Author's Note: OK. I'm leaving tomorrow. Here's your last chapter for maybe a few days. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for all your reviews and stuff! You guys rock, seriously!


Greg didn't even remember falling asleep, as was becoming habit for him, but he woke up with a cat purring heavily on his chest and a patchy, matted tail beneath his nose. He coughed, disturbing Liver, who meowed bitterly at this rude awakening. His claws tore into Greg's shirt and the human flinched as the sharp points poked into the skin of his chest, but did nothing as the cat used him as a scratching post before leaping onto the ground and slinking under the table, where he turned around and blinked up from the shadows with his eerily dual-colored eyes.

He meowed again, and this was a sound Greg was learning to recognize. Liver was hungry.

Stretching, Greg swung his legs over the side of the couch and made his way lethargically over to the kitchen. He was in the process of pulling the wet cat food out from the fridge when he froze, memories of conversations he'd had when he was high pouring back into his mind like floodwaters. Groaning, he closed his eyes and rested his head against the door to the freezer before closing the fridge door and going to the counter to prepare Liver's breakfast. The cat, never one to miss an opportunity, was weaving in between Greg's legs and meowing constantly.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's comin'," Greg muttered as he scooped the remaining half out onto a bowl of dry food and tried to think of what he would do about Nick and... Oh no, Sara...

He groaned again at his idiocy and the odd conversation he half-remembered having with Sara. "Oh Jesus..." he murmured, running a hand through his own matted fur. "I need to do some major damage control..."

He set Liver's meal down on the floor, and the cat pounced on it as if it were a mouse, before striding out to the living room, where he searched tediously for his phone. He walked back into the kitchen and stared at Liver with his hands on his hips. "I don't suppose you know where my cell phone is, do you?"

The cat continued to eat and Greg rolled his eyes and was about to turn around when Liver looked up, but the feline wasn't looking at Greg. He followed his cat's gaze to the kitchen table where his phone rested quietly. He looked back at Liver, who was already eating again.

"I bet you're some sort of reincarnated Buddhist wise man or something..." Greg mumbled to himself before striding to the table and picking up his phone. He scrolled through recent calls and was disappointed to see that his suspicions were confirmed. He had called Sara the night before.

Falling into the chair with a sigh, he called the number again and leaned his head on his hand as it rang a few times. Finally, she answered.

"Sara Sidle."

"Now, you see, if you'd answered your phone that way last night, we would have had a much clearer conversation," said Greg.

He heard a loud sigh on the other end of the phone, but when she spoke again it was with a smile in her tone. "Good morning, Greg, and welcome back to the land of the sober."

"Right," Greg muttered, annoyed with her already. Why was everyone annoying him lately? "It's not like you've never attempted an... an escape."

"Escape from what?" she asked curiously.

"What else but the mundane mediocrity that has become my life?" Greg returned, banging his head on the table and resting it there. "I am so tired of everything that is... me."

He heard her emit a contemptuous "Hmph." She took a breath, and then, "So what's going on in your life that it's spurred you to indulge in carcinogens?"

"Carcinogens?" Greg blinked. "I hadn't even thought of that..."

"Well?" Sara pressed. "Answer the question."

"Do you s'pose if I smoke pot, spray hairspray, stand by microwaves and eat my steaks very well done it'll help me die faster? I mean, I already dye my hair, there are carcinogens in that, too..."

"You want to die, Greg?" She sounded curious, but also cautious. Greg wasn't sure if she was putting on the casual façade to put him at ease, or if she really was taking this in a lighthearted manner.

"No, I don't want to die," Greg admitted, and it was the truth. "Least of all by cancer, I mean, damn, talk about a slow death. Nah, if I wanted to die I wouldn't use cancer."

"So, you're not smoking pot to kill yourself. Accepted. Then why are you?"

"For the obvious reason I already gave you," replied Greg, irritably. "To escape from my boring life."

"Your life is boring?"

"It always has been since you left, Sara, didn't you know?" He said it with a smile to flatter her, but there was a hint of mockery to his tone that he hadn't meant to include.

"Hm..." She paused, thoughtfully. "What about Nick?"

"What about Nick?" Greg asked quickly.

"Did he come over last night?"

"Shit, so you did send him, thank you for that," Greg said snidely.

"Don't be touchy, Greg, I had no idea how high you were, or why, and you mentioned his name and I... I thought maybe he would be better to deal with you than Grissom."

Greg frowned. "I... I said his name?" He didn't remember that.

"Yes, yes you did," Sara replied, matter-of-factly.

Greg held his breath. "Well... wha-what did I say?"

"What do you think you said?" Sara returned enigmatically.

Greg laughed. "Aw, see, you don't know anything."

"I know something's up with you and Nick, so please, enlighten me."

