Author's Note: I feel confident enough to start posting daily now. So expect the next chapter tomorrow.

True to her word, Catherine had Grissom send Greg out on a double homicide with Nick a few nights later. Feeling like he was walking on air, Greg strolled into the trace lab to drop off some evidence.

"Fibers and an unidentified red substance," Greg said with a grin. "It'd be nice to get it done ASAP, Ecklie wants this case solved."

Hodges glanced up briefly at him from the microscope then looked back down again. "OK."

Greg was taken aback. "What, no snippy remark? No crack about how I sold out to become a CSI?"

Hodges shrugged, still looking in the microscope. "Eh, you know that already, you don't need me telling you."

Greg raised a skeptical eyebrow as he backed away toward the door. "You know…" he began, "Come to think of it, you haven't said anything Hodges-like to me in months."

Hodges looked up from the microscope and smirked at him. "'Hodges-like?' Wow, I'm so special I'm deserving of my own adjective. Thank you, Sanders."

Greg shrugged, satisfied with this small quip of Hodges and turned to leave. Right as he reached the doorway, Hodges spoke to him again. He tried to sound off-handed, but there was the note of something else in his voice.

"Have you been to the records room lately?"

Frowning, Greg turned to look at Hodges over his shoulder. "No, I've had no reason to…"

Hodges looked up and smiled at him. "Well, then you wouldn't mind doing me a favor, would you? I've been meaning to get this down there— It's some old evidence that's been sitting on my desk for the Walden case? You remember, he was that serial rapist Catherine and Warrick apprehended a week ago."

Greg slowly turned and took the file Hodges had slid across the desk. He looked from the file to Hodges. "Uh… Sure, I guess I could do that."

Hodges nodded, his eyebrows raised and his mouth puckered. He looked like he was expending effort to look casual. "Yeah, thanks, that'll save me the trip." Greg flipped through the file and Hodges added, "And while you're there, I mean… W is right after V…"

Greg stopped flipping through the file and looked up at Hodges, his true intentions finally shining through. Or at least part of his true intentions. "You want me to look at the Volkov file… Why?"

Hodges rolled his eyes and laughed, again in an effort to seem laid-back. But Hodges wasn't a very good actor. "I don't want you to, it just occurred to me that you could. I mean, if I was the subject of a case file, I'd want to know what it said. It was just a silly little notion, just forget I said anything." And with that, he went back to work.

Greg watched him for a long time before leaving, trying to figure out Hodges' motives. Even as he walked towards the record room with the file in his hands, he had an itching feeling that Hodges was trying to tell him something indirectly. He tried to unravel the mystery all the way to the records room and he entered, walking down the aisles of boxes until he finally reached the W's and pulled out the Walden box, neatly slipping the file inside.

He glanced over at the V's, which temptingly taunted him. He reminded himself that he was still curious as to what Sara's wounds read, and so decided to start with Sasha Volkov's box and pulled it out. There were manila envelopes and folders, as well as miscellaneous evidence, including a video tape and Greg knew all too well what was on it. He pulled out the photographs of Sara's thigh and grit his teeth in revulsion as he laid them out on the table to read his hideous "poetry."

But like a phoenix, my love is reborn in you
Your fiery blood will eternally bring me to life again.

No wonder Sara had flipped out. He was basically saying that she immortalized him. Every time she looked down, those scars would give his ghost new life, and he would rise again and again, and she would keep lighting the thought of him on fire until it burned to ash. He was a deformed firebird of folklore that refused to die and leave them alone. Greg wondered vaguely how long the Volkovs would haunt them and dimly answered his own question. As long as those scars remained on Sara's legs. He hoped they healed fast, for her sake.

He quickly put the pictures away and promised himself he wouldn't look into Vera Volkova's file. It just felt wrong somehow. He was sure it had to be against the rules. Could he get fired for looking at it? Still, when he put away Sasha's box, it was right next to Vera's. He chewed on his lip a moment more before making his decision and snatching the box.

He sifted through the files until he found the crime scene photos. He shuddered to see himself in such a state, swollen and cut up, bleeding on the floor… and he was… naked. His cheeks burned in shame. But then the thought occurred to him. Why was he naked? He didn't even remember being stripped… But even as he thought about it, he realized she had stripped off his jeans. She had threatened to castrate him, and at the memory Greg was more terrified of the idea now than he had been at the time. As if to reassure himself, he looked down just to make sure his pride was still intact, so to speak. But where had his boxers gone? They were off too… what purpose had that served, other than, of course, to completely humiliate him. But he recalled Vera hadn't been into humiliation, at least not as much as her husband had been into it. Every move she made had a purpose. She didn't do anything for no good reason…

Greg gathered the photos and put them away. Catherine had processed the scene, if he remembered correctly… She would have taken the photos, gathered the samples, documented all the evidence of… what?

