No Other One, Chapter 33
Title: No Other One, Chapter 33
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Yelina Salas, Horatio Caine, the whole Caine family
Author's Note: WARNING: SPOILER FOR SEASON 6.
Summary: Almost two decades ago, Horatio made a decision that would change his family forever. Will they ever forgive him? Will he ever tell Yelina how he feels? This is an alternative to the beginning of season 6. A Horatio and Kyle story; H/Y romance in the future.
Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26, Chapter 27, Chapter 28, Chapter 29, Chapter 30, Chapter 31, and Chapter 32.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show.
“In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Her skirt felt rough against the side of his tear-stained cheek. Not that the cloth was meant to be that way, like wool, Ray Junior knew. Because his mother, with her white linen clothes and maroon-painted toes staring back at him, was not one to skimp on her physical appearance. So he could only assume that it felt like he was rubbing against sand paper, because he was upset.
Which was so… lame.
In this family, displays of emotion, Ray Junior knew, weren’t discouraged or anything like that. As if his parents even could tell him not to do that. After all, his mother was the person he fought with nearly every day, and his dad had been nothing but drama since day one. And now his uncle with this new cousin bullshit.
So they couldn’t judge him, like, at all. But there was still something pathetically lame about being two months away from fifteen and sobbing in your mother’s lap. Punching things, screaming, destroying property - that was the family norm, and for a good ten minutes, Ray thought he’d actually been able to uphold that standard.
And then he’d broken.
He’d tossed the requisite reaction aside and cried, clutched his mother, asked why over and over. He’d been… childish in the way he’d looked for Mommy to fix everything.
But laying there now, his head on her lap and her hands in his hair, Ray wasn’t sure what bothered him most. It was one thing to want her to make it all better, another entirely to know that she couldn’t. Blinking back the fresh set of tears threatening to fall, he decided the second was far worse.
They continued to sit this way for a while, the amount of time beyond his comprehension. Whether it was minutes or hours, he didn’t know, and he didn’t really care. His thoughts were too jumbled, a house of cards collapsing in on itself.
A memory flashed through his mind then. It was hazy, not entirely formed, as nothing from that time was for him. His father had died, and everything else going on had slipped past him easily. Lying next to his mother now, Ray couldn’t recall the exact moment he’d learned the truth.
Daddy was alive one minute but not the next. In spite - or maybe because - of the traumatic event, he’d never really remembered the instance the change occurred. Only random snippets of things seemed to stay in his mind: Uncle Horatio yelling at reporters, strangers bringing by lots of chocolate cake (which stopped being great when, after sneaking a third piece, Ray Junior promptly threw up everywhere), Mommy going through Daddy’s ties - even when everyone else said that no one would see it, because the coffin wouldn’t be open.
From moment to moment, there was a hushed frenzy that threatened to consume them all. Whispers in Spanish about how Mommy should lay down, tears from everyone when they thought he wasn’t in the room, and harsh words towards Uncle Horatio for trying to help were frequent, filled the house during the day. And somehow, to Ray Junior, that was way better than when Mommy locked herself in the bedroom and screamed.
Sobbed.
Begged.
Burrowing his head further into his mother’s lap now, he could only remember that happening once distinctively, in vivid detail. Maybe it had occurred before that one time; he didn’t really know.
His grandparents had gone home to sleep, and Horatio was doing something with the police - Ray didn’t know what - and so he’d been left alone with her. And she’d retreated from him, and he had listened to his mother beg God to bring his father back.
Even now, he could remember pounding on the door for hours to be let in; it had scared him so much. And finally his grandparents had come back - pulling him away from the door that they eventually broke down. Just a little boy, he’d watched, as his grandfather tried to drag him into the living room, his grandmother slap his mother. Several times. Which now made Ray Junior want to stab the old bat, but at the time, it’d just been another thing he couldn’t understand.
