pick up her pillow. When she retrieved it, she threw it at his head again, smirking when he had to react quickly and duck.

"What was that for?" he asked innocently, holding his hands up.

"Getting me up," she said, heading for the kitchen. Smiling at Mac, she wished him a good morning on the way to the coffee machine, grabbing a mug from the dish strainer on her way by. "Why are you so excited about today, anyway?"

"It's your first day of school," Danny said, coming into the kitchen himself and getting a mug for himself and Mac. "I didn't have any kids before you, and I've got you, so I'm excited. Am I not supposed to be excited?"

"It's early," she said, adding a large amount of creamer to her coffee. "And you're a little overboard."

"It's because I love you," he said in response, kissing her forehead on her way to the table. "And because of that, I'm going to make breakfast."

"I don't need food poisoning on my first day of school, Danny," Mo said deadpanned, looking directly at her uncle. Danny turned a delightful shade of pink and Mo considered that suitable revenge for getting her up so early by tickling her.

"She's got a point," Mac said quietly, taking the coffee cup that Danny handed him.

"I don't want to hear it from you," Danny said, coffee cup in one hand and searching for a pan with the other. "We can't all cook like world class chefs. Someone has to screw up and burn toast."

"And you have that down," Mo said, sipping her liquid caffeine.

"Hey!" Danny said, pointing a spatula in her direction. "Toast burning is an art."

"Easy with the spatula, Danny," Mac said, holding tightly to his coffee cup so Danny wouldn't knock it out of his hands with all the flailing he was doing.

"You know, I think I'll skip breakfast," she said, putting her mug on the table and heading for the bedroom. "It's better than probably throwing it up, anyway," she murmured, not sure why she was feeling so nervous all of a sudden. She'd never gotten this way when she lived upstate and it had been her first day of school. Maybe it was because this was with Danny and Mac now, and she didn't want to disappoint them or anything, but this was not a pleasant feeling.

Danny looked over at Mac for a moment and then watched her go. "I'll take her today," he said, heading for the bathroom. When she was in the bedroom, the other safe option was the bathroom. Halfway down the hall, he stopped, went back, and kissed Mac a thorough good morning. Then he headed for the bathroom.


Mo hadn't said anything the entire ride from the apartment to the school, and that had Danny slightly worried. It didn't help when he told her stories of when he and Louie were younger and in school. It also didn't help that she was going to same school that he and Louie went to, and most of the teachers would probably still be there. He knew that the threats of retirement after he got through school were only that; threats.

"Look, Danny, I really don't want to talk about this," she said at last as he pulled up in the front of the building. There were already a lot of students milling around and she was about to get out and have to go face it...it was not a happy feeling. "Maybe you can ask me later what I'm thinking or feeling, but I'm just nervous right now. Really freaking nervous."

"Okay," Danny said, knowing when to back off with Mo. She didn't flip out often, but when she did, she had to the temper of two Messers, Danny and Louie, and when she got rolling, it was wise to get the hell out of the way. "So, you don't want me to come in with you?"

"Not really, no," she said, starting to feel apprehensive, like she'd offended her uncle who had done nothing but help her and look after her since she'd arrived. "If that's okay."

"It's fine, Molly," he said, using her full name to get her attention and let her know everything was all right. "I'll pick up you later, after school, right?"

"Right," Mo said, opening the door and eyeing the crowd of students with slight fear. "I'll see you then."

"Have fun," he said, remembering what his mother had said the first day of his school career. "Love you."

"I love you, too, Danny," she said, and then she was trotting across the street to get out of traffic.

With a sigh, he merged back into traffic, heading for work. It was going to be a long day for both of them. Three of them, if Mac decided not to have the greatest of days.


Mac was slightly worried when he walked through the door that night at the apartment. It had been Mo's first day of school and Danny hadn't really said anything after he'd come back from dropping her off at the apartment. He figured Mo hadn't been ready to talk about it yet and probably hadn't really said anything to Danny on the way home. If she had, Mac was pretty sure that Danny would have said something, or commented or something.

