A/N: Thanks to happyharper13 and Blatantly Jennifer for the reviews!

Warnings: Slash. Angst.

Disclaimer: CSI belongs to CBS and Bruckheimer Productions, not me.

All the King's Horses
2.

It's strange, isn't it, how someone can have such a profound effect on me when I don't even know his name. Sure it is. One of those "laugh or cry" things, and I've never been much for tears. Even after I forgot how to laugh, I never chose "cry."

And I'm going to break my promise, and mention Nick, because I want you to know why it ended, how it ended, and then we'll go back to the first moment I saw the boy.

I forgot how to laugh. I forgot how to be me. And Nick—it would have been easier for me if he hadn't understood, but he did. He told me to take all the time I needed, to remember how to be me, and he'd be waiting for me whenever I was ready. Have I told you, yet, how he's fucking perfect? He said he'd help, however he could, even if that meant staying away from me, going to a purely professional relationship.

For two months and seventeen days, I watched the pain in his eyes as I felt myself slipping further away from who I was. And on the last day, I finally told him what had grown abundantly clear.

"I'm sorry, Nicky. I don't think I'll ever be me again. Or maybe 'me' is just someone very different than I used to be."

I watched his heart break when I said the next part, but he has to be free.

"I'm not going be ready for you. I'm sorry. You should find someone else, move on. We both have to move on."

I hope I explained it better in my letter. It's just that when I saw the boy, I knew I'd never be who he'd loved again. Whatever made me me was gone, and it would be cruel to keep him waiting for something that wasn't coming.

Never mind that. Let's start over. From the first pertinent moment. When I saw the boy.

It was my day off. I'd just gotten off shift, and I couldn't bring myself to go back to the apartment Nicky'd never even seen, but I couldn't hang around the lab. You understand, right?

Of course you don't. I don't. I threw away the best part of my life, and I'm only telling you this so you'll understand where my head was at when I drove out to Lake Mead.

What? I like going there to think. It's peaceful and quiet and I've got my iPod for music, so it's perfect.

Where was I? Oh, yeah.

So it was my day off and I went up to Lake Mead, just to get away from the city for a while. I was at this little cove I found about a month ago, where I didn't have any Nick moments to remember, and that's where I saw him. The boy.

You'd think, what with being a CSI and everything, that I'd be used to seeing dead bodies. And I am. It makes me sick, thinking about what I've gotten used to, so I don't think about it but that doesn't make it any less true.

If I'd come across the boy at a crime scene (you know what I mean, like when I was on the job and sent out to a crime scene) I would have been fine. It wasn't even a gruesome body, he was just… dead, gone. Empty. I remember his eyes were open, and there was this look in them that was familiar, hauntingly familiar.

I called dispatch, told them what was up, and then sat on the hood of my car and waited. I guess I could have started processing the scene, but I had just worked a double and it was my day off, and I was pretty sure I had just made a big mistake with Nick but keeping him waiting for me wouldn't have been any better and then there's that part of me that was just horrified to find myself watching a dead boy and obsessing over Nick, like the boy wasn't a person anymore just because he was…

Maybe it was a severely delayed reaction, you know? Like, I didn't throw up at my first autopsy, didn't even feel sick, so I had to now. Not throw up, just… I felt sick. Sickened. By the fact that people could do this, any of it, any of the things we've seen, and how could someone do this to a kid? Just a teen, and he's empty and his eyes were starting to disturb me and I was shaking. And it's just so wrong seeing it here, out at the lake where it's supposed to be beautiful and I'm not working, and it's wrong that I can't smile anymore and it's wrong that I let Nick go (but it's right for him, I have to believe that) and when did my whole existence become something that's wrong?

I couldn't tell you how long I sat there. It took a while for someone from dayshift to get there. Bunch of slackers. I gave a statement (basically "I came out to the lake and found a body. We done here?") and let them take shoe prints, and finger prints ("Just to exclude you, Sanders." My ass. First to find the body, first suspect, and they should really know better than to use that line on a CSI) and I let them take a DNA sample, and I went back to my apartment to try to sleep.

A couple hours later, and I was still lying there awake, still seeing the boy's face and his eyes, and it hits me: his eyes were dead. My eyes look dead, every time I look in a mirror; the fire's gone from me and there isn't even a spark left to rekindle it, and I couldn't stand it anymore. So I wrote a letter to Nick, but that's private and I don't really want to tell you what I wrote. Talk to him, if you care so much. And I called Sara.

Why Sara? Well, she's the only person I really wanted to say goodbye to. Warrick and Catherine, they're friends, but we've never really been close. Grissom is the boss, and kind of stupid when it comes to the more emotional issues. I mean, just look at how long it took him to get his act together with Sara, and she's beautiful and completely in love with him. She accepts him just as he is, just as Nicky's always done for me.

Nicky. I wish I'd called him. Just to say sorry, and goodbye. Writing the letter was cowardly. But, I'd spoken with him during our shift, and I'd written everything I really wanted—no, needed him to know in that stupid letter.

I wish I could take it all back.