A/N: Okay, I post 3 chapters. Please read 19 and 20 before this one. Thanks again everyone for reading. I do appreciate it. Any and all reviews are welcome. Thanks again.

Chapter 21

It'd been a long restless night. Sara hadn't been able to sleep. Every time she tried, she would see her brother's fearful eyes, hear her mother's manic voice, and feel all those feelings that she'd been fighting since childhood. The worst part was that she couldn't help. She was no longer a CSI and unless she went back to work, there wasn't much she could do except relive her childhood over again. Could that be enough to help? She had no idea.

To try to relax, she started reading. Greg didn't have too many reading options in his bedroom, but she found a sci-fi novel and was two pages deep when she felt the pressure once again pressing into her chest. She rolled over and saw a shadow at the door, making her gasp in surprise before she realized it was Gil. Their eyes locked and she knew something was seriously wrong. His normally stoic face was distraught and in his eyes a world of pain.

Sitting up, she dropped the book as she asked, "What's wrong?" He didn't say anything as he walked into the bedroom and shut the door. Last she saw Greg, he was still asleep on the couch. "Where's Greg?"

"Getting breakfast," was all he said as he sat on the edge of the bed and removed his shirt. Then he sucked in a deep breath and stilled before letting it out.

Reaching for him, she felt the tension in his shoulders and back. Wrapping her arms around him, she hugged him tight. She loved this man dearly and whenever he was having a hard time it hurt her heart. He was shaking; breathing heavy as he fought for control. "Babe. What happened?" He shook his head as she heard the hitch in his chest. Her arms held him tighter as he kept shaking.

She'd never seen him like this before. They've dealt with tough cases in the past and she's seen him so affected by a case that it sent him off to ride a rollercoaster, but nothing like this. He was completely wrecked and shaken; almost broken. All she wanted to do was take it away, whatever it was, she wanted to make him feel better.

She kissed his shoulder, his neck and face as she ran her hands over his chest. He had yet to turn around to face her, but once he did, their lips met in desperation as he deepened the kiss. She had no idea what he wanted, and if this was okay or not, but it worked. Gil's breathing settled as he stopped shaking. Pushing him onto his back, she straddled his hips and kissed him again. His hands soothed up under her pajama top, caressing her skin, as he hugged her to his body.

His lips kissed her mouth one last time before he cupped her face and stared into her eyes. The devastation was still there, and it scared her. She grabbed his hand into hers and held it tightly as her other hand rubbed his chest, trying to soothe it away. He would talk when he was ready. She knew he wasn't. His eyes had that faraway look to them again. He was lost somewhere in his head.

So, she started talking. "I think we needed this." She had no idea if he was hearing her or not. "If we can come out stronger than before then…I know that I can't take back what I did. I know I can't do that, but I can promise that you don't have to worry about there being a next time. I have hope in us because you make me believe that we can survive anything. I told you that you're my home and I meant that."

He heard her as she saw the tears that stung his eyes. Letting out a deep breath, his hands gripped her waist. She let him take his time as he closed his eyes and forced the tears away as he let out another deep breath. When he spoke, it wasn't what she expected.

He said, "Nathan's on a suicide mission."

"What?" she asked as she felt her body tense. This was about Nathan? "Is that what happened? Did he—"

"There was a mass shooting. Fifty people are confirmed dead. Twenty-eight more injured."

She felt her blood run cold as she shook her head. "That can't—" she stopped herself. Gil wouldn't be telling her this if he wasn't certain. "How do you know it's a suicide mission?" she asked as tears stung her own eyes.

"Several things. His writings. He's clearly depressed and has suicidal thoughts. His actions. Spree killers spiral. They almost always end that way. Lastly, um…I think I know why the number 37 is important to him. The age of your father when he was murdered. He was 37 years old, wasn't he?"

She gave a nod. "I never told you that."

"I know. I, um…I realized that Stephan Sidle was the first. With how Nathan is trying to make sense of his life, he's attached meaning to everything. He would have attached meaning to the first person he ever killed. The first sacrifice. The first one to join his army."

