The Beginning.
Death Becomes Her … After Awhile.
Greg sighed as he sat at the break room table, Life & Style spread out in front of him. He flipped the pages dispassionately. He didn't particularly care if Angelina and Brad were having another spat. They were regular people. Why the masses followed them so religiously, he didn't know, because they were just normals thrown into the limelight, whether they wanted it or not.
"… and this is the break room, complete with a CSI who looks like he's about to fall asleep. He also has his own stash of Blue Hawaiian coffee somewhere in the room. He never shares, though …" Nick said loudly over his shoulder as he strolled into the room. A group of timid looking teenagers followed him in.
Greg looked up, a bewildered expression on his good-natured face.
"Greg, meet the teens who are interning here for a week while they're on summer vacation," the Texan said, gesturing for the teens to come into the room.
All in all, there were eight of them: four boys and four girls. Greg knew he'd never remember their names.
"This is Alisha, Spencer, Dominic, Delaine, Lucy, Damion, Rachel, and Josh," Nick said, pointing to each of them. Greg nodded to each person, and the teens smiled hesitantly at him.
"So how do you like the lab so far?" Greg asked the group at large. No one answered.
"Um, it's pretty cool," one of the girls – it might've been Delaine or Lucy – said, glancing around quickly as if she was shocked that she'd said anything. She brushed a piece of her brown, choppy hair behind her right ear, her eyes becoming fixed on the floor.
One of the guys came to her rescue and elaborated: "It's fascinating to see all the machines and how they correlate to our justice system."
"Oohh, correlate …" Nick responded, shooting a grin at Greg, "that might be too big of a word for our ears, Spenc."
Spencer blushed a furious red, but he smiled anyways. Greg was surprised that his friend had gotten to know the kids so quickly; Nick really was great with people. Friendly, kind, and fun. A triple threat.
"Anyways, Greg, we still have to go check out Grissom's office. His fetal pig needs to be looked at," Nick said, waving to the younger CSI as he left the room, his troop following after him in a single file line.
Greg didn't even have a chance to say goodbye. However, it wouldn't be the last time he saw that group of teenagers around the lab.
Nonetheless, within two weeks, he'd end up wishing he'd never seen that group of kids. He'd end up wishing that one girl in particular had never come to the lab – that he hadn't seen her smile or listened to her voice or helped her work the high-powered microscope.
He also wished more than anything that Nick hadn't taken a liking to her and hadn't ended up being her mentor.
Too bad life never listens to one's hopes … it only deals with one's fears.
"There's a wrong time and wrong place for everyone. It's the place that everything ends at and no one wants to be there when it's their time. And yet … if all endings are planned from the first word of the story, then no one can say it was the 'wrong place, wrong time' for someone. It was the place they were meant to be at, even if it was the last place they would ever venture to."