The scene he entered into was a weird one for their household. The TV in the living room was off and Mo sat at the kitchen table with a math book in front of her. There were other assorted books and papers, and Mac knew they must have just dived right in on the first day. No games or fun things for those kids on the first day of the new year. But he hadn't expected things to be this quiet that fast, or for Mo to be so engrossed with something so quickly.

Danny was in the kitchen as well, tinkering around the stove. From the tense silence that was there, it seemed that Mo hadn't actually talked about her day, and Danny wasn't saying anything on the subject either. He was silent as a stone and there was a way he was moving that showed to Mac just how tense he was. No, this was not the happy family they'd come to regard themselves as for the past however many weeks that Mo had been there with them.

"Hey," Mac said as he put his coat by the door. Mo looked up briefly from whatever she was doing and nodded to him. She stole a quick look at Danny and then went back to what she was doing.

"Hey Mac," Danny said from the stove. "Dinner should be ready in about a half hour."

Mac nodded and sat across from Mo. She rubbed her face with one hand, picking absently at the paper with the tip of her pencil. Mac knew that if he gave it enough time that she'd open up and eventually tell the both of them what the hell was bugging her. He just wished that it would happen before the next millenium so they could maybe have some good feeling back in the apartment and things could somewhat return to normal.

"I hate math," she said after five minutes. Danny looked over at her from the stove and Mac realized that this must have been the first thing she'd said in a long time. "I really hate math."

"Hate is a strong word," Mac said, trying to read the problem upside down.

"Trust me, it fits this perfectly," she said, biting the top of the pencil. She made a face at that. She wasn't a pencil gnawing type of person and it showed.

"Do you need some help?" he asked.

"She doesn't but she won't take it," Danny murmured, barely loud enough to hear, from the stove.

Mo shot him a dirty look and then glanced at Mac. "I can't figure this out and I've looked at it for about twenty minutes."

Finally, Danny gave a sigh and came over to sit in the remaining chair at their small table. He took Mo's pencil out of her hand and closed her book. When he had her full attention, he looked her square in the eye and said, "You're a Messer. We get frustrated and angry, but we don't give up. You can do this. Whatever insecurity you've got goin' on in that head of yours about that school, throw it out the window because you're just as good as they are. And we love you. You don't have to impress anybody because you did that when you came here. You impressed us from the moment we saw you because you've been through so much and had to come from upstate back to the city and you've adapted. You're amazing. You just have to believe it yourself."

Mo gaped at Danny and then looked at Mac who smiled that little half-smile of his and nodded wisely.

"Thanks Danny," she said, looking at her math book. Sniffing the air, she looked past her uncle at the stove and then said, "Uh, I think whatever you're attempting to cook, is burning. Bad."

Danny turned and jumped out of his chair and then the smoke alarm went off. There was a racket as Mac went for the smoke alarm and Mo sat there, laughing at the men in her family, that were her family, and knew that no matter what, everything was going to be okay. They'd get through this as they had everything else. It would only be a matter of time. And a couple of burnt dinners, but she could live with that. She grabbed her house key, prepared to run to the corner diner for a back up plan. The feeling that they were going to need it was there. And it felt like home.

***

A few weeks after Mo had starting going to school, she witnessed one of the larger fights between Mac and Danny. It had happened in the lab, apparently, in the relative privacy of Mac's office, and Danny had apparently come storming out of there with such anger that he terrified a first-year tech who happened to cross his path. Mo had just walked out of the elevator when she saw him snap at the tech, and she grew a little apprehensive. She didn't like Danny or Mac in a bad mood; she hadn't really had to deal with them angry or upset, and Danny was Italian, so when he got mad, he got mad. Rumor had it that that was where she got her temper from, but both of them denied that. Mo didn't have a temper; she had slight anger management issues.


So, at a safe distance, she followed Danny into his office, barely catching the door before it closed, and then closed it behind her. Silently, she took her regular seat on the corner of the lab table where there wasn't any evidence (he usually left that corner for her) and folded her hands in her lap. She bit her lip, unsure of what to say or if she should say anything at all. Danny was throwing off a lot of anger, and she didn't want to take any of it, even inadvertently.


"How was school?" he asked calmly, trying to calm down for her. He just really couldn't believe Mac's nerve....


