Author: Sam

Story: Speed Trap: 1 of 23

Series: Speed-Burn

Pairing: none yet

Story Rating: T: Teen: violence, language, and despair mostly, but nothing overly graphic. The rating is mainly for the imagery, not the written word.

Story Summary: When Miami, Dade loses one of its own, it effects more than just Horatio’s team. The repercussions can be felt as far away as even New York City.

Spoiler: Yeah, just count it as spoilers for anything before Under the Influence (CSI: Miami) and Summer in the City (CSI: New York).

Category: Drama; Science

Setting: Early December, 2004. Maine. Just after "Camp Fear" from CSI: Miami, and "Night Mother" from CSI: New York. Thus, Speed has been shot but Aiden has not yet attempted tampering with evidence. See note.

Disclaimer: CSI: New York and CSI: Miami are produced by Alliance Atlantis Communications and CBS Productions, in association with Jerry Bruckheimer Films; the series is distributed worldwide by Alliance Atlantis, and by CBS in the USA. I am in no way connected with these people, and I do not claim ownership to these characters, lands, or names. I have borrowed them to share a story... and most likely not a story any of them would have written, had they had the time or no. I am making no money from this, and it is just for my entertainment, and that of free entertainment to a select group of friends. Thank You.

Distribution: Please ask first?

Note: This is a cross-over between CSI: New York and CSI: Miami. Anything that takes place in this story may contradict canon CSI: Miami, and this is a blatant change for CSI: New York, as I truly like Aiden’s character and chose to change her fate. Thus, it is AU.

Author’s Note: AU: Speed-Burn: Actually, this story explains the entire "Speed-Burn AU" that I prefer to use, so here is the second in the series (the first is a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation story called Ten Little Indians); I am finally providing the explanation. Bear with me, you’ll understand everything shortly.

Feedback: Yes, please? Especially constructive. samwise_baggins@yahoo.co.uk

Webpage: http://www.geocities.com/samwise_baggins/index.html

Groaning, the thirty-something man shifted restlessly on the hard wooden floorboards of the nearly bare apartment. There was only a sleeping bag between him and the cold surface, doubled over for cushioning instead of on top of the man for warmth. He shivered as a draft crossed his thinly clad body, T-shirt and old jeans not enough protection in the cold December air of a late New England fall.

He shifted again and felt an intense, sharp tug of pain in his chest and his hand went defensively to cover the ragged wound dubiously protected by old, none-too-clean bandaging. The sudden attack left him panting and weak. He didn’t know how he could live like this much longer.

The program was supposed to help him, not bring him back from the edge of the abyss to desert him, freezing and weak and alone. He wondered just how many other screw-ups had left people without money or help at the possibly worst time in their lives. If something didn’t change soon, if the program didn’t figure out why he was there and how to get him out of it, they might as well just bury him, because the young brunet couldn’t stand another night of this wretched existence that had become his life.

Distraction: that was what he needed.

With a soft sigh, feeling the sharpness easing in his wound, the man opened chocolate-colored eyes. He moved his shaking hand up, over his damp face and into shaggy, unkempt brown-black curls. Rather than dwelling on the lack of furniture, medical care… and even soap, in his current life, he concentrated on the little things.

“My name is Joe Avery,” he told himself, the suddenly hoarse admission cutting through the cold night air. “Joe Avery… the nobody.” A derisive, humorless snort followed that statement, cut short by a gasp at the renewed sharp pain. Damn! If the program didn’t come through soon, he wouldn’t need medical care anymore; he’d be dead already.

Joe let his pain-filled eyes close once more, willing the intense pain to ease, to disappear completely. As it obeyed, this time, the man further willed himself to relax. The pungent scents of human sweat and unwashed body and clothes surrounded him, but he’d actually started to get used to the sickening odor. Life was a far cry from the way it used to be, before he’d made mistakes, before he’d wound up in the program and just this side shy of homeless and derelict. Hell, in a couple more days, he’d be out of the food he’d been grudgingly provided by the bitter woman who’d dumped him in this unfurnished, unheated studio apartment. Then, he would have to go begging, something the once proud man had never done in his life. In fact, this was the first time in his life he’d actually not had enough to eat, had the threat of starvation hanging over his broken body.

“I live at 44 Donner Street in Old Harbour, Maine.” Live? Yeah, right! As if anyone could call this living. It was more like a limbo existence, somewhere between hoping against hope to be rescued and waiting to die in obscurity. He might as well have taken his chances in the shelters and churches; they’d undoubtedly have helped him more than the program.

Hell… that was what the program should really have been called.

God, he needed a fix: just something to take the edge off, really. A bitter chuckled escaped the thin man, followed by a gasp of pain as his chest once more reminded him of its recent trauma. Once upon a time, when he’d lived a different life, a fix would have meant something nefarious and disgusting… would have meant coke or heroin or meth. Now, it simply meant ‘something, anything to get rid of this soul-eating pain’ If he had money, he might have even been tempted to try one of those forbidden false self-medications… then again, if he had money, he’d have checked himself into a hospital, no identification be damned.

Ironic how hard the paramedics had tried to save him, had even used electricity to bring him back from the dead. They’d pushed so much blood into him; his DNA could have changed, if that was possible. With all the tubes, wires, and monitors, for two months, Joe had looked more like Frankenstein’s creature than a real human being. And for two months, his precarious life, shattered by a single bullet, had balanced on the thin knife’s edge of hope. Science nearly gave up on him, medicine wailed in despair that he would ever regain that ephemeral state called life, and religion hovered just out of reach, waiting to claim him in that final, all consuming darkness each person comes to dread or resignedly accept. Somehow, someway, life had won and the man known as Joe Avery had been reborn. Had been reborn merely to find himself neglected, forgotten, two and a half months later, lying on a cold hard floor in an out of the way place, dying once more… this time more slowly and painfully than the initial shooting had done.

Perhaps, just perhaps, he should give in, waste the efforts of that heroic medical team and let the cold darkness claim him. Perhaps the doctors had been wrong to defy God and pull him back into life. Perhaps Joe Avery was never meant to exist, the man he had been was meant to die in that shooting so very long ago, two and a half months and a lifetime in the past.

Joe closed his dark brown eyes once more, and this time, he didn’t even bother to gasp as the pain shot through his heart and radiated over his chest. This time, he even stopped trying to will it away.

Perhaps, it was time Joe Avery accepted death after all.