I know I haven't been updating this story in some months now. I don't know what people know, and I don't feel like explaining it here, so I hope you all understand that I had a good reason not to write lately, and it hasn't been writer's block either. I just hope that all is forgiven and that reader interest in this story is still there. After all, the story is almost done and I'm trying to wind it down soon enough because the case is basically over, the issues are almost buried and a happy ending is in sight. So, please review!

The next night, her head clearing up from the drinking with Nick, Maggie found herself back in the office, typing another report for Ecklie, her hangover still threatening to tell her to call out for the night. However, she was also still disappointed with the previous night's conversation – and even the silence that ensued after her subtle offer to Nick – and she tried harder on concentrating on her work, but could not. She thought: the fun, the games, the laughter: was it all a dream? Was it all some sort of surreal adventure, an illusion of her mind once more, something that she thought that she could reach for and could not possibly hold? Could it be possible that coming back to Las Vegas had been a mistake after all?

A lot of things would not have happened if I came back. Ursula and Eric would still be alive. I would still have my lousy job and working my meager hours…Jesus, I should never have come back to Vegas. I wouldn't know what I know and people would still be alive.

Alive…but, what is that to me? Everybody around me just dies or runs off. I just find myself grasping for what I cannot see, what I cannot comprehend, and then suddenly watching it set on me, just like the sun. And all of them – all of those that I need the most in my life – are always out of reach. First, it was my parents, Ursula, Eric, Nick, Eddie, Chris…

Nick…but, he isn't dead yet. Neither are my brothers. But then again…what does that matter now?

Is he, though? Nick? Is he dead in my mind, in my heart, in my soul? Or, can it never be possible? Memories can be erased forever, but can the heart manage even that?

I don't think that it can this time. I wouldn't be able to handle it.

"Knock, knock…can I come in?" A timid face, without the children around her, peered into Maggie's office. "The people at the desk said that I would find you here. And nobody else could figure out where you were, since you don't answer your cell phone and you aren't in the field with anybody, according to Grissom."

"What is it to you? What do you need from me?" Maggie's eyes barely left the screen, her hands still posed on the familiar, and yet foreign, words typed on her screen, lines of a case she could barely remember in her foggy mind, in another night that forbad her to jump the final hurdle towards freedom.

"Well, I'd thought we'd discuss our children and…well, you know…if they should meet each other. I mean, your son is four, I think, and…well, umm…Ms. O'Keefe, I thought that we would try to discuss Jason and –"

The name of her rapist – her parents' murderer from long ago – had her ears perked up, her hands silent and still, her head turned to the voice at the door.

It was Karen, Jason's widow and Quentin's wife…or soon to be ex-wife, if the rumors about it were correct. Brass seemed to be a gossipmonger, she found out once more.

Dammit…I should have known. She would know where to find me.

"Well, can I come in? I don't mean to intrude on you when you're working on something." Karen's gentle blue eyes – those same eyes that Maggie had been trying to avoid for some years, eyes that she didn't want to see up-close – prodded into her office space, searching and asking for some answers. It was as if she were asking to enter into the world that Maggie had denied to her for so long.

"You might as well. Everybody seems to intrude upon this space without quite asking me." Maggie's sudden sharp tone cut into the other woman's heart and she saw it quickly, mending it just as the previous words did. "I'm sorry. Sit down here." She motioned the seat in front of her desk, watching as Karen obeyed her silently, as if her life depended upon it.

"Now," Maggie continued as Karen looked to her (composed in her seat as Maggie settled down to business), "you said something about our children meeting and having visitation, since they have the same father, are technically siblings, and should know each other. Correct?"

"Yes," Karen started, "but –"

"I apologize if I seem so rude, Karen…may I call you Karen? You may call me Maggie. I don't like formalities, unless they are necessary. And in this case, I don't think that they are."

She nodded at Maggie, letting her go on, the permission painted plainly on her face.

"Now, Karen, I know how painful this is. I understand that you knew the man, Jason, before I did possibly more than I. However, it was never my intention to be with him, or to have Michael when it happened. Hell, I don't regret having my child or having to raise him alone, but at the same time, to explain to him that he was a child of rape, and that same man killed his maternal grandparents years before he was born, seems a little too much for him. He already knows a lot more than he should, at an earlier age, and for him to know that he has siblings with the same man who was his father might either crush him or excite him. I don't know yet. I don't know if it's a good idea or not."