The two women had shouted at one another in Spanish. The words coming out too quickly for him to translate it all in his mind, they’d screamed at one another until his mother had caved. It was one of the only times Ray had ever seen it happen, but after an hour of trading slaps and his grandmother saying she was scaring the baby, his mother had done just that.
And everything seemingly went back to normal afterwards. His mother had gone back to focusing on him like she had before. Only this time, her parenting was almost obsessive in a way. It was sort of like… Ray Junior struggled to find the right words. It was sort of like… the absences his father created had to be filled, replaced, so that it didn’t mean anything. So that his death didn’t mean the end of their family.
Ray Junior supposed it had worked in some ways; his mother never locked herself alone in a room again, anyway. But that nervous energy, that tangible… fear something would go wrong, had continued to lurk beneath the surface.
And that idea seemed to invade every aspect of his life, even now. At the time, he’d hide from his grandmother, afraid that she would snap as she had before. She’d come into the room, and he would cling to his mother’s legs, worried that this seemingly benign woman would turn on him.
But even Mommy was no longer comforting. Because he’d heard her cry and scream, and that made him realize quickly that she wasn’t perfect. That she couldn’t move heaven and earth simply by will.
What she appeared to be wasn’t who she actually was on that day she locked herself in the bedroom. And that made little Ray Junior wonder if Daddy had ever been… real. Had he really been as strong and funny as he made tiny Ray believe?
During the funeral, it was all he could think of. He clung to Mommy throughout, but all the while, his dark eyes stayed trained on the black coffin.
On the bed, Ray instinctively shifted, twitched, and his mother stroked his hair, whispered, “I’m sorry.” But there was no way, he understood, she could know or understand what he was thinking about. Because he’d never talked to her about this particular deep-seated fear.
It wasn’t about death itself. The teenager wouldn’t ever say that he was comfortable with the idea - he didn’t want to die. But more than that, it was the fear of dishonesty, of things not being real. And while part of him wanted to talk to his mother about it, Ray Junior knew he couldn’t. How could he? The thing that frightened him the most was all tied up in his father’s death, which was a sensitive subject at best.
He’d brought it up with Horatio once - the fear of what was in the coffin. But thinking about it now, Ray wasn’t sure his uncle had really understood. Horatio had merely said that they should think about how his father had lived, which really didn’t offer that much comfort.
Because the teenager knew it wasn’t being scared about death. When his pet parakeet, Toaster Oven, had died, it hadn’t frightened him. No, standing there in the middle of the night in his bare feet, Ray Junior had only hoped to say good night to his bird. And the stiff creature, its blue and gray feathers still fluffy and neat, hadn’t scared him. He’d missed his pet something awful, obviously, but… if anything, death had interested him. Which was either normal, he thought now, or really not normal, and he was going to turn into a sociopath sooner or later.
Given what happened today with his asshat uncle and this new cousin… probably sooner.
But the point was, Ray thought, pushing that idea aside, death itself didn’t scare him. With his father, what terrified him more than anything was… wondering whether or not the older man had been who he’d said he was. All the whispers had seeped into his subconscious, and he’d worried that maybe there was more to the story than everyone had said.
And it had all come to a head at the funeral.
Mommy woke him up looking happier than… no, not happy at all, Ray Junior decided as he wiped the sleep from his eyes, and she smoothed his hair back with her hand. She was still sad, sitting on the edge of his bed, in a black slip. Her hair was pulled back, which wasn’t normal, and he didn’t like it. Didn’t like that there was any change to her, and more than that… the long dark curls had always been a nice place to bury his face.
Not that he was a scaredy cat, because he wasn’t. Ray Junior always enjoyed getting into new things. But sometimes… that meant getting into trouble as well - like the time he pushed all the elevator buttons and some old angry man caught him and threatened to skin him alive. Or the time he’d jumped into the duck pond at the park, even though Mommy had said he couldn’t, and slipped and broken his foot.
Both times, she’d saved him, scooping him up into her arms and letting him hide his face in her hair. She’d always saved him, always protected him, always given him that little place to run to.
And now it was gone. Now she’d taken that away from him.
