A/N: I posted this last night, but went over a couple things and added like a sentence or two. It's a couple of things that I probably would have added in last night if I proofread anything, but I never do because then I get self-conscious and don't like it. Read or re-read, whatever it is you need to do. I hope you all like it - it's pretty much completely random and came from staring at my desktop picture of the team standing in front of the tape at a scene.
:) I am so happy because I got my CSI: Season Five in the mail today! I know that some people bought it yesterday, but here's the thing- you had to pay. I, being a manager at a Mickey D's, used Best Buy Bucks online and got it for free! I so got the hookup. LoL. Okay, that's enough.
Chrissie
Crime Scene Tape
There are very few words that can command the attention of such a varied and large audience.
"Crime Scene: Do Not Cross". Yeah, that does the trick. People notice that. Sometimes more than anyone would want. Easily recognizable to most anyone, it draws your eye. Makes you curious. Beckons for you to come closer and see what kinds of horrible things have happened to someone that you don't know and don't know anything about.
It's funny, how something so eerie and ghostly can be one of the things universally recognized. Yellow and black. Someone was robbed. Yellow and black. An accident.
Yellow and black. Someone died.
It is a barrier, more often than not separating the dead from the living. A threshold that only a select few get to cross.
Yellow and black. It stings like a bee.
And sometimes, it did sting. When one of them went to grab the tape and pull it up, making room for one of the others or for themselves to duck under, a weird kind of shock ran through them.
It was eerie, being on the other side.
And it meant something different to each of them, being on the other side.
Gil Grissom was in charge.
There was no other way to put it. He was running the show, and that gave him the luxury of holding any emotional responses at bay.
When he was barking orders, it was because it was his job to bark orders, not because he was cold and unfeeling. When he chastised another's emotional involvement, it wasn't because he himself had a heart of stone and the emotional range of a shrub; it was because it was his job to keep them focused, to keep them moving.
When he told himself these things, it usually helped.
Usually.
"I wish I was like you, Grissom. I wish I didn't feel anything."
Sometimes, it didn't help. But that was the risk he took. He'd been doing this job long enough; he knew how to control his reactions. He knew how to look down at the body of a dead child and not so much as twitch a muscle in his face.
He knew how it looked to the others…"I wish I didn't feel anything." He was somewhat disappointed in how they perceived him. They were scientists – weren't they supposed to be well-trained to look beyond the surface of things?
He wasn't a robot. Every now and then, something would still break through. Something Sara said. A defiant glare from Warrick. A look from Catherine. A look at Nick. But he wasn't just in charge if the situation, he was in charge of his emotions. Emotions didn't belong in the lab, and they didn't belong in the field.
The others took each case to heart, and it was very visible, and they were sometimes given the impression that he brushed each case off with nothing more than a signature on a file.
This was not the case.
And it was not the case…it was just his job.
Catherine Willows was strong.
She had her part to play, and she knew it well – she'd been playing it for years.
She was their backbone, their brace. She held the others up when they looked like they might not make it.
"You know what? I know you. I don't believe that."
She didn't cry. Not when they were looking. That would probably break them, one by one. They had all been tested so much, more than they would have thought possible, and she didn't let them see her cry. Even when it was tearing her apart inside and her heart ached until she wished that she didn't have one…she didn't let them see her cry.
She had seen them all pushed to their emotional limits…"I know you. I don't believe that"…and she had stayed strong. She stayed as clear-headed as she could. She always had a plan.
They joked about her treating them like she was their mother, but no matter how much they joked – deep inside, she knew that they needed it. Five fully-grown men and women, and they needed her more than they could express in words.
She didn't mind it, because she slid into the role effortlessly, being that she was a mother.
Every single scene, she thought of Lindsey. She stayed strong for Lindsey. She was never ever going to let anything happen to her.
Every single scene, she thought of Eddie. One of the cases that remained unsolved. She knew now the pain that an unsolved case brought to the persons involved, and she never wanted to inflict that pain on another, so she worked each scene like it was her husband, her mother, her son. She stayed strong for each of the victim's families.
She stayed strong for each victim.
She stayed strong for Grissom. For Warrick. For Sara. For Nick. For Greg.
Sara Sidle was sad.
She always took a moment to pause and grieve for the life lost. Even for the criminals. It was still a life lost.
They all started to connect in her mind. Each face reminded her of one from the past. Each case brought back a flood of memories that she kept inside.