"Perhaps if you talked with him first…?"

"I will. Soon enough, I will talk with him about it. And it's an open possibility. However, Karen, right now, I don't think I can handle this and thinking about quitting my job and –"

"You are thinking about quitting your job?" Karen interrupted suddenly, the shock palpable on her face. "How will you support your child, especially now, in these hard economic times? How can you buy a home and then think about quitting at the top of your game, just when things are starting to look up for you? There are things outside of your sight, Maggie. You should think about it more warily than throwing it all away. Your life will be more miserable!"

Maggie stared at her blankly. Not only had the woman figured out most of the issues on her mind, but also, she had pointed out the obvious: at the prime of her life, how could she, Maggie, leave something she used to love so much?

"Because I don't think I can do a lot of things anymore," Maggie answered carefully, knowing about the gossip mill just outside of her open door. "I don't think that I can be with the one person that I love the most in my life, lose him again, and then force myself to forget."

"Then don't forget about him." Karen shook her head, already with grey hair. "Quit your job if you want to and find another in another career. Never be a C.S.I. ever again. Take your child from place to place so that you yourself can never remember the harder times in your life. But, never…ever…take yourself away from the one person who has made you happy. You lost him once, twice maybe if you've tried to go back after him. I can already see that you keep running back and forth to him, abusing yourself and your mind because you think that, if you can get one last glimpse of him, you can make yourself feel better, forgetting what Jason had done to you and everything else afterward. But, you hunger for more of him. You can't live without him and you know it. In your heart, you know that the man you loved the most is the one man you can't afford to be running away from."

Maggie could only continue to stare at Karen, amazed at this woman who dealt with abuse with both of her husbands, coming out stronger in the end.

"Besides," Karen went on, regardless on anything else (the outside hallways not on her mind, but more on Maggie's), "I think it's the same way for him too. I talked with him, Nick Stokes. He doesn't like to open up to a lot of people and to tell what's on his mind, but the potential to do so is there. If you only communicated with each other, your relationship with him would have been stronger. And you still have that chance now. You gave it to him and him to you."

"If only it was given to me so freely and so easily!" Maggie exclaimed. "If only that chance was there and clearly in front of me, I would take it. But now, it just seems like it's not there, even if he said it came. We could always be together, and talk about the old times together, but it'll never be the same spark."

"Yes, it is, and you know it."

Maggie saw the determination and even the knowledge in Karen's eyes and knew. She knew that this other woman – this woman that had every reason to be jealous of her, every reason to hate her because she killed her husband, the father of her child as well – was right. There was no denying it anymore.

"Just talk with him…please," Karen pleaded, getting up from her seat. "Talk with Nick. He has more to say than you think he does. You both covered a lot of ground already, working on this case with Ursula fooling you and…knowing what was wrong already. The love is still there, Maggie. You can't deny it anymore. Too many people have also told you otherwise, too many people telling you to listen to your heart. Or, do you remember at all?"

Maggie nodded her head, vaguely recalling Eddie visiting her. It seemed ages ago.

"Then try it. You never know if you try it once more." Karen then dropped something on her desk with a single, tiring motion and smiled at her for one final time, walking out of her office door, becoming lost once more in the sea of employees that roamed the hallways. She had disappeared, as if she had never existed…as if she had never come into the office in the first place: the person heard of, never spoken about, and kept unknown because that was all she ever wished for her life.

Maggie saw what was dropped: a paper, something old and cautiously given to her. Karen had left her a small note, her home number on the top, another plea: to call her sometime soon. But the words that flowed almost informal and even carelessly on the wrinkled page – folded many times over in so many different ways, thought over numerous times, for sure – stood out in Maggie's mind.

I forgive you anything and I give you everything. We share one man in destiny, but never held him for so long. I know that you meant nothing except justice and in seeking so brought too many troubles for you, but I can understand finally. For what is yours is mine, and what is mine if yours.

As it has been said, "The thief only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."

Reading it over and over again, Maggie knew what Karen meant immediately. Without thinking of anything else – not of her hangover, report of even of Ecklie – her thoughts slid elsewhere, a single tear riding down her face.