Of Life and Living - Book 2: Chapter 4/6

[laurelgardner]

Title: Of Life and Living - Book 2: Chapter 4/6
Author: laurelgardner
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Gil/Greg, Nick/Sara, Catherine/OMC, Warrick/OFC
Summary: Getting what you wish for can be devastating. Or perfect. Or just maybe it's both. At any rate, it ain't easy.
Author's Note/Warnings:  Some ickiness, references to child abuse and molestation, murder, typical CSI stuff.
Disclaimer:  I bought CSI - and CBS - yesterday when you weren't looking. Serious.

All previous chapters of this story and all my others can be found here.

knightmusic , you make my world go round.

I'm still sorry.



"You're sure Warrick's okay with this?" Greg asked.

Carol scoped out the neat little park they were standing in, eyes moving rapidly as she took in ever inch of it. She was looking, Greg knew, for the perfect place to set up a base of operations for their little mission. She sipped her soda thoughtfully as she slid on a pair of dark sunglasses, seeming not to have heard Greg's question.

"There," she said, pointing. "That bench. We'll be able to see his house from there."

"Okay," said Greg, following her as she lead the way, "but you still didn't answer my question.

The corner of Carol's mouth twitched upward, but the rest of her expression was hidden by the glasses. "That reminds me," she said, "here." She grabbed Greg's hand and held it. "In answer to your question," she said, "Warrick understands, yes. We do whatever we have to for a case, and I have to use you because the suspect knows what Warrick looks like; he did the preliminary interview before Grissom switched our assignments. Besides," she added, "it's not like you pose much of a threat."

Behind his own set of dark glasses, Greg raised an eyebrow.

"That's a very Grissom look," Carol observed.

"Hmm," was Greg's only reply.

A few more steps and they had reached the bench. Carol junked her soda cup in a nearby trash.

"Well, there's my DNA, for anyone who wants it," she mused. "Let's just hope we can get some of this guy's. You ever do drama club, Greg?" She asked, sidling up next to Greg as she sat down. She leaned into his space flirtatiously, placing a hand on his knee.

"You bet," said Greg. "And anyway, I've had plenty of experience at making out with girls and pretending to like it."

She laughed hard at that, over exaggerated, but said, "That's sad, Greg."

"Yeah, well," he said, shrugging, "I was a late bloomer. You should probably kiss me now."

Carol leaned in, adopting a coy smile. "Good idea."

She was a pretty good kisser, even if it was all for show. Eyes hidden by the sunglasses, Greg was able to watch the house across the street, the home of their suspect.

Carol ended the kiss slowly. "I really appreciate you helping out with my case, by the way," she said, sounding utterly professional.

"You bet," said Greg. He leaned in for another quick kiss, reaching for her hand where it rested in her lap. This was fun, it was like a sting operation. Not the sort of thing scientists got to do very often.

Carol placed her hand on the side of his face. "Now, the trash gets picked up on this street at 6:15, but he'll probably be watching so that he can put it out right when he sees the truck coming up the street."

"That narrows our window of opportunity," said Greg, kissing her hand. "Are we even sure we'll find anything?"

"Well," said Carol, "think about it; can you really keep from throwing away anything with your DNA on it?"

Greg nodded, careful to make it a flirty, in-love kind of nod. "True," he agreed, "even if you never use plastic utensils and only drink from glasses, you still have to blow your nose. He might use a band-aid, or get his epithelials on a piece of Scotch tape. Or a q-tip. Q-tips are great."

"That's what I like to hear!" said Carol, kissing his cheek. "By the way, I never bothered to ask you what your boyfriend thinks of this."

"I haven't asked him," Greg said flatly.

"You guys have a fight or something?"

"Yup."

"Ah," said Carol. "That's rough."

Greg shrugged. "I've never had a first fight happen so soon."

"Really?" said Carol, "With me and Warrick...three days."

"Wow."

They'd allowed themselves to assume somewhat more casual body postures, leaning back against the bench, but they were careful to keep up a physical connection, holding hands or touching arms or knees. Just two college kids on a date, nothing suspicious, nothing to make a cautious criminal re-think whether he'd put his trash by the curbside.

"So I take it you're not on speaking terms right now?" Carol asked him.

"I don't know," said Greg. "We haven't talked about how to handle the whole work thing, but I'm guessing he's not going to want to finish a fight at the lab."

"Yeah," Carol said, sympathetically, "It can be really tricky, trying to just put something on hold while you're at work. It gets easier the longer you do it, though." Suddenly, she flopped over, putting her head in his lap. "You wanna talk about it?" she asked.

Greg ran his fingers through her hair. "Sure," he said.

Carol raised her eyebrows, expectant.

"I'm actually really pissed off at him," he began.

"Oh?"

