HOUSE OF CARDS

Disclaimer: I know it and you know it. I don't own CSI or anything associated with it.

Nick woke for the third time. He had seen in his dreams a bullet hurtling towards him but had woken, thankfully, before impact. It always happened like that. As he opened his eyes the reality of the night before came rushing back, almost as forceful and awful as his dreams.

He was at Sara's, but the bed was strangely empty. "Sara?" he called, his voice shaking slightly. "Sara?" He cursed himself for the plaintive note in his voice and for the fact that he needed her so much. He checked the clock. Ten am. He got out of bed, put on his boxers and t-shirt and went in search of Sara. It took him all of twenty seconds to assure himself that she wasn't in her apartment at all. Stuck to the fridge with a magnet was a note: 9.30am. Nicky, had to go for a run. I hope you're OK, help yourself to whatever. Love Sara. He took the note off the fridge and ripped it in half. Nick knew Sara's instinct when she was upset was to run for miles, but he still felt abandoned. He needed her. He didn't want to be alone.

Nick went morosely into the living room and put on the Discovery Channel, but it held no distractions for him today. All he could think of was guns and dead bodies, and Sara. He needed her. Didn't she know that?

Someone knocked on the door. Nick jumped, his heart racing with unwanted adrenalin, but it didn't stop him being grateful for the diversion. Catherine. He opened the door.

"Nick! Uh, I was looking for Sara. Hey, are you all right?"

Nick shrugged. "She went for a run," he said, ignoring Catherine's asked and unasked questions. "Come in."

"Thanks."

"Coffee?"

"No. Thanks. Nick, look, I don't know what to say about - about anything. I'm sorry about what happened last night."

"Yeah, well, it happens, doesn't it?" Nick looked away.

"Yeah. Are... are you all right?"

Nick smiled grimly. "I'll cope."

"What about Sara? Is she okay?"

"What do you think?" Catherine wasn't the company Nick had wanted, and her concern grated against raw nerves.

"Well, no. Not Sara. Look, Nick, you and Sara..."

"Yeah."

"Oh. Well, that's... nice..."

"It is." Nick looked away again. "I'm sorry," he said after a few moments, sighing. "I'm not in a very good mood."

"Yeah. I figured. I guess you're entitled."

The sound of the door opening and shutting broke the awkward silence. Sara appeared in her running gear, clutching a water bottle, her hair scraped back into a tight ponytail. She'd obviously been running hard and, it seemed, through eyes blinded by tears. Nick looked her as she halted abruptly in the doorway and some of his resentment disappeared.

"Cath!"

"Yeah. I just came to see if you were all right?"

"Well, you know, aside from the fact that I keep seeing myself killing people..." Sarcasm dissolved into tears and Sara fled. Nick heard a suppressed sob as the bedroom door slammed shut behind her. "We've both got appointments with the counselor today," he said in a half-hearted attempt at a joke. Catherine didn't smile.

"Nick, I - " Catherine obviously stopped saying whatever she had been about to say. "Go and talk to Sara. If you need anything..."

"Yeah. I know."

Nick watched Catherine leave, then gently pushed open the bedroom door. Sara was lying face down on the bed amid the tangled sheets, and though the curtains blocked out most of the light, he could tell she was crying. "Sara..." he said, sitting down on the bed and touching her shoulder. "Hey. It's okay. Sssh. Sar - "

"Go away," she cried, raising her head. Something inside Nick's stomach clenched at the look on her face. "I just want to forget, Nick, I just want to forget, I..."

"Sweetheart - "

"Go away, Nicky. Please. I can't..." Sara buried her head amongst the pillows. Nick felt the muscles in her back tense as she kicked one leg in anger. "Just leave me alone!"

Hurt and bewildered, Nick gathered up his clothes from the floor. "I'll be at home if you want me."

The bedroom door slammed again, and, a few minutes later, the front door. Desperately alone, Nick got into his Denali and prayed that he wouldn't cry until he got home.

At almost the same moment as Nick reached home and unlocked his front door with hands that didn't quite co-operate Catherine had reached the lab. Grissom had an appointment with the Sheriff at eleven and she wanted to be there. Grissom wasn't particularly tactful when he was angry, and antagonizing the Sheriff wasn't likely to sort things out.

It wasn't just Sara's probably rather tenuous position that was bugging her, but Grissom's as well. It was because of Grissom that she had her job, and because of Grissom that she'd kept her job. Holly Gribbs had died because of Warrick's carelessness, Nick didn't always know when to keep his mouth shut, and everything she'd personally done had come back vividly. No one else had blown up the DNA lab, putting Greg in hospital, injuring Sara and Jacqui and several others, destroying thousands of dollars worth of equipment and, worse, crucial evidence for thirteen cases. Mere weeks after that she'd compromised the evidence in that first case against Sam Braun by comparing his DNA to hers. Catherine knew that under any other supervisor she'd have been out on the streets, and that she should have lost her job several times over.

It was a moral dilemma that sometimes perplexed her when she was trying to sleep. Night by night they worked to enforce the law, but she, and the others, and Grissom by his complicity, had undermined rules put in place for a very good reason.

That was why she was accompanying Grissom to the Sheriff. If it was going to come down to it, she wasn't going to let her friend go down alone.

Grissom was in his office, staring fixedly at his tarantula. Catherine poked her head round the door. "Ready to go, Gil? I'll drive," she offered.

"Did you see Sara?" Grissom asked as soon as they'd pulled out of the parking lot. Catherine knew him well enough to catch the suppressed tone in his voice and to understand what had caused it.

"Briefly. She'd been for a run."

"And?"

Catherine contemplated the look on Sara's face. "Not good. At all. But Nick was there, so I left her to him."

"He coping?"

"I don't think so. He's dealing with having a gun pointed at his head, again, as well as whatever private hell Sara's in at the moment. It can't be easy."

"No," said Grissom. He sounded preoccupied, and Catherine left him to his thoughts. For years she'd wondered if anything would happen between Grissom and Sara - if two self-confessed loners could break through the gulf between them. There had been in change, on Sara's part, in recent years, and now she knew. If Grissom had ever truly wanted Sara - and Catherine was sure he had - then he'd lost out to his younger colleague.

In light of the current situation, Catherine couldn't think of it as such as bad thing. She suspected Grissom was uncomfortable with the depths of emotion to which Sara was capable of plunging, and found them rather disconcerting. The expression on Sara's face was one which Catherine wasn't going to forget in a hurry, but if anyone could cope with it it would be Nick. He knew the extent of pain as well as Sara did, and he had an intuitive way of comforting people that was well out of Grissom's reach. As she drove, sneaking sideways looks at Grissom, she wondered if he realised that as well.

The Sheriff was waiting for them in his office, a stack of what looked suspiciously like CSI personal filews on the desk in front of him. "I know why you're here," he said.

Grissom leaned forward. "Good. But let's just make sure we're on the same page, shall we?"

TBC...