Disclaimer - I don't own 'em, don't make money for doing this - what do you think I've got the day job for!
A/N - please review if you are so inclined- silence is an abyss and it's SCARY. Grave Danger woke my need to write and I'm not sure it's done with me yet. I love the stuff that keeps me thinking. I hope you like.
He sprawls now, stretching out to the edges of the bed; or he curls up tight, returning to the womb. He never lies flat on his back anymore, never lets his arms fall at his sideswith closed eyes, it's too much like that unnamed thing, that unnamed place. The day that took Nick Stokes away from him and replaced the friendly, polite, Texan with something else – he has yet to decide what that something was. Curling up under the covers doesn't stop his thoughts from taking him places he doesn't want to go, nothing can do that.
The first time he'd seen an ant in the yard Nick had been relieved that he had been alone. Once he'd been able to get his breathing back under control he'd gone to his kitchen, boiled the kettle and gone on a killing spree. He had stalked the boundaries of his yard searching for ants. It became genocide on a massive scale when he found a small ant's nest hidden away under some bushes. Laying in the semi-darkness Nick could still hear the crackling hiss as the steaming water had decimated the ant's home. "Not even safe in your own home any more." he'd whispered as he went to refill the kettle, but then Nick knew that better than anyone.
He'd been told by Grissom that the fire ants had been the first clue as to where the box (he couldn't use the word coffin) was buried. Grissom had explained to him in that way of his, professor mode, with his head tilted to one side and a slight frown marring his brow that Solenopsis Invicta was not native to the USA; they had arrived in the country by way of a Brazilian cargo ship having stowed away on board. Solenopsis Invicta or Fire Ant was rare in Nevada because they preferred damp soil; it had helped the CSI's narrow down the search parameters. Grissom gave a wry little smile at that point and told Nick that they should be grateful to the ants; they'd saved his life. Fine, Grissom could be grateful he'd boil a kettle.
The first time he'd been bitten by an insect it had taken him back to the torment of a thousand stinging burning needles piercing his skin, it had brought his breath fast and hard in laboured gasps and an hour later he had still been shaking. The calamine lotion he used to ease the itching made him retch; the medicinal smell of it taking him back to days of being smothered in the chalky substance from head to foot, lying in a hospital bed and imagining himself scratching, and scratching, and scratching until his flesh fell from his bones and there were no more stings left to itch and the nurse coming in the room and looking down at him with pity in her eyes, in his imagination she would shake her head and tell him that the itching meant that he was healing and that he shouldn't have scratched.
There were a lot of firsts now – first ant encounter, first insect bite, and the first time back behind the wheel. It was strange how even that had held unknown terrors for him. The glass and metal box was familiar and strange, a threat, an enclosed space, it was yet another box. Hyperventilating and shaking so much he could hardly get the key in the ignition, he'd been so determined, so desperate to prove to the others that he could keep his independence even though he hated to be alone now. He'd started to tag everything that happened as either 'before' or 'after'. B.B. or A.B., that had been Greg's idea, screwed up as it was it had made Nick smile for the first time in a long time.
That conversation had taken place at the hospital. Nick, even under a haze of drugs, was being driven crazy by the itching all over his body. Deep under the skin needles probed and prodded, fire at their tips, giving him no respite, its own kind of Chinese Water Torture. Greg had seen the lines tightened around his eyes, the hand curling and uncurling in their desperation to scratch and had tried with some desperation of his own to distract his friend.
His efforts had been pretty pathetic to start with, but then after Nick had glared at him and called him Greggo, he'd relaxed and started being Greggo again. He'd apologised for acting weird, said it was cos this was 'A.B.' and when Nick had asked what he meant he'd squirmed before explaining that was how he categorised everything that was happening, after Nick's burial in a glass coffin. "Maybe we should call you Snow White," Greg had teased, and Nick had grinned and replied, "So does that make you guys the seven dwarves? Brass is Grumpy, Grissom would have to be Doc, what about Sara?" and they'd spent the rest of Greg's visit deciding which member of the team was which dwarf.
It had given him a little hope and Greg some peace. Nick knew that his friends were having a hard time with what had happened to him, they were still crowding him, always visiting or phoning with some excuse or another. But he knew as well as they did, that they just needed a little reassurance, confirmation that their dreams were nothing more than figments of overwrought imaginations and exhaustion. He'd been surprised to find that everyone in the department had given up their time and sleep without thought of overtime, just for CSI Stokes. He'd expected it of Warrick and Catherine, he'd known that Grissom and the rest of the night shift CSI's would have done everything they could, Archie and Mia hadn't really surprised him, they were good people; but when he'd been told that Hodges had worked just as hard and in fact if it hadn't been for him the whole team would have been blown sky high, Nick felt his world view shift and it made him dizzy.