And Daddy was dead too.
And no hiding spot curtained in hair could protect Ray Junior from that so it was stupid to want it anyway.
And it was all wrong!
The thought seemed to lodge itself in the back of his throat, refusing to leave and setting the tone for the rest of the day. He was grumpy because of it. Every little thing left him upset and dissatisfied, even if it really wasn’t that big a deal. The sugary sweet and colorful cereal he was rarely allowed to eat was served for breakfast. But then Mommy left, telling him that she needed to get ready, and… alone with his fruity pebbles, Ray Junior felt so cold. Despite wearing his stupid pajamas with the footies that made it hard to make it to the bathroom in time occasionally, he was cold, shivering.
And even then, his small mind understood there was no fixing that. So he ate his cereal miserably.
The chill seeping into his skin only worsened throughout the funeral. Freezing next to Mommy, Ray could only stare at the coffin - all black and wooden.
A few people, the little boy didn’t recognize who they were, got up and made speeches, but he didn’t pay attention. His dark eyes remained trained on the casket, his mind wondering whether or not Daddy looked like Toaster Oven did when he had died.
Was he also stiff? Cold? Or was it different? Did Daddy know he was dead? Could he tell?
Had he really done some of the things everyone whispered about now?
Was Mommy going to lock herself in that room again? Would she be unable to come back from that?
Was everyone hiding something underneath?
Pulling himself from the thoughts, Ray Junior closed his eyes, his cheek pressed firmly against his mother’s lap.
At least that one question no longer plagued him.
Yes, everyone was hiding something. Everyone. His father hadn’t been dead, had lied, had done all sorts of horrible things. His mother… seemed relatively sane, but part of the teenager always felt the need to test it. Needed to push her as hard as he could to see just if and when she would break.
And now his uncle. With his hidden bastard child.
Given the secrets in this family, Ray Junior thought…
Death seemed so little by comparison.
In fact, lying here now, he wondered if it weren’t a preferable solution to the tangle of lies that had become his life.
End (34/??)
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Yelina Salas, Horatio Caine, the whole Caine family
Author's Note: WARNING: SPOILER FOR SEASON 6.
Summary: Almost two decades ago, Horatio made a decision that would change his family forever. Will they ever forgive him? Will he ever tell Yelina how he feels? This is an alternative to the beginning of season 6. A Horatio and Kyle story; H/Y romance in the future.
Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26, Chapter 27, Chapter 28, Chapter 29, Chapter 30, Chapter 31, and Chapter 32.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show.
“In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Her skirt felt rough against the side of his tear-stained cheek. Not that the cloth was meant to be that way, like wool, Ray Junior knew. Because his mother, with her white linen clothes and maroon-painted toes staring back at him, was not one to skimp on her physical appearance. So he could only assume that it felt like he was rubbing against sand paper, because he was upset.
Which was so… lame.
In this family, displays of emotion, Ray Junior knew, weren’t discouraged or anything like that. As if his parents even could tell him not to do that. After all, his mother was the person he fought with nearly every day, and his dad had been nothing but drama since day one. And now his uncle with this new cousin bullshit.
So they couldn’t judge him, like, at all. But there was still something pathetically lame about being two months away from fifteen and sobbing in your mother’s lap. Punching things, screaming, destroying property - that was the family norm, and for a good ten minutes, Ray thought he’d actually been able to uphold that standard.
And then he’d broken.
He’d tossed the requisite reaction aside and cried, clutched his mother, asked why over and over. He’d been… childish in the way he’d looked for Mommy to fix everything.
But laying there now, his head on her lap and her hands in his hair, Ray wasn’t sure what bothered him most. It was one thing to want her to make it all better, another entirely to know that she couldn’t. Blinking back the fresh set of tears threatening to fall, he decided the second was far worse.
They continued to sit this way for a while, the amount of time beyond his comprehension. Whether it was minutes or hours, he didn’t know, and he didn’t really care. His thoughts were too jumbled, a house of cards collapsing in on itself.