"Yup. He was being a royal asshole last night."

"Asshole? How so?"

Greg sighed. "I don't know. Insulting."

"Really? That's not like him," Carol observed.

"I know," Greg agreed, "I think I said something that set him off, but I'm not sure what."

"Oh," said Carol lightly, "you probably just touched a nerve that connected to some deep-seated insecurity or fear of rejection."

Greg blinked at her, though she couldn't see it. "You think he has deep-seated insecurities?"

Carol laughed. "Oh, man, Greg...everybody does. And traumatic experiences, too."

"I don't."

"I'll bet you do if you really think about it. I think that's what all fights are about." She sat up. "Look, Greg," she said, her voice firm but very kind, "Just because he doesn't talk about something, doesn't mean it's not there. That's the kind of guy Gil is."

"Since when do you use his first name?"

"I don't. But trust me on this one; with someone like him, you're going to have years worth of unraveling to do."

"Great," Greg muttered. Then a thought occurred to him, and he asked, "Since when do you pay so much attention to Grissom?"

Carol's cell phone rang, interrupting them.

"Since always," she said, fishing her phone from her pocket. "Vega," she said, looking at the caller ID. She answered it.

"Hello?" There was a pause as she listened. "It's coming around the corner now? How long? Two minutes, okay. All right, I'm going to have Greg try to steal my cell phone now, then we'll do it. Be ready for us at the end of the block." She nodded to Greg, almost imperceptibly, and he playfully tried to snatch her phone from her as she pretended to still be talking on it; now was the moment when he was most likely to be looking at them

She closed her phone, tucked it away, then gave him an affectionate shove. "Time to move," she said.

"Okay." Holding hands, they stood up, sauntered over to the crosswalk and crossed the street.

"Time for some heavy petting," she said.

To any outside observer, it looked like they were making out passionately, but in fact, it was a useful cover for the act of slipping on their latex gloves unseen. Soon, they caught sight of the garbage truck turning the corner.

"There it is," said Carol, "Now, cross your fingers..."

Kissing again, they watched as the door to the house in question opened and a short, scruffy, balding man stepped out of his garage and deposited a trash can on the curbside. Then he went back inside his house.

"He'll probably still be watching," said Greg. "We'll have to go fast."

Hiding their outer hands in their jacket pockets and holding fast to their inner hands, his left clutched in her right, they started down the sidewalk. Greg's heart was pounding.

"Ready?" she said.

"Ready," he replied.

"On three, we grab and run like hell. One...two...three!"

They reached. They grabbed. They ran.

Greg kept Carol ahead of him as the sprinted down the block, wanting to be the first one overtaken if the guy pursued them. But he didn't look back, didn't see or hear anything of their suspect. If he did chase them, Greg never knew it. They just ran until the sidewalk ended, then plunged into the open backseat of the squad car that awaited them there, laughing and whooping in triumph.

* * * *

He'd had bad days at work before, but this one was shaping up to leave all the others behind.

He was distracted, and that almost never happened to him, certainly not to this extent. There was apathy, too, and while the last few months and years had gradually made him no stranger to that emotion, this new incarnation of it felt insurmountable.

But most of all, he was numb. And under the numbness, pushed away to the furthest corner of his mind, was that raw, gaping hollow of pain he'd come to know over the course of the last fourteen hours.

He hadn't slept much the night before, but that didn't surprise him. Nighttime always made him susceptible to emotions, alone in the dark as he was, with no puzzles to solve, no thoughts to occupy his mind. Yes, he'd had sleepless nights before, but this one...

He'd risen from bed at his usual time, bone-weary and feeling like he'd passed an eternity in that bed, restless, between those ignorant sheets that still smelled cruelly of Greg. A shower had done little to improve his weariness, and he had not even attempted to eat. Then, faced with the decision of whether or not to come to work, he realized for the first time in years, decades, that it was a decision.

Free will. The only thing you have to do is die. Waking up to suddenly find oneself not wanting anything to do with life certainly brought that reality into sharp relief.

It was cowardice, he supposed, that finally did bring him into the lab, fear of the kind of commitment he would be making if he didn’t show up. It would be a point of no return, a definitive and perhaps final sign to himself and all those who knew him that he had given up.

When he did arrive, he was a full forty-five minutes early for the start of the shift, so he didn't expect Greg to be here yet. For that reason, he nearly jumped when he caught sight of him in the DNA lab.

Gil stopped in the doorway. Carol was with Greg, he saw, and judging by the looks on their faces, he'd just interrupted a rather joyous moment. There was a long, awkward pause between the three of them, which was finally broken by Carol. Stubbornly cheerful, she picked up two pages of computer printouts from the counter and handed them to him.

"We have a match," she said.