"Okay. How was your day?" she asked.


"Let's not go there." He was not a happy camper.


"Okay." She looked through the glass and noticed like, half the lab, looking at her and Danny. "I'll be in the break room doing my homework." She didn't wait for him to answer; she just got up and left. Once she opened the door, whoever had been standing there staring quickly went back to work like they hadn't been doing anything other. Shaking her head, she headed for the break room via Mac's office. She tapped lightly on the glass to get his attention and waved, opening the door when he motioned her in. "Hi, Mac."


"Mo." Mac's voice was guarded. She knew right then that Mac knew why Danny was so pissed off. Then she had the idea that it was something between the two of them. And it was something bad.


She couldn't figure out what else to say and so she just walked back out the door and down to the break room. Once there she had enough time to do all her homework, and then Danny came to get her, saying he was leaving. She had the urge to ask if they were waiting for Mac, but she didn't. Silently, she waved goodbye to the people she passed, and then followed Danny out to his truck. The drive home was tense, and she really wanted to ask what the hell was going on, but she didn't. Halfway up the stairs to the apartment, Danny looked like he was ready to explode, and once the door was shut, he did. Mo froze just on the inside of the door and listened to him rant. If it was this bad on Danny's end, she could only imagine what it was like on Mac's end. From what she could hear and understand the argument wasn't about anything big...but somehow that got lost in translation and the result had gotten considerably blown up in the process.


"So what do you think? Who's right?" he asked her.


Damn. He was going to put her in the middle. Well, she didn't want to be in the middle. This was between him and Mac, and she didn't want any of it except for the part where they made up and realized how much they loved each so that a little argument like this was really nothing. Unfortunately they hadn't gotten to that stage yet, and Danny was attempting to put her in the middle. I'm not going to be in the middle of this thing. I don't care how much he yells or rants or whatever; I'm just not going to be in the middle.


"I don't know," she said. "I-I-I'm going to go for a walk, okay?" What that meant was that she really had to get out of there before Danny got so angry he'd either start throwing things, or he'd start drinking. She didn't know much about him when he was drunk, but she knew, from experience, she didn't want to be around him then. Maybe she'd call Mac and see what went on earlier, and then maybe she'd go chill over at Flack's or Stella's. She really wasn't getting in the middle of this, and going over and staying with Mac would look like she was choosing his side instead.


"Now?! It's dark!" he looked at her like she was nuts, but she went out the door, eager to get away. "Don't make me come lookin' for you!"


Mo ignored the threat and ran down all five flights off stairs, not stopping to catch her breath until she'd run out of the building and down to the little Italian place on the corner. She leaned against the side of the building, glad she had her bag, and reached in for her cell phone. She dialed Mac's number and waited for him to pick up. When his "home" phone didn't pick up, she tried his cell. That didn't pick up either. She looked back over her shoulder, hoping Danny hadn't come after her, and then she jogged a few more blocks away from the apartment building, just to put some distance between the two of them. That's when she really felt like she was in the middle of him and Mac, in the middle of the fight they were having. She'd had enough of people fighting when she had lived with her Uncle Ray, and now that it was happening over again, well, at least this time she had a place to go. So, she closed her phone, opened it again, and called the other number she'd hurriedly memorized.


"Hello?" came the voice on the other end.

"Hey, Don," she said, one hand in her other ear to try and block the noise of the city. "It's Mo."


"Hey. What are you doin'?" he asked, sounding interested and slightly concerned. Flack worried about her a little more than he really should have, but he did consider her family.


"Well, I'm walking," she sighed, stopping under a street sign on the corner. She knew this was mildly dangerous as some moron could come along and think she was a prostitute (even though she wasn't dressed remotely like one) and try to pick her up, but that's why she was on a phone and still in a good neighborhood with lots of shops that she could run into. "Mac and Danny had a fight and Mac didn't come home with us tonight. Danny's mad and I don't want to be in the middle." Somehow she sounded a little more lost and helpless than she really was, but that was okay.


Don considered for a moment on the other end. "You okay?"


"Yeah, I-I just...Can I come stay with you for a while?" She hadn't meant to say that last part but it had just come out. She didn't regret saying it.


