Title: Awake
Author: solitary echo
Summary: Post Assume Nothing. Greg relishes in his on the field experience, then finds out that the lab will be getting two new criminalists. One being him but one being...OC ALERT! GS/OC, GG/SS, NS/OC, WB/OC.
Author's Note: To my Fanfiction.net readers, since I know I'll get at least one of those, I decided to change my screen name. This is Lizi Belle 0019.
To my efanfiction.net and fandomination.net readers, which I don't know if I'll get any of...this doesn't mean my story(ies) that I have up now will stop. I just wanna write a CSI story, too.
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone except Remedy McGuire and Christi Davis.

Prologue: Old Gripe, New Life

Greg Sanders looked down at his shaking hands and groaned. 'It'll stop,' Grissom had said. Every time Greg looked at his hands, he wanted to drop an anvil on them. Maybe that would stop the shaking. The thought of that, as he looked at his hands in that moment, seemed to make them shake even more. He tore his mind from that realization, clenched his fists for a second, then reopened his hands and continued past the stop sign and down the street to his apartment. The case he'd just finished was horrible. It was almost like nothing he'd seen before. Seeing the human body so mangled was something that any human being would be sick about.

Greg had yet to develop the immunity that his coworkers, Gil Grissom, Catherine Willows, Nick Stokes, Sara Sidle, Christi Davis and Warrick Brown had to seeing it, so he was still grossed out. Especially seeing a woman's mutilated body hung from the rafters of the house was something Greg never thought he'd erase from his memory. The last time he'd been this squeamish about blood, he'd felt like an idiot. But this time, he'd been assured that he was fine, and that he wasn't a bad criminalist just because of that. Seeing dead bodies was something that took time getting used to--time Greg hadn't quite put in yet. He breathed out a deep sigh and went up the stairs, into his apartment. He'd only just recently been promoted from the DNA lab to work on the field after finding a key piece of evidence in a serial murder, so he still had a lot to prove.

Soon, he wouldn't be the rookie anymore, though. Soon, he wouldn't be the new kid. The Las Vegas Crime Lab was getting yet another criminalist, and this girl was from way up in Maine. Chances are, up there she didn't see half of the messed up things he saw in Vegas. She must have been worth something as a criminalist, though, so he wouldn't pass judgement on her just yet. It'd still be another night before he met her, and then he'd think what he wanted to think of her...when he saw he face-to-face. He wondered how old she was. All he knew was that her name was Remedy McGuire and hers was the most qualified application that Grissom, the supervisor of the night shift, received.

Maybe she'd be his age. Maybe she'd be into his loud music, into his sense of style, into more of the things that he was into, rather than condescending him for them. Then again, maybe she'd be his age and sort of preppy. Maybe she'd think he was a loser and rally to get him fired. Maybe she'd be the stereotypical blonde bitch...the type that always rejected him in high school. Or, on the other hand, maybe she was the day shift supervisor, Conrad Ecklie's age and the same as him. Then Greg would have a heart attack. He'd prefer a blonde bitch to an Ecklie clone. But Grissom wouldn't hire an Ecklie clone. One Ecklie was bad enough. Two might just push Greg to his breaking point.

If she was older, he hoped she was like Catherine...patient and understanding. She may have been patient and understanding, but Catherine was also a small part of the reason that Greg was in such bad shape. She was a half of the reason that the lab he used to work in exploded, that his hands wouldn't stop shaking, that he felt that his world was crashing down around him constantly. But he hated thinking of that. It brought him back to the day that it happened, and the memory of that terrified him. He sighed, put his keys on the coffee table and sat down on the couch to watch TV before he went to bed.

~~

Remedy's eyes filled with the radiant glow of the Las Vegas lights. This definitely wasn't what she was used to, having grown up in Maine and gone to college in New Hampshire, but it was definitely an amazing sight. She watched the lights go by her car as she approached her new apartment. It was incredible. She'd never seen anything like it in her life. She smiled slightly and watched as she passed a casino. She remembered reading in her forensic problem solving class, about Doral Phieffer, a nationally acclaimed poker player, passing away in that casino in the middle of a poker game. Death by chocolate...she remembered. She shook her head. Las Vegas was home to almost all of the strange scenarios in that class.

She remembered reading about a bus veering off the road, and the Las Vegas Crime Lab being led back to Sean Nolan, and him having used chloroform...and having to figure out how he'd sent a bus off using chloroform. She was the first one in her class to get it right, too. Remedy McGuire's interview, application and degrees were the only of the out of state applicants that Gil Grissom seemed to have any interest in. Partially because her credentials were so amazing, any supervisor of a crime lab would have to be out of his mind to turn her down. She specialized in anthropological, psychological, DNA and audio-visual evidence, but she could manage with anything. She graduated at the top of her class from New Hampshire State University and she was only twenty-five.

She knew that working at the Las Vegas Crime Lab would be a challenge, but it was a challenge she could definitely take. She was a smart woman and she was strong. She could take anything that was thrown at her. She pulled into the parking lot of her apartment building and grinned. It was a small building, but she didn't need much room at all. It was only going to be her and her two cats, Punky and Kitty Vicious, so she only needed a small apartment. She walked up the stairs, carrying her pet carrying case, with both of her cats in it, and opened the door to her apartment. This was the first page in a brand new chapter of her life, and she was writing with the brightest ink around...

~~

One devotion to an empty moment. Can't you stay tonight?
Silence broken with words unspoken. Now she's on her knees (no more)
"Feeling so useless, can I beg for one more?" she said.
Taking with arms wide open. Longing for sleep again.
The air is clearing. Again, we're breathing.
Water turns to wine. The day is tired, the night inside her.
Now she is alive. No more feeling so useless.
Can I beg for one more she said. Taking with arms wide open. Longing for sleep again.
But now, I'm awake. But now, I'm awake...
Keep breathing, 'til you feel something, take my breath away! [Repeat 5x]
No more feeling so useless. Can I beg for one more she said.
Taking with arms wide open. Longing for sleep again. But now, I'm awake.
Awake - Finch