A memory flashed through his mind then. It was hazy, not entirely formed, as nothing from that time was for him. His father had died, and everything else going on had slipped past him easily. Lying next to his mother now, Ray couldn’t recall the exact moment he’d learned the truth.
Daddy was alive one minute but not the next. In spite - or maybe because - of the traumatic event, he’d never really remembered the instance the change occurred. Only random snippets of things seemed to stay in his mind: Uncle Horatio yelling at reporters, strangers bringing by lots of chocolate cake (which stopped being great when, after sneaking a third piece, Ray Junior promptly threw up everywhere), Mommy going through Daddy’s ties - even when everyone else said that no one would see it, because the coffin wouldn’t be open.
From moment to moment, there was a hushed frenzy that threatened to consume them all. Whispers in Spanish about how Mommy should lay down, tears from everyone when they thought he wasn’t in the room, and harsh words towards Uncle Horatio for trying to help were frequent, filled the house during the day. And somehow, to Ray Junior, that was way better than when Mommy locked herself in the bedroom and screamed.
Sobbed.
Begged.
Burrowing his head further into his mother’s lap now, he could only remember that happening once distinctively, in vivid detail. Maybe it had occurred before that one time; he didn’t really know.
His grandparents had gone home to sleep, and Horatio was doing something with the police - Ray didn’t know what - and so he’d been left alone with her. And she’d retreated from him, and he had listened to his mother beg God to bring his father back.
Even now, he could remember pounding on the door for hours to be let in; it had scared him so much. And finally his grandparents had come back - pulling him away from the door that they eventually broke down. Just a little boy, he’d watched, as his grandfather tried to drag him into the living room, his grandmother slap his mother. Several times. Which now made Ray Junior want to stab the old bat, but at the time, it’d just been another thing he couldn’t understand.
The two women had shouted at one another in Spanish. The words coming out too quickly for him to translate it all in his mind, they’d screamed at one another until his mother had caved. It was one of the only times Ray had ever seen it happen, but after an hour of trading slaps and his grandmother saying she was scaring the baby, his mother had done just that.
And everything seemingly went back to normal afterwards. His mother had gone back to focusing on him like she had before. Only this time, her parenting was almost obsessive in a way. It was sort of like… Ray Junior struggled to find the right words. It was sort of like… the absences his father created had to be filled, replaced, so that it didn’t mean anything. So that his death didn’t mean the end of their family.
Ray Junior supposed it had worked in some ways; his mother never locked herself alone in a room again, anyway. But that nervous energy, that tangible… fear something would go wrong, had continued to lurk beneath the surface.
And that idea seemed to invade every aspect of his life, even now. At the time, he’d hide from his grandmother, afraid that she would snap as she had before. She’d come into the room, and he would cling to his mother’s legs, worried that this seemingly benign woman would turn on him.
But even Mommy was no longer comforting. Because he’d heard her cry and scream, and that made him realize quickly that she wasn’t perfect. That she couldn’t move heaven and earth simply by will.
What she appeared to be wasn’t who she actually was on that day she locked herself in the bedroom. And that made little Ray Junior wonder if Daddy had ever been… real. Had he really been as strong and funny as he made tiny Ray believe?
During the funeral, it was all he could think of. He clung to Mommy throughout, but all the while, his dark eyes stayed trained on the black coffin.
On the bed, Ray instinctively shifted, twitched, and his mother stroked his hair, whispered, “I’m sorry.” But there was no way, he understood, she could know or understand what he was thinking about. Because he’d never talked to her about this particular deep-seated fear.
It wasn’t about death itself. The teenager wouldn’t ever say that he was comfortable with the idea - he didn’t want to die. But more than that, it was the fear of dishonesty, of things not being real. And while part of him wanted to talk to his mother about it, Ray Junior knew he couldn’t. How could he? The thing that frightened him the most was all tied up in his father’s death, which was a sensitive subject at best.