"Course ya can, Mo," he said. "You want me to come pick you up?"


"No, I can find it," she said with a slight laugh. "I did before, remember?"


"Be careful."


"I will. I promise." Then she shut her phone and headed for Flack's.


****


When Mo didn't come back or call at around ten, Danny's paternal instincts that something was wrong were kicking into gear. He paced around his small apartment like a caged animal, phone in hand, but he didn't know who to call. He'd called Mo's cell phone multiple times and had gone straight to voicemail. He didn't like that she was out of contact, and therefore she was either with somebody or out wandering the streets on her own either with her cell phone off, or out of service. Or she'd been abducted and possibly killed, and none of those options sat well with him. He wanted her safe at home, in the apartment, and probably going to bed by now, and that wasn't happening. Finally, he broke down and called Mac.


"Hello?" Mac picked up on the third ring. His voice was guarded.


"Is Mo with you?" Danny asked, more fear in his voice than he'd really intended.


"No. Shouldn't she be with you?" There was a little bit of worry beginning to creep into Mac's insides, turning his stomach.


"She went for a walk and she didn't come back," Danny said, trying to control his breathing. He'd had too many cases that started off like this, and to have the idea of having to process Mo...that was not a pleasant thought and it nearly made him want to throw up.


"Well, where else could she be? Have you called her cell?" Mac, logical as always, was trying to stay calm.


"Tried the cell, just went to voicemail," Danny's Staten Island accent was getting thicker with his worry. "I don't know where she could be, Mac, I honestly don't know." The phone started beeping. "Hold on, I think I've got another call." He switched to the other call, and said, "Hello?"


"Messer, this is Flack," Don said.


"Flack, great, this is not a good time," Danny said, momentarily forgetting that Flack was a detective.


"Looking for Mo?" he asked. "She's asleep on my couch. You and Mac had a fight?"


"Yeah, but...why is she on your couch?" Danny was confused.


"She said you tried to put her in the middle and she doesn't want to be in the middle," Don said, looking at the back of his couch and then up at the TV where some game show had just been playing. "So, she wanted out. She didn't want to stay with either of you in cause you thought she was pickin' sides. Smart kid, really."


Danny relaxed a little. Flack would take good care of her until either she wanted to come home or the fight between him and Mac had a resolution. He had to admit now that Mo. was a smart kid for wanting out of the middle in a situation she didn't feel comfortable with. With a sigh, he said, "Do you mind watchin' her for a while, Flack? Just until this is figured out?"


"Nah, she and I are friends," Don said, walking over and taking a small look at his newest houseguest. "I'll take good care of her, Danny. You tell Mac that, too."


"Don't spoil her, Don," Danny said with a smile. "I like my girl the way she is."


"Then fix your problem with Mac, Danny," Don said, hanging up.

***

Mo. spent one full week with Don. On the Monday after she'd sort of abruptly moved in with him, things changed. It was a little after dark and Don was still at work, so Mo. had gone to have dinner at the corner café a street away from Don's apartment. She'd bought Don something to eat, and had it in a paper bag. She was walking near the street, away from the side of the sidewalk that had the openings to the dark alleyways, just like Danny, Mac, Don, Stella, Lindsay, and Hawkes had told her to. Hammerback had even told her the same thing on the few occasions that she'd actually been in the break room at the same time that he was and the topic of her wandering the streets by herself after dark came up.


So, she was playing it safe when she turned the corner and started for the front of the apartment. She didn't even hear him sneak behind her before he grabbed her, dragging her into the dark alley to the left. The bag hit the ground....


********

Danny was having a very severe case of déjà vu as he raced through the Emergency Room doors. He was reminded too forcibly of the night that Louie had been beaten up, and he was praying that that hadn't happened to Mo. If she was...if there was the chance she wouldn't...God, he couldn't even think of that. He raced up to the nurses' station, and said, loudly, and hurriedly, "I'm looking for Molly Messer! Where is she?"


"Are you family?" a nurse asked him, holding a file.


