This is just one way I'd like to see the cliffhanger of Nick quitting play out next season. Of everyone on the show, I think Sara would have the most pull with Nick.

Warnings for spoilers and language. Enjoy!

He knew who it was knocking at his door without even having to think twice. He was actually surprised the knock hadn't come sooner. He had had a knot in his stomach even since Greg had said the name Jeffrey McKeen, and the knot grew tighter and larger and become more painful as the hours wore on. Listening to Liston at her press conference only made it worse, because he knew things would never get better for long. All of their hard work bringing down McKeen after Warrick was killed apparently did nothing because McKeen had just as much pull on the inside as he did on the outside, making it even harder for them to prove or stop anything. He tried to wash away the knot in his stomach and the lump in his throat with whatever alcohol he could find when he got home, but nothing seemed to be working, and he was soon out of liquor. So there he sat on his couch, head in his hands, listening to the knocking at his door. In the back of his mind he was wondering why it had taken so long for the knocking to come; deep down, he knew something had gone wrong, and the knot pulled tighter at his insides.

"I know you're in there, your car is in the driveway and I heard you phone ringing when I called it."

He wanted to smile at that comment because it was so like her to say something like that. Always a CSI's mind working with her. But he ignored her. The door was locked, she would have to give up and leave sooner or later. But still, he knew she wasn't going to leave. She'd break in through a window if she had to.

But she didn't have to, because seven years ago he had given her a key. She couldn't remember who had brought it up, but they ended up exchanging keys in case anything were to ever happen. It was after he was buied alive. She shivered at that thought as she slid the key into the lock and opened the door. He looked up at her with surprise, then remembered. She had his key, he had hers. He had had Catherine's as well, until she left, and he still had Warrick's on his key ring. Couldn't quite bring himself to get rid of that one just yet.

"You can't quit Nick," Sara said, still holding the door open as if he was going to agree and follow her back to the lab right then and there.

"You quit," he argued. "Four years ago, you quit. Catherine quit. Grissom quit. So who are you to say-"

"Ecklie was shot, and McKeen had someone kidnap DB's granddaughter," Sara interjected. "This is only the beginning of this whole thing, and you're going to sit there and drink and do nothing because you don't think it will matter? Don't you think this is going to matter to DB, and his entire family? She's just a little kid."

The knot had shot up from his stomach and wrapped itself securely around his heart. "You guys can find her without me," Nick replied, his voice and face showing no emotion.

Nick Stokes had been, since the day she met him, the most openly emotional person she had ever known. People told her she wore her emotions on her sleeve, well, Nick wore them in his eyes. He always had. But when she was watching him talk to McKeen, and listening to him talk about the department, his eyes were like stone. The deep brown tint did nothing to add any emotion. His voice was steady, his jaw was set, and his eyes were cold, which wasn't an adjective Sara Sidle ever thought she would use to describe anything pertaining to Nick. And that's what scared her. It was like he was broken, like he had been hurt too many times and to such an intense degree that he couldn't feel anymore or he would crumple under the weight of it all. She was scared because she knew he believed everything he had said to be true, and his lifeless eyes were making her believe it too.

She felt tears stinging her own eyes, hoping it would show some affect on him. "Have you ever quit anything in your entire life? Any sport, or club, anything like that?" she asked, but didn't give him an opportunity to respond because she already knew the answer. "I know damn well you haven't, because that's not who you are. You have always refused to give up, on anything, no matter what. You didn't give up on Cassie McBride, even when everyone was telling you she was dead, including me, and you saved her life. You didn't give up on me when I was out there in that desert, and you found me. Not Catherine, or Greg, or even Grissom. You. You don't quit, you don't give up because it's not who you are Nick."

He shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Gotta start somewhere, right?"

She wished she was close enough to him to that she could hit him, slap him, tackle him, anything to get him to show some form of emotion. She wanted to beat some sense into him, make him say he was sorry and promise to come back and to never, ever mention quitting to her ever again because she knew she would never be able to do this without him.

"This is the most selfish thing I have ever seen anyone do," Sara spat. Selfish; another word at the end of the list of words to describe Nick.

He stood from the couch now, but was still calm, his eyes still cold. "Why are you holding me to a higher standard than anyone else who has quit? You quit Sara. Why was it okay for you and not for me?"