Ecklie's involvement was even more bewildering, he'd put his neck on the line for Nick. That was what they'd all told him, usually with a puzzled frown on their faces; Nick knew just how they felt. He'd walked in to the Twilight Zone that night and he hadn't escaped it yet.
Ecklie had visited him in the hospital, heck even the Sheriff had made a quick smile and run. It must have been to satisfy the media because Nick hadn't seen an ounce of compassion or sympathy in the man's eyes, just a cornered rabbit's fear of the farmer's gun.
Because of the unusual circumstances the hospital had relaxed their visitation rules, his doctors had thought having his friends and family around as much as possible would help, and it had. Until he'd asked Grissom to tell him how they'd found him and the night shift supervisor had explained what had happened, even describing his feeling of relief when he recognised the fire ant.
Nick had still been slightly dopey from his meds but he was quick enough to ask how Grissom had seen the ant. Grissom had shifted in his chair before answering, as if he had only then realised that Nick wouldn't necessarily like what he was about to hear, but Grissom had understood that for Nick knowledge was control and he needed every ounce of control over the situation that he could get. Unfortunately, this particular morsel wasn't exactly empowering to Nick. He listened as Grissom described the arrival of the package and the message, he'd felt himself slowly turn numb as Grissom described clicking the mouse and seeing Nick's panicked face on the web cam, and when, finally, Grissom had finished his only reaction had been to close his eyes and turn his head – Grissom waited for a few minutes before deciding that a strategic retreat was for the best, but as he stood in the doorway holding the door open he paused and smiled softly down at Nick, whose eyes were still stubbornly closed.
"You've never disappointed me Nicky."
Nick hadn't replied, his eyes had begun to sting as badly as the ant bites and he was too busy losing the battle against the lump in his throat to notice the door close behind Grissom as he left. He was so sick of the tears but they still came.
Nick didn't know what to make of the new improved version of Grissom he was seeing. Grissom showing his compassionate side was rare, Grissom showing it to him? He could hear the Twilight Zone theme playing again.
He'd known that they cared about him, but it had always been an abstract thing, something intangible but there, hovering in the background, a form of white noise. They were all married to their jobs to some degree, some more than others, but this; this wasn't about work, it was about fear, fear of abandonment, fear of separation, fear of failure. They feared that they had failed him and he feared that he would fail them because he was lost, lost to them and lost to himself. He feared that their assurances that he would be 'fine', 'ok' and even as his father told him, 'soon be back in the saddle, son', were wrong, he feared that he couldn't live up to their, or his, expectations.
Fear was a crippling thing.
And he was sick of it.
His parents had left reluctantly, drawn back to Texas by obligations, both work and family, with promises to visit and send his siblings to Vegas to check on him. His mother had cried, clutching him as if she would never see him again, asking him incoherently to come back home, she'd look after him, she'd make everything all right; but she'd lost that power when he was nine years old. He'd hugged her and pushed her away, loving her and needing her to fly away home.
His father had been more in control, but even his voice had broken in his goodbyes, he'd called Nick, 'Poncho', and Nick had called him 'Cisco' and their hug had been brief but heartfelt. For one of the rare times in their relationship love could be freely given and accepted, without expectation or disappointment. But the name, Poncho had echoed in Nick's head, it still did, Grissom's voice calling through the void, pulling him back from his already plummeting fall into the abyss. It was his lifeline in the blackest part of the night, when the others were working and he should be sleeping, when the world had still been tumbling and down wasn't up and up was nowhere at all.
Grissom hadn't used that magical name again, hadn't acknowledged that he even knew it, but that was all right too. Words that held that much power should only rarely be called upon or the magic would fail. Nick feared that if Grissom called him Poncho again his dreams would become reality and he would be sucked into the earth, Warrick's desperate hands unable to hold on to him. His last words a scream, his last sight, green eyes and the stars above.
Nick sighed and turned over onto his other side once more, but the tangled sheets and the stuffiness of his room made him feel as if he were back fighting the box to escape its clutches and he fled from the bed and the bedroom and the house, he went to his last refuge.
When he was unable to sleep at night because it should be day or because he was sick of the nightmares, he often stood barefoot and bare-chested on his lawn, gooseflesh crawling across his arms, and watched the moon sail across the night sky; enjoyed the caress of the light breeze on his skin; listened to the sounds of traffic and rustling leaves; curled his toes into the soft, dew-dampened grass; breathed deep of the night air, sweetened by a neighbour's jasmine and his grass and cooling pavement from beyond the fence. Here he believed that there was a future, here he believed that he could be whole again, here he believed.
The End