"I'm her uncle, where the hell is she?" Danny was getting near hysterical now, and he was kind of glad that Don appeared from somewhere to the left, grabbed his arm, and led him through the maze of the hospital until they got to an exam room partitioned by a white curtain. Danny was almost afraid to go behind the white curtain because he was afraid to see what had happened. He was afraid to see what had happened to his little girl.


"Danny," Don said softly, "she's okay. She looks like hell, but she's gonna be fine." He led Danny around the curtain and sat him down in a chair by Mo.'s bed.


Danny looked at Mo. and felt his heart catch in his throat. The entire left side of Mo.'s face was bruised, there were bruises on her throat, and there was a splint on her right wrist. She was hooked up to a heart monitor and an IV, and she appeared to be sleeping. If she'd had a few more machines then she would have really reminded him of Louie, and that might have been too much for him to handle right now. As it were, she was alive, and, apparently awake now.


"Hey, little one," Danny whispered, trying desperately not to cry even though that was what he really wanted to do right then.


"Danny?" she whispered. Her eyes looked up at him, then searched the room looking for someone else. "Wh-where's..." She closed her eyes, struggling to find words when all she wanted to do was a weird combination of sleep and sob.


"Right here, sweetheart," Mac said, appearing on the opposite side of the bed. He and Danny simultaneously reached for Mo.'s hands, but she jerked them away from the men, staring at the ceiling and looking like she was just going to break down and sob.


"You...you two are still...f-fighting," she said, finding it difficult to speak. "Otherwise you'd be on one side...t-together..."


Don was completely silently, waiting for the family drama to play itself out. Danny looked ready to cry and throw something; Mac's face was unreadable; Mo. was damn close to tears herself, but she wasn't caving in. She looked from Danny to Mac and then from Mac to Danny, and then she stared up at the ceiling.


Danny looked up over the bed at Mac, allowing their eyes to meet. In that moment he saw the love that Mac had for him, and he knew that it had been a stupid thing to fight over. Mac reached for Danny's hand, and Danny gladly gave it to him, Mac squeezing hard. Mac let go, walked quickly around the bed, and hugged the daylights out of Danny. Danny had a few tears leaking down his cheeks at this time and Mo. had a few of her own going. Mac was sniffling, and Don was wishing he were kind of somewhere else instead of this intimate moment. Danny held Mac's hand in one hand, then reached for Mo.'s with his other. Mo. took it, and Mac put his own free hand over hers, sandwiching her little hand between his and Danny's.


"Do you want to talk about it now or do you want to wait?" Danny asked, swearing to himself that if Mo. needed the help of a shrink he was going to make her go, no questions asked. And he wasn't going to stand for any objections on her part. He didn't know what had happened to make her look the way she did, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to, but he wanted her to be back to normal as soon as possible.


"I called Stella, she and Lindsay, and Hawkes are on their way down here," Don said softly from his post. "Mo. gave permission to Stella to process her. We want to get the guy who did this."


As if on cue, Stella and the rest of the crew with her walked through the door, noting with a slight smile how Danny, Mac, and Mo. were joined in their little family security blanket. She raised her kit in a kind of salute, and Mo. nodded to Danny. Danny reluctantly released her hand and followed Flack, Sheldon, Mac, and Lindsay out into the hallway. Stella closed the door and the blinds, and turned to Mo.


"Hi Stella," Mo. said softly, her throat hurting. She didn't remember much, but she remembered screaming a lot, hoping...praying...that somebody would hear her. That would probably explain why her throat hurt. And the bruises on it didn't help any, either.


"Hey, Mo.," Stella said, popping open her kit and donning gloves. "This should be painless, okay? I'm going to need to take a lot of pictures first? It's just like you've seen Danny do."


"I know," Mo. said, trying to sound brave when she really wasn't feeling it. "You take pictures and then you scrape my nails and test for other stuff and try to find out what happened, right? Or do I have to tell Don my story?"


"You'll have to tell Don, but if you want to tell me, you can," Stella said, reaching for her camera. "I need to photograph all of your bruises and other signs of struggle, okay?"


Tears came to Mo.'s eyes; they were tears of embarrassment and shame. "Is Danny gonna see these pictures? Or Mac?"


