Okay, awesomely fun (a.k.a. angsty) chapter.  Grissom practices for upcoming events.

Like I said, we're winding down, so consider this YOUR rehearsal, too!

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Chapter Sixteen: A Tragedy in Three Acts, and a Fourth

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Grissom rehearsed for upcoming events in his mind.

Act One: The Death.

He got the call a few minutes past midnight.  The phone was on his bedside table, a slim manila set that shook and rang its way into his dreams.  He found it, pulled it towards his ear, and groggily answered by saying his own name.  The voice, disembodied, queried as to whether or not he was the same Grissom who had signed Greg Sanders's papers at West Palms.

"Yes."  His stomach knotted.  His throat felt dry and hurtful, like he'd swallowed sandpaper and ground glass.  He wanted to hope; to believe that his wake-up call had been Greg's, too; but something about the gravity of that anonymous voice made him uneasy.

"Greg Sanders passed away twelve minutes ago."  A beat, as if the speaker was waiting for a reaction.  A denial, maybe.  A hoarse, muttered curse.  Grissom gave nothing.  "I'm very sorry."

Grissom gripped the phone cord between his fingers and struggled to say anything at all, then:

He stood in the funeral parlor with a painfully composed Nick, walking through a forest of coffins open to display velvet or silk liners.  Nick looked strained and pale, and sometimes he would swallow compulsively and give a hideous grin.  Smiling, Grissom remembered, suppressed the gag reflex.  He wanted to say something to Nick, who was so obviously trying hard to be composed.  A good, fast, messy breakdown would probably have been more emotionally helpful and healing for Nick than that terrible, relentless self-control.  But Grissom wasn't born to communicate, so he stayed silent.

"What one, do you think?" Nick asked.

They all looked shiny, expensive, and serene.  Greg would have hated them.

They needed a tie-dyed liner and brighter colors.  Maybe a coffin the color of a fire-truck, or one of glistening chrome, somehow both gaudy and magnificent, like Greg himself.  Fluorescent lights.  He was having trouble breathing.  He stabbed his finger at random into the air.

"That one."

It was a lighter wood, lined in sky blue silk.  It was atrocious.  He hated it.

He shakily wrote a check to the funeral director.  His blue fountain pen was low on ink, and it took several scribbles before it would produce a jerky version of his signature.  The director, like a magician at the beginning of his act, made the check vanish.  He reeled off a line of questions.

Would they want Greg dressed in a suit?

Nick's self-control slipped slightly as he answered, but Grissom didn't think he even noticed, judging by his unfailing grin-grimace.  No, Nick said, they would not have Greg dressed in a suit, it would look ridiculous, and Greg had probably never worn a fucking suit in his entire life.

"We'll pick something out," Grissom said.

The funeral director stared at Nick for a moment, but apparently he had seen stranger displays of grief, because he quickly picked up the thread of conversation and continued, shooting his questions at Grissom.

He answered them effortlessly.  Yes, he would be covering all the expenses.  Yes, the local burial place would suffice.  He scheduled the viewing and the gathering, afterwards, at Catherine's house.  She was probably the only one with enough groceries stocked up to pull off the gruesome feat of entertaining mourning guests.  Of course, some of them would bring their own supplies - - at his father's funeral, Grissom remembered people lining up to hand out casseroles and homemade pies.  It was bizarre.  He didn't plan to bring anything.

"Did the deceased have any religious beliefs?"

Grissom didn't know, and judging by his absent look, Nick was either equally clueless, or had drifted off and was no longer listening.

"I don't know."

"Would you like a nondenominational service, then?"

"I don't know," he said again, and then decided, "Yes.  That will be fine.  What else?"

"There's the matter of the eulogy - - "

This had been discussed.

"Me," Nick said, snapping back to the present.  His dark eyes were intensely focused, and there was almost too much feeling in them.  Nick was filling the room with his grief.  Grissom wanted, suddenly, to be elsewhere.  "I'm doing it."