And then it hit him. Trace evidence. Why else would Hodges of all people be trying to tell him something about his case? The answer had to be in the trace evidence!

His fingers finally found the file with Hodges' results on the trace. He frowned at it a moment. It had been labeled classified and sealed with a sticker proclaiming the same thing. Greg narrowed his eyes at it a moment before he decided, to hell with the rules, and opened the file anyway, breaking the seal with a nearby pen. At first, he saw nothing unusual. Blood: type O neg— well, he knew that— DNA matching one Greg Sanders—well who else would it match, the Queen of England? It sure as hell wasn't Vera Volkova bleeding out on the living room floor— and… trace amounts of…

Greg stopped reading as he dropped the file, staring at it stunned.

She had climbed on top of him. Greg had been fascinated by the flashing colors, and the dull pain that radiated from his body like heat… The world was a carousel and he was riding a white horse… Or had the white horse been riding him… He couldn't remember what Vera had been doing… She had been moving up and down, her head thrown back in the thralls of…

The color drained from Greg's face. He snatched the file and looked at it again. Trace amounts of semen. DNA match: Greg Sanders.

Greg swallowed and closed the file before tucking it under his arm and striding out of the records room without even putting the box away. He needed to find her. That was his priority. He needed to ask her why she hadn't told him. He had to know.

He banged on the door to her office and she looked up at him, confused. "Greg?"

He marched in and angrily threw the file down on her desk. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me?!" he demanded. "I was on drugs, I had no idea what she was doing! I didn't know she fucking raped me!"

Catherine knew it was time for damage control as she rose to her feet, trying desperately to calm him down. "Greg, I'm sorry, I didn't want to drag you through more muddy messes. I thought that if you didn't know—"

"I wouldn't get hurt?" Greg interrupted, angrily. "Catherine, how could you keep this from me? I have a right to know!"

"I—I understand why you're mad, Greg," Catherine said slowly. "But you have to understand my position. How are you feeling right now?"

"Pissed off," Greg snarled. "Betrayed. Violated."

"You see?" Catherine said quickly, coming out around her desk. "It's upset you, and you'd been through enough as it is, you didn't need to know."

"I'm not feeling betrayed by Vera Volkova, Catherine. You violated the trust I had in you!"

Catherine leaned back on her desk and shook her head sadly at Greg. "No, I think that's just what you're telling yourself, Greg. Sure, you do feel like I betrayed you, and I guess I kind of did… a little… But it's much deeper than that too. You're hurting. Like… Like Sara is hurting."

Greg folded his arms defensively and stared at the floor as he pursed his lips. He didn't want to admit it, but she was right. He felt humiliated by Vera Volkova, but it was worse that Catherine had known about it all along. She had known more about what Vera had done to him than he even knew, and in away he felt more mortified at that thought. He told himself it would have been better if he had known, if Catherine had told him right away. But then he would probably still be ashamed at the thought that she knew of his humiliations too.

"I can't look at you right now, Catherine," he muttered, refusing to look up from the floor. "I feel like every time you see me, I'm exposed and… I just can't…"

Catherine swallowed, but her guilt rose back up in her throat like vomit that refused to go away. "I really am sorry, Greg."

"Who else knows? I mean… does Grissom…"

"No," Catherine said sharply. "Just me."

Greg nodded, still staring at the floor. "Just you."

"And…" Catherine added, just remembering. "And… Hodges. Hodges knows, but only because he was the one who processed the evidence and found it."

"Yeah…" Greg muttered. "I figured as much. He kind of tipped me off."

I'll kill him, Catherine thought to herself. But she had to be honest, she was glad it was Hodges and not Vera, who had for some strange reason seemed to have kept her word.

Greg turned to leave when a horrible thought suddenly struck him in the doorway and he stiffened at it, feeling suddenly nauseous. "Catherine…?"

"Yes, Greg?" She spoke softly and regretfully, like a mother who felt guilty for punishing a child and was trying to make amends.

"The baby… the one that's growing inside of her… the hell spawn." He heard Catherine take a sharp intake of breath. "Who… who's the father?"

Catherine had lied to him too much already. "She claims that… you are."

Greg closed his eyes shut tight and his back went rigid. "Is there any credibility to this claim?"

Catherine bit her lip. "Autopsy findings on Sasha Volkov conclude that he was sterile."

