Title: Quietus
By: cassie_jamie
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Claimer: But Emilie and Harper/Hal are mine.
Pairing: Horatio/Eric
Rating: PG
WARNING: DEATHFIC!
Dedication: Yana for inspiring me to draw out of my temporary, self- imposed hiatus and James-Alyssa who's left a bruise on my shoulder from where she punched me.
Notes: I had previously doubted that I would be writing this installment of the series which started with Atropos and continued with Harbinger, but my muse started screaming for attention and when that happens, well...ya'll know you can't ignore it.

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Dad tussles on my floor, trying to hide his red eyes.

He thinks I'm asleep and gently strokes my hair, my cheek, my arm evenly. His hands are frigid despite the location of our home; the home we have lived in every day of my humbled life.

The steady silence of my bedroom evokes the braided memory of twilight hours ago, when I tightly held Papa's chest in my fourteen- year old arms. Dad held my clingy little brother, Harper, against his chest repeating the nickname of Hal that I had given in the softest... most broken... voices I had heard in my life. The machinery clicked on for several seconds, until his once strong hand came to rest in my hair and he eeked out a brief, "My angel."

Then the once rhythmical nightsong that lulled me off so many times turned flat.

My heart stilted too; stunted, arrested, suspended, and ceased. For the briefest of seconds.

Hal sniffles from his room across the hall. He cries out for Papa, seeking out the calming sound of the oxygen tanks as our father breathed in raggedly; there will no longer be that comfort for he or I. Nor for our now-sole parent who slept through the noise so many years of his aging life.

Eventually, my brother calms and drifts into slumber, when Dad drags himself to his feet, leaning over the side of my bed. He places a kiss to my temple, lingering for a moment or two with his forehead lying amidst my shoulder-length curls. He mutters out a hoarse, "I love you."; exits my room then. His toes catch the edge of the hallway carpeting and if it were any other day I would hear Papa chuckle and call out for his klutz to come to bed.

But that is our path no more.

The miracle I spend a childhood hoping for never came.

The silence is cold, deafening; Daddy's cries are louder. They bore through the walls and penetrate the ink-blackness of my sanctuary. Shatters it along with the marble pedestal I statued my invincible parents on.

Night blossoms impossibly further as the southern air swirls through the open windows. Something tempts me to rise from my nest of blankets and pillows and teddy bears, which I obey for some unknown reason. My feet connect with the horizontal wood, a hand reaches out to flick at the switch to splay light across the tiny balcony.

Pictures balanced precariously on my dresser top call my attention like a siren's song. My eyes immediately file in on the well-worn photo of myself and Papa, the tiny infant Erica Speedle cuddled close to her namesake. She's six now, and I doubt she'll understand when my aunt and uncle attempt to explain that her goddaddy will never draw pictures with her and her brothers ever again, that she will never be graced with a bounce on his knee nor a butterfly kiss.

My body shifts of its own accord and I am carried closer to the green-tinted glass doorway, shove myself onto the tepid white tiles.

The stars glisten down at me, the water strains to lap at the edge of the yellow-sanded beach, and the curtains flutter behind me. It's seemingly a perfect nocturnal state... one he would have loved.

A tiny body plasters itself to my legs. Hal. Two huge, saucer- shaped brown eyes glimmer up at me, "Papa?"

I steel myself as I pull him up into my arms.

Like Erica, he does not understand and he won't for many years. I'll spin the tale for him one day, let him know what transpired beneath his toddler nose. Not now though.

Right now I'll be strong. I'll cuddle him close and restrain my tears, I'll go through the wake on autopilot and laugh when Aunt Calleigh tells the same boring story we have heard a thousand times before, I'll guard my heart when I toss the fistful of ashen earth to scatter on his final, eternal home.

Then I'll go down to the beach, to the spot that he settled in with myself clambering to lay in his lap. Where we talked about every infinitesimal bout within our lives. And I will let the tears go, where no one will see but my Papa himself.