Chapter Seventeen

II

Dream faded into awareness faded into dream. The smell of food and a sense of light pushed itself into her mind, but she clung to sleep a while yet, enjoying the comfort of not thinking, not straining, not hurting. All around her was soft and comfortable, almost like a womb. Almost like innocence.

Laughter. It tickled against her skin, drifting through the room and she fought her eyes open.

The room was bright with morning light and for a moment, she let it burn against her skin. Flames of the dawn, stroking her slowly.

It felt like a dawn in more than one way.

She got up and tossed on some clothes, the fabric feeling rough against her sore skin. As she walked through her house, she heard Warrick's muffled voice drifting from the kitchen, and a moment later, her daughter's.

Almost like a normal family.

She halted in the kitchen doorway, watching Warrick and Lindsey chatting away, eating slightly-too-burned toast. Warrick was describing footprint lifting, and Catherine had to bite back a smile.

Warrick's idea of being charming. It had its moments, she had to admit.

As she stood silently watching them, worry seemed to creep into her mind with the morning light.

Warrick couldn't be just another guy she could seek some comfort and caresses with. He was already in her life and she could not shut him out, even if things went sour. High stakes, but Warrick was an able gambler.

It remained to see if she was.

"Are you going to hover in the doorway all day?"

She met Warrick's bemused glance, noticing Lindsey's slightly more guarded look.

"I like to observe," she replied, tilting her head Grissom-esque.

"Should I start looking out for spiders in your office, Mrs. Grissom?" Warrick grinned and Lindsey made a slight 'ew' sound.

It surprised her slightly Warrick was so comfortable with her long friendship and bond with Grissom. He'd never asked if there was something between Grissom and her, as if Warrick knew it wasn't merely by being near them. Eddie had asked. Eddie had assumed.

But then, Warrick knew Grissom better than Eddie had. Perhaps he even knew her better than Eddie had.

It was a strangely seducing, yet scary thought. Was she so like Grissom she too feared someone knowing her to the bones of her flaws?

"If mom gets a spider, I'm moving in with you," Lindsey declared to Warrick, interrupting Catherine's train of thought.

"Good. You can do all my laundry and cook my meals," he replied, finishing off his toast with an energetic bite.

"Chauvinist."

"Arachnophobe."

"Now, now, children," Catherine broke in. "Be nice to each other. Lindsey, I think it's about time for school."

"Do I have to?" Lindsey asked quietly, something almost like a shadow of fear in her eyes. Fear she'd come home to find no one there? Fear of losing her mother as she had her father?

'I wish I could shield you from fear forever, but you are growing up and leaving innocence,' Catherine thought and her own childhood felt fainter than ever. She was old, her child was growing old. The years passed. And she sometimes wondered if she had lived them at all.

"Yes, you have to."

"Will you drive me?" Lindsey asked Warrick, pointedly not looking at Catherine. A punishment, perhaps even a rebellion.

Warrick gave Catherine a quick look, and she merely nodded, feeling sharp tugs to her heart. Lindsey knew where to hurt, just as Catherine had known where to hurt her mother. Your own sins could come back to haunt in your children and pained all the more.

Lindsey coolly accepted a departing hug, and Warrick gave a slight smile of sympathy. She watched him walk away with her daughter and felt envy. No thorns, no pains. But then, Lindsey didn't need to rebel against him, didn't need to lash out. He had no hold over her, as Catherine had, the hold of shared blood.

Parents and children and blood.

She went into her quiet living room, knowing her mother would want to hear from her again, but shying away from making the call. Not now, when she felt vulnerable and old. Later, when she could be the calm no one could shatter. Sam would probably make contact too. Her father, in blood. Not much of a father in anything else.

Fathers. A father had taken her and Warrick, wanting to know why his daughter was dead. It had to be a case CSIs dealt with. Could it be Georgina or Rita's father? Or had the still undiscovered John Keyes lost a daughter in his life?

She would have to delve into their lives and see. Look into old cases of hers too, see if there were any unsolved cases involving distraught fathers.

There would probably be too many. She had forgotten, for her own sanity. But a parent would have no such choice. The loss would linger, maybe even corrupt. If you had suffered such a loss, why shouldn't others?

She felt a chill even in the sunlight as all her thoughts seemed to slam together. Georgina James and Rita Williams and weeping fathers. Killing father.

