Disclaimer is back in Chapter One, but I'll reiterate that I don't own any character from the show "CSI."

Thank you all for reading! Please review!

Nick was worried about Sara; he honestly was. Sara was not the type you worried about; at least, she wasn't the type you admitted you worried about. He knew only the sketchiest of details about Sara's childhood, but he knew that she had survived something horrific. He knew that she had been in therapy for a while now, and he knew that most of her teenaged years were spent using books and science to escape from foster care. However, the more he had learned about Sara, the less he had worried. Sara was tough. She had learned how to survive and function normally without needing to lean on anyone else. She could get through anything. It reassured him and assuaged his worries whenever he started to fret over her, the fact that he knew that she would survive. Worry was only a warning to look out for a little more closely, keep an eye on her back. Just in case.

He had begun this passive watching years ago, after a few too many cases with her struggling to pretend to be a dispassionate observer about victims. She was such an enigma; she was fully cocooned within a no-nonsense, straightforwardly quirky and geeky exterior but was really very compassionate and empathetic. She saw victims and injustices where others saw crimes needing justice. Nick had dated a psychology major all through college, had picked a few things up that, when coupled with his observation chops, he was able to notice things. Her obsessiveness, her awkwardness, her energy and quickness, her love of the science, her fear of attachments, her smile, her survivor's guilt, her tumbling-snowball mentality, her self-mutilating habits of making things unnecessarily complicated and hard on herself. He began to study her, and he began to be fascinated by her and her complexities, which seemed much more real and tragic than everyone else's due to their nature and her nature. Everyone else had something to fall back on, something to look forward to, something that tempered him or her when things got tough. Sara didn't really have any of those, and she seemed scared of having normal coping mechanisms. She coped in her own way and she went on, but she preferred to do it in the most difficult manner possible. She was brilliant, literally a physics genius. She was beautiful, with a wonderful sense of humor and happy smile when she wanted it. But she was an extreme type-A, the sort of person who might have died if they had gotten a B, been second-string in a sport, wasn't the teacher's natural favorite, or hadn't come in first in everything she attempted. She was naturally introverted, too, and was able to use her independence and academics as a way to separate herself, keep people from questioning her, and continue to lead her tough, tumbleweed existence.

Now, though, he felt he needed to be more active. Sara's very nature was to not trust anyone and not get attached to anything, in order to maintain her reserved, fight-or-flight mentality. She had to keep moving, keep acting and thinking like she was analyzing a chess game. For her first several years, there was no future; planning ahead was staying afloat. She had once told him she had stayed too long in Vegas; paradoxically, she felt she was too involved now to leave. She was wary of any sort of relationship with codependency; it was giving up too much of herself, risking too much, only to potentially be damaged again. Boyfriends, roommates, and family—in order to feel safe, Sara couldn't have any of these. He knew that she was changing, maturing, slowly, but now—he was damn uncertain. The three unknown variables of Lilly, Jules, and Grace would completely throw off Sara's methodical, scientific way of surviving. The flip side of surviving—she hadn't yet hit 'overcoming'—her childhood was being unable to be leaned upon too heavily. She could deal with being responsible at work, getting through the case and getting her job done and being responsible, but he wasn't sure that, at least right now, she could emotionally handle the burdens and benefits of family. Sara hated to be considered fragile, but she was, and she could crack.