"Because it won't work without you!" she yelled, surprising herself and him as well. "The team has survived without Grissom, even though nobody thought it would, because he taught us, especially you, everything he knew. And that was it, he could leave. Same with Catherine, and same for me. We gave it all we had, and the only reason I came back was because I knew you guys needed help after Warrick died. And do you know why I stayed? I didn't miss the gruesome murders. I didn't miss the helpless victims or their distraught families. I missed you, Nick. You make the whole thing work because you have the best of all of us in you. You have Grissom's knack for solving puzzles, Catherine's determination, Warrick's stubbornness, Greg's sense of humor, my unbridled emotion, and your own heart. Without you, it doesn't work."

"Things change Sara," Nick replied. "People quit, people die. I can't do this anymore, not when nothing will ever actually change. The system can't be changed, there will always be corruption and murder and lies. I don't want to be a part of that anymore."

Sara couldn't believe how frustrated she was and how calm he was remaining. She couldn't see the pain on the inside, however; she was just assuming it wasn't there because he wasn't expressing it on the outside, as he had always done. He was always the one that would calm everybody down in situations like this and say everything would be okay, and she always believed him because he wouldn't give up until everything really was okay. But now he was removing himself from the equation, and she didn't know where that would leave them. Sara was becoming desperate and was running out of ideas. He was easily dismissing everything she said, making her more angry and him more calm. So she thought.

"Warrick never quit," she said softly. "He would have never turned his back on his team."

"I'm not Warrick," Nick said, shaking his head.

Sara nodded. "No, you're not. You're better than he was Nick. I cared about him too, and I miss him like crazy, but he wasn't perfect. He-"

"Didn't deserve to die," Nick interrupted her.

"No," she agreed. "He didn't. But he did nonetheless. McKeen killed him, and now he tried to kill Ecklie, and DB's granddaughter, and I'm sure he'd love a crack at you and even the rest of us just for knowing you. And, what? You're just going to sit this one out? Because you can't handle it anymore?"

Nick scoffed as he shook his head. "Why did you quit Sara? You couldn't handle it anymore either, remember? All of the shit we have to see, you didn't want to see it anymore. After everything that had happened, you had had enough. And you quit. You just left, and I never blamed you. I wish I would have quit sooner. Hell, I should have just fucking killed myself that night in that box."

And that did it. The tears in her eyes finally were too built up, stinging too much, and they overflowed down her pale cheeks. Hearing him say those words with such conviction in his voice and year and years of pain etched on his face made her break. She knew she was no longer just trying to get him to come back to work, she was trying to get him back in general. The guy she had known for so long was now gone, replaced by a look-a-like with stone cold eyes and a broken heart.

"Do you know what that would have accomplished?" she said, her voice weaker than she could ever remember it being. "Your poor parents would have had to bury their youngest child. Warrick would have had to brush that dirt away to watch you pull that trigger. I can guarantee you that if you had died that night, every single one of us would have left Las Vegas and never come back."

"You all did leave," Nick said, the level of his voice rising slightly. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but Grissom's not doing crossword puzzles in the break room anymore. Catherine's not fighting with me over whatever the hell she feels like fighting about at any given moment. Warrick isn't playing video games with me in between shifts anymore. Only you came back. I'm the last one left, that has to count for something. Why does everyone else get to leave but I don't?"

"Where are you going to go Nick?" Sara asked. "Back to Texas? What exactly are you going to do now that you're not a CSI anymore? Because I know you, and I know that you can't possibly be as good at anything as you are at being a CSI. Are you going to go be a CSI somewhere else, with less corruption? What's your game plan?"

Nick shook his head. "I don't have one. I don't care what happens to me right now."

"Do you care what happens to DB's granddaughter?" Sara asked. "Or Ecklie? Or the rest of your team?"

"You know I do."

"Then you can't quit," she stated simply.

"That's not fair," Nick replied, and she could pick up on a hint of emotion starting to come into his eyes and alter his voice. She was getting there.

She threw her hands in the air. "Fair? You want to talk about fair? You know that nothing is ever fair, especially for you. After all the shit that you've been through, this is what finally makes you snap? A corrupt police department? That's not fair Nick. None of this is going to be fair without you on our side. It won't be a fair fight. It isn't fair to begin with, but without you, we almost have no shot at all and you know that."

"I'm not a magician Sara," Nick remarked. "I can't snap my fingers and solve cases. I'm not a better CSI than you, or DB, or Finn, or even Greg or Morgan. I can't find her any easier than you guys can, and I can't figure out who shot Ecklie or who the leak is in the department in any special way nobody else can."

