Relinquishing Control
Title: Relinquishing Control
Rating: PG/K+ (I guess? Lol)
Summary: Mid-late Season 5: As her pregnancy reaches the stage where it’s beginning to rule her day to day life Lindsay is sent into a self reflective tailspin thanks to the Gods of the NYPD Crime Lab. Lindsay Centric, mentions of DL
Authors Note: This is my first CSI:NY fic so please be gentle as I very much out of my comfort zone with this one! I wrote it for a dear friend, Diane (paradiseblue ) who is constantly writing for others and never receives enough fic-gifts herself! I hope that she (and everyone else who’s kind enough to give this new to fandom author a shot), enjoys it.
Walking back into the office she shared with her boyfriend Lindsay didn’t know whether she was relieved or annoyed to find Danny was once again not there. She wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened, but to have his presence in the room while she tried to work out why she was feeling the way she was would have been a comfort she desperately needed right now. Ever since they’d told Mac about their pregnancy their shifts together had been few and far between. For the most part their relationship outside of the office hadn’t caused any issues on the work front from anybody but themselves. Mac had chosen to pretend he didn’t know something was going on as long as Danny and Lindsay did their best to have the same attitude during work hours, but over the past couple of months the rota seemed to always put them on opposite shifts. She’d questioned Stella on the fact, missing her boyfriend terribly in a time when she needed him more than she had before, and had gotten the somewhat flattering response that they just didn’t think Danny would be able to keep a clear head with both his lover and baby in the possibility of harm’s way. Understanding their point of view didn’t make it any easier though, when she was curled up in her empty bed, checking the time every time she woke, straining to hear the key she’d given him turning in the lock to let him know he was safe, and home, and she’d be able to get a few hours of real sleep before having to face another shift of her heightened sense of smell bringing a whole new perspective to life as a CSI. Chemicals smelled different, the unmistakable reek of a dead body was stronger, and she’d be lying if growing a human life inside of her didn’t make daily seeing people taken before their time harder to bear. She’d tried sleeping at his place, thinking being surrounded by his things, his smell, would be comforting to her, instead it just made her worry about him more, she’d think she was waking up beside him only to find it was the lingering scent of his cologne on the pillow she’d hugged her body around. Making her question her choice in having them keep separate lives despite the one they had started together.
Sighing as she sat down in her seat, stubbornly ignoring the blissful satisfaction that spread through her as her growing form sunk into the structure, her feet automatically settling slightly raised against the bar under her desk. Now was not the time to be dwelling on her relationship with Danny. It was her relationship with Danny that had caused the dilemma she was facing now, and she felt an annoyance fill her as she looked down at the phone sat on her desk, a picture of the two of them smiling goofily, their hands resting on her swollen stomach staring back at her from its screen. The lack of message or call symbol marring the image caused her to scoff. He clearly wasn’t as preoccupied with her as she was him. The fact that it was only 10am and he hadn’t gotten home until 6 not even a fleeting thought in her currently emotion driven thoughts.
She’d known, of course, that this day was inevitable, had even discussed it before and how she was going to deal with it, but all those conversations had placed so far in the future it had seemed hypothetical. The mother-to-be in her had been the one in control of her emotions on the subject; Of course she would take things easy as she neared her due date, of course she’d adapt the way she did her job to accommodate her pregnancy and to keep her child safe, but now she’d actually heard the words. Now Mac had handed her a list of dates that spanned only over the next couple of weeks, and a form she was to sign off on which one she would officially stop going out into the field, she’d well, for want of a better word, she’d freaked.
