Title: In Hell with Love

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or its characters. I'm just a fan

Author's note: The previous chapter was the first time I got 10 reviews. That's the most I ever gotten for a chapter. Thank you all who reviewed, you have a special place in my heart. I'm not really the kind of person who begs for reviews, but I have to admit, they do make me happy. Haha. Hope you'll enjoy this chapter.

Chapter 13

We always hurt the ones we love.

I was told once, that we always hurt the ones we love and trust because we'll always trust that they'll love us back. Sounds like a load of crap, but sometimes it does apply. We do it because we can be selfish, stupid and cruel sometimes. I think it hurts coming from the ones you love because it would be intensely difficult to cause the same amount of emotional pain in a stranger.

It's so easily done, even if we don't mean to. Our love ones, the ones we care about… they trust and depend on us, making it easier for us to let them down, and harder for us and them to take.

Nick stared at the phase wide-eyed, almost forgetting to breathe. He grazed his fingers over its impressions, making sure they were real, rubbing each letter as if they held the next clue.

They were real all right. The pain in his chest was agonising feeling of the words being graven on his heart.

He heard imaginary chuckling in his head. The laughter of the killer. Pointing and making fun of him. This was a matter of life and death, and he made it into a game.

A game for his own personal twisted amusement.

"Nick!" a loud crackled voice spoke directly toward his ear. His skin literally crawled, ripples of goose flesh undulating up his arm and down his spine. The radio on his vest came to life, at the worst possible moment ever. He took several uneasy steps back, the tingling sensation wearing off as he tries to maintain his balance.

"Now's not a good time!" Nick shouted into the radio. His unsteady hands were still shaking from shock as he rummaged around, looking for more medical supplies. "The medical supplies that he promised? That's bull. There's nothing but heroin."

Nick kicked a wine barrel out of frustration. There was a rustle of tiny padded feet behind him. Rats ran in wild directions, disappearing into holes in a desperate attempt in avoiding Nick's wrath. A moment of silence told him that Warrick and Brass were transferring the message back to the gang in the lab.

"Nick… Listen up." Warrick suddenly said with a hint of authority in his voice. "Sara's fading fast. This is what we're going to do…"

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On unsteady, tired feet, Sara caught herself from falling for the umpteenth time. She had lost her balance again, her knees almost giving way under her weight. The floor beneath her was cold against her bare and blistered feet, cold enough to make her toes curl. Her sticky blood pooled around her feet like melted wax, adding to its chill. She heard a tumble of wood behind her and tried to turn around but she moved so slowly. She gave up, and instead stared at the wall she was chained to, watching as her vision merged the lines and cracks into one deluded blur.

Whoever came to help her had gone elsewhere, leaving her with nothing but a cap and a layer of his skin around her body. It's fabric caressed her skin painfully, the moisture of her blood sticking it all over her body. She shivered uncontrollably, but less than before. The clothes had retained heat, enough to keep her alive for a little while more. After spending so long in depths of god-knows-where, she had forgotten what warmth could really feel like.

Fatigue sapped her energy for a moment and she had to blink rapidly to clear her head. She felt extremely tired, her eyelids were like lead dragging over her eyes. The feeling refused to leave her, a wash of listlessness made her body so heavy that she had to lean against the wall for support. Her neck ached with the weight of holding up her head. She shifted uncomfortably, trying to sense the helpful presence that was with her a moment ago.

There was nothing. She was alone now.

Her chest heaved painfully and she began to sob despairingly.

Was that moment real? Did someone come to rescue her, or was it just her imagination?

Her forehead leaned against her bound wrist, excruciating pain swelled within her as her wounds pressed against the wall. She didn't care anymore. Everything else was better than the feeling of hope tearing away from her. She gasped in agony, the images around her blurred and she had lost all sensation. The pounding at the front of her head filled her world and took over her soul. She couldn't fight, she couldn't even utter a meek protest.

And then, everything went black.

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The darkness claimed her, darkness more profound than the darkness she'd ever experienced inside this room. The only difference was that there was no fear in this place. Her restraints were gone. Sara felt no ground below her, nothing on either side of her, nothing above her. She lay motionless, confused…

Then something appeared out of the darkness.

A light. A light that was different from the one that shone through the door in her dark prison. A dim orange glow that was like a flame on a candlewick, glowing in solitary, alone in the dark with her. It waved and flickered for a moment as if she breathed too hard towards its direction, but then it returned back to normal. She reached out for it, trying to keep it alive, not wanting it to blink out of existence. She knew that, if she didn't do anything, she'd be alone.

She didn't want to be alone again.

The glow grew as she gave her will to it. She was glad, the happiest she had ever been in a long time. It grew like the light at the end of a tunnel, giving off enough light for her to see where she was.

She was sitting in the break room in the lab. The glow that she thought she was nurturing was hanging on the ceiling above her. She looked around, her vision in a tint of light blue, almost cold. Everything was the way she remembered it. Everything was where it was suppose to be. She smelled the heavy aroma of coffee. She heard the soles of shoes hitting the ground and lab coats flapping in the corridor. She didn't know where they were going.

Sara frowned in confusion and stood up slowly. She felt light like she was in experiencing zero gravity on the moon. She realised that she didn't know what she was doing before this moment and she wasn't sure what to do next. She walked out to the corridor, towards the sounds of human life.

In the blink of an eye, she was in the middle of the corridor, as if the few seconds that took her to walk through the door was erased from her memory. People in lab coats walked passed her, barely touching her. She couldn't see their faces, features smudged beyond comprehension. No one acknowledged her, no one looked at her direction. She felt isolated, alone. She wanted to cry but the tears never came. She looked beyond the lab coats towards the windows of the rooms reflecting images of her.

