Grieving Nick, angry Nick, and mental voices Nick, all in one chapter. He's going through an awful lot right now - - though what else is new?
Again, continued thanks for all the lovely feedback. I've decided to up this rating to an R, based mainly off some feedback about the violence of the death scene. I hope this doesn't bother any of you.
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Chapter Twenty-eight: Reoccurring Over Time (NICK)
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No one said things thinking that they were going to last forever. No one prepared every conversation as if it were going to be the last time they talked. Despite all good intentions, good friends still sometimes parted on bad terms. Just because no one could take back anything they said - - it didn't mean that they didn't expect that they wouldn't have a chance to at least bury it under other conversations. Nick had never thought that his last words to Greg would be what they were. He couldn't retract them or wash over them. He was all out of chances.
Warrick hadn't been able to tell them easily, they had just all been sitting there, blank-faced and dark-circled, yawning into their hands. He had talked and kept talking about ethics and accidents and investigations and loss until the truth didn't so much drop out as crawl out, unraveled and pieced together so slowly that it still seemed possible to escape it, just by playing dumb. But Sara hadn't been able to keep her mouth shut, and had to make it true by saying:
"Greg's dead?"
Her voice had been a combination of fear and shock, and Warrick had nodded, and Nick hadn't been able to escape the truth anymore. It was just the end of the line, the end of the steady plane of his life that had, until that moment, continued, and he neatly stepped off.
He received his own actions in flashes, after the fact.
(martyr)
He didn't even know that he was going to the morgue until he was there, didn't know that he was crying until he saw his own tears mirrored on Grissom's face, and didn't even know he had spoken until he had already been answered.
Brass tried to usher him back into the main part of the lab, his hands on Nick's shoulders, maneuvering and coaxing, but Nick fought back until he had wormed out from under Brass and was standing behind Grissom, almost hiding behind Grissom. Grissom could maybe protect him, because, ridiculous or not, whether or not Nick was just That Guy, Grissom was maybe magic, and if Nick asked nicely enough, Grissom could wind back time and save Greg. Grissom could even take Nick's words away on the roof, so that Nick could wipe away his jetlag and irritation and not let it spill out.
"Nick - -" Brass walked towards him again.
"I want to talk to Grissom," he said. He was surprised at how scratchy his voice sounded. Like his vocal chords were made of sandpaper.
"That's not a good idea right now - - "
"I want to talk to Grissom!" he yelled, and listened as the sandpaper became steel.
It was Grissom who put his hands on Nick's shoulders, then, and steered him away into the corner of the room. "What is it, Nicky?"
"We had a fight," Nick said again, and tried to fit all of his meanings into those four words, tried to somehow show Grissom exactly how bad it had been and how far it had gone, but Grissom looked at him with those implacable eyes, and he knew that Grissom wasn't getting it at all. "I told - - told him that he wasn't some kind of martyr. I blamed him for what's happening to you."
The "you" came out like an accusation, and he saw Grissom wince. He felt instantly shameful, but pressed on, his mouth trembling and the words sounding like mush.
(martyr)
"It wasn't even about him. I was tired, and I'd just come back to find out everything that had happened here - - I didn't mean to say it. I didn't mean to blow up at him. He blew right back, yeah, sure, but I started it."
"It's not your fault that Greg's dead, Nick," Grissom said.
Nick wondered if that were Grissom's idea of comfort.
Grissom continued, all of his attention suddenly targeted on Nick, "This isn't your fault. It's mine, but I can't help right now. You'll have to do it. Nick, I want you to learn everything you can about Matthew Flowers, the signature killer."
"Warrick - -" It takes him a moment to catch his breath and orient himself. "Warrick asked me last night. You think that was who - - you think he - - ?"
Grissom nodded, almost imperceptibly.
"I'll get on it," Nick said. "Right away. Promise."
He felt his mouth squirm again, and he hated being vulnerable like this, open and hurting. It was like someone had stabbed him through a dozen times and then trusted him to get up and keep going, keep walking. People were counting on him, after all, so all he could do was just press his hands over the cuts to slow the blood-flow. That was grief. Grief was walking wounded, stumbling around, looking straight ahead, and gradually realizing that the blood on the floor wasn't your own, after all.
And the great insight he had been hoping for from Grissom was just what Warrick had already told him: Matthew Flowers.
Then Nick got it; he understood why Grissom suddenly looked so fragile - - so fallen from a pedestal.
