7. Fallen angels

When Sara's eyes met Sofia's she knew the blonde thought the same she did. Warrick. The last case got their memories of their former friend and colleague back. A body found on Warrick's grave, they had to get his son out of the house because Tina, Warrick's wife and the mother of Eli, had some problems, that could endanger her son's life. And at one point it even looked like Warrick was alive. Or kind of alive. Reached out from wherever he was?

"How are Tina and Eli?" Sofia asked.

"Tina will do everything to get him back and I have no doubt she loves him."

"Love is the most important thing between a mother and her child, but to give your child a good life, he needs more than love. I saw photos of the house, you had no other choice than calling Child Protective Service."

"I know. It hurt anyway. It's not what Warrick wanted for his son. Eli loves his mother, it broke my heart to see him cry when he was taken away." And it would have broken Warrick's heart too.

"I can imagine this."

"But in the end, Tina decided to go the right way and I'm sure it wasn't the last time we have seen Eli. I guess she understood now, we don't want to take her son away, we only want him to know his father so and we don't forget him." It was hard not to forget a person, who wasn't there anymore, would never come back. With every day, you lost a little bit more of this person until the memory was gone.

"She has nobody else than Eli, being protective of him is normal."

"I know." Sara looked at her beer for a few seconds. "I often ask myself if I had pulled the trigger on McKeen. If I had been in Nick's shoes, what would I have done? Having him at gun point, after he shot Warrick, killed more people. I'm not sure I could have had myself under control."

"To McKeen it might have look like Nick is weak, unable to take revenge for his dead friend. I think it showed his real strength. It's easy to settle a score, more difficult to not let yourself pull down to the same level like the one you hate most. McKeen will be in prison for the rest of his life, he'll pay for what he did every day. It doesn't bring Warrick back, neither does killing McKeen."

"He's sleeky, prison won't be a big punishment. He might find ways."

"It will be more difficult. Killing him had stopped him, but I don't think I would have done Nick any good."

"Maybe not." The brunette sighed. She missed Warrick, no matter how hard the first weeks had been for them. She came to Las Vegas to investigate him, she could have gotten him fired. It was a hard thing Grissom asked her to do back then. That he trusted nobody as much as he did her, made it only partly better.

"This case, it got not only Warrick back, it has a lot of to do with Grissom too, right?" Sofia asked carefully.

"He loved him. Warrick was like a son to him. I've never seen him this broken than on the day Warrick was killed. They had a special relationship."

"Yes, they had. Did you…did you tell Grissom about the case? About Tina and Eli? And the body on Warrick's grave?"

"No. It's nothing you should talk about on the phone."

"Does he plan to come back to Vegas?" A delicate question, sometimes it looked like Sara had no idea what Grissom planned, what he was up to.

"I hope so, right now I can't tell you what his plans are. It's…it's all complicated."

"Seems like in our lives there are more complicated things than we like. Not only the cases get harder, I sometimes feel like they even get more personal, but our private lives are also not a walk in the park."

"I'm afraid we choose jobs, that are like our lives. Being a CSI, a cop, a doctor, you see so many bad things, it's hard to go home and be happy. Look at DB, he tried to protect his family, keep it out of the job, it doesn't work. Sooner or later the job gets you and your family. Evil reaches out to the good."

"That's why we get up every day and fight it back. So it won't overtake our lives." The question was, how long did they have the power to fight back? And was it possible to fight evil or would it overpower them in the end?