"His army? I'm sorry, what are you saying?"

He was almost out of breath as he told her, "He believes that the God that resides inside of him will transcend into the sky gaining power from the sun and then fall back to earth to rule over it. He needs an army to rule, and all the dead…all the dead souls he's gathered…they will be that army. Including your father."

She didn't want to believe what he was telling her, but she had no choice but to believe every word. She'd seen the video tape. She heard the words their mother had spoken and how she had manipulated her son. As tears slid down her cheeks, she wiped them away. Gil didn't take his eyes off her.

"How can you be so sure of what he's thinking or planning?" she asked even though she already knew the answer.

"Because…it's the same reason why you had every right to leave. I can deny it all I want, but…I know why my face blurs every time I look into a mirror. Much like Nathan, the face I wear isn't my own."

She had no idea what he was talking about. "You've lost me. Babe, what are you—"

"I can become anyone, Sara. That's the curse attached to my gift of pure empathy. If I think something long enough, believe it hard enough, I can…I can stop smoking. I can stop being an alcoholic. I can hold my anger in check and never…" He stopped and shook his head. "I can become someone else. Simply by thought. Gil Grissom is logical, patient, pragmatic, and relies solely on science, and is emotionally stable by being emotionally unavailable. He's everything Will Graham is not. I made myself that way—"

"He's just as much a part of you as you let him be."

She saw his soft smirk break through the pain before it fell. His eyes cleared as the devastation faded back into his head. "I feel like a fraud some days. A thief who stole someone else's life."

"You're not." The thought occurred to her again. Who was she talking to? She had to question it, because he made her question him. She had to ask. "The way you're talking, you're making it sound like you're two different people. Are you?"

The look she saw in his eyes was all she needed to know his answer. It sounded that way because it was that way. He'd told her; he has two sides. And with a nod, he confirmed it. He had told her, and been trying to tell her something she didn't want to hear. There was Gil, but then there was also Will.

"Will is who my mother gave birth to. As far as Gil is concerned…I became him, but he's a lie. He's not the truth to who I am. But, he's who I want to be. For you."

"Why for me?"

"I know that—that he's who you fell in love with. Not Will. Yet, I can't shake him loose like I could before. He won't go away. You're not going to be able to love him, Sara. He's not going to let you." As sadness filled his eyes as he said, "There are no forts in the bone arena of his skull for the things that he loves."

She felt a shiver run through her as he spoke those words. "Yes, there is. There's always room—"

"Lecter was right. Everything I see, all I learn, touches every aspect of my mind and I am appalled—"

"He wasn't right," she told him as she shook her head. "He wasn't," she said again as she cupped his face into her hands as she leaned down to kiss him hard. When she ended the kiss, she told him, "I love you. I'll love you no matter what. I told you that I want to fight for us. And I will." She had no idea if he believed her or not. He was pushing her away again; she could feel it in his body how it tensed under her palm and see it in his eyes as he got distant again. This whole thing made her afraid, but not of him but for him. "Gil? Can you do the same? Can you fight for us?"

His breathing was still hoarse, but he gave a nod. "As much as I can, which is as much as he'll let me. I can't breathe anymore. The only breath I feel in my chest is his."

"Then tell me about him," she said. She wanted to know. "Tell me who Will Graham is. I know he's short tempered. Angry."

He almost laughed. "He's not angry. It's so much worse. He's rage. Extremely temperamental. He reminds me a lot of you when you get angry," he said with a slight smirk.

Oh, now he was teasing her. It made her relax, but only slightly because she knew he was still keeping something from her. There was a reason he was having these thoughts. This was important, but it was also a distraction.

