1Title: Eidola
Fandom: CSI
Characters: Nick Stokes, Greg Sanders Mention of Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom
Prompt: Prompt # 92 Haunted
Word Count: 646
Rating: T
Summary: Nick wakes up from repetitive nightmares about a case he and Sara had a while ago.
Author's Notes: Warning, there are somewhat graphic details about death, and child abuse/killing. If you're not into the really gory stuff, well, then you have been warned. It's not really that gory, but the subject matter (children being brutally killed) may not appeal to all. You have been warned.
I woke up in what felt like a near blind panic. I paused for a moment, trying to gain my bearings, before I realized that I was in my bed, in my room and in my house, not in that house, that house full of blood. I sighed, running my hand through my hair and moving to sit on the edge of my bed.
I had been having this dream for nearly two weeks, almost every night. I kept reliving the case. I guess reliving isn't the right word; haunted would be better.
It had started off with Sara and me arriving at the house Grissom had given us the address for. At first the case seemed to contain nothing out the ordinary, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that would make it different; it just seemed like a routine murder case. Something we'd both done hundreds of times. Nothing could have prepared us for what we found inside.
The first body that we found belonged to the father. He had been shot several times. By the looks of things, the cause of death had been loss of blood. As we went farther into the house we found the mother, decapitated on the stairs.
As we investigated the rest of the house, we found the little boy in his room, beaten to death. He was barely recognizable; there were bruises on bruises. Autopsy later showed that he died from a blow to the skull. I forced my eyes away from the gruesome sight as bile burned in the back of my throat and my stomach twisted painfully. A young innocent boy beaten to death and would never grow up to play baseball, football, or any other sports. He would never experience life. We soon found out that neither would his sister.
The last body that we found was the little girl. She was in her room, across the hall from her brothers, lying crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood with her throat slit open. The look on her face is something I will never forget. It was a look of pure terror. Almost immediately I felt sick to my stomach. The scene wasn't the worst I had ever seen, but how could anyone do that to a little girl? All I remembered was rage. I was so angry at the person who killed these people, especially the children. What kind of sick fuck could do something like this?
My thoughts were interrupted as I felt Greg's arms wrap around my waist as he nuzzled my neck.
"You're having that dream again," he said, as he gently pulled me so I was lying down on the bed again. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked as he curled up against me and laid his head on my shoulder. I paused for a moment and looked at him before I started speaking.
"I just can't understand how people could do something like that, how they could viciously kill little innocent children." I took a breath, trying to gather my thoughts. I knew I needed to get this out, but it was hard to put my thoughts into words. I took another breath before continuing. "I've never understood how people murder innocent children, put them through a horrible, painful death. I..." I trailed off, not know what else to say. I looked down at Greg, and caught his eye. He understood, he understands everything I've said, everything I'm trying to say, and even things I haven't thought about yet. I felt Greg move around on the bed for a moment before I felt his lips gently press against mine.
"It's ok," he whispered, his hand gently caressing my side, gently lulling me to sleep. I knew I wouldn'twake up from nightmares again, not with Greg beside me. I wouldn't be haunted again tonight.