Though his job and day-to-day life dealt with the factual, dead side of death, he had been exposed to both the emotional aspect and the dying period of death many times before, and not only in the violent, explosive ways Sara had been. He had seen one grandmother die of Parkinson's, one grandfather from a heart attack an hour before Thanksgiving dinner, and his other grandmother die from lung cancer. He'd seen one cousin drown the year he was seven at their lake house, had had another two that committed suicide, one while high, a friend in high school die in a car accident, and had watch an aunt die slowly of cervical cancer the year he was fourteen. He recognized death and had known immediately that Lilly, who had bright eyes and tried so hard to be charming and welcoming, was dying. Grace and Jules were very smart and engaging; they had been raised right. They knew that she wasn't going to last very long. He wasn't sure Sara knew; he was fairly certain she didn't know the whole purpose of the 'treatment' was so that she hoped she had found someone to watch over her daughters. He thought that if Sara adapted, if she grew outward and expanded and didn't flinch, she would be wonderful, that Lilly had great wisdom and forethought to choose Sara. Hopefully, the experiences in the next few months would teach Sara these things, and hopefully, the effects of having their mother die wouldn't send Jules and Grace totally off the stress deep end. If all three coped correctly, it might work out. Otherwise, he was just worried that Sara would collapse and the other two would self-destruct or implode.

He parked his car in Caesar's parking garage, taking his ticket from the attendant. They were planning on eating a light, early dinner and then Doing Vegas—maybe gambling a little, seeing a show or something. They would meander through the night.

Kevin had called him earlier that day with room details, so Nick bypassed the front desk and immediately headed up to Kevin's room. The two had had roomed together at college, and Kevin had gotten an MBA from SMU as Nick started at the Dallas PD. Kevin had gotten married, Nick had broken the engagement to Kevin's fiancée's sister and moved to Vegas. Going back to stand with Kevin had been one of the most uncomfortable occasions of his life, what with his ex shifting from right foot to left foot and avoiding him from five feet away in a celery green dress and his mother's disapproving glare and folded arms nine rows back on the right. After a few years of being too busy to see each other, the two tried to get together every time Nick returned to Dallas or Kevin found a conference in Vegas.

He rapped on the door and yelled, "Yo, bro."

"Yeah, Stokes, coming," Kevin called from the other side before swinging the door open. Kevin was a little heavier than last time they'd seen each other, his blond hair thinning and graying towards the crown. He still looked like a good ol' boy quarterback. He had two children and his wife was pregnant again. They did the manly half-hug, half-backslap and Kevin said happily, "You look good, Stokes. How's the job treating you?"

"It's pretty good. We had some internal shakeups a couple of months ago, but it's working out." He decided to gloss over the buried-alive thing.

"Still working your crazy-ass raccoon hours?"

"Nah, I'm afternoon and evening now. I get off at eleven, as opposed to starting then."

"Damn, you're still crazy. And all that overtime they make you pull…."

"If I didn't like it, I'd switch shifts, or quit," Nick pointed out. Kevin was from an affluent, content, suburban Dallas family and had happily fit in to that wholesomely Texan mold when he grew up. He worked normal hours, had a wife that did not work, and liked to put on cowboy boots underneath his suit. He liked the things his job provided but probably didn't care for his work. He had rarely struggled with anything, or thought about things to the point where he needed to struggle with them. They'd had a lot in common in college, but had slowly drifted down divergent paths since then, and kept in touch for old times' sake. "How's your job doing?"

He shrugged. "Pretty good. Not really exciting, but it can be interesting, if you make it, you know?"

"What's this conference about?"

He rolled his eyes. "Banking Issues Affecting Families—mortgages, college funds, retirement accounts. Pretty damn boring. I've gotta get out onta the town, it's just so damn boring."

"Where do you wanna eat?" Nick said as they waited for the elevator.

"I don't care. It's up to you. How's the traffic?"

"Oh, it's fine. I was just running late. I was helping a friend move into her new place."

"Ah, okay. I was just worried that traffic might be a bitch or something."

Nick chose the BOA Steakhouse, mostly because it was located in Caesar's. It was very good, though. They started to laugh about Old Times, and Kevin shared gossip about people that Nick remembered. He learned about Peggy and Michael's split, Diane's Botox, Charlie had quit smoking for real this time, and on and on. Nick was half-listening, mostly nodding along. Shortly after they had placed their orders, Kevin casually said, "Oh, and Megan's having a baby. She's due in February." Megan was Nick's ex-fiancée, Kelly's sister.