"Will is…He's like a body of water that formed from the collection of all the painful raindrops that landed on his head. When he's all filled up, he starts to spill out all over. Leaving parts of himself behind until he no longer knows who he is, what he thinks, or how he feels…because all he thinks and feels is everyone else. All those droplets. He gets so lost. Out on the ocean, just…waiting for the tidal waves that sends him crashing down onto the shore again, drowning all those people that he loves as he rages." He took a deep breath as he fought to control his sudden gasps of air. His chest was so tight, she could hear it straining his voice. "He drowned them, you know? His family. Kevin doesn't even trust him. Me, because Will made them choke until they couldn't breathe and had no other choice but to leave him behind. That's who Will Graham is. He's the water that drowns you."

His eyes cleared as he stared up into her eyes if clarity hit him.

She was so startled by it she asked, "What is it? Babe?"

He sat up so fast she almost fell backwards off the bed to only catch herself as his arms wrapped around her back, keeping her in place. His panic was gone, replaced with urgency as he said, "I need to find Kevin."

"Now?"

"Yeah," he said. "Now."

She slid off his lap as she told him, "I'm coming with you." He went to protest as she cut him off, saying, "You can't stop me."

Pulling out clothes from her suitcase, she quickly dressed as he pulled his shirt on and stuffed his feet into his shoes. Minutes later they left the room. She heard noise down the hallway. Greg was back with bags of takeout and had them on the table in the dining room as they walked in.

"Hey, guys," Greg said, "I uh, got your favorites."

"It's going to have to wait," Gil said as he eyed the food as she heard his stomach growl.

"Maybe we should eat—" she said before Greg cut her off.

"Or," Greg said as he opened an empty bag and started putting the food back into it. "We can all go and eat when we get to wherever we're going."

"You're not going," Gil said as he grabbed his keys off the table. It hadn't been the food he was looking at. He'd been searching for his keys.

"Why not? Look, if this is about the case, I'm working on it with Agent Collins and—I slept all night, so I'm good." Greg had all the food in the bag and headed with them towards the door. "Where are we going, anyway?"

She told him since Gil was focused on leading the way to the truck. "We have to find Kevin. He figured something out."

"Oh, sweet," Greg said as he shut the apartment door behind him. "Good thing I got extra."

They found Kevin at the FBI field office. Gil spotted the open office door at the end of the hallway. Kevin was pacing the floor with the phone to his ear. By the time he reached the open door, he was off the phone and the fax machine was printing.

He turned to both Sara and Greg, saying, "Let me do the talking."

"Fine by me. All I'm here for is the food and…you breaking the case," Greg said as they approached the door.

Tapping on the door, Gil got Kevin's attention as he said, "I, uh…I have a profile of our serial killer."

Kevin eyed him as he said, "That's great news. So do I, but you're not going to like it." He picked the sheet of paper off the fax machine and read it over. "I have here a…uh," he stopped as he caught sight of the others behind him in the hallway. "I didn't know this was a party. Hey, Sara. Greg."

Greg held up the bags and said, "I brought breakfast."

With a slight smile, Kevin said, "We'll go to the conference room down the hall. More room."

They were shown to a room down the hall that held a bigger table and a lot more chairs for everyone. Once Greg got the containers of food back out, and everyone got situated with coffee, Kevin said as he unbuttoned his cuff sleeves, "I was wrong. Nathan and our killer aren't partners. I think he's been following Nathan around in order to set him up to be the fall guy. All the victims have been found in places near where he lived, worked, and the meth lab."

"We know. All the planted evidence leads back to Nathan."

"So, got me thinking. How soon did he start following Nathan. Couldn't be here in Vegas. They had to cross paths in San Francisco. I've been doing some digging, trying to see if anyone's been in contact with Nathan prior to him coming here. I started with the mental hospital. No one visited him the entire time he was there. Given the fact that he was a John Doe, I'm not surprised. So, I got to thinking some more. Laura Sidle." His eyes went to Sara's before he continued, "Your mother. Maybe someone visited her." He held up the paper that he'd retrieved from the fax machine. "In September of last year, she had a visitor."

Gil already knew where this was going as he leaned back in the chair with the coffee cup in hand, and said, "Let me take a guess. Me."

Sara's eyes landed on him as he turned to face her. She gasped in surprise as she asked, "You? You never visited my mother."