"They're working on the case, so, yes, there's a good chance they might," she said, knowing from experience how hard it was to have a co-worker see those types of pictures. Danny was Mo.'s uncle, her protector, her legal guardian, and her parent figure. Then there was Mac who had just as much standing in her life if not officially on paper. "Nobody's going to think any less of you, sweetheart. These are defensive wounds. You fought back."


"I know," Mo. said, crying harder now. "I tried to get a lot of stuff under my nails because I knew you'd scrape them. I-I just don't really remember..."


"You let us piece this together, Mo., until you can remember," Stella said, putting a soothing hand on Mo.'s arm. "Will you close your eyes, please? Danny and Mac and everybody else want to see you so let's get this over with, okay?"


Mo. closed her eyes while Stella snapped photographs of the bruising on her face and neck. She felt Stella move her head to get a better angle and she cried silently through it, trying desperately to be brave, holding onto the thought that none of them would stop until they found the person who did this to her. She opened her eyes when Stella moved the blankets and her hospital gown to get at the bruises elsewhere, and she took some of the splint. When Stella was done photographing, Mo. felt the CSI scrape beneath the stubs of her fingernails. There probably wasn't much there, but whatever was there would be helpful. Once she was done with that, Stella combed through Mo.'s dark hair, and then gave her a once-over. Then she brought out another kit.


"Molly, honey, can you remember if he touched you anywhere?" Stella hated to ask, but she had to. It would be easier if Mo. could remember, but if she couldn't, Stella would have to fulfill the kit. It would be awkward, uncomfortable, and probably deeply shaming, but it was her job.


"He didn't," Mo. said, closing her eyes. "I don't remember much, but I know he didn't. I'd feel dirty, and I didn't feel that way when I woke up." She paused, swallowing hard. "But I don't really know."


Stella looked. "There's no sign. You're still whole, Mo." She packed up her evidence in her kit, tucked Mo. back into bed, and then opened the door. Danny was the first person back in the room, Mac hot on his heels, and went back to her bedside, taking her hand. He whispered something to her in Italian, and then kissed her forehead. She smiled and then closed her eyes.


"I'm going to go get some coffee from the cafeteria, anybody want some?" Danny offered, putting Mo.'s hand on her stomach. "She went back to sleep." He noticed both of Stella's kits and his eyes got wide. He put his hand over his mouth, hoping that would still his churning stomach. He must have paled considerably since Stella put a hand on his shoulder. He barely managed to choke out, "S-Stella, tell me...please, God, tell me she wasn't...she isn't..."


"No, Danny," Stella assured him, rubbing soothing circles on his shoulder. "She's fine, she wasn't. She's going to be fine."


Danny nodded, getting a little of his color back and took a deep breath. He looked at Mo. asleep in the hospital bed looking so small, pale, and fragile, and knew he had to be strong for her. If nothing else, he had to be strong for her to keep her together when he wanted to fall apart. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to fall into a million little pieces and then have somebody help put him back together the way things should have been. But that wasn't going to happen. There wasn't a magic button to push to make things right. There wasn't a magic switch to flip to make what had happened to her go away or to reverse itself. That girl in the bed had been through more hardship that one should really ever have to face, and Danny hadn't been by her side for most of it. Well, now he was, with Mac along side him, and the rest of them for support. He had the feeling the two of them were going to need it.

***

They released Mo from the hospital a few days later. Danny and Flack wouldn't let her walk out on her own, they insisted she have a wheelchair, and she wanted to be out of that place so badly that she just did what she had to. Danny, to her immense embarrassment, buckled her into the backseat himself, and then got in the passenger seat. Once the door was shut and Flack started the car, she looked around for all the possible things she could hold onto to prevent herself from slamming into the door when Don turned corners. In her opinion, Flack was about as good as a immigrant taxi driver when it came to navigating his way through the city, and she would have suggested that Danny drive, but she didn't want to say anything and risk Flack's hurt looks in the rearview mirror. Don was as close to her as a big brother, and she knew that sooner or later she'd have to tell him all the fragmented bits and pieces of that night that were coming back to her. She really hoped that wouldn't make things between them a little awkward.