The director gave him another dubious look as if to indicate that this choice might not be wise.

"An inscription?"

That was something he hadn't considered.  Did they choose the traditional - - Gone Too Soon?  Beloved by Friends?  Did they lie and include Beloved Son?  Did he want the truth emblazoned on the stone forever - - Stolen and Wanted Back?  Unfairly Punished?  Here Lies Gregory Sanders, Who Would Have Hated Being Called That, 1975-2004, He Didn't Deserve to Go Out Like This and Everyone He Left Behind is Extremely Sorrowful and Pissed That He Did?  One Miracle Wasn't Enough?

What sentiment did you put on the grave of a man that was only a boy?

Here Lies Greggo, Master of His Domain, Grissom thought, and nearly laughed.

He went with the first.  "Gone too soon," he said, and the director nodded, relieved.

"A good choice," the man said, then:

Grissom had been just drunk enough to get through the funeral and not drunk enough to resist getting into a fight with Nathan Sanders.  At first, they had traded curt words in the soft, artificially green field near Greg's headstone, but that had somehow changed when Grissom had seen Catherine and Sara standing near the stone, oblivious to the testosterone display going on behind them, and he had seen Sara turn, her face streaked with tears, and Nathan had smiled.

"God grant he lie still," Nathan had said nastily.

And there had suddenly been a flurry of fists, and Grissom hadn't hit anyone in years, but his hands remembered how and he was trying so hard to get at Nathan and there was the sudden blockage of Nick and Warrick, holding him back after only one hit to Nathan, bruising the tanned, country club skin surrounding his right eye.

Nathan had taken one extra look at Grissom and must have seen something that made him back down, because he was muttering to himself, and then he took his leave.  Warrick and Nick cautiously released him.

He said to Warrick, "You're crying."

"Am I?"

Then:

He had told himself that he wasn't going to bring anything, but he somehow found himself standing at Catherine's door, holding a sticky bakery tray of brownies.  They were covered in sugary chocolate frosting.  She answered and waved him in.  She must have put on fresh make-up after getting back to the house, but her mascara had already started to run again.  It wasn't sobbing, or he didn't think so, but just a steady, consistent trickle of tears.

"Gil."  She was hugging him, almost squashing the brownies, which he pulled aside and just in time, and he surprised himself when he hugged her back, almost pulling her into him like he needed to cling to someone or die himself.

"What a mess, Catherine," he said, once they released each other.

She gave a choked laugh.  "Yeah, I know.  All these people.  And they keep talking about him, like we did in the car, and I'm going crazy listening to it.  You know what I keep coming back to - - the only thing that makes me feel a little okay?"

"What?"

"We got the bastard," she said, and it was a hard-edged grin on her face, her jaw clenched tight.  "Less than a hundred days after the shooting - - we've got Trey Robertson for murder and Melissa Sharpe for conspiracy."

"Does it help?"

"Not as much as I'd like."  She closed the door behind him and he held up the tray.

"I brought brownies."

She laughed, and cried, and it sounded and looked the same, then:

Three days into work, and Grissom found himself revising the tenets of grief.  Now that he understood it, he thought he might finally know the right thing to say to the mourners that he saw day in and day out.  "I'm sorry for your loss" became "I'm sorry that you're lost," because that was how he felt, cut adrift, unsure of what to do or how to move forward in a newer, colder world, then:

"Are you going to hire a new DNA tech soon?"

How very much a question Director Covallo would ask.

"Yes," he said.  "Soon," then:

A year - - standing at the stone in the grass that would never be covered by the snow that Greg had wanted one Christmas, the grass that was immortal in a way that Greg had somehow failed to be, and reading the inscription again: Gone Too Soon.  A bundle of white roses were resting against the bottom, and he didn't know who'd done that, whether it had been Nick, Sara, Catherine, Warrick, or someone else entirely.