Lindsay Monroe had been thinking of herself as someone’s mother for about a week now. It wasn’t the moment the stick turned pink, it wasn’t the day the doctor confirmed the pregnancy, or when she’d told Danny, or even the first time she felt the baby kick. She hadn’t thought of herself as a mother until she experienced, what she can only presume, was motherly instinct. It had been a day like any other, she’d been at work, analysing some trace from a crime scene when her heart seemed to stop in her chest. If her breathing hadn’t become so laboured she could hear it, she would have sworn to you that her heart literally ceased beating. She’d called a lab tech over to handle the things she had out, and cautiously made her way to the locker room, her hand never moving from her distended stomach. The baby was kicking up a storm, something that was supposed to fill her with joy, but instead made an ominous cloud settle over her, something just hadn’t felt right. Telling her colleagues she was taking her lunch, something she’d been given a little more leeway with dictating since her pregnancy, she headed down to the health centre, all the while telling herself she was overreacting but unable to stop from boarding the subway and calling ahead to try and get an emergency appointment. Her doctor had told her both she and baby were fine, but they wouldn’t be if she kept up the pace she was, and not for a second had it occurred to Lindsay to do anything but take that advice, and as soon as she returned back to the lab she’d spoken with Stella about how they could adapt her job role.
Not for a second had it occurred to her that she’d do anything but go along with doctors orders, until now. She was grounded. Lab duty only, and mid shifts that meant most of the time someone else would be around to take over her job if it became apparent that things were getting too much. Now with her diminished job role imminent Lindsay found herself not thinking as the mother she was coming to terms with the idea of being, but thinking as Detective Monroe. Being a mother was a new and undeveloped part of her, a part that currently paled in comparison to most of the other things that made up who she was. She knew that would change, likely the moment she held her baby in her arms, but right now she didn’t know how to think as a mother, to feel as a mother about things in her life that didn’t relate to that warm fuzzy feeling that took over her when the baby moved and she was reminded that she wasn’t just pregnant - she was going to have a real live baby at the end of this ride, but right now it was all abstract most of the time, her job wasn’t. She knew how to think as a CSI. She knew how to feel as a CSI, and she’d worked hard to become a CSI. The idea that this new chapter of her life, this part of her she was so excited nurture and grow and have become more important than anything could ever, had ever, and would ever be, was challenging something she had spent her whole adult life working to be was suddenly confusing, and unacceptable to her. Being a CSI was more than a job to her, it was her passion, her calling, her penance...
She knew people’s first impressions of her were that she was sweet. A word she’d often hated but knew she could be described as a lot worse, and it had often played in her favour in her job. Her sweetness disarmed people, made them more likely to open up, or feel they didn’t have try so hard with their lies, meaning it was easier to see their flaws. She’d even had DA’s ask her to play on it over the years when giving evidence. To dress like a country girl and lay her accent on thick so the jury didn’t feel the science was above their comprehension, and they could just take this sweet girl on her word. Being sweet was a big part of who she was, but the days when it encompassed who she was were long gone, there was a time when she thought it wasn’t going to be a part of her ever again.
There’s a year of her life, give or take a month or two that she doesn’t remember all that well. It could be because the moments that sandwich it are so vivid she can close her eyes and be back there in a second, or it might be that she doesn’t want to remember the specifics. The general idea is bad enough. She knows the destructive behaviours she fell prey to. Everything you’d expect a 15 year old rebelling against the fact she was just plain old still alive to do. There were boys, there was booze, there was sex. She went from being miss all America her freshman year of high school, to a train wreck her sophomore year. She’d been an honour roll student on the cheer squad and co-captain of the JV soccer team when they’d split for the summer, but all of that fell to the way side when she lost all her closest friends in one foul swoop days after their first year of high school had finished. Twelve months later it couldn’t have been more different if she’d actually been trying to ruin her life instead of just being completely apathetic to the fact that she had one, she barely passed the grade, and the only extra-curriculars she’d participated in had been skipping Math to get drunk on some random senior’s ranch, and perfecting the art of climbing out of her bedroom window and off her parents property without alerting to them to the truck ticking over at the end of the driveway, waiting to pick her up for another night of debauchery.