"So you'll just leave us shorthanded then," Sara said. "That will make it easier to figure it all out. Losing one of our best and most experienced CSIs, which will undoubtedly dampen the mood even more, and give McKeen a stronger hand. Is that what you want?"

"No," Nick replied. "That's not what I want. What I want is to be able to go back to that day in the woods so I can kill him. If I had killed him then, none of this would have happened."

"And you'd be in jail."

"So what? I deserve to be. McKeen may have been the one to pull the trigger, but I didn't do much to help matters. My best friend was spiraling out of control, and I did nothing to stop it. I knew I couldn't save him, he almost didn't want to be saved, but if I had known McKeen was going to kill him, I would have went out with him into the alley that night and taken the bullets myself. That would have been fair."

Sara smiled sadly. "This is why you can't quit," she said softly.

Nick shook his head again. "What are you talking about?"

"You always empathize with the victims, and you caught a lot of heat for doing that over the years. But it never stopped you. And when someone you loved became a victim, it didn't cloud your judgment. You were the one who figured out it was McKeen. You had a chance to kill him, and you didn't, and that's why you can't quit. Because nobody else is willing to go through what you do for the victims we have to see every day. No one else is willing to let themselves be torn open time after time, but you are. We can't lose that. We can't lose you Nick."

Nick suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to just run away. He didn't have any particular place in mind of where he'd like to go to, but he felt a strong wave wash over him and his own voice screaming at him inside his head to just run, to anywhere. He had never had a feeling like this before in his life; the closest thing he could equate it to was when he was buried in that box and he wanted so desperately to get out. But he couldn't get out, just like he couldn't run away just then. He physically couldn't move, making it just as impossible for him to escape as it had been that night seven years ago.

He said heavily. Upon exhaling, he felt like he was going to collapse altogether. "What do you want me to say Sara?" he asked, unable to formulate anything else. His mind was racing and the more he thought about things, the less and less they were making any sense to him.

"That you're not going to let him win," Sara stated firmly, her glistening eyes as emotional as his usually was. "We have to stop him. You have to stop him. The system can be changed, and it's people like you that can change it. Liston can get it started, but you are the type of person that can really make a difference because it matters to you. With you quitting, McKeen gets exactly what he wants. If he had had his way, he would have killed you after he had killed Warrick that night, or in the woods that day if he had been lucky enough. But he wasn't. He can be stopped, but not if you're not even willing to try. If after, you still want to quit, then fine. Quit. But not now. Not when you quitting means he wins. You can't let him win Nick."

Nick made no attempt to swallow the lump in his throat, he merely forced the words out from around it. "I don't know how to stop him. I don't know if I can."

"It's worth a shot," Sara replied. She looked down at the floor for a moment, then back up at him, meeting his darkening eyes. "He's going to try and kill you too."

Nick nodded slowly. "I know," he said softly.

"And that doesn't scare you?"

"No," he answered honestly. "Because it won't be him pulling the trigger. He can send someone else after me, and maybe they'll do it, maybe they'll succeed and kill me, but it won't be by his hand."

Sara choked back more tears that threatened to fall. "It doesn't matter who does it!" she exclaimed. "What difference does it make who killed you if you're dead? It doesn't matter if it's McKeen or not."

"Yes it does," Nick replied. "He can't kill me. So he'll never fully win. That much I can control. The rest of it isn't up to me."

Sara walked over to him, crossing the room in a few quick strides. She grabbed his forearms firmly in her hands and looked straight into his eyes. "Yes, it is," she argued. "We can't do this without you. We need you, I need you. Please Nick, don't let him win." She dropped his arms and stepped back slightly. "Warrick wouldn't give up on you. He wouldn't let McKeen or anyone else get away with any of this. If nothing else, do it for him because you know damn well that if he were here, he would be right next to me yelling at you to get your ass back to that lab and stop this son of a bitch from ruining more people's lives."

Of course, she couldn't be more right. And he hated that, hated that she knew exactly what to say to him to make him break. He felt the knots in his stomach and chest shatter, not relieving the pain, but making it more spread out and transforming it into a dull, throbbing ache. There was no way he could sit this one out, no matter how much he wanted to. He had to see this through because he knew if he didn't, he would never be able to forgive himself.

He didn't say anything, but she knew. She got him back. And everything was just beginning.