'Do you kill because your own loss is unbearable?' she thought and for a moment wondered what she might have done had her daughter died too when Eddie had and with no justice for the killer.

The killer of Georgina and Rita could be a grieving father, perhaps even the grieving father who had taken her and Warrick. And if she could find the father's loss, maybe she could find him, stop him from passing the loss ever on.

She sat in the silence and sunlight for moments of eternity, thinking about parents and loss until the sun had started to cross the sky and she heard a door open. For a moment, she felt a twinge of irrational fear, just as she'd known she would. She forced herself to sit still until she felt soft hands on her shoulders. Confront the fear, not letting it dominate her.

"Hey," Warrick greeted her with.

"Hey," she replied, twisting her head slightly to look up at him. He had changed his clothes, she noticed, probably having stopped by his own place. He was armed too, she noticed and knew he too felt the fear.

"Lindsey pissed at me?"

"Yeah," he replied, not shielding her from the pain with a lie. "It's none of my business, Cath, but it wouldn't have hurt her to stay home today."

"It could have," she said quietly. "I don't want her to start fearing I'll disappear while she's away. Fear grows when you don't confront it. It cripples you."

He considered that, looking down at her with a penetrating glance. "You've learned that?"

"I've learned that."

"So what are you afraid of?"

"My mistakes," she whispered and leaned back against him. He kneaded the tension out of her shoulders and she let him, feeling younger under his touch.

"I want to find this guy, Warrick," she said after a while and wondered why her voice spoke of doom.

"We will."

"I think the same guy who went after us also killed those girls."

"I've considered it," Warrick replied calmly, not interrupting his slow massage.

"He's going to try to kill again."

"Yeah."

"He's looking for a daughter in death," she said distantly, remembering Georgina, remembering Rita.

"We all look for what is lost."

"Yes," she agreed. "I think I still look for a father."

"So do I," he said quietly. "My grandmother was wonderful, but you can't ignore the call of blood. I look for my parents still."

'In Grissom?' she wondered, but didn't ask. Maybe one day she would. Or maybe one day she wouldn't need to.

The sun burned even through the windows and she dared a look at it, her vision turning to white under its onslaught. Unbroken light, even through its long journey through darkness and nothingness, bringing life with it.

"I'd like to stay here for a few days," Warrick said, slight hesitation in his voice. "Just in case. I know it's not exactly following office policies, but the guy could be back."

'All the parts of my life you ease into... How can I ever shut you out again if you hurt me?' she thought, but it was a thought of the future, a fear she'd have to confront one day or it would cripple her.

"I don't much care about office policies right now," she said after a moment's hesitation. "Let Ecklie slam them on me if he wants."

"You do care. You love your job."

She smiled, feeling Warrick come around and kneel down by her, his hands warm as they came to rest on her thigh. "You love yours."

"That's not the only thing I might love."

His voice was soft, a caress leaving her body warm and her mind jumbled.

"I haven't loved anyone in a long time," she replied, feeling Eddie's ghost pressing down on her, heavy and cold.

"I've been burned too, Cath," Warrick said casually, but she heard what was buried beneath the calm. She knew it from herself.

Pain and scares and ashes.

His face was almost boyish as she looked at him, a hint of the innocence he'd once held. She wondered what had burned it out of him. The father he'd never had? The lights of Las Vegas? Bullies of his childhood?

"I know," she said quietly.

"I don't want you to be hurt. In any way."

Eddie had promised not to hurt her, promised her the fairytale, but Warrick wouldn't offer that promise, she knew. It would be a promise he'd break. He knew love always brought some hurt, knew that children would hurt their parents, parents would hurt their children, lovers would hurt each other and yet the world would still move on and people would still love.

People would still love.

People would still kill. For love, for love lost, for love desired. And she'd still have a job to do. A murderer to catch.

'Life is pain,' she thought and kissed Warrick gently, knowing the velvet touch of his lips would one day mean barbed wire around her heart, tugging, burrowing, hurting. All love brought pain, but she had always carried her scars and not looked back. So she told herself, repeating it until she believed.

And somewhere, she could almost feel a father, a killer, a mourner awaiting, looking back because he knew no path forward, lost in his loss.

She could almost pity him. Almost. She would still bring him down. As she had to, as she wanted to, as she was driven to. Killers and pain and love and pity. Her life in the morning sun.

And ever there was the lost innocence, haunting just out of view, forever lost to the path already walked.

'Never look back,' she thought.