And Nick said, "It's not your fault he's dead, either."
(martyr)
The gratitude on Grissom's face was somehow painful to look at.
Is that what I do now? Is that some kind of post-Greg epiphany? I can comfort? I know what people want to hear and I have the strength to say it? How stupid. How perfect for me, really. How mind-numbingly appropriate.
But it was what he wanted. Saying that to Grissom was like saying, "Okay, Grissom, it might be as much your fault as it is mine, but give me your guilt and I'll take it, because at least I was there near the end. The last thing I said to him was enough to kill any chances of a clear conscience, so give me all your guilt, and maybe I'm even more of a martyr than Greg was, because the weight of the world feels good right now. See, it's not just pain, it's penance."
He was abruptly aware that it was time for one of them to say something, but his prepared speech was pointless. Grissom would look at him like he were crazy, and although crazy would be fun for a while, crazy wasn't going to solve anything. He'd go crazy later, when it was quiet, and he was staring up at his ceiling, calculating the hours gone by to find out exactly when things went so wrong.
"I trust you," Nick said.
Too bad you couldn't have said that earlier, to someone else.
He had never seen Grissom look like that. So used, so old. Wadded up and thrown away.
"That may not be the best idea, Nicky."
Robbins and Brass were silent in their respect positions, Robbins (thankfully) waiting to begin the autopsy. If he saw someone cutting Greg open, Nick thought that he might actually throw up, and he hadn't thrown up at a crime scene or an autopsy in years, not even when they had the decomp a few years ago.
He shook hands with Grissom even though it would've made sense to hug him. Grissom wasn't really the hugging type. The shake, at least, was so desperate and clenched that it felt like more than it was. Hands traveled from hands to wrists to forearms, and Nick felt himself fighting back tears, because crying in front of Grissom was embarrassing. But he was going to say goodbye like this, dammit, he was going to end this right so that if Grissom died before Nick saw him again, the last thing he said would have been I trust you and not some childish taunt.
This time, he let Brass half-walk, half-shove him to the door.
"You shouldn't say things like that to him," Brass said quietly. "I trust him, too, but it looks bad for the investigation to show a personal bias, even if we know that Grissom didn't even touch Greg. Gotta keep up appearances." Brass scowled at everyone that passed them whenever they directed their pitying looks at Nick. "If we're tough, no one can say we know he's innocent."
"I get that," Nick said. The next person who took a small step towards him to offer some kind of commiseration was going to get punched in the face. He didn't want commiseration. "But I don't want to end anymore conversations on bad terms."
Brass nodded. "Yeah, I know. Just don't let it get around."
"Will do," Nick muttered, pushing open the glass doors to the break-room. Warrick was still standing, still looking like he might have to talk for an hour to get out a single sentence. Sara and Catherine were pinned at opposite ends of the table, avoiding glances and kind of tearing up separately. Nick sat square in the middle and put his elbows on the tabletop.
(martyr)
"I talked to Grissom," Nick said.
They all looked at him, eyes tentative, as if he might snap again, and this time, kill instead of run.
"I had him brought in," Warrick said, and hastily added, "not arrested, though. Listen, we all know that we have to play fair on this, right? We get that, right?"
Long, meaningful look at Nick.
Nick thought about throwing the table across the room and seeing how many long, meaningful looks he got then. Warrick didn't think he could be objective on this? Fine, whatever. He didn't particularly care about that or anything else right now. He'd already gotten his mission from either boss - - real or temporary - - and it wasn't based on anything that could be compromised, no matter how much personal interest he had in the case.
Matthew Flowers.
He also thought about saying, "Maybe toss one of those looks at Sara, okay? I'm not the only one who doesn't want Grissom called guilty."
Warrick must have taken Nick's long silence as an agreement, because he pressed on.
"To branch out from the forensics a little," Warrick said, "the strongest argument for Grissom's innocence is his lack of motive. There was no reason for him to - - to . . . kill Greg. Officially, we had to have him brought in because of the missing evidence problem, but that's not a real motive, and we can make that clear to anyone who asks."
"Why is it not a real motive?" Catherine asked. Her pretty face was perfectly expressionless, like looking at a wall of glass. The only glimmers off the surface were Nick's own feelings.
"Because Grissom didn't know that the evidence was missing, let alone that it disappeared from Greg's lab. It wasn't in any of the press reports, and we all agreed not to tell him."
