Well...NEW FIC. BE glad. :) There's another chapter to this, and it's huge!

Natalia sighed. She couldn't do this anymore. No matter how many times she tried to stop herself, being locked in a trunk and pushed off of a pier into the ocean was the last straw.

Sighing once again, Natalia looked around her bedroom. She moved to a relatively better neighborhood after she was officially a CSI, but that still didn't stop the flashbacks or nightmares. Domestic abuse cases were twice as bad, because after each case she felt like blowing out her cookies.

And then there was Ryan. The night of the basketball game, Ryan had found Natalia in a bar, drowning the loss of Jesse in shots of vodka. Ryan and Natalia talked, and then he drove her home, Natalia still completely in tears, not even knowing if it was the alcohol that was making the water works or something completely else. Discussing Natalia's drunk feelings led to them hooking up which led to a sickeningly awkward moment when she saw Ryan with Erica the next day. The night that Ryan drove Natalia home after she was hospitalized after reasons that are were still unknown to Natalia now, Natalia hoped that they would at least talk about what happened.

Along with Ryan came Molly. The pretty new lab tech that asked Ryan out on a coffee date the day that Natalia was kidnapped.

-o-o-o-o-

"Why are you cleaning out your locker?" Ryan asked, when he saw Natalia in the locker room, looking like she was on the brink of bursting into tears.

"That was my last case." Natalia said, piling all her things into a box, a rushing out. Ryan was positively sure that she was crying.

"You look a bit confused." Molly said, coming into the locker room after Natalia left, Ryan's brows still screwed up quizzically.

"Why this Natalia's last case?" Ryan asked, something not clicking in his mind.

"She's quitting." Molly said. "She didn't tell you?" Molly asked stiffly when she saw Ryan staring at her, his mouth agape.

"No." Ryan shook his head.

"I wouldn't blame her though. I don't think that she has a boyfriend, and going through these kind of things like she is right now is kinda hard by yourself." Molly shrugged.

"Did she say why exactly she was leaving?" Ryan asked, more desperate for information than he was when he was framed by Stetler.

"No, because I heard the info from Rachel." Molly shrugged, and left the locker room.

-o-o-o-

Ryan knocked once and he heard nothing at all. No sounds of life were heard inside the house and the car was gone. Ryan shuffled back to Hummer, and tried to figure out where Natalia could've gone to. And that when he heard the radio.

The silver painted metal was crushed around the tree like an aluminum can. Fire fighters were doing the best to straighten out the metal so that they could understand what happened. The ambulance that Natalia was put in was already gone when Ryan arrived to the scene.

Ryan couldn't exactly stomach what he was seeing, but he was told that Natalia was already sent to the hospital before he could even approach the mangled car.

"Do have any idea of what happened?" Maxine asked when she was able to open her mouth when Ryan explained what he was told.

"No. Actually, we won't know what exactly happened until Natalia wakes up because there were not drugs or alcohol in her blood system, so she just lost control of the car." Ryan shrugged.

A pounding headache made Natalia attempt to open her eyes, even though she felt that her eyelids were made of solid lead.

"You're an idiot, Natalia." Ryan grumbled when Natalia finally opened her eyes looking around the room.

"Is that really what you say to someone who was just in a car crash?" Natalia asked, trying to pull herself up into a sitting position so that she could look at Ryan point blank in the eye, but moving her head gave her the sensation that she was about to throw up.

"Well yeah, if the person is you." Ryan said.

"Well thank you, I love you too." Natalia said. "I'm tripping, woobie." Natalia muttered. "Come back in a few hours." Natalia shooed Ryan out of the room, and in about 10 minutes she was asleep.

-o-o-o-

"Did Natalia Boa Vista already sign herself out?" Ryan asked, coming back to the hospital later that night. Horatio had called Ryan in to help process the car and when he came back, they told him that Natalia was gone.

"Yes, she did. Since she only had a minor concussion, so yeah, she signed herself about 3 hours ago." The nurse said, checking the clipboard that she was carrying.

"Great. Just great." Ryan muttered, before saying goodbye and leaving the hospital, the sliding glass doors closing behind him.

-o-o-

Natalia wasn't answering his knocks, no matter how loud or how many times he knocked.

"I just want to talk to you, damnit!" Ryan snapped loudly at the door. He almost gave up when he heard the dead bolt open.

"You don't give up easily." Natalia said blankly.

"No I don't." Ryan sighed.

"So what do you want to talk about?" Natalia asked. Her voice sounded like it was worn out like an old rag, squeezed and tired.

"Natalia, why are you leaving the department?" Ryan asked.

"I just became the lab's hostage victim. If any creep wants to get access to the lab all they have to do is kidnap me, or hijack my car or something." Natalia muttered.

"So, what are you going to become a school teacher or whatnot? Because getting kidnapped and hijacked is part of the game, frankly." Ryan said. "I got shot in the eye with a nail gun, and yet here I still am."

"I could go back to the FBI." Natalia said, shrugging Ryan's comments off.

"Natalia, wait." Ryan said, going after Natalia as she made her way across her living room to the kitchen.

"WHAT?" Natalia barked, whirling around to stare at Ryan. "You'd rather be with Molly than me, so what do you want?" Natalia asked, Ryan's brain not exactly processing what Natalia was blaming him with.

Ryan opened his mouth to say something but no sound came out, so he closed his mouth, looking a bit like a fish out of water. He'd rather be with Molly than Natal-? His brain cut the sentence off when he saw Natalia break down into tears.

He wanted to talk to her, to comfort her. But then he realized- he didn't know what to say. He had absolutely no idea of what he could tell her.