He wanted to tell her. He wanted to pour all of his secrets into her like jewels into a coin purse and then seal her lips with a smile and tell her to never mention it again. But he knew better than that. If he told her about Nick, she would urge him to confess his undying love in a poem or a balcony serenade ala Cyrano de Bergerac. If he told her about the Valium, she would ask why. If he told her he thought he might be addicted, she'd urge him to get help. If he told her he didn't want to, she would tell Nick. He had no doubt she would tell Nick. Because though he trusted Sara with his life, he knew that if one of the secrets he told her threatened that same aforesaid life, she would betray his trust in order to do what she thought would save said life. But Greg wondered if the life he had shared with Sara, before her exit, was the same life he had now. Indeed, Greg even wondered if his life was the same as it was only three months ago, before he had begun his self-regulated Valium regimen. And Greg wondered if it was a life worth saving anymore.

"Greg? Are you there?"

"Huh? Yeah, just... thinking."

"OK... I was worried you'd smoked up again." She was laughing, but it seemed forced.

"How do you feel?" Greg asked. "About... me smoking pot."

She hesitated. "Is it a regular thing?"

"No," he replied, honestly.

"Well then, I suppose... there are worse things you could do..."

It was Greg's turn to hesitate. "Right, so... you think it's OK?"

"Sparingly, marijuana is believed to have... a number of health benefits, actually," said Sara, impartially. "In large quantities it may be a cause of memory problems later in life, and retardation of reflexes, not to mention the cancer—"

"OK, right, yeah, I'm a chemist, I know what marijuana does. Could do, actually. Those tests are inconclusive. It's like... alcohol is good, unless you become an alcoholic."

"Right," Sara said. "So long as you understand."

So marijuana wasn't an issue to Sara. He wondered... "Hypothetically speaking, if... a person with anxiety and stress, a, um... a doctor, who knows stuff, right, self-prescribes some medication which could possibly be addictive... Now, it's unethical, sure, but do you think it's necessarily a—"

"There are reasons why we have laws against doctors and self-prescriptions," said Sara immediately. "Of course it's stupid on the doctor's part. He may think he knows what's good for himself, but we're always a biased judge about that, aren't we? We put too much stock in our own knowledge, and too much weight on our wants, without taking the time to think if medication or... or leaving somewhere you call home, for example, is... is really the best thing for us. What the doctor has done is not only unethical, but unhealthy. He should discuss it with another doctor, if he really feels he needs the medication... Is this related to a case?"

"Yeah..." said Greg, absently. "Yeah, a, uh, case."

"Oh." She was quiet for a moment. "How are you handling your cases?"

"Pretty well..." Something occurred to Greg. "What do you mean leaving home?"

"It was a hypothetical," she replied flatly.

Greg's brow furrowed. "Oh... Yeah, right, a hypothetical..."

There was a heavily pregnant pause, which eventually gave birth to an awkward goodbye.

"Look, I, uh, need to call Nick. We didn't leave on good terms yesterday..."

"Oh. OK, yeah, sure, of course. Call him. But don't forget to call me, too, every now and then."

"Yes... of course... bye." And he hung up, dropping the phone onto the table as if it had burned him.

He looked up at Liver, who had finished his meal and had taken to watching Greg in that peculiar way of his.

"What?" Greg demanded of the cat. "I'll call him. Just... give me a second... He's just finishing up his shift anyway. I don't want to bother him..."

The cat continued to stare, and Greg saw his own insecurities reflected in Liver's cloudy eye.

"OK, fine, you win," Greg grumbled and picked up his phone again, his nerves shaking as it rang.

"Stokes," greeted a solid Texan voice.

"Hey..." Greg began, awkwardly. "Listen, I wanted to apologize for last night..."

There was a pause. "Oh... Hey, Greg."

The disappointment in his voice was palpable. "You know, I'm sorry if I freaked you out or whatever yesterday, but it's not a frequent thing, really, and you have no business judging me about it. All that marijuana crap the government feeds you is bullshit anyway, so..."

"So you're an anarchist now?"

Greg couldn't tell from his tone what Nick was thinking and it bothered him. "No, I just..."

"What is this, Greg, the sixties? What are you rebelling against?"

"Nothing!" Greg snapped. "I'm not rebelling against anything, I just needed to relax, that's all."

"Yeah, well, you relaxed yourself right past shift," said Nick.

"I don't even think that sentence makes any sense," Greg replied, although his muddled mind wasn't sure what did and didn't make sense anymore.

Nick sighed. "The point is, Greg, that there is a time and there is a place for everything..." He hesitated. "Look, something's going on with you, man, I can tell. You've been... withdrawn. Distracted at work, irritable, and Molly said that you found some Diazepam at a scene and you didn't even tell me about it? We're supposed to be working together here, Greg."

Shivers danced across Greg's skin at the mention of his drug of choice. His head was beginning to throb again and he felt his irritability level rise. "I know, I mean, I'm sorry, I got confused, the Diazepam, it was for another case, she... she confused me, OK?" And then, it just slipped out, bitterly, accusingly, and he couldn't take it back. "What do you see in her, anyway?"

There was a pause. "What?"

"In that girl, the lab tech, that blonde, that—that—fuck, I don't remember her name—"

"Molly, Greg, her name is Molly Hart."

"Oh wow, doesn't she sound like a wholesome hometown girl? That's why you like her, isn't it, because she's Southern?"

"What?!" Nick exclaimed again, this time more baffled than anything else. "Greg, what are you talking about?"