Greg said nothing. He simply slammed the door and walked briskly through the hallway, past the trace lab where he barely noticed Hodges look up at him as he passed. He was walking blindly through the lab until without realizing it he ran headlong into Nick.

"Whoa, take it easy there!" Nick said with a laugh as he grabbed Greg's shoulders to steady himself. He looked up and instantly saw that he was upset. "Greg? What's the matter, bro?"

Greg shrugged his shoulders out of Nick's grip. "It's nothing," he muttered before moving past him and trying to continue on his blind path down the hall.
But Nick wouldn't let him. He snagged his arm and Greg reacted violently, snatching Nick's wrist and twisting it.

"Don't touch me!" he growled.

Nick shook out his wrist, his brow wrinkled. But he wasn't giving up that easily and he glared right back at Greg. "Look, I don't know what your game is, Sanders, but something's definitely up and I'm not gonna let you walk on down that hallway until you talk to me about it, whether you want to break my wrist or not."

Greg simply scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he said before turning his back on Nick and heading down the hallway.

The pain was sharp and fierce as it attacked him from the side. Luckily, he wasn't bruised there but it still hurt like a bitch and Greg spun around, doubling over in pain as he staggered into Nick who caught him.

"What the hell was that for?" he demanded through his pain. Slowly he straightened up and glowered at him furiously.

Nick was now massaging his left wrist with his good hand. "Consider it payback for the wrist. Talk to me, Greggo."

"I got a shrink for that sort of thing now, Nick," Greg answered.

Nick grit his teeth. "Fine, you don't want to talk, I can't force you. But don't you forget we're working on that Silverman double homicide from Eastland Heights. You hear anything from Hodges about our evidence yet?"

The sound of Hodges' name got Greg fired up again. But whatever rationality was left in him knew that it wasn't Nick's fault. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, swallowing his pride. It burned in his stomach like bad heartburn. He rubbed his eyes, trying to force himself to calm down, at least until he could get somewhere to take his pills. "Uh… no. I just gave them to him like fifteen minutes ago."

"Oh," Nick said, feeling a little foolish. "Right, that makes sense."

Greg had a feeling Nick had only asked him about the case to get him to talk to him about something. He felt only slightly bad for their violent encounter, but not enough to apologize. Still, he wanted to make Nick feel a little better, so he cooperated. "Yeah, but I can get on those shoe impressions we found around the perimeter. How's it coming tracking down their kids?"

Nick sighed looking at the file in hand. "Not good," he replied. "They had, like, twelve. I could only reach two thus far, but they're both in New York, so I doubt they had anything to do with this…"

"Hey Nick?" Greg asked suddenly. "In your life, how many one-night stands would you say you had?"

Nick's eyes rolled up to the ceiling as he thought. "Uh… a few. Generally when I was in college, and inebriated. And one last week with a girl named Alex from that sports bar, or at least I hope she was a girl…" At Greg's dropped jaw Nick grinned. "I'm kidding," he assured him. "Why do you ask?"

"I was just wondering how you'd react…" Greg began slowly. "If say one of them you didn't remember so well, and one that you weren't particularly fond of in the first place… somehow ended up… pregnant."

Nick cocked an eyebrow. "You didn't knock up some chick you met at a strip club, did you Greg?"

"No, no, no!" Greg said quickly, shaking his head. "I'm just taking a poll, you know, one of those 'what if' scenarios."

Nick folded his arms as he thought. "I dunno," he said honestly. "I mean, if she told me, I guess I'd try and help out for the kid's sake…"

"But what if you really really didn't like her?" Greg pressed. "Like, the very thought of her just pissed you off and made you sick to your stomach."

"If that were the case, I'd wonder how we ended up in bed together in the first place," Nick said with a shrug. "I generally don't sleep with women who repulse me."

"Yeah…" Greg said, his mind elsewhere.

Nick put a concerned hand on Greg's shoulder. "You OK, man? You don't look good."

Greg flashed Nick one of his trademark grins. "I'm great," he lied through his teeth. "Just anxious to get back to Sara, you know. Ever since Grissom suspended her she's been cleaning the house like it's her new job. I swear, she won't let me in her apartment until I take off my shoes and if it's raining she won't let me in until I'm dry. Next thing you know she'll be requiring haz-mat suits of everyone. It's kinda eerie."

Nick chuckled as he patted Greg on the back. "Alright, well you get on those footprints and I'll keep calling the Silverman clan to alert them that their folks are dead and see if any of them already knew."

Greg nodded eagerly. "Sounds like a plan." And with that he took off down the hall and swerved round the corner. As soon as he was out of sight of Nick, he ducked into the bathroom and dug deep in his pocket.