Someone would take the flowers away when they started to die.  It was a neat cemetery.  Nothing dead there but the people.

Grissom closed his eyes.  He thought about telling Greg - - or what was left of Greg - - that the boy had finally driven him again to some semblance of religion - - that he had gone to Mass, confessed, and prayed for both Greg's soul and a miracle - - that somehow, the clock would be turned back and he would never have given Greg the night off, never, ever, ever let Greg out of his sight again, if that was what it would take.  But no miracle had come.

"You were the better," he said.  "The better of the two of us.  I don't know why it went this way."

They had put him in a box.  Bright, brilliant, buoyant Greg, rotting away in a box.  They had shut him away in the dark, under the ground, and Grissom had signed the checks and selected the coffin.  All the murderers he'd had to let get away.  All the things he'd done and the people he hurt, and what he was most worried about having to answer to was shutting Greg away in a wooden box.

It hurt.

He'd explored those options enough.  That was one road, but he knew now where it led, and if that was the course - - if that happened - - he'd be somehow prepared for it.  He guided the Tahoe seamlessly into more traffic.

Act Two: The Sleep.

Greg didn't wake and didn't die.  He slept, instead, as if he had no idea that there were people waiting for him.  He slept so long and so intently that the doctors claimed his bed and sent him to Haven View, where the machines were better, the care was more sympathetic, and there was a total absence of hope.  Grissom continued to pay the bills for Haven View as he had paid the bills for the hospital - - they weren't as much as he'd suspected, and his supervisor's salary amply supported it.  Nathan Sanders left after a few more bitter confrontations, and headed back home.  No one was unhappy to see him go.

They hired a new DNA tech and no one was sure how to act.  They settled for treating him like any other lab tech, but occasionally, some coldness must have shown, because he quit soon after, saying that he was resented.  They hired another and were more careful about appearances.  That one didn't leave.  He didn't have Greg's spark or Greg's enthusiasm, but that was more than acceptable, because they didn't want a substitute for the one they'd lost.

Weeks.  Months.  Years.  No one could visit as often as they liked.

Six years after the flexible bullet, Grissom visited Greg at Haven View again.  It was Christmas, and the staff knew him well.  He was as regular as clockwork about his holiday visits.  He was ushered into the room and he sat down in the worn chair by Greg's bed.  No one spiked his hair anymore.  He was still thin, but no longer wiry - - he looked emaciated, instead, as if the coma was eating him.  Grissom understood: muscle deterioration.

"We make them into saints, you know," he said to Greg.  "The people who don't die and don't live.  We revise them and erase them until they're saints, lingering on like Sleeping Beauties in their towers."

And he'd done it, too.  He was sure that he must have been upset with Greg at some time, but he could no longer remember it.  Any irritating personality traits, any way they'd clashed had faded from him, leaving nothing behind but the good - - a cardboard cut-out of perfection that he'd lost.

"You made great coffee," he said, but he could not longer recall the brand.

Six years in a coma.  He'd known Greg sleeping longer than he'd known him awake.

All of the specifics were gone.  Greg liked punk rock.  He didn't remember the bands.  Greg had a hundred hairstyles a year.  He couldn't picture them.  Greg could never settle for the standard way of delivering information.  He couldn't think of an example.

And had Greg really wanted fieldwork, or had that been in his head?

He sat there for a long time, thinking about saints and sinners, and after a while, he stood and left.  He hadn't cried.

"Merry Christmas."

But he had forgotten that Greg disliked Christmas in Vegas, and even if he'd remembered, as he had two years ago, he would not have been able to recall why.

He lingered in the doorway.  "People forget," he said.  "They forget the things they've lost - - and I never had a chance to grieve for you."

Nothing left to say.

Grissom shuddered and turned from those thoughts.  He resurfaced.  Catherine had turned the radio on and a lonesome country station was crying about love.  A third stage set itself up in his mind, and the rehearsal began again.

