Sounds like that was the first time you've seen "HA", yes? It's an absoulutely CHOICE scene with the set up and execution specifically engineered by AD (in her more sane years). Every single nuance performed to perfection by SM and DC. I'm with Luce, it's my all time fav scene between these two.
BTW, did ya notice the parallels between H and Miguel (Martin Modesto’s bro-in-law) i.e. when Miguel returns to inform H about his sister giving birth to a baby boy. Horatio asked Miguel, "Are you going to look in on the little boy?" and Miguel countered that it would feel weird because he didn’t always approve of the way his late brother-in-law treated his sister, so he wouldn’t know what to say to the little boy about his late father. To which Horatio replied, "Let’s tell him his father died trying to save their home".
Horatio’s use of "Let’s tell him.....", and not "Why don’t you tell him..." seemed to be an indication of Horatio identifying with Miguel’s situation. Both men have been called upon to be "surrogate fathers" to their nephews; both men did not always approve of the treatment of their respective sister and sister-in-law by their husbands; and both men will at some point tell their nephews that their fathers’ died trying to save their homes/family(er, of course at the time Raymond was still technically dead. *sigh*).
This scene between H and Miguel then sets us up nicely for that scene at the end. Once again we see Horatio struggling with reconciling the responsibility of minding his brother’s family with the enormity of his feelings for Yelina.
With that scene, I especially savored the manner in which inwardly, Horatio was weathering his own emotional version of Hurricane Anthony, whilst outwardly, all his physical actions and intonations are deliberate, soft, and quiet albeit tempered by an air of nervous anticipation. Then for the final touch par excellence, there was the compelling imagery of the sun breaking through the clouds and that of Horatio moving past one set of barriers.