Kevin handed the paper over to him with a heavy sigh. He took the sheet and read the name the moment he said it, "Will Graham."

He felt his jaw tense as he sat the paper on the table for Sara to read. She picked up the paper as he said, "They would've asked to see his ID. They didn't make a copy of it?"

Kevin shook his head. "That's not procedure. Guests just sign in, show a picture ID, and that's it. No one remembers what he looked like." He tapped the table the way he did when he wanted to ask something but wasn't quite sure how or if he wanted to know the answer. "How'd you figure it? That the killer's profile was you?"

"Sara," he said with a smile. He caught her eyes and saw the realization hit her equally as hard as it'd hit him.

She said, "Will Graham. He's the water."

He gave a nod. "I am also completely out of my mind in love with you. 'For nothing this wide universe I call, save though, my rose; in it thou art my all'. You're my everything. If you're my everything, you're Graham's everything. He's also obsessive, and his anger and jealousy can take the form of possessiveness. And since becoming Grissom, I've learned to hide my rage behind this mask."

"Have you been dreaming of their deaths?" Kevin asked before he hesitated, looking at Sara, and asked, "Hers?"

He shifted in the chair and took in a deep breath. "By now, I'm normally dreaming of the killer's fantasy. I see what he sees. Think his thoughts. Feel him moving inside. Throughout this entire case, every time I try to get into this phantom killer's head, all I've felt were my own emotions ravishing throughout my body. All I see is my own duality. Every time I go into the dark void where I dream, I see myself. I see Will. I don't see anyone else. There's no faceless figure hidden in the dark. The only becoming that's happening is my own. My childhood as a kid sitting under a southern live oak reading poetry. My face blurs and I become something else entirely. Or, I see myself standing in the rain, collecting all the droplets, becoming the body of water, then spilling out into separate puddles as I slowly fade away. I lose my identity completely as I become who I'm hunting. I became Lecter, in my dream. I was him, Kevin. I was him looking back at myself. Analyzing myself. I also became the Egyptian God. I became Dolarhyde and Hobbs. I'm all of them inside one person. The mask of this killer keeps appearing on one face."

He heard Sara say, "Yours."

"The face of my symbolic representation."

As he spoke the words, his mind drifted as a song lyric came to mind. "I can still hear my old hound dog barkin', chasin' down a hoodoo there." Out of the walls sprouted branches, leaves, and up out of the floor, flooding the room, was green water. A steady slack that betrayed the dangers underneath. It was a swamp. In the distance he heard barking. A dog was chasing a scent left behind by a thief. Running through the hedgerow was a boy. The thief. He was that boy. He was the thief.

Once a thief, always a thief. He'd stolen so many things, including his own life.

"I call it my dragon, but what it really is, is…a hoodoo."

Greg wrinkled his head in confusion. "A what?"

He saw the swamp disappear as the office reappeared. "Song lyrics. John Fogerty had been inspired by blue singers while writing 'Born on the Bayou'. Hoodoo is folk magic that was born out of the deep south from African slaves. In places like New Orleans. Anyway, Fogerty took a different approach to the meaning while writing the song. He said that, uh, hoodoo is a mythical, magical figure, like a shadow or a ghost, which doesn't have to be evil, but it is otherworldly."

Out of the air appeared his shadow. A mythical other-worldly figure. A manifestation of all the dragons and monsters he'd slayed. Had it been created out of the power of suggestion or of thought? Was he there due to the 'magic of his mind'? Was the void otherworldly? He didn't know.

Kevin had a worried expression on his face. He wasn't liking anything he was hearing. "You're seeing things that aren't real." He regarded his son as he asked, "How often?"

"All the time."

Kevin's jaw tensed as his nose flared and eyes hardened. He was furious. "Like how it was when you were in the psych ward?"

"You were in a psych ward?" Greg asked.

He blinked as his dragon disappeared just as easily as the swamp. Gil only had one thing to say to Kevin's accusation and that was, "I'm not crazy."