He didn't find anything.

Greg began to freak out as he stuck his hand deeper into the pocket, searching for something, anything. But the bottle was gone. He cursed under his breath and leaned on the sink, looking at his gaunt face in the mirror. His mussed up hair did nothing to make him look healthier and his eyes were sunken and bloodshot. Nick had been right, he didn't look good, not at all. He sighed and splashed his face with water, as though that would help, and combed his hand through his hair to maybe style it a bit better than the just-out-of-bed look that he'd been going for lately. Or more like going with. Often it was a literal look—he'd crawl out of bed with a cow lick or two and not bother putting in the gel or even brushing it out. He was half-surprised that his hands could still go through his hair and not get caught for long in tangles.

When he was done, he looked at the mirror again and shook his head. He still looked like a train wreck, which was the perfect reflection of how he felt. He really needed his pills.

But no, he thought, he didn't need the pills. He shouldn't say he needed the pills, that was a sure sign of addiction. When Amy forced him off the Imipramine, he had simply gotten Rachel to write him a prescription for Efexor, claiming the Imipramine wasn't enough anymore. The SNRI was renowned for being more potent than its sister drugs, but it wasn't addictive. No antidepressant was really addictive. Or that's at least what Rachel had assured him, and she was a doctor, and she knew these things. He was a chemist, and he knew these things too.

So no. Of course he didn't need his pills. They just would have been nice to have, in the moment, considering he'd just found out he'd fathered his rapist's child. More than that, that he'd even been raped at all.

The thought left him flabbergasted. He knew men could be raped, but whenever the thought occurred to him he only though about penetration, by other men, or with a foreign object. But the law had been changed. Rape didn't just mean penetration anymore. Loosely stated, it was "having carnal knowledge without consent." "Carnal knowledge" was so ambiguous, these new terms were often debated in court. But he was pretty sure that what Vera Volkova had done to him—drugged him, physically stimulated him, and impregnated herself with his child— could definitely be construed as "carnal knowledge without consent."

Greg shivered at the thought and felt coke bugs crawling under his skin and suddenly empathized with Sara. He immediately wanted her there with him, so he could hold her close and smell her strawberry Sara Sidle scent, and feel her warmth close to him. He knew she would make him feel better just by being there.

Truth be told, he had no idea what he was going to do. He needed help, but he didn't know where to turn. He could tell Sara. But she had closed himself off from him lately. The first time he'd seen her cry, or even talk about the Volkovs at all, had been a few nights when she'd broken down in her shower. And she hasn't mentioned it since. All she'd do all day is vacuuming, or scrubbing the floor, or washing the windows. She didn't want anymore drama, and Greg wasn't inclined to give her anymore.

He could, of course, talk to Catherine. But he was too angry with her at the moment to try and ask her advice. Considering the actions she'd taken already, she'd probably tell him not to worry about the baby. He didn't know if he could do that. It shared half his genes, it was half of him. But it was also half of her. He wondered how politically correct it was, referring to a human life as an 'it.' This thought led him to question if he would forever consider the child to be an 'it' even after it was born…

Could he tell Nick? The man had always been like an older brother to him, always looking out for him, keeping him on his toes… He did tend to give good advice, too. He knew what he was talking about.

He could tell Amy, their psychiatrist. That sounded like a good idea. She was paid to deal with his pain. But would she tell Sara? All doctor-patient confidentiality considered, Amy had given Greg little hints to try and get Sara to open up to him again. He was sure she gave Sara equally indirect insights into Greg's head. But was it really so bad if Sara knew? What would she think of him? Would she be able to deal with it? Would she still love him?

Greg shook his head to clear it. It seemed there were a few people he could talk to after all, if he worked up the courage.

A name entered unbidden into his head. Grissom. Gil Grissom. As wise as Greg considered him to be, the two of them had been on thin ice for the past three months, now that Greg and Sara were dating. He knew Grissom tried to hide it, but Greg saw the broken look in his eyes whenever he saw Sara and Greg together, and this saddened Greg more than anything. When the whole debacle had started to unravel, he had told Sara that the last thing he'd wanted to do was hurt Grissom and in the end, that seemed to be exactly what happened. He had hurt him badly, and he'd gone straight to the jugular because not only had he had an affair with Grissom's girl, but he'd also stolen her away, right out from under him. That couldn't have been a confidence booster for the man, almost twenty years Greg's senior.

But then, another name floated on his thoughts and he tried desperately to chase it away. Vera Volkova. He had to see her, if only to make sure that her child really was his.

But first, he had a job to do.