He’d brought it up with Horatio once - the fear of what was in the coffin. But thinking about it now, Ray wasn’t sure his uncle had really understood. Horatio had merely said that they should think about how his father had lived, which really didn’t offer that much comfort.
Because the teenager knew it wasn’t being scared about death. When his pet parakeet, Toaster Oven, had died, it hadn’t frightened him. No, standing there in the middle of the night in his bare feet, Ray Junior had only hoped to say good night to his bird. And the stiff creature, its blue and gray feathers still fluffy and neat, hadn’t scared him. He’d missed his pet something awful, obviously, but… if anything, death had interested him. Which was either normal, he thought now, or really not normal, and he was going to turn into a sociopath sooner or later.
Given what happened today with his asshat uncle and this new cousin… probably sooner.
But the point was, Ray thought, pushing that idea aside, death itself didn’t scare him. With his father, what terrified him more than anything was… wondering whether or not the older man had been who he’d said he was. All the whispers had seeped into his subconscious, and he’d worried that maybe there was more to the story than everyone had said.
And it had all come to a head at the funeral.
Mommy woke him up looking happier than… no, not happy at all, Ray Junior decided as he wiped the sleep from his eyes, and she smoothed his hair back with her hand. She was still sad, sitting on the edge of his bed, in a black slip. Her hair was pulled back, which wasn’t normal, and he didn’t like it. Didn’t like that there was any change to her, and more than that… the long dark curls had always been a nice place to bury his face.
Not that he was a scaredy cat, because he wasn’t. Ray Junior always enjoyed getting into new things. But sometimes… that meant getting into trouble as well - like the time he pushed all the elevator buttons and some old angry man caught him and threatened to skin him alive. Or the time he’d jumped into the duck pond at the park, even though Mommy had said he couldn’t, and slipped and broken his foot.
Both times, she’d saved him, scooping him up into her arms and letting him hide his face in her hair. She’d always saved him, always protected him, always given him that little place to run to.
And now it was gone. Now she’d taken that away from him.
And Daddy was dead too.
And no hiding spot curtained in hair could protect Ray Junior from that so it was stupid to want it anyway.
And it was all wrong!
The thought seemed to lodge itself in the back of his throat, refusing to leave and setting the tone for the rest of the day. He was grumpy because of it. Every little thing left him upset and dissatisfied, even if it really wasn’t that big a deal. The sugary sweet and colorful cereal he was rarely allowed to eat was served for breakfast. But then Mommy left, telling him that she needed to get ready, and… alone with his fruity pebbles, Ray Junior felt so cold. Despite wearing his stupid pajamas with the footies that made it hard to make it to the bathroom in time occasionally, he was cold, shivering.
And even then, his small mind understood there was no fixing that. So he ate his cereal miserably.
The chill seeping into his skin only worsened throughout the funeral. Freezing next to Mommy, Ray could only stare at the coffin - all black and wooden.
A few people, the little boy didn’t recognize who they were, got up and made speeches, but he didn’t pay attention. His dark eyes remained trained on the casket, his mind wondering whether or not Daddy looked like Toaster Oven did when he had died.
Was he also stiff? Cold? Or was it different? Did Daddy know he was dead? Could he tell?
Had he really done some of the things everyone whispered about now?
Was Mommy going to lock herself in that room again? Would she be unable to come back from that?
Was everyone hiding something underneath?
Pulling himself from the thoughts, Ray Junior closed his eyes, his cheek pressed firmly against his mother’s lap.
At least that one question no longer plagued him.
Yes, everyone was hiding something. Everyone. His father hadn’t been dead, had lied, had done all sorts of horrible things. His mother… seemed relatively sane, but part of the teenager always felt the need to test it. Needed to push her as hard as he could to see just if and when she would break.
And now his uncle. With his hidden bastard child.
Given the secrets in this family, Ray Junior thought…
Death seemed so little by comparison.
In fact, lying here now, he wondered if it weren’t a preferable solution to the tangle of lies that had become his life.
End (34/??)