Act Three: The Survival

"I know that our preliminary evaluation found no signs of brain damage," Brenner said.  "But we feel that Sanders has regressed.  He shows the mental equivalency of - - oh, a five-year-old.  He's able to perform simple tasks and communicate on a basic level, but he has the thoughts of a child right now."

Grissom listened numbly.

"Will it go away?" he asked, and hastily added, "And don't lie to me.  We're colleagues."

"No," Brenner said.  "The chances are astronomical.  Grissom - - it's a miracle that Sanders is alive at all.  The miracle that he woke up - - that's compounded.  You ought to be thankful."

"I'm not."

"I understand that," Brenner said quietly.  "I do."

"You don't.  But that's fine.  So what happens now?"

Brenner peered at his file.  "You're listed as the contact for Greg Sanders, since you're the one paying the bills.  There are - - organizations for this sort of problem.  Institutions.  He certainly won't be capable of taking care of himself all the time.  But - -"

"But - - some of the time?"

"Sometimes, yes.  If instructed, he can learn how to make elementary food items.  Sandwiches.  Pre-prepared lunches."

"So he could look out for himself, then, for hours at a time, as long as he was properly instructed on what to do in someone's absence."

"Grissom - - I know you."  Brenner's dark eyes looked fatally serious.  Grissom thought that they begged for a diagnosis.  "You're lonely.  I can understand that.  You're a workaholic.  I can understand that, too.  This boy affected you.  All right.  I get it.  But you are in no way capable of caring for Greg Sanders.  Not with the schedule you keep."

It had been the pronouncement he'd feared.  He stayed the reaction, hoping to baffle the doctor.  "I don't exactly have a busy social life."

"I'm talking about your work, Grissom."  Brenner refused to miss his point.  "You're a good man - - and you've done a lot for this kid - - but I can't sign you off to care for Sanders when I'm not certain - - at all certain -  that you can."

Brenner turned to leave, as if that bleak proclamation was the last thing he had to say on the matter, but Grissom HAD done a lot for Greg, Greg HAD affected him, he would be damned if he let Brenner sign Greg into some institution where the kid would get regulated affection along with regulated meals.  He grabbed Brenner's sleeve, hard.

"Listen.  Give me a chance.  Sign me up for temporary care.  A month.  A week.  However long or short you want, and if Greg is fine - - then let me keep him."

"This isn't a project, Grissom," Brenner said tentatively.  "He's not an experiment."

"Don't you think I know that?"

"He's also not some means to an end for you to be a martyr.  He thinks like a child, now, and you better have a damn good way of explaining it to him if you lose him after a month.  He remembers you.  You're attached.  He'll love you to death if you give him a chance - - he's a child, now.  You have to be responsible for him.  He's not your penance."

"I know that."

"So tell me why.  Tell me why and if it's a good enough reason - - and the truth - - I'll sign the papers.  Preliminary.  A month."

Why?

He thought about telling Brenner, curtly, "I don't do 'why,'" but just as he opened his mouth, he realized that there would be no faster way for him to lose any chance at taking Greg home.

"Because - - he didn't deserve this."

Brenner nodded, then:

"This is home?" Greg said, looking around with interest.

Grissom tightened a hand on his shoulder.  "Yeah.  This is home."

"My room?"

He led Greg to the guest room - - a small little one next to his that he had never had any use for before.  "We'll get it painted," he heard himself promising.  "Bright colors.  You'd like that?"

"Yeah."  Greg was smiling at him, and Grissom felt, for a moment, that everything would be all right, that this was just some kind of a joke, but he realized the flaw of that grin - - that it was too open, too bright, too innocent to belong on the face of an adult, then:

He came home to Greg coloring.

"Did you eat?"

"Peanut butter and jelly."

"Good boy," Grissom said reassuringly.  Greg was always nervous about whether or not he'd done the right things will Grissom was gone.  "Shower?"