It was the truck that picked her up most often that her deceased friend’s mother had seen her falling drunkenly out of at that second vivid memory that bookmarked the worst year of her life. She’ll never forget the look in that woman’s eye, or the tone of her voice when she told Lindsay how she’d spent hours up at night hating herself for wishing it was Lindsay who had died and not her daughter, how terrible she’d felt for questioning God on why Lindsay had gotten to survive when her daughter hadn’t, and the disgust in that woman’s whole being as she told Lindsay that had she known the young girl was going wasting her life away the way she was she never would have exhausted her energy on feeling guilty. Being the scientist she now is Lindsay knows that isn’t possible to just sober up from a shocking event, you may feel more coherent but your blood alcohol level doesn’t just suddenly drop but in that moment she went from a stumbling, slurring, numb teenager, to a crying, regretful, little girl who swore she wasn’t going to waste her life anymore. That had been the moment she woke up, that moment realised she’d been numb, and the moment she had to face she hadn’t been asleep at all. Her friends really were dead, the things she saw when she closed her eyes weren’t a scene from a horror movie she’d been forced to watch, the ringing in her ears wasn’t down too much vodka, but the echo of gunshots that had changed her life forever. It was also the moment that she swore she was leaving it all behind, that she wasn’t going to let that man take away her life too, and she was going to prove that she was worth having survived it all.
There were a few things that lingered in her life from that forgotten year, her hair although not the white blonde mess it once was due to the bottle of peroxide she’d poured over it to separate herself from the girl in the diner, had never again been as dark as the natural chocolate brown she’d been born with, and she’d never let it grow past a certain point, somewhere in the back of her mind she was scared of looking in the mirror and seeing that girl again. There were the tattoo’s; the four daisies on the back of her shoulder that she remembers getting in honour of the hours of her youth she’d spent making daisy chains with her three best friends on her daddy’s ranch, and the heart on her hipbone that she has a very hazy memory of being talked into but had always planned on getting removed until her first night with Danny when his eyes had simultaneously lit up and darkened before he’d spent a good twenty minutes paying homage to it, and telling her it was the sexiest thing he had ever seen. There was a time when she contemplated having his name added to the symbol, but then they’d gone through their rough patch, and she was reminded why she’d always thought getting someone’s name tattooed on you was stupid. Ironically, it was also that year of her life that meant after everything they’d been through she was willing to give Danny another chance. He hadn’t had to tell her that he’d slept with someone else, she knew because she’d done it too, not to him, but when she should have been at her best friends funereal she’d instead been losing her virginity to the dead girls boyfriend, both desperate to feel a connection with the person they’d never be able to touch again. So despite the hurt, she’d understood, and eventually that understanding had opened the doors for forgiveness, and now they were going to have a beautiful baby together and had never been happier or stronger within their relationship,
The strongest, most life shaping left over from that time however is her career. In the days after the shooting it had seemed there was always some kind of law enforcement official at her house, and although most of them spoke through her and to her parents, she’d always been listening. It was when she was taken to the local PD to have finger prints taken that she’d asked her first question. She’d asked if they were going to be able to catch the guy, and if they did would she have to face him. She was a smart girl, and her curious nature meant she kept abreast of current affairs enough to know that eye witnesses were often the core of a case, but the idea of facing this man terrified the barely more than a little girl she was. She was told that they were going to try their best and that they’d never stop looking, but yes the likelihood was when they found this man her testimony would be the thing needed to put him away. Looking at the situation now she knows it was fear more than anything else that drove her. When she was forced to face the reality, a year on when she was finally starting to deal, that this man still hadn’t been caught she started looking at why. She started to learn what all those people she remembers speaking to did within their jobs. The roles they played in trying to find the person who had killed her friends, and almost ruined her completely. She came across articles about cold cases being solved every day due to the advances science was making, and the advancements they expected in coming years. She had sworn that although she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop awful things happening, cause if they could happen in Bozeman, Montana they could happen anywhere, she was going to do her very best to make sure no one could ever get away with committing such horrific crimes. She figured if people didn’t think they could get away with these crimes they’d be less likely to commit them. She never let herself admit that all the college, all the extra courses, and hours hidden in the library reading stuff she needn’t know, all the fierce determination may have come from just wanting make sure her own crime was solved, and maybe she could find a way to prove she saw what she did without having to go through the chilling, heart gripping fear she’d been right in presuming facing the shooter would cause.
