DISCLAIMER:Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it.
RATING: T – Teen (language and adult issues)
PAIRINGS: GSR & Yo!Bling pre-established in previous fics of this timeline.
SPOILERS: Sequel to "Displacement" and "Transitions"
SUMMARY: Everything is changing around Nick Stokes. Can he deal with it, and how it will affect him in the end?
A/N: Sorry for the delay in getting this one up, but I had some costuming to get done for the nephews. Hopefully this was worth the wait.
REVIEWS: Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.
Chapter 35
06:45 – 2006.12.15
Outskirts of Lost Gringo Mtn. State Rec. Area: Desmaiseaux Cabin
The ride down the highway was uneventful, and in fact, it had been strangely calming for Nick. The miles clicked by effortlessly, and gave Nick an incredible sense of space that he felt was missing for some time, enabling him to put into perspective much of what had happened in the last couple of weeks. The whine of the road beneath his tires was like a comforting song that brought his mind into focus as he replayed the events of the last couple weeks in his head.
He had been reacting to everything on a purely visceral level up to that point, never taking the time to process anything before responding to it. And while it still bothered him that Sara failed to tell him about the details of her transfer, he knew her explanation was the truth, and she had no control over who would be moving to Graves from the day shift. He knew that Grissom's choice to install Warrick in his place was the right decision, but it was still a huge hit to his ego to know he had never even been in the running. However, he had no one to blame but himself in that regard, because he had been coasting along on auto-pilot for quite a while. He planned to use his time off to try and get a handle on the whole thing and figure out where he was going from there on out.
Nick enjoyed the peaceful ride out to the desert, and used the time to center himself before he met up with the professor. He planned to do everything he could to convince Dr. Desmaiseaux to assist them in the search for their suspect. As he was on his way out of town, Nick remembered that Sandi said there was a whole crew out there, so he stopped at a little donut shop at the outskirts of the city to pick up a couple dozen doughnuts. Nick knew from his own college days that someone showing up with doughnuts was a hero under any circumstances, so this way he knew at least the crew would be happy to see him.
Hazarding a glance at the map he taped down to the gas tank, Nick doubled checked the directions to the cabin site and realized he was within minutes of arrival. With the sun rapidly rising to his left as he traveled south along the road, he checked his watch to make sure his arrival time would not be too late. When he saw that it was still before seven o'clock, he decided to hit the cabin site first, instead of continuing to the research site pull-off.
As he passed the mile marker from the directions, he started to look for the Forest Service road on the map and slowed the bike down to enable a quick turn. When the road suddenly came into view, Nick was ready to make the left turn, but terribly unprepared for the rugged grade of the road. Normally, he would have simply enjoyed the bumps and jumps, but with two dozen rings of sugared bribery riding behind him, he decided to take it easy.
With an opening on the right, Nick caught sight of a grouping of tents and campers long before he saw the cabin. His first indication was that he had happened upon a park campground, but then he saw the base of a tower with several cables running from it. When he looked a little closer, off to the left, tucked into the trees, he spotted a small cabin.
Nick stopped the bike long enough to check his directions when a man in a floppy, tan, wide-brimmed hat came walking towards him. As the man drew closer, Nick recognized the shaggy blonde hair belonging to the professor's field assistant, Boone. He brought the bike down into the clearing and met Boone onsite.
"Dude! You must be a serious glutton for punishment." The young graduate student smiled as he walked up to him.
Nick removed his helmet and gloves, dropping them down onto the seat of the bike. "Yeah, well, I'm told that I'm a slow learner." Nick was doing his best to keep things light.
"Must be, man…" Boone checked out Nick and the bike for any clues. "So, what brings you all the way out here at the crack of dawn?"
Nick pulled off his backpack and set it down next to the helmet on the bike and then reached to undo the box of doughnuts he had strapped down to the back of the bike. "Well, I'm doin' a favor for the lead detective, and throwing myself on my sword to do it." Boone laughed at the obvious joke and waited to learn the truth. "And, I brought a peace offering to get my foot in the proverbial door." Nick handed over the box and waited for Boone to inspect the contents.
"DUDE! You just hit the motherload!" Boone reached into the box, took hold of the wax paper and then picked two of the jelly doughnuts out and handed them to Nick. "Take these with you to the cabin and I'll distribute the rest." Nick gave him a strange look when he took the doughnuts and Boone laughed as he said, "Trust me, man… Those will save your life."
Boone walked Nick up to the porch and when they reached the door he said, "Make sure you give her the doughnuts first, it'll lessen the bite." Nick was about to say something, but not before Boone knocked on the cabin door as he turned and ran back to the site's other inhabitants.
