Little Deaths
'Do you die a little every time you press that button, knowing what kind of hell he's in, and that you are helpless to rescue him from it?'
He doesn't answer, and Walter Gordon seems to take his silence as agreement. But the truth?
No, he doesn't. He does worry about his CSI, fear for him. That's why he accepted Catherine's solution of getting the money from Sam Braun, in spite of the risks. That's why he came here. But every time he presses the button and sees Nick in his Plexiglass coffin, it doesn't break his heart.
It gives him hope. Because Nick is alive, and as long as he's alive, they can save him. They have a chance. It's not over until Nick dies.
That's not to say it's easy. It's not. It's painful, watching Nick endure the lights and the confinement and the thirst and the hunger that his CSI must feel.
Later, in the lab, he nearly cheers when Nick shoots out the light. It scares him almost to death, but still...Nick figured out that the light and the air were connected. And he did something about it, something to give himself more time. He's using his head, and that's good. He hasn't succumbed to his fears and his isolation yet.
As much as he hates that Nick is trapped, he's almost glad it is Nick and not one of the others. Nick is one of his more level-headed team members. Steady. Solid. His chances are good. Well, not good, not with time ticking down and the scant amount of clues they have, but better than they could be. He'd really prefer it if it was himself, but...things are what they are.
It's still not easy. Not when he sees Nick give in to a brief fit of hysteria. Not when he sees Nick sobbing and pounding the glass, his face illuminated by a glow-stick.
And he really does die a little inside, when Nick pulls up the tape recorder and starts leaving his own message. A farewell message. It's the beginning of the end, he knows that. Nick is giving up. He wants to shout across the communication line, tell Nick not to give up, that they're looking, that they're coming for him. That they're going to find him.
But there is no sound, and the connection is impossible to trace. No sound means that the others in the room, watching the footage, can't tell what Nick is saying.
But he can. And this does break his heart, reading Nick's lips and the shape of his words as he speaks a halting farewell to his parents, his family, the rest of the team. As Nick speaks to him.
'Grissom. I...I guess I just...I tried. I tried my best. I hope I never let you down.'
He whispers his reply, and hopes he'll be able to give it to Nick in person. "No Nicky, you never have." He knows he looks strange, talking to an image that can't hear him, but he doesn't care.
When the ants get into Nick's prison and start biting him, well, it might be the first time in his adult life that he hates bugs. It's certainly the first time he's wanted to kill them. destroy them. But if he could, if he could reach out and crush the life out of every ant that's biting his CSI, he would.
Watching Nick scream and flail, trying helplessly to stop the pain of hundreds of ant bites...that ranks as one of the top 10 worst moments of his life. Actually worse than realizing he was losing his hearing. Much worse. He would trade those days of terrified uncertainty for this in a heartbeat.
Then Nick calms, stills, blocks his nose and closes his mouth and his eyes, remembering. He's taught his CSI's little things like this. 'Stop moving and they won't bite...not as much.'
He's so proud Nick remembered that. And he hates that his CSI needs to remember that, that he hasn't already been rescued, that time is running out. Warrick has already determined the fan will only run so much longer, and now they have the added factor of the ant venom. Too much of that will kill Nick, just like too many wasp stings would.
Ant venom. If he can just get one good picture….
It takes 20 heart-breaking, agonizing minutes, but finally, an ant crawls across the screen and he manages to screenshot it, freezing it in place. And finally, finally, there is something he can do, because he's an entomologist. He studies bugs, and an ant...is a bug.
He tears through his books at a speed he'd find reprehensible at any other time, and within a quarter of an hour, he has it. Fire ant. Unusual in Nevada. They've narrowed the search.
30 minutes later it comes together, they have a location, and every man still in the building mobilizes. Even Ecklie is with them, tie loose and jacket undone, looking ready to grab a shovel with the best of them.
Searching the nursery is agonizing. The minutes are counting down on Warrick's watch, and they still have to dig. Adrenaline pounds through his blood, and fear as well. Catherine's shout is the best thing he's ever heard.
'I found it! I found him!'
He doesn't dig. Warrick and Greg are already in there, throwing out shovels of dirt like men possessed. His age makes him slower, a little weaker. He needs to have his hands free, to think, in case an emergency occurs.
Greg trades with an officer when he gets winded. Warrick doesn't even slow down, digging like everything in his life depends on getting to Nick. And just as the alarm goes off (Out of Time, Out of Time, Too Late) he hits something hard.
The dirt swipes aside to reveal Nick on the edge of breaking, gun under his chin. Warrick is the one who screams for him to stop, to put it down, to let it go, but he's certainly not the only one who feels like screaming.
And then Curtis calls with the information about the Semtex. Explosives. What it means.
Emergency indeed. He hasn't come this far to lose Nick now. He's already making plans even before he closes the phone.
Semtex on the bottom. Most likely pressure plate. So...maintain the pressure. And move fast. Very fast.
He summons an earth-mover to dig up dirt roughly equal to Nick's weight, then summons Warrick out of the hole.
And that's the last straw. Nick, inside his transparent prison, seems to go mad, screaming and crying and pounding on the lid.
Calling his name doesn't work. Calling him by rank is worse. And finally, in a fit of desperation, he resorts to a name he heard Nick's father use, watching the live feed in the station.
'Poncho! Poncho, look at me! Look at me; are you looking at me? See my hand? Put your hand there, put it next to my hand...'
This...this is the moment when he dies inside. Looking at his shaking CSI, calling him by a childhood name, like he's his father (he's never felt less worthy to be anyone's father or mentor). Watching Nick press one bloody, bitten, swollen hand against the transparent surface on the other side. Watching his CSI breathe and nod.