"What kind of system rewards the suspect when the victim is too tough to die?"
Very few cases had gotten her to outwardly falter. But the ones that had…they stuck with her. She lay awake in the morning hours and stared at the ceiling. She could remember each and every crime scene as vividly as if she was there.
It didn't matter to her if they had caught the suspect or not – someone had still lost their life. Death was wrong, and stupid, and it brought back too many memories.
Memories that made her sad.
She worked the sadness away, or tired to, to the best of her abilities. More overtime. More field time. No, I don't mind taking on another case, I only have three.
No matter how sad she grew on the inside, she had to keep it together. She'd fallen before, and the disappointment in his eyes had been enough to make her wish that she could have just disappeared. "Come on. I'll take you home."
Where did being home get her? No, she was best on the scene – pushing things down, working the sadness away, working, working, working.
For them.
For every single one of them.
Greg Sanders was sick.
He tried not to show it, and was doing a decent job of hiding his seemingly constant nausea.
This was what he wanted, right? Being cooped up didn't suit him, and he'd wanted out.
Boy, was he dumb.
He was harsh on himself. The others seemed to do just fine. The blood didn't faze them. The blood and bone and flesh and rot and excuse me, where's the bathroom?
It was just so different from the lab.
You'll get used to the smell.
But the smell was death. It was rotting. He didn't want to be used to that. That, in itself, was sick.
The lab had been order. He knew where and what everything was. He lorded over the small space.
Out here, he was helpless and confused. Nothing was where it should be. Nothing was brought to him with a smile and a wave and a joke. It was out there somewhere for him to find. A different kind of processing, now.
"I guess I just wasn't expecting blood to look like that."
Blood didn't come in convenient little labeled tubes anymore. Blood came in spatters and splashes. In drips and drops. It was thick, and the smell was thick. It chocked him and he smiled.
Smiling suppresses the gag reflex.
Smiling suppresses the oh-God-I-shouldn't-be-here-what-in-the-hell-was-I-thinking reflex.
Warrick Brown was privileged.
It was the pay-off, walking under the tape. It was what he went through all the school, all the training, all the ridiculing for.
"Nobody owns me."
He strutted and strolled. He knew what he was doing and it showed. He didn't back down for anyone – he was going to solve the crime. There was nothing that he couldn't do when he had his kit. He was a kick-ass investigator, and he knew it. It wasn't being big-headed, it was being honest. He knew how good he was.
He knew how lucky he was.
He wasn't just lucky for the things and people that he had in his life – he was lucky to be alive.
He took this blessing as that. A blessing. And a sign. It meant that he had a purpose on this earth, and he fully believed that that purpose was to do just what he was doing.
Help people. Secure justice for those who could no longer fight or speak for themselves.
Some people would never get it. How precious life was. These were the people that he was meant to find and bring to justice, because they had done something that had violated the preciousness of life.
On the other side of the tape, he was on. He had his game face on, and it was time to go.
On the other side of the tape, he was "the man".
Nick Stokes was just trying to get through the day.
He used to want to be "the man". He used to be a bright-eyed kid who got a kick out of strolling through the strobing lights with his gun and his hat.
He wasn't a kid anymore. He knew that this job changed people, but he hadn't thought that that was going to happen to him.
He was wrong. Now, he just wanted to get in, get done, get out. The crime scene investigating just wasn't the fun that it used to be. The tape did nothing more than to serve as another barrier, something else keeping him in. Another manmade space made to hold him prisoner.
He made it through. There had been a couple of close calls that, for even the briefest of moments, he honestly hadn't known how he was going to make it.
"How do you deal?"
"You just do."
The dark was uninviting. Small spaces were unnerving. Couldn't people just kill each other in bright open fields and make things easy on him?
No, they left bodies in bunkers, three hundred feet underground. Just where he wanted to be.
He was good at hiding it, but it seemed to him that they were all hiding something. He didn't ask anyone about it. He appreciated the things that people just sometimes needed to keep to themselves.
He wasn't exactly jumping to talk to someone about how much harder it was. he guessed that it wasn't as hard as it could be, because they weren't allowing him to be alone.
He didn't want to be alone, anyways. Being alone just brought it all back.
"How do you deal?"
"You just do."
So they all stood there. Time and time again, unmoving. Fighting for the victims; fighting nausea; fighting tears; fighting their inner demons.
At least they were fighting together.