When she’d first started dating Danny, she’d insisted they keep it to themselves. He’d joked that she must be ashamed of him, but that really was far from the case, and there were many times when she’d had to suffer watching a temp secretary, or flirty lab technician none too subtly trying it on with her boyfriend that she’d wanted nothing more than to stand up on a table, fire her gun into the air to get everyone’s attention, and announce that he was hers. They could check for the intimately placed hickies if they didn’t believe her, and they had damn well better back off. The problem was, having had half her life as ‘that girl, who’d survived that thing’ had made her very conscious of people’s opinion of her. New York was a big city, full of people who didn’t know her past, and she’d been brought here because she was good at her job, and she wanted to prove that. Have the only notoriety her name had in the lab be associated with her work, not the fact she was having a relationship was the offices’ established womaniser. She’d been raised to believe that respect was earned, but it was of the highest regard, and she felt that since coming to New York she’d earned that respect. That within the NYPD Detective Lindsay Monroe meant something, and she respected herself for having achieved that. Now, even though she knew it wasn’t the case logically, she felt that her job role being diminished was a black mark against her name, the fact that she wouldn’t be allowed to do the job she’d come to love to its full extent made her feel disrespected. She was pregnant, and she knew all the risks, and she knew it was all being done with her and her baby’s best interest at heart but it was hitting an incredibly raw nerve. Building on a fear that had begun to keep her up at night. Would she ever be Detective Lindsay Monroe again, with all the meaning it meant now, or was this the end of that, and the beginning of Baby Messer’s Mom. Was it the end of the Lindsay she’d worked hard to become? The one she was content with, happy even. Did the fact that this was all affecting her so much, that she was dwelling on all these selfish thoughts make her a bad mother before she’d even really become one?
“I do love you, you know.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, her hands cupping her stomach, her thumbs stroking the skin lightly, her face tilting down as she directed her words at her as yet unborn child. “Mommy’s not angry at you. She’s just scared, and sometimes when Mommy gets scared, she gets mad. You’ll see I’m sure, although I’m going to try my best to never get mad at you unless it’s really necessary.”
She closed her eyes and shifted a little in her seat in an attempt to get comfortable, the baby moved inside of her, shifting in their own attempt at finding comfort and a sad smile grew on Lindsay’s lips. “Another thing you should know about Mommy is she likes to be in control, and ever since she found out she was going to have you, heck if we’re being really honest here, ever since she fell for your daddy, she hasn’t felt like she’s in control. My job is important to me,”
She paused when she felt a hefty kick, seemingly in response to her words and it made her hope that maybe the baby was listening, and suddenly feeling a little less alone. “Never more important than you, sweetheart, I promise, but I need it in my life. It gives me a sense of control when there’s so much I can’t. I realised very young that there’s things that are going to happen that are out of our control, things that can shape your life, for the worse, and sometimes for the better, but in my job I feel control. I’m good at it, and I love it, and it means that I can at least try to take control of those things that happen to us, without warning, without consent, and now I don’t have that control in my job anymore. Because I’m having a baby. A baby I can’t wait to meet, a baby who will always be my first priority, but I do resent it a little. Not you, never you. Just the situation, and I’m scared.”
A few tears fell from her eyes, god she was just so scared, scared of the things that were to come, scared she’d never feel like herself again. “I don’t know how to be a mom, or a wife, or fiancée or live in girlfriend, or whatever it is your daddy’s pushing for me to be this week. I know how to be a CSI. I like being a CSI.”
Swatting at the tears that lay on her cheek she sighed. “I guess it all comes down to the fact, baby, that Mommy doesn’t like feeling scared. It’s just another way of not being in control. Although apparently, it’s something I have to get used to when you get here, my lack of having control, and living in a constant fear, or so your grandmother tells me.”
She looked down at the sheet before her, the one asking her to pick a date and sign. At least she got to pick when her field duty ends, even if all it was to the department was a way to protect their own back if god forbid something was to happen, to her it personified everything she was worried about the next few months bringing, almost like signing off on this date was signing away her last ounce of control.