Clean, professional and healthy. Like nothing had ever happened.

As she walked closer to one of the windows, the flow of people suddenly stopped. She felt complied to touch one of her reflections. She lifted her arm towards it. A bloody, injured hand came to view. She turned her palm towards her, watching her reflection doing the same thing at the corner of her eye. Her reflection had clean hands. She knew she was shocked and horrified but her brain was slow to register. She felt detached and dissociated. Her body had yet to feel pain.

Images inside her mind flashed and faded again, like the flashes from a camera.

On and off, on and off.

The images brighten further, hurting her eyes. Dreadful clarity and detail, forming shapes, patterns, taking sequence.

Sound.

Her world had been quiet till now. Sound flooded her mind, synching noise with pictures. Shouting, screaming, cursing, clanging, banging, crashing, punching, hitting, bashing, fighting. Sara covered her ears to get the noise out of her head, trying to shut them out. Then, the unexplainable happened. Images, motion, sound and noise inside her mind had pushed her into a whole new world...

Feeling.

It's happening again. Over and over again. Pain, suffering, shock, torment, torture, misery, sadness, agony, anguish, heartache, hurt, distress, grief, loneliness and oh God my God the pain ripping her skin, tearing her flesh.

Her tears continued to flow even as she clamped her eyes shut. She covered her ears tightly in her hands but sound seeped through. She cried out to anyone who would listen, but nobody came…

A foreign scream suddenly arose from somewhere, from nowhere. Her eyes shot opened. Her surrounding had changed. She felt like she was somewhere in the lab, but at the same time, she was in her underground prison. She was leaning against the wall, in a sitting position, not knowing how she got here or how she ended up in that position. There were no windows in sight, no doors, no way out.

A person stood before her, the light against his back. Sara knew full well who it was.

Without a word, he grabbed her neck tightly, obstructing her airway.

"No," she managed to shout before she coughed and coughed until she could speak anymore. "This isn't real. This is just a dream!" She could barely breathe. Her body cried out for mercy. Is this real? Her own dream was hurting her. She tried to clear her throat and blink her eyes, trying to reconcile where she was in waking life. It wasn't easy.

She couldn't remember.

She saw his lips move before thrusting the knife at her, hitting her hard in her left shoulder. Her lungs grew dry and shredded inside her chest as she sucked in air to scream.

Her world had turned black again. In the darkness, she heard a voice in her head.

I got you Sara. I got you…

It was more of a comfort than a taunt. She felt her legs wobble beneath her, which confused her because she thought she seated against the wall. Her entire midsection screamed in pain as arms wrapped around her body in a protective embrace.

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Nick caught Sara as her legs gave way. "I got you Sara. I got you. You're all right. You're alright."

Nick moved into a position that was comfortable for both of them. He stood between the wall and Sara. Her bound wrists near the back of his head, his neck in-between. Her arms were resting on either side of his broad shoulders, while his arms were around her body. Nick held her in a warm hug, keeping her close to him, serving as both her support and heat insulation. Sara's head leaned heavily upon Nick's shoulder. He didn't mind that her blood seeped onto his white shirt. He could feel the warm liquid pooling onto his shoulder, making him embraced her tighter, afraid that if he didn't, he would lose her forever.

Nick felt the heat of her forehead against his neck. She was burning up with a fever but she was hypothermic. This doesn't make any sense. Nick didn't understand at first, but as he looked towards her left shoulder, he realised the problem.

A wound on her shoulder had become infected. Its surrounding area was red and warm. An accumulation of pus had form a yellow line on the wound. Stitches, unprofessionally sewn were visible.

An untidy mess of black thread, forming letters of X and Y.

Whether her tormentor used painkillers or not, Nick didn't know. He looked towards Sara. Her eyes were closed, eyeballs moving within its sockets in an attempt to get some painless rest. Solidified blood covered her cheeks, flaking off against his shirt and her hair. She had a nosebleed and her breathing reduced to slow gasps, her broken ribs rubbing against his torso. Nick wondered if he should cause her any more pain.

Slowly, he took a piece of cloth from his pocket and doused it with a bottle of alcohol that he took from a wine barrel in the cellar. He hesitated before pressing it against her wound, trying his best to clean it as painlessly as possible. It burned like corrosive acid on skin. Sara screamed in agony.

The pain woke her up and bent her double at the same time. It made her want to pass out even as it brought her fully to consciousness. She cried into Nick's shoulder, tears staining red as it mixed with her blood.

Sara's body leaned against him heavily, shaking more violently as the fatigue and pain increased. Nick held her as he continued to clean her wound, whispering apologies to reassure her that everything's going to be okay. His voice changed as he spoke, the Texan accent coarsening, sounding kind but fragile at the same time. She knew that voice. She knew him. Even though she couldn't see him clearly, she knew it was him.

"Hang in there, Sara. Be strong for me okay? I'm here for you. I'll keep you safe…" It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. A nice, final thought to leave this place with.

Wait a minute…

Without warning, flashbacks surged into her head, hitting her brain at full force. The memories raped her mental state. The alley, the shot, this place, her endless calling, her silent replies…

You're not really here. She thought. It's not possible. She didn't understand—how could he be here, if she was wide awake?

A dream?

She did dream of him once in a while, but this, his actual presence in real life, was quite impossible.

You're not real… A long time ago, you died.

TBC

For all those confused, Sara thought Nick died in "the other room" in chapter 10. All this while, she couldnt really see Nick and only thought of him as an "ink blob"

FYI. The stab that Sara got from her tormentor can be found in chapter 10.