A/N: Not much to say. This is, like the last story, odd in a way. Slightly angsty, but I hope that you like it regardless. As always, comments are much loved :)
Emily
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Las Vegas could be a world of its own, at least when the sun goes down. The lights come on, and what seemed so innocuous by day is turned into an unearthly sight. The streets that seemed like every other city street in America becomes a place where ghouls and goblins come out, dressed in the guise of adults looking for fun.
In many ways, Las Vegas at nights almost resembles the lawless streets of the Parisian underworld in the 19th century. Whores and thieves rule the streets, and fights are common. The respectable people go in, and the peasants come out. Children, whose parents are off drunk somewhere, or are gambling their lives away, run wild, ruling the streets much like the Paris gamin of the 1800s.
Of course, a brilliant but lonely man, walking these streets mindlessly, made all these observations. There are times that the brain grabs onto anything to compare its surroundings to, as farfetched as it might be. The mind struggles to find comfort in the surrounding area by comparing said area to a place from a novel, or from long ago, thus allowing it to escape its surroundings for a time being. That lonely mind, often trying to hide from an inevitable event that will soon occur, will not allow itself to look upon reality; rather, it will convince itself that things are not what they seem.
This is, at least, what Gil Grissom thought as he wondered through the Las Vegas streets. Though night, the bright neon lights illuminated the walks, casting a bright light over the city. Around him, people went about their business, their voices indistinguishable from one another. It had become a habit of sorts for him, walking along the streets, so corrupted and filled with sin. Perhaps not a habit-for he had only been back in Vegas for three days. Rather, it was a distraction, taking his mind off the sole reason that he had returned to this dirty place, and taking his mind off what he knew he needed to do.
If he were to be perfectly honest with himself, he would admit that perhaps there was another reason for his nightly walks through this city of sin. He might admit that, however unlikely he knew it to be, he was hoping to see her amongst the streets, an angel of hope wading through the valley of sin. Of course, Gil Grissom was a man of science, and men of science do not allow themselves to imagine such fanciful events. He relied on reason, much as she did. For as many know, science and reason often go hand in hand.
Granted, he was here, back in Vegas. And though he would never admit it to himself, if he were purely logical, he would not have come back to see her. Because coming back was following his heart, and allowing the thought of her falling back to him to enter his mind.
Still, Gil Grissom didn't think about that.
"Sir! You look down on yer luck!" A street vender pursued him, grabbing at his arm, steering him towards one of the many vending carts lining the streets. Grissom followed, reserving his strength for later events that he knew would occur.
"Thank you, but I do not want…" The vender smiled, a gold tooth glinting in the bright lights. A shadow fell across his rat-like face; his small beady eyes alight with the prospect of money.
He reminded Grissom of a greedy innkeeper.
"Come on man! Take a look 'ere. We got shirts and hats. Come on, buy somethin' to impress the ladies." The man held up a shirt, and Grissom allowed himself to examine it.
'I came, I gambled, I lost,' is what it read.
Grissom got an eerie feeling that it was an omen of things to come. He pulled away and quickly walked off, the rough voice of the vender following him: "Yer gonna get it, man!" Grissom sped up, but halted as he collided with someone.
"Watch where you're goin'!" A woman in fishnet stockings glared at him as she steadied herself on her stilettos. Her harsh expression changed, and she smiled in a way that made Grissom feel dirty.
"You look mighty sad. I know something that could pick you up." The insinuation was obvious, and the woman grinned. Grissom shuddered; she was missing her two front teeth. He managed to say no, and once again hurried away.
Grissom hailed a cab, climbing into the back, away from the driver.
"Location." He gave the directions to the familiar place, and they were off. Grissom's stomach flopped, and his mind raced. Several times, he thought about telling the cabby to stop, but each time, he remembered the beady-eyed vender, and the whore with her front teeth missing, and he stayed quiet.
"Sir…" He looked up; lost in thought, he hadn't realized that the cab had stopped. He slowly raised himself and opened the door. With slightly shaking hands, he handed the driver his money, which was eagerly received. The driver took off, leaving Grissom standing in front of the familiar lab, the place he walked out of three years ago, the place that held the woman he walked away from three years ago.
There is a certain hum unique to fluorescent lights. Often, it cannot be heard, but when one is lonely, the hum is amplified. It surrounds you, the sound deafening, cloaking the air with disparity.
Gil Grissom knew this feeling all too well, and was not surprised to be met with the cruel sound, reminding him once again of his mistakes. The air was heavy with death, hope utterly absent from the large building. His footsteps echoed as his shoes hit the cheap flooring.
"May I help you?" The receptionist, eyes tired, face taunt, looked at him; another down man, another visitor. Nothing worth noting. He was acutely aware of her impatience as he struggled for words.
There are times when we are saved from one thing, only to find that our rescuer will force us into another situation that we have no desire to be in. A death of a close friend will rescue a person from an office meeting; a call saying your parents have been in an accident will be the saving grace for a bad date. In Grissom's case, the appearance of Catherine Willows was the savior that extricated him from an awkward encounter with a receptionist.