"I better not see you hangin' onto anything back there, Messer," Don said, looking briefly in his rearview mirror and seeing Mo's calculated looks. "My drivin's not that bad."


"Last time I knew, I drove better than you," she muttered, staring out the window. Louder, she said, "I'm not hangin' onto anything, Flack, just keep your eyes on the road like you should."


"Don't worry, Messer," Flack said, whipping around a corner faster than he probably should have. It was probably a damn good thing he was an NYC cop otherwise he would have been pulled over by now. At least, Mo hoped that would have happened. "Don't you be hangin' onto that door handle."


"You want hanging onto something, look at Danny!" she said, clutching the door handle. "At least he has a handle thingy over the door to clutch! Jeez, Flack, I'm a bit banged up as it is, so take it easy!"


Flack turned a healthy shade of pink and Danny bent forward in silent laughter. Flack turned, looked at his friend, and smacked Danny on the arm. Danny only laughed harder and Mo chuckled, settling back against the seat as Flack gently hit the brakes, slowing down to a normal speed. With a slight smile, Mo felt her eyes start to slide shut and she rested her head back, looking out the window.


She must have fallen asleep because when she opened her eyes next, Danny was unbuckling her from the backseat and had slid his hands underneath her to move her. She wrapped her good left arm around his neck, trying to do the same with the splint on her right and not really succeeding. It didn't matter anyway; Danny had enough of a hold on her to hold her steady and Flack opened the doors to the apartment building for them. Mo didn't have enough embarrassment after all that had happened in the hospital with Stella and the photographs and the kit...even with all that, she didn't have enough left to feel embarrassed about being carried up five flights of stairs. It meant she didn't have to walk, and she was grateful for that because she didn't think she could manage it.


Mac was already home so all Flack had to do was open the door to the apartment, close and lock it when everyone was in. Danny smiled at Mac, who was in the kitchen making dinner, and then set Mo on the couch. The TV was on a soccer game and Mo smiled over at Mac, a thank-you in her eyes. Danny put her blanket around her and she curled on the end of the couch, resting her head back. He leaned down and whispered something to her in Italian before kissing her forehead and heading to the kitchen where Flack had taken residence at the small table.


"She fell asleep on the way here," Flack said, accepting the glass of water from Mac. "After she picked on my driving."


"You can't call that driving, Don," she called from the living room, grinning.


"Yeah, well, as I recall, there's a reason I don't ride with you, Mo," he shot back.


"I drive better than you, that's why."


Mac and Danny were silently cracking up. Flack wasn't impressed.


"Least I can drive in the city, Messer," Don said, thinking of his next move.


"New York can handle my driving, it's yours they're caught up on," she said, grinning like the Cheshire cat.


"Go back to Hoboken!"

"Go back to Yonkers!"


Danny snorted and had to excuse himself to go laugh in the bathroom. When he came back, Flack was still smoldering slightly and Mac had a grin that didn't seem to want to come off his face. There wasn't really any sound coming from the couch and Danny's protective nature was in full force, so he walked over and looked over the back of the couch. Mo was sleeping peacefully, her head to the side so that her bruising was up, her splinted wrist across her lap. She reminded him so much of Louie that it was almost painful to look at her, yet he couldn't take his eyes off her.


"Danny," Mac said softly from the stove. "She's gonna be okay. Give her time. When she starts talking about what happened, then we know she's really going to heal properly. But it takes time."


"I couldn't look at those photos without wanting to throw up, Mac," Danny said, entering the kitchen. "That's our little girl that's in those crime scene photos, our little girl who has her own case at the NYPD, our little girl that was a victim. I wanna get him for what he did to her. And I wanna know why."


"She's gonna remember some of it, if not all of it, Danny," Don said. "She'll remember in time. And when she wants to talk, she'll find somebody she trusts to talk to. I can give her another day and then I need to start pressing her for what she remembers otherwise this is going to go relatively cold." He flinched at Danny's glare. "And I hate to think of it that way, but she is a case now, Danny. We can't change that."


"No, we can't change that," Danny said, looking at the back of the couch where his girl was, "but I'll be damn sure that when we get this guy, I get a piece of him." It was a promise and a Messer always kept his promise.

***

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