Disclaimer: I own absolutely NOTHING… makes me wanna cry… :D
Written for/Submitted to The Ultimate FanFic challenge: community(dot)livejournal(dot)com/fanfic100/
My LDT Link: krysnel-nicavis(dot)livejournal(dot)com/875(dot)html
Title: Wrong
Fandom: CSI
Characters: Nightshift CSI's
Prompt: #82 – If
Word Count: 598
Rating: T (Some violence, minor coarse language, and/or minor suggestive adult themes..)
Summary: What if everything had gone wrong?
Author's Notes: based on some of the "What if" questions posted on the CSI Forum "CSI Couples". (Spoilers for the following episodes: 1.01, 1.02, 1.07, 1.13, 3.15, 5.21, 7.04, 7.07)
As I sit in the transport bus I think back and wonder when it all started going wrong. If I had to pick an exact moment, I would have to say it was when Warrick was shot while shadowing the then rookie CSI Holly Gribbs. Gribbs was shot also, but Warrick had died on the operating table not long after Sara Sidle had arrived to do the internal investigation. Gribbs pulled through.
Not that long after Warrick died, while in the middle of one of the biggest cases the lab had seen in a long time Catherine was put under investigation by Child Services. Her ex-husband Eddie had claimed their daughter Lindsay was being neglected by her mother. Catherine lost the case and lost custody of Lindsay.
They say evil comes in threes. Almost immediately after that Nick was suspected in the murder of a prostitute. DNA evidence placed him at the scene before the time of death. There was never any evidence found to contradict the evidence that pointed at Nick being the offender. A court of law found him guilty of the murder and he was given a sentence of twenty-five years to life imprisonment for a crime none of those on the nightshift believed he committed.
About two years later, Catherine received an out-of-the-blue phone call from Eddie's cell. She was in the middle of processing a scene and wasn't able to answer the phone in time. The following day it was discovered that Eddie's car had veered off the road into a flooded drainage ditch (1). Lindsay had been trapped inside and drowned, Eddie's body was found farther into the drain, a bullet wound in his stomach.
A few years after that, I passed my last proficiency and became an official CSI – a triumph that was quickly followed by immense tragedy. While investigating a murder in a mental hospital, Sara was attacked by an inmate. The inmate had sliced open her throat with a piece of broken pottery. Following her death we all got the shock of our lives. Gil Grissom, a man whose history was a complete mystery, admitted to the gruesome murder of four teenagers that occurred long before I'd even started working at the lab in Las Vegas. Following the confession, he was sentenced to the death penalty. Last I heard he'd still on death row.
That was almost two years ago. I am currently on route to what is to become my new home: a maximum security penitentiary not too far from Vegas. My crime? The murder of a young man named Demetrius James. A coroner's inquest was held to determine whether my actions that night – actions which saved a man's life and endangered my own – were justifiable, excusable, or criminal. They were found criminal. The trial that occurred not long later awarded me a life sentence with no chance of parole.
I'm brought out of my thoughts as the transport comes to a stop inside the gates surrounding the prison. I don't bother looking around as we're ushered in and prepped for our stay. I move robotically when told to and am led to my cell, which I will be sharing with another inmate. I'm staring at nothing as the bars slam shut behind me and I hear my new cellmate move into a sitting position on the top bunk.
"Well you're certainly the last person I expected to see here, Greggo," says a distantly familiar southern drawl that I hadn't heard in almost six years. I gaze up at the wry grin of my former colleague.
"Hey, Nick."
- 30 -
Footnotes:
(1) A drainage ditch/canal to channel the water. (Thanks tanzensiemit on livejournal for this info – I originally had it as a sewage drain because I couldn't remember what it was.)
chapter updated: December 25, 2007