Greg crosses his arms, dropping the crayon.  "Don't wanna."

"Have to."

"No."  Greg shook his head stubbornly.

Grissom thought he might be crying - - because this was GREG, Greg who danced with evidentiary hats on his head, Greg who screamed rock lyrics at the top of his lungs, Greg who found the DNA if there was DNA to be found, Greg who was fast and friendly and bright and Greg who was now sitting on his floor, with eyes like a child, saying that he wasn't going to get in the tub because he didn't need a bath.  He took a bath yesterday.  And oh God, it never should have had to be like this.

He said, harshly, "They'll take you away from me."

Greg's anger and stubbornness faded out momentarily in favor of confusion and curiosity.  "Who?"

"The doctors.  I have a month to prove that I can take care of you, and if I can't, then they'll take you away.  They'll send you to a different place."

"Nick?"

"Not Nick."

"Catherine?"

"No, Greg.  No one familiar.  No one you know."

Greg looked suddenly teary.  He gripped the crayon tightly.  "Wanna stay with you."

"I want you to stay here, too."

"Home."

"Yes."

He said, sniffling, "I'll go take a bath now, if you want."  He stood, awkwardly tall, a child in a young man's body, lanky limbs and unnaturally bright eyes.  He had to pass Grissom on his way to the bathroom, and he said, "Don't make me go away, Grissom.  Please."  His shoulders were shaking. "I don't wanna leave."

"Never," he promised.

Greg hugged him abruptly, pressing into him with the smells of Crayola and clean cotton.  Peanut butter.  Out-of-place aftershave, because he had carefully taught Greg the art of using a razor.  He rubbed his tears into Grissom's shoulder.

"Not gonna make me go?"

"No.  I promise."

Greg smiled at him, that golden, innocent smile, but he still looked shaky and there were tears clinging to his eyelashes.  "And not gonna let them take me away?"

"I won't."

"Good."  Another tight squeeze.  "I love you, Grissom."

"I love you too, Greggo."

Greg grinned again - - the nickname was his favorite.

Grissom closed his eyes as Greg disappeared into the bathroom, and told himself that he had only gotten angry to help Greg.  He told himself that he had been cruel to be kind.  And even if it had been anything more - - even if it had been borne of irritation and desperation rather than a motivated, understood cause - - what he had told the young man was the truth.  He wouldn't let anyone take Greg away from him.

A promise was a promise.

Grissom came from those thoughts smiling through a glazed-over sadness.  He - - he could believe in that, maybe.  He could maybe even call it a happy ending - - but that was only one card out of the deck of possibilities the third act offered.  Brain damage didn't necessarily mean that he would have an innocent, childlike Greg on his hands.  It could mean retardation.  It could mean paralysis.  It could mean . . . just about anything.


The fourth act, though, had one ending, and one ending only.  It was also the shortest, because he didn't have to walk very far into it to understand.

Act Four: The Life

Greg stirred gently, his eyes parting to reveal a view of dark brown eyes.  He made a gentle groan against the light, and rolled over, yanking an IV with him.  His eyes opening again, he must have seen them standing there, arrayed out at the foot of his bed.

"I'll have the results out soon," he said irritably, and went back to sleep.

Or he would have, had he not been shaken awake again by eager hands, and a bright shaft of light had gone through Grissom entirely, leaving him woozy and thankful, and in almost a prayer, he thought: Awake.  He's awake.

He's fine.

Someone called for the doctor, but the prognosis was complete: life.  Complete.  Whole.

A smile broke out over his face.

But could he really believe in that?

"Catherine, do you believe in happy endings?" he asked.  They were only a few blocks from the lab, and she seemed surprised that he was starting a conversation.

"Yes," she said firmly.

"Always?"

"No, not always, Gil, don't be an ass.  We both know that it isn't always.  But sometimes - - sometimes, it happens."

"Greg?"

"I hope so," she said tightly.  "I hope so."