The Doc's voice bellowed from the back of the cabin. "C'mon in!" Nick cautiously poked his head inside the door. He seriously began to think the whole thing was a huge mistake. He should have hit the Ranger Station and been announced, but he honestly thought she would have blown him off if she knew he was on the way. The surprise attack might get him more lumps, but at least he would get some kind of response to take to Brass, instead of a brick wall.
As Nick slowly walked over the wooden floor, he quickly realized the woman was not aware of her visitor's identity, so he decided he should announce his presence. However, once he stood inside the cabin he was shocked at the size of it. From the outside it had looked much smaller, but from inside he deduced that it had to be at least in excess of a thousand square feet of space.
"I'm running late, Boone, so the coffee's not ready yet." Nick followed the sound of her voice and found the kitchen. When he took another step forward he was stopped in his tracks by another sight; the professor standing, with her back turned, in the middle of the kitchen, wearing a tank top. For the first time since David's graphic description of her accident, Nick had a visual frame of reference for her extensive injuries. There were large, purplish patches of skin along her right shoulder and upper arm, an enormous scar from a surgical incision across her shoulder blade and a jagged and deformed scar where it looked like the skin was torn away from her arm. As he stood there in awe of the significance of the damage, she lifted an overshirt onto her shoulders and that was when he noticed the scars that extended up along her neck and disappeared into the hairline that he saw for the first time. She had her hair tied up in one of those bands, and he could also see that her hair was obviously disturbed by scars on her head as well, from the way it was pulled back.
When the timer on the coffee pot went off, Nick struggled with the view in front of him and his breath caught in his throat at the visual proof of her trauma. But the one thing he knew was that he needed to let her know the identity of her visitor, and the only thing that popped into his mind to do was, "That's okay, I've already had my coffee."
He tried not to look directly at her as the professor quickly pulled the shirt tightly around herself and instantly took her hair down in a panic before she turned to face the voice that was obviously not her field assistant. "Where'd you come from?" The tone of her voice was shaky and almost sounded frightened.
"Sorry, Boone sent me in here. I hope it's okay." Nick realized that, not only had he caught her off-guard, but his presence in that vulnerable moment upset her more than he understood.
She fumbled with the shirt and her grasp of the counter when she replied, "Um, yeah. It's ah, fine… What brings you out here?" She practically stuttered her way through the words and her level of comfort in the situation was obviously very low.
"Ah well, actually Captain Brass asked me to talk to you and see if you couldn't um, help us out a little more." Nick fought to keep his focus with the images of her shoulder playing out in his head. "They had a little trouble when they tried to-"
"Yeah, I heard from the rangers that things got a little hairy up there." Nick noticed that she seemed to have gotten her guard back up and it served to make him nervous instead.
"Right…" Nick looked down and noticed that he still had the doughnuts in his hand. "OH! I almost forgot. These are for you." Nick placed the doughnuts down on the counter in front of her, and hoped the peace offering would put them back on the right path.
"Doughnuts?" She gave him a wary look. "Where'd you find doughnuts out here?" Nick thought he saw a glimmer of hope in her question, but he was still on unsteady ground.
"Ah, I stopped and grabbed them from this little place on the way out of Vegas. Sandi told me you had a whole crew out here, so I got a couple dozen." Nick shuffled his feet as he explained.
"And these were the only ones to survive the vultures?"
Nick blushed when he realized she was hinting at something. "Nah, actually Boone liberated those for you. Said they'd keep me alive for dropping in unannounced." When he looked up to smile at her, he had to fight the urge to cringe as he noticed that her hair was no longer covering the right side of her face and he could see the obvious droop in that corner of her mouth.
He knew she had seen the look when her face instantly turned to stone. It was as though a wall had dropped over her expression in that moment. "So, what do you need this time?"
Nick tried to sound confident as he explained the problems they faced. "Well, they lost the ring leader out in the woods after the drop and they couldn't find him with the chopper. They're afraid he's holdup somewhere out there, or that he'll slip past them." He was still unable to find even a hint of softness in the looks she gave him. "This guy is bad news, and he's responsible for bringin' a lot of heroin into the country."
"You have the coordinates where they lost him?" She grabbed her crutch and started for a large table in the center of the main living area. On the table was a series of topographical maps.
Nick tried to keep his emotions off of his face as he followed her over to the table. Once they reached it, he handed her the trail map Brass had given to him. "They lost him 'bout a half mile from that drop site we found."
Dr. Desmaiseaux took the map from him and then reached over for a map roll leaning against the table. She laid out a fresh topographical map, complete with the park trails on it and began to make some notes directly on it. She flipped back and forth from the map with the notes and the one below it. "Do you have anything else that would give me any leads?"