Kevin wasn't buying it. "I'm not saying you are, but your mind—"

"My mind is lively."

Kevin huffed out a bitter laugh. "Lively. That's one way to put it. I'm being serious."

"So am I." He glanced at Sara, seeing her reassuring eyes as she reached over and touched his hand. He felt her presence and it gave him the courage to say, "The reason I reacted the way I did, a long time ago. Why I stopped talking, and eating, and put myself in that position of being admitted was because it used to scare me. I had been terrified about something that I didn't understand. I was too young and for most of my life, I've been told that my mind was something for me to fear. That I was mentally unstable." He shrugged, saying, "Maybe I am. But I don't fear it anymore. I understand myself better now than I ever have. I know what I see isn't real. The hardest part for me was always distinguishing my own thoughts and emotions from those of the killer I was after. I know who I am, Kevin."

Kevin leaned on the table and said, "Even so, I have to ask the questions. Did you kill these women?"

He almost smirked at the absurdity. "No."

"How can you be so certain?"

As Kevin questioned him, he remembered the conversation he'd had in his head. Lecter had smiled and said: "Memories, now there's an interesting subject. I read that they change every time we access them. If true, how can you be so certain of who you really are, or what you've actually done? You've still never answered my question."

"Which is?" he asked while standing in the middle of the falling rain turned to sand.

"Who are you really, wanderer? I know, but do you?"

He did know. Or, at least, he knew he was now. He knew his thoughts and his dreams. Despite his past being somewhat of a mystery, he knew what he wasn't and would never be. "Because I know where I've been and what I've done. Look, if I am crazy, I know what kind of crazy I am. It's not this. I'm not a cold-blooded killer."

Kevin smiled. "I know you're not. Being a genius, however…It has been mistaken for crazy many times before."

"I'm not a genius."

Kevin leaned back in the chair, saying, "Could've fooled me, old man."

He almost smiled.

There was something else on Kevin's mind, and it surprised him when he asked, "Do you believe in magic? Greg said you did," he said as looked at Greg who was sitting beside him.

He smirked at the look on Greg's face from being called out. "Magic isn't real. At least, not the stage production of magic."

"What about the other kind?" Greg asked. "You told me that you saw a psychic."

Gil shifted in the chair as he got more comfortable and gave it some thought. "There's a lot to consider when you have faith. There's also a lot of warring happening in one's heart, mind, and soul when the only truth you rely on is empirical science. Some things are unexplainable, until the explanation is found. There's always a reason why, even if science can't explain it. Do I believe in magic? I don't know, but I believe in something that science can't prove. God. I guess that's more of my duality." He was both a man of science and a man of faith. "Grissom believes in science. Graham believes in magic."

Kevin gave a nod as he looked around the room. He was working on more questions to ask him. "Okay. Can you account for your whereabouts when the victims were murdered? Or when you were supposedly in California visiting Sara's mother?"

"That's not going to matter—"

"It will when the Sheriff decides to have you arrested."

"It won't get that far. This isn't about putting me in prison. I thought that this guy was trying to get Sara's attention. Now I know I was wrong."

"Fine. Who? I mean, this guy has to know you enough to be able to make you see yourself in these killings."

And that was the real troubling part. Whoever was behind this knew him. Studied him. The killer understood him so well that when he killed those women, he made him see himself in the killings. "There's always someone smarter."

"No, no," Kevin said. "He became you. He asked himself, how would Grissom kill, and then he went out and did it."

"The question isn't 'how Grissom would kill'," Sara said. "The question he asked was 'how would Will Graham kill'."

"Whatever," Kevin said as he picked up his cup of coffee and took a drink.

"There's a difference," she told Kevin, gaining his attention and making him feel the guilt once again creep up into his chest and head.

She did understand what he'd been trying to tell her. There was a difference. He wasn't just one man. He felt a stirring inside that he'd been feeling ever since he read a note from Lecter on the back of a photograph stuck on Hayashi's refrigerator.