They've already killed the ants with the fire extinguisher. That's a small mercy. But there's no denying that this moment breaks his heart. Shatters it into pieces every bit as sharp as the fragments of Plexiglass he can see in Nick's prison.
He keeps speaking in calm, soothing tones because he has to, because he's the only lifeline Nick has, and he can't...he doesn't dare give way to his emotions now. One wrong move, and Nick will panic. And then he'll probably die. But every second is painful, heartbreaking.
'Do you die a little every time you press that button, knowing what kind of hell he's in, and that you are helpless to rescue him from it?'
He didn't then, but he feels like he's dying by inches now.
He keeps speaking, because he has to, because it's all he can do.
'Okay Poncho. I need you to listen carefully to me, okay? We're gonna open the lid now, and I need you to stay still. Stay lying down, okay? We need to be careful. There are explosives under the box, and we need to be very careful or we'll set them off. So, we're going to get enough dirt to equalize the pressure. You understand? We're going to equalize your weight. But until we're ready, I need you to stay still, stay where you are. Can you do that for me?'
He's long since stopped believing in religion, a lapsed Catholic, but God help him, it's all he can do not to break into shudders himself, watching Nick nod. The sheer courage his CSI is showing...he'd need a heart of stone and the soul of a complete sociopath to feel nothing. It takes everything he has to keep his voice and his hand steady.
He and Warrick pull open the lid. He doesn't bother to scold Warrick for climbing back into the hole after he specifically told him to leave. He knows Warrick needs to see Nick alive, needs the desperate clamp of hands between them. Nick needs it too. He leaves Warrick to comfort Nick as he fastens the D-ring and it's heavy rescue rope at Nick's waist. This isn't going to be pleasant for his CSI, and he knows it, but it's almost over.
And then it's time to climb out, get ready for the maneuver that will get Nick out without blowing him up (hopefully). Nick's whimper as he and Warrick leave tears at his gut. He's glad he hasn't eaten recently. He'd probably be nauseous.
He's second on the rope, right behind Warrick, as they prepare to pull Nick free. Everyone else lines up behind them. Catherine, Greg, Brass, even Ecklie sheds his jacket and takes hold.
The dirt goes in, and he tries not to imagine the nightmare feeling, how terrified Nick must be. Nearly twenty-four hours trapped underground, and now he's truly being buried alive.
He's not the only one who feels it, if the way Warrick seizes the rope and wrenches back is any indication. The rest of them heave back along with the CSI, and Nick comes flying out of the shallow grave like he's been launched from a cannon.
It's lucky they pull so hard, because apparently it wasn't enough dirt. A muffled boom and a shower of earth are enough to prove that.
At another time, he might be curious as to how much dirt it would take to equal Nick's mass. Right now though, he couldn't care less. All he cares about is the young man lying face-down in the dirt, coughing roughly and whimpering through cracked lips into the soil.
Nick is alive. Safe. He'll recover. He believes that, as he watches them load the young CSI, now mercifully unconscious, into an ambulance. The Stokes will meet them at the hospital. He doesn't say a word as Catherine and Warrick jump in beside Nick, taking his hands as they sit. Catherine and Warrick have been his team, his partners, for the last several months, and this is their right. Their place.
He senses Ecklie's presence at his back. He's grateful to him, in a way. As much as they clash, Ecklie went to bat for them. He ran media interference while they neglected other cases to search for Nick. He went before the City Council to request the ransom. He went to the Sheriff for the same. He really did try.
Knowing that isn't enough. If Ecklie hadn't broken up his team, he'd have made sure Nick had a partner. They'd have been better prepared. He knows it. Ecklie knows it. He can sense Conrad's guilt, and his gratitude over everything the man tried to do isn't enough to stop him from playing on that guilt.
'I want my guys back.'
He knows Ecklie will agree. Which is good, because he never wants to feel like this again. Dying inside, praying he can save his CSI, his team, from a worse fate.
He doesn't want his team to feel the way they have for the past twenty hours.
Warrick, who probably was dying a little every time they pressed the button, who is drowning in guilt that Nick was in there instead of him. Warrick, who kept time and must have frozen a little more in his soul with every minute of the past 90 that they searched, knowing Nick was running out of time.
Catherine, who went to the one man in Las Vegas she truly despises and almost loves all at once. Her father, Sam Braun. Went to him and asked him, as a daughter, for the money to save Nick. Because she couldn't and wouldn't do anything else. He and she are the only ones who will ever know the truth of it, but it says a lot about her state of mind that she could, and would, do what she has done. A deal with the devil, made for love of a teammate.
Greg, who spent hours and hours analyzing, running errands, trying to keep himself and everyone else sane.
Sarah, who chased lead after lead after lead, hunting down all the little clues. Who talked to Walter Gordon's daughter and found the final pieces of the puzzle to lead them to Nick. Who hasn't slept in over a day and probably won't for a while, imagining everything that could have gone wrong, and how Nick must have felt.
Archie, chasing the video footage every time they tripped the camera, working tirelessly for the entire period Nick was missing. There are bags under the technician's eyes and he looks like he needs a weeks worth of sleep, but worst is the look of anguish in his eyes. All that effort, and he feels like he failed, because he couldn't trace the signal. Too randomly directed.
And Nick. Trapped and terrified, thinking he was going to die alone in a transparent coffin, no one knowing where to find him. Fighting to breathe, fighting not to panic. Losing hope and finding the will to survive anyway so many times. He's not even sure how often Nick must have despaired, there in his underground prison. They didn't see the first few hours, after all.
None of them should feel this way. And he's determined that none of them ever will again.
Even if the effort breaks his heart. Even if it kills him.
Author's Note: Watching the end of Season 5, and this just tackled me. No escape.