Nick looked up, "Yeah? You'd said she'd gotten married."

"Yeah, last June, to Ted Oleson. He's a little older, divorced. Has three girls with Miriam—God, what's her last name? —it sounds like…Merchant, that's it. Miriam Merchant. She's remarried, too, to Danny Gullet. Anyways, Ted and Miriam's second daughter—they have three—is Kent's age, they're going to kindergarten together."

"Whoa, Kent's in kindergarten? Wow." Nick said, eager to get off of the bedhopping of his ex-fiancée's current husband.

"Yeah, starts next week. Kelly's so nervous. I think if she didn't have Katie still at home and another one coming, she'd be heartbroken. But, we found out three weeks ago—the next one's a girl, too."

"Oh, really? That's awesome. Are you keeping with the 'K' names?" Nick smiled.

"Yeah—Kassie, we think. Or Kayla. Still have another few months, though."

As the night progressed, a familiar pattern was followed: Kevin would discuss his life for the first part of the evening, and then, as he got more drunk, would start asking Nick probing, blunt questions about his life. "Are you seeing anyone?" he said as they were waiting for the dessert.

"Me? No." Nick took a sip of his beer. "I don't leave the lab half the time."

"Yeah, Miranda's mentioned that a few times." Miranda was the third-youngest Stokes, three years older than Nick. Her husband banked with Kevin. Nick rolled his eyes. Miranda was, like most busybodies, well intentioned and ill informed. "I mean, Nick, you really can't tell me you're happy being such a free spirit. You've gotta settle down, you know? I mean, look at it in the broad context." He stumbled over context. "I mean, we're nothing. Shitheads. We're here for a while, we die, and do many people really care? No, nobody outside your family. Is the greater good of humanity altered? Nope, unless you're one of a very select number. And what is the easier of these two to achieve—family, or being famous? You gotta have a family. They're your legacy; they're the only ones that care when you die and they're the only hope you got of actually impacting something big. Kids, wife—everything's just a lot happier with them."

"I don't know. I'm not against marriage, but I'm not rushing into some decision just so I might have kids. I'd be fine without kids. I am fine with out kids."

"Really? You've never thought of having someone with your eyes when you're asleep or playing football with a boy that throws exactly like you?" Kevin was way drunk. Nick suspected they wouldn't be gambling that night. "You always think, Oh, I can live without kids. Then you have them and it's amazing and scary and everything they say it is and you can't imagine your life without them. I mean, hell, Nick, we're 34."

"35." Nick corrected. "My birthday was two weeks ago."

"See? We're grown-ups. In a few years, it's gonna be twenty years since we got outta high school. Damn, how scary is that? What are you going to say at the reunion? Nick, I know you don't think you need kids right now, but honestly, dude, life without them now—"

"Kevin," Nick said slowly and deliberately, as if dumbing down the Superstring Theory for a nine-year-old. "First, I'd like to get married. And I'm not getting married unless she's the right woman. And I haven't found her yet. It's really just that."

Kevin's expression perked at that. "What about the chick?"

"The chick?" Nick wracked his brain for a chick.

"Yeah. You helped her move today, remember?"

"Sara."

"Yeah—hey isn't she the one that we went out to drinks with? Brunette?"

"Yeah, that's Sara." He was surprised Kevin remembered that.

"She's pretty hot."

"We work together. We're friends."

"Friends?"

"Exactly."

"Just friends." Nick was getting irritated; Kevin always seemed to get so wasted when they were together and then started belligerent, irritating conversation.

"No," Nick said, "not just friends. We are friends. There's no 'just' about it. That 'just' belittles our friendship. We're friends. We laugh, we hang out, we talk. There's nothing romantic going on there. Period."

"Kay," Kevin said.

Nick rolled his eyes, "Come on. Let's get to the casino or something." He helped Kevin to his feet. And they thought Sara had a liquor issue.