Some may call it fate, some may call it irony. Some may call it divine intervention, other call it luck, and still others think of it merely as an odd coincidence. Be that as it may, what happened next was, to say the least, of good fortune for both parties. Catherine walked into the lobby just as Nick was walking into the break room, and just as Gil Grissom was walking through the doors. She stopped short, looking upon the man that had walked out of their lab three years ago. Her eyes narrowed, and her face clouded over. She marched up to the older man, and grabbed him by the arm, not allowing him to voice his thoughts. He did not need to say anything; Catherine too was a logical person, and she knew why he had chosen to show his face once more
"Grissom, are you mad?" he looked taken aback. Seldom do people who have been gone for some time expect such a harsh greeting from an old friend.
"I need to see Sara." He did not need to elaborate, nor had he really needed to state that obvious fact.
"No." It was the way that she said that simple word that got him. It was the finality of the word, the firmness.
The effect that this had on Grissom was not what Catherine had hoped for; rather, it was that of a typical man.
"I don't think that it is your say as to whether or not I see her. Neither she nor I are minors, we do not need permission."
"It is my job to protect the lab, and protect the work that we do. You will compromise the work if you see her. So leave. I don't know what it is that you thought you would get, but regardless of if you obtained it or not, I want you to leave. Leave my lab, leave Vegas." Her harsh words cut through the air, leaving him without words. He could see people looking at the two of them as they stood face to face in the hall. From the break room, Nick Stokes glared at him.
"I am not leaving Vegas."
"Grissom, there are things you don't know. Things have changed. Sara has changed."
"I know…"
"She was devastated when you left her. You didn't even have the courtesy to tell her goodbye. She was miserable."
"And I feel bad about that. I need to tell her that I love her, Catherine. I need the chance, and I need to know that there is no chance for…" Catherine did not want to tell Grissom, she really didn't. She still had some respect for him, for she had been his close friend for many years. It is human nature to want to keep from hurting a fellow human. Still, he needed to know that things had changed indefinitely.
"Gil, Sara is married."
Looking back, his reactions to this were interesting. Grissom's first thought was, oddly enough, 'Who is Sarah?' it took a few moments for the full impact of the words to hit him, and for him to comprehend what had been revealed.
It did make sense-Sara was a beautiful and smart woman, and any man would be happy to have her.
"She married Nick a year and a half ago, Gil. They have a daughter."
It was all starting to make sense. This was why Catherine didn't want him to see her; this was why Nick was so angry over his arrival. Catherine, he realized, was still speaking:
"…you see, Gil, why you can't see her? She has moved on, and so should you." He nodded, or at least he thought he did.
Getting your heart ripped out is an odd feeling, he thought. It was rather like losing control over your body. He seemed to become disconnected to his form, drifting away and watching the conversation unfold from afar.
"I see," was all the empty shell of a man said, or rather, was all it could say.
"I was just leaving." Grissom, in both mind and body, headed towards the door. The body paused briefly in the doorway of the break room. "Congratulations, Nick. She deserves you."
"Stay away from her, Grissom."
It's amazing how long thirty minutes can be sometimes. It had been a mere thirty minutes that Grissom had been sitting on the cold bench outside the lab-he knew this for a fact. Yet, if asked how long it felt, he would not hesitate to answer: "an eternity."
He didn't know what he was waiting for, or whom he was waiting for. Whatever, or whoever it was, he was reasonably sure that he was not going to find it out here of the dirty wooden bench. Footsteps approached, and he raised his head.
Through the dark, a figure came towards him, gradually growing visible in the dim yellow light that streamed from the street lamps.
The white shirt was the first thing he could see of her.
"Grissom. They said you were here. It has been a while."
A thin white top, loosely hugging her slender body.
"Nick warned me that you were here."
A blob of dark brown stained the left breast of the top.
"I don't know what you want."
The stain marred the beauty of it all.
"I've moved on."
It had to be baby food. This revelation left a heavy feeling in his stomach.
"I am in love with Nick."
"Tell me you loved me." He looked up, his eyes wide. "Tell me you loved me," he repeated.
Her mouth opened as she struggled to find the words to respond to his words. "I…"
"Tell me you love me still."
"No." And that was it. There was no room for argument, no room for interpretation. With that simple word, she had said all that she needed to say. In that word, she had destroyed all fantasies, all false illusions that he had ever harbored.
"All right then." He stood up, and walked away, retreating into the darkness.
The Paris whore, the Vegas hooker; the greedy innkeeper, the greedy street vender; the gamin, the Vegas hoodlum; they all have something in common: all are unloved, all fight to survive, living one day at a time. All call the corrupt streets their home, be it the nineteenth century Parisian world or the twenty-first century world of Las Vegas.
Thus, with the lonely, the corrupt, the unloved around him, Grissom trudged on. For at the end of the day, he was, perhaps, just like the whore and the crook-unloved, and living one-day at a time.
A/N: A note about the word gamin. It is a word, though I do not know if it was created by the writer Victor Hugo, or if it is a true French word. I do not know if it translates into anything, for I do not speak French at all. I merely read novels translated from French.
As always, comments much loved!
Emily