TITLE: Sweet Undead

FANDOM: CSI Miami

NOTES: ARGH! Horatio fic! Written after ‘Dead Woman Walking’.

He couldn’t live with pity, with weakness like that. He didn’t know love all that well, couldn’t reconcile it with the world he knew.

He once met a woman he could love – funny on his level, a lawyer playing on his side, a woman who was dying. He met her and it was already too late. Fate was a cruel-hearted bastard.

But he didn’t believe in Fate, didn’t know love at first sight, and his heart had never equated properly in his head, so it was better to ignore, wasn’t it? He recoiled from his announcement of her death; cold, stuttered, she deserved better.

He was a man she’d never look at twice; it was strange what death could do to you. She was dying and he was there, nothing more he knew, and if she weren’t, he would’ve searched her house, then walked away. So he couldn’t say he was in love, because what did that mean in her last week of life?

But vengeance he knew like an old friend, and he always turned to it when he needed fire, energy for his work. For his brother, for his mentor and now...for Belle.

He still accused her, but shot down Speed when he dared to suggest it, as if this was personal. He had no right to make it personal.

It was love that killed her, but love couldn’t save her. He hated love.