DISCLAIMER: Same old. Not mine.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Response to a "Mea Culpa" post-ep challenge at the nicksara livejournal community.
It's not long before working the swing shift begins to pale on Nick. Something's lacking; obviously it's something that graveyard had and swing doesn't, but he can't put his finger on what's missing. There are so many other things grating on him, but nothing that really explains it.
Catherine's a fairly good supervisor, and at first he's relieved to put some distance between himself and Grissom's all-seeing eye. There's not the same self-imposed pressure to live up to Grissom's murky and undefined standards. Nick and Warrick and Catherine work well together, even if there's some weird tension between Catherine and Warrick he doesn't want to think about too much. It's nicer than he'd expected to actually start work with the sun still shining - he feels a little more like part of the human race this way.
There may be three shifts, but there are only two lots of lab techs. It takes some getting used to, handing something to Jennie Ryan from the day shift and getting it back from Hodges on graveyard. The coroners vary depending on what time the body's brought in, and really, sometimes it feels like working two separate shifts at once. It's a little disorienting, and he'd expected it to be exciting.
One ordinary Wednesday afternoon Catherine sends him out to work a rape and murder. One of the benefits of this swing shift is the increase he's had in solo cases, but he's also finding it a drawback. There's no one to bounce ideas off, no one to share the experience, this exact experience, with.
That's not his problem, either.
Rapes, murders - those sorts of cases never get any easier. Nick sets to work, methodical, as detached as he can be. He's still disturbed by the case, creeped out by the sheer violence human beings are capable of producing. It makes him sick, not in his stomach but in his heart and mind.
It's while working this case that he first begins to realise what's bothering him about working the swing shift, and it's the people he left behind. He's missing Greg's CSI training, and he feels like a father missing his son's first steps. He and Greg are friends, they still talk, but it's not the same as being there. It's a vaguely paternalistic feeling and it bothers him, because it reminds him of the way Grissom acts towards him. He misses Grissom too, because even with all the pressure that comes from working under a man like that, he's still aware that Grissom taught him most of what he knows, that it's because of Grissom that his job is what it is.
That's not quite what his problem is.
Working the rape case he realises he misses Sara, more than he'd imagined he would. He'd never really even thought about Sara; he'd thought about Grissom and Greg, when he'd made this change. Sara is Sara, a workaholic enigma.
Nick's getting jaded, and he knows it. His job is making him cynical. Somehow he needs Sara to keep him balanced, because Sara has such a vocal loathing for the crimes they face. She might be dodgy if you try to discuss her personal life, but she's straight up when it comes to crime, victims, and perpetrators. She's passionate, and it makes him look at cases in a new light, to escape from feigned detachment into admitted reality. Being with Sara, somehow, gives him the right not to be detached. He can keep his emotions in better check than she can - he's not likely to let them get the upper hand over science and professionalism - but he feels better about his handling of the case if he cares about the victim, rather than the crime itself. That's what Sara does, he realises. Nick sees rape and murder. Sara sees a victim.
The revelation so blows him away that he retreats to the break room for coffee. He sits there at the table, trying to figure out what, if anything, all this means, and swirls the coffee around in his cup. It's not drinkable, the coffee. He's tempted to raid Greg's secret stash, but that would involve getting up and he's too tired and too caught up in his thoughts to do that.
Nick doesn't work out what to do about his revelation that night, nor for months following. He just keeps remembering Sara, and one day he figures it out at last.
THE END