Leaning forward onto the table, Gil regarded his son as he told him, "Grissom and Graham are two different people."

"You're you regardless of name." Kevin stood as he felt the tension once again settle in the room. "What did Shakespeare say about a rose of any other name is still a rose—"

"'What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet'. Maybe, but that doesn't account for—"

"It doesn't matter," Kevin said, cutting him off. He shook his head and said, "The killer also knows anatomy to sever the right veins that would prevent blood splatter."

He gave a nod as he heard the dismissal in those words. Kevin didn't want to talk about it anymore. Once again, he was reminded of the one thing that kept Kevin from trusting him completely. It wasn't the fact that he'd taken lives. Kevin didn't trust his mind. His mind showed him things that weren't real. Made him think things that only psychopaths could think. It made leaps into the unknown where monsters lived.

Kevin didn't understand it, he couldn't, and it was what scared him the most. The abyss and the unknown where monsters made you into one of them. Kevin didn't want to become a monster in order to stop them, he only wanted to stop them.

When Kevin didn't say anything else, he picked up where his son left off by saying, "And how to cut precisely in those spots without hesitation. That takes skills. A steady hand. Quick reflexes."

"What about motive?" Sara asked. "Why you? Why do any of this?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"What if all of it is one big distraction?" Greg said as he kept eating. He was the only one eating.

He eyed Kevin as he asked Greg, "What'd you mean?"

Kevin was standing with his hand on the back of his head, lost in thought. He seemed so lost. It reminded him of the times when he would shut down to think. Under all that though he saw something else. A bigger fear. A deeper regret and pain. A ghost of the past that was swallowing his son from the ground up. It threatened to bury him.

"Well," Greg said, interrupting his thoughts. "All this magic talk got me thinking about how a magic trick is done. Smoke and mirrors along with a lovely assistant distracting you with her beauty. So, if he's making you see yourself in the House of Mirrors, it's because he's hiding a bigger truth. Sara's the beautiful assistant, meant to confuse and point us in one direction when what's really going on is happening elsewhere. And, like any magic trick, he doesn't want to expose it until the end."

That got him thinking as a moth entered the room. It wasn't real as it floated and flittered in the air, dancing its way to the table where it landed in front of him. Its wings spread out far and wide, trying to confuse him from seeing what it truly was. The moth viewed him as its prey, but it was the one doing the hunting.

Sara asked, "Gil, what is it?"

He wanted to reach out and lift the moth into his hand but knew he couldn't. It wasn't real. "An old case we worked on. The male IO moth is one of the largest in North America. They have eye-like spots on the back of its wings. It's an illusion to confuse predators. Birds get fooled into thinking it's an owl."

Kevin finally dropped his hand as he turned to face him. He asked, "What does a moth have to do with who the killer is?"

"He reminds me of it. He's an illusion. He's fooling us like the IO moth fools birds. Confusing his predators by making us see an owl in the profile instead of a moth."

Kevin said, "You're saying that he's the moth and you're—"

He heard the Dragon's voice in his head, and it sounded very much like his own, as it said, "See." A laugh started to build in his throat, warm and full of clarity, as it said again, "See—"

"Us," he finished. With a knowing smirk, he quoted Job 30:29-30, "A brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat."

The Dragon smirked, and it resembled his own.

Cutting Kevin off, he said, "I'm a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls…And so is he." Gil felt his body go cold once again at the man who came to mind. "I see myself in the profile because we're the same."

Kevin eyed him as he leaned over the table, saying, "You know who it is, don't you?"

He gave a nod. "I have a theory. I'm going to need help to prove it. We need a lure. Bait. One big enough for him to bite."

Kevin glanced at Sara, saying, "You can't be serious?"

"I don't mind," Sara said. "If being bait helps catch the killer—"

"You're not going to be the bait, Sara." He shook his head. "Like Greg said, you're the distraction."

Kevin asked, "If not her, then who?"

He looked around the table, seeing their expectant eyes, before he answered, "Me."

TBC…