Nick saw Sara's reflection change. She had been pale and beautiful before, hurt but still strong, and he knew where the strength came from, because Sara had no reason to feel guilty. When he watched the guilt surface in her eyes, it was more than unsettling, it was exhilarating. Selfish or not, he didn't want to be the only one who showed their emotions on the surface. If Catherine felt guilty, she was hiding it too well for comfort.
"I told him," Sara said.
Nick halfway expected someone to say, You did what now?
"I told you," Warrick said, his voice practically shaking with anger. "I told you not to tell him. You gave him a motive. Do you even know how guilty this makes him look?"
"Yes," Sara said. "I do."
It was the simple fact that she wasn't defending herself that made Nick jump to her defense. Because, like with Grissom, he couldn't just stay still and watch her get hurt. The same deal all over again: know what people need to hear, and say it. Say it when they couldn't.
(martyr)
"It doesn't matter," Nick said. "You can't blame her for thinking that Grissom deserved to know what happened to the evidence in his own case. Besides, we have all the articles from . . . from the crime scene," he continued bravely, "and we can still forensically prove that he didn't do anything wrong. Just because he has a motive doesn't mean that he's guilty."
"We have the evidence," Warrick said, still not looking at Sara, "but who knows how long we'll have that? Besides, I've been wanting to run some tests, but we're still missing Hodges. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to pull the Trace guy out of days and have him work the case."
"Hodges is missing?"
"I called him in just before I called you," Warrick said, "and he said he'd be here right away."
"Can't we run some of the tests by ourselves?" Catherine asked. "Not all of them require that much expertise. I want to get started on that rose you found."
Warrick assented, and started assigning. He gave Catherine the rose, Nick got Greg's clothes to examine, and Warrick very, very reluctantly told Sara to get started on looking over both the telephone pole and the plywood. "I'm going to check out the - - autopsy," Warrick said, looking faintly squeamish at the idea. "Everybody come and see me when you get your evidence processed."
Nick thought about going over the bloody clothes, inch by inch, looking for stray fibers or traces of foreign cells, and shuddered. Long work, with probably nothing at the end of it. The killer would've probably worn gloves, after all, and he was afraid that he would just spend hours tweezing and swabbing and getting nothing. Worthless. Useless.
(martyr)
He touched Sara's wrist as they headed out into the main lab.
"It's not your fault," he said. "You thought you were doing the right thing."
Sara smiled at him, sadly. "Yeah. But since when does that mean anything? Besides, I didn't even do it for the right reason. I didn't do it because I thought he deserved to know. I didn't do it because I thought someone should warn him. I told him because I wanted him to remember that I was the one who came to him and told him the truth. I wanted him to remember that I broke the rules for him."
"You told him because you love him," Nick said, but Sara just shook her head once, as if he wasn't understanding her at all.
"It wasn't about love," she said, "it was about making myself someone he needed. I just wanted to make up for saying something I regretted."
"I told Greg. . ." He swallowed. "I blamed him for losing the evidence."
There it was, in the open now - - and telling Sara was completely different from telling Grissom. Telling Grissom had been fine because Grissom had needed reassurance that he wasn't alone in the guilt for Greg's death, but telling Sara, who hadn't done anything wrong, brought on an immediate, scalding sense of shame. He could have gone the rest of his life without them knowing what had happened on the roof. Warrick thought that Nick just convinced Greg to go home. But hiding that many secrets was poison, and he couldn't afford to die right now anymore than he could afford to go crazy.
Save death and insanity for when he had more time.
"Two peas in a pod," Sara said, looking at him with more kindness than he had expected. "We all do things we regret."
And he had thought that she would understand. He didn't want kindness, didn't want forgiveness. He wanted blame and guilt and finger-pointing and as much pain as he could carry without falling down entirely. He wanted Sara to tell him he was right, that his last words to Greg were permanent and unchangeable, that his guilt was deserved and correct, and all she was doing was comparing them. Whatever Sara had said to Grissom, she'd had time to take it back.
Nick was all out of chances. He'd carry that for the rest of his life, and Sara thought that they were so much alike.
He pulled away from her, anger suddenly blocking out his grief, and walked down the hall, ignoring the whispers of the people he passed, but nevertheless getting the feeling that they weren't just pitying him for losing a friend, they were blaming him for killing one.
And he took it all in, breathed it like air, and held it inside. So much bitterness.
(martyr)
(you want to be a martyr)
Let them blame him. He wanted it.
(who's the martyr now, Nicky?)
(let's go)