"OK, she's cute, I'll give you that," said Greg, reluctantly. Now that he opened the floodgates, he couldn't stop it, and the headache that had taken up residence in his skull was cheering him on. "Kinda sweet, too, I noticed how she tries to relate to everyone she meets in some odd way... But it didn't work. I mean, she's just... too much, she's... like, it's like she's... I dunno, she's too sweet, actually, you know, like when you were a kid and you ate too many pixie sticks?"

"OK, so you don't like her," said Nick. "What's your point?"

"Why do you like her is my point," Greg replied. "Why? Why?!"

"Calm down!" Nick cried. "What's the matter with you?"

"You won't answer my question," Greg returned, a bead of sweat trickling down the side of his forehead, his headache dancing around inside of his skull, prodding the part of his brain right above his left eye with a very long and sharp stick. "Why do you like her?"

"Because I like damn near just about everyone, Greg!" Nick returned. "Hell, I even like you, despite how crazy you've been acting lately! What's your problem? Why are you—" He seemed to catch himself, gathered his wits, then continued in a harsh whisper. "Why are you smoking pot, Greg? Are you drinkin', too? Is this gonna be a problem, Greg, because you've come into work with bloodshot eyes before, and Molly said that you're worried about memory loss—"

"Molly said this and Molly said that!" Greg interjected. "You sure do spend a lot of time talking to Molly!"

"We were talking about you!" Nick yelled. "Greg, even a total stranger could tell that something is wrong with you. Won't you please tell me what it is?"

Greg was trembling fiercely by now, so badly that his phone was knocking against his ear. He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath, staring at the ceiling, raking one hand in his hair. "I need to stop this..." he said, mostly to himself. "I need to get out of here."

"What? Greg, where are you going?"

"I don't know yet..." Greg whispered, chills crawling across his clammy skin. "I just..." He closed his eyes and gripped his phone tightly. The lights in his kitchen were too bright. He closed his eyes tightly to save his pupils. "I have to go. I'm sorry, about the marijuana thing, I am, but..." He licked his chapped lips. "It won't interfere with my job."

"So you'll do it again?"

"Jesus, Nick, it's marijuana, not heroin!" Greg growled.

He heard heavy breathing on the other end of the line. "It's not just the marijuana, G. It's... everything. Everything that's wrong with you. I need to know, Greg. Greggo. Please, I need to know."

"Why?" Greg demanded coldly, unable to keep his voice from shaking. "Why do you need to know? Why can't you just leave me alone? Yeah, I have problems, but I have always dealt with them on my own. I don't need you to—"

"But I need you!"

Greg was struck dumb, his breath catching in his throat as his mouth went dry. The interpolation had been sudden, desperate and honest, and every note of it wavered.

There was a moment in which neither one of them spoke, but Greg knew Nick was still on the line because he could hear the change in his breathing. Finally, Nick chose to elaborate, obviously trying very hard to keep calm. "I need... Ever since what happened to Warrick, I've been so... fucking... scared, Greg. And you make me... I don't know, but I can't just stand here and watch you struggle with some invisible demon that I so badly want to see."

Greg pursed his lips, sympathy for his friend finally reaching out a warm finger and sending a static shock to his weary heart. "But you don't have to do that..."

"No, Greg, I really do," Nick insisted. "You don't understand, when Warrick..." Nick held his breath. "He had... these pills. And I knew that something was wrong. But I figured that he was smart enough to deal with it on his own. I asked him about it once. It got... awkward, so we both tried to laugh it off. And I figured he got the message. And I knew the drugs were linked to his odd behavior, his obsession with Gedda, and I... Oh God..." He sniffed. "I can't. I just... I can't talk about this."

Greg was holding his breath, his heart leaping into his throat. "I am... really, really sorry, Nick. About Warrick, about... everything. Really, I am. But you don't have to worry. I have a plan. I'll be OK, I promise. I know what I'm doing." There were those words again.

And the tragedy was, that even though he had said that before, and even though each time, he had been wrong, Nick still trusted him when he said it. "OK, man... OK. If that's what you want... OK. But I'm telling you now. If it doesn't get better, if you keep on like you are... I will find out what's going on with you. The marijuana, the bitterness, the forgetting, the strange women..."

"Woman," Greg corrected quietly. "Just one woman."

"Camellia..." Nick whispered.

Greg sighed. "OK, I get it, I do. And... thanks. For trying. But I won't need your help."

"I really hope that's true, Greg," Nick breathed. "I really do."

"Now, I gotta go..." said Greg slowly. "And you have to let me."

There was another strange pause, and then, "OK, Greg. Goodbye."

As Greg hung up, he noticed he was shaking visibly and swore under his breath. He couldn't afford to take any more pills. He didn't even know how many he had taken the night before, or how long they had kept him under... But he was already experiencing withdrawal symptoms, and it wasn't even eighteen hours later. He looked at Liver, as if his cat would have all the answers.

But he knew someone who did.

Shaking terribly, he seized his phone and dialed a number.

"Yo."

"Cam? It's me. R-Rabbit. I need your help something bad."

Even though he couldn't see her, he knew she was smiling.