"OH!" Nick dropped his backpack onto the table and dug out the trace report from the suspect they had in custody. "Here's the trace report from the guy we nabbed up there."
She leaned against the stool beside the table and began to look through the report. When she needed to see the next page, she set it down on the table, let her crutch rest against the stool and flipped the page with her left hand.
Nick stood by in agonizing silence as she slowly and painfully leafed through the report. When she reached for her crutch to rise, Nick thought his brain was about to explode in anguishing anticipation, but she only made a few more notes on the map.
After what felt like an eternity, she rolled up the map with the one good hand and gave it to Nick with a shove toward the center of his chest as she said, "I've marked off the place to find your guy. Just remember that there are some caves in that area, so be prepared for a fight."
She limped over to a walkie talkie sitting by the front door and called, "Boone."
"Go ahead."
"I'm sending you out on babysitting duty in the back nine. So, make sure Sawyer is ready to handle the crew today."
"Copy that, Doc."
Nick watched intently as Dr. Desmaiseaux crossed the room with a bit of difficulty, to a short-wave radio that sat on a cabinet. "RJD-Niner to Ranger Control… RJD-Niner to Ranger Control, come in Ranger Control."
"Hey Rox! What's the word?"
"Hey Danny, can you put in a call to the LVPD guys and the State troopers to meet C.S.I. Stokes at the trailhead, please?" Nick was distracted from what she was saying by the fact that her crutch was dangling from her left arm as she held the transmitter of the radio. His rapt attention was on that crutch as it swayed back and forth. Each tick it made in its rhythm made him more and more aware of her disabilities.
"Ten-four, Rox … What's brewin this time?"
"Got a twenty on the suspect… Tell those guys to come loaded for bear, and get the boys over at the U.S.G.S. to deliver the carts."
"Hey Rox … Any chance we can get in on that action?" The professor laughed at the question.
Still under the spell of the crutch, Nick absently said, "If they got more of them carts, it might not be a bad idea if they got anybody that's armed."
She shrugged at his suggestion and then spoke into the transmitter again, "Dan, Stokes is saying to break out the guns and carts and head on out there, buddy."
"Roger that, Rox! Consider it done… Over and out." It was obvious the ranger on the other end of the radio was thrilled at the chance that Nick was providing them.
The Doc shook her head as she turned around and said, "Well, that got you more points than the doughnuts." When she finished turning around she caught sight of Nick and suddenly realized what he was staring at and her entire expression went from stone to fury in an instant.
She turned on a dime and made her way straight back to the kitchen, as she called out over her shoulder, "Take the map, you'll need it… Thanks for the doughnuts and enjoy your trip."
Nick looked down into his hand at the map, and suddenly felt like he had just been dismissed by the queen. That understanding started bringing his anger back to a boil. He felt as though he was being punished for something he did not understand, yet again, and he had finally reached his limit for the rudeness he was going to take by that point.
"Is that it?"
Her curt response was all he received. "Excuse me?"
"Is that it? You just walk away and dismiss me like one of your students, dependent on your whims, and that's it." Nick had no idea where it had come from, but the ire was there and he had reached his fill of her attitude.
She turned and fixed him with a steely glare when she said, "I wasn't aware there was anything else required of me by the people of Nevada."
"Fine, then can you tell me exactly what it is about me that seems to turn you into a raging…" Nick chewed back the word. No matter how angry he was, he just could not bring himself to call a woman by that word. "Why is it you feel the need to treat me like dirt all the time?"
"I don't have the time to treat you like anything, Mr. Stokes. And I certainly don't have the inclination to waste any of my time placating your ego with useless pleasantries. I have done my job, I have done my duty, and now that my usefulness in your endeavor is over, I see no reason to entertain you further." She was grinding her teeth as she spoke through her clenched jaw.
While Nick was angry, her last statement confused him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that I take no joy from being anyone's sideshow attraction, and I try very hard to limit the time I spend with people repulsed by physical appearances. At the same time, I don't feel particularly friendly toward anyone uncomfortable with how I look or act. So, no Mr. Stokes, I don't feel a need to treat you like anything, because that's what you are to me; nothing." She turned again and began to walk away from him as quickly as her crutch could carry her.
As he opened his mouth to respond to her accusations, Boone popped his head in the door, "Yo Boss Lady! The natives are gettin' restless out here without their coffee…" Boone noticed Nick at the door and said. "Hey Nick, you ready?" The sandy haired man smiled at Nick, but it was short lived when he saw the look on his face. "Everything okay in here?"
Nick shook off the feelings of rage, shock and frustration, and tucked his chin down to hide the rest as he brushed past Boone when he walked out of the door. "It's fine… Let's go."