Gil peered at the DNA results, then gave her a questioning look.

"Saliva from a beer bottle, taken from our suspect’s trash."

Grissom cast a quick glance at Greg, who returned the look somberly.

"Oh," said Carol, following Gil's gaze, "I had Greg run the DNA. I didn't want to wait for Mia's shift."

Gil nodded, barely hearing her. He knew he should feel something right now; pleased, proud, relieved, at least, but he still felt only numbness. They had the evidence that would put a child-killer away for life, but he didn't care.

He didn't care.

"Have you called Vega?" he asked.

"I was waiting for you, first. But I will now."

"All right," he said, handing the pages back to her, "let me know how it goes. I'll be in my office."

He could feel both of them watching him as he headed off down the hallway, but he didn't look back. He pulled the blinds in his office, then sat at his desk, where he proceeded to bury himself in case reports and the sounds of Hindemith on his headphones.

Time passed slowly as he labored away at the familiar logs, notes and forms that had once been the most loathed aspect of his job. Right now, though, they were mind-numbing and tedious, and that was exactly what he wanted.

He knew he couldn't do this for long, hide like this, even if he had enough paperwork to last him. Sooner or later, he would have to face the music...though he wasn't entirely sure what that would mean. Would he and Greg be able to forge a usable working relationship after this? He had confidence enough in Greg, he discovered...but not in himself.

Which is exactly why this was a bad idea from the start, nagged a voice in his head, and you knew it. But you did it anyway.

Gil sighed. No point in crying over spilt milk. He would try to be professional with Greg, and if he couldn't, he would leave. Leave the supervisor position, hell, leave CSI; it was not as though he didn't have other options, most of which involved working on his own, availing his expertise as a consultant. Nothing face-to-face, dealing with information, not people.

Maybe that was the best idea, after all. Maybe that was what he should have done years ago. Maybe...

His music suddenly stopped.

He glanced at his MP3 player to see what the source of the problem was, and saw it instantly; there was a finger resting on the 'pause' button, slender, feminine, and beautifully manicured. Looking up, he saw that it was attached to...

"Catherine!"

Catherine Willows stood on the other side of his desk, smiling at him. He removed his headphones.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. He was instantly and conflictingly pleased, dismayed, and surprised to see her, and he couldn't decide which of these was the prevalent emotion.

Catherine frowned in response to the expression on his face.

"Six hour layover before we fly to Venice," she explained. "I'm glad you're so happy to see me," she added with a note of sarcasm.

A weary sigh escaped him. "No, Catherine, I am...it's just...I've had a rough night."

"Yeah," she replied, "I heard about that."

He stared at her, aghast. "You...heard?"

She shrugged. "News travels fast in this lab. Always did."

Gil closed his eyes for a moment, slowly shaking his head. Catherine regarded him silently for a moment.

"Look," she said, "do you want to take a late dinner break? Just you and me?"

Gil shook his head. "I'm not hungry."

"I didn't say anything about eating," Catherine said firmly.

Gil considered it. "What about Charlie?"

"He'll be fine."

After a long moment, Gil nodded. "All right."

* * * *

"I appreciate the fact that you're taking this all in stride," he said to Catherine.

From her position next to him on the hood of his SUV, Catherine shrugged as she chewed her turkey club. She'd re-nigged on her earlier words about not eating and made them stop at a nearby deli where she'd ordered for him, remembering what he liked. For the moment, though, she seemed to have given up her efforts to force him to eat.

"Since I married Charlie," she said, "nothing surprises me anymore." She wiped mustard from the corner of her mouth and swallowed. "It was more than that, though. We were all kind of hoping it would happen."

This came as rather a shock to Gil. "You were hoping?"

Again, Catherine shrugged. "Well," she said, "not realistically. But we thought about it. Everybody pairs up...you start to notice who's left... Besides," she added, "Greg's had it bad for you for a long time."

"Has he," said Gil mildly.

"Uh huh." Catherine nodded, her eyes wide. "A couple years, at least."

Gil said nothing, but he frowned a hopeless frown and sighed.

"So what happened with you two?" Catherine asked, "All that buildup and then...a week and a half, and it's done?"

"That's all it was," he said miserably.

"That sucks," she replied. She lowered her voice cautiously. "Did it...not... work for you? I mean...this is a new thing for you, right?"

He fixed her with a glare. That was not a conversation he was going to have with her. "No," he said simply, "it worked." His tone forbade her to pursue the topic any further.

"Sorry," she said. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"No," said Gil, sullenly, "but I probably should."

Catherine smiled at that and punched his arm. "That's the spirit," she said. "Now dish."

Gil sighed. "Catherine," he began, "do you think it's possible to ever truly know someone?"

"Come again?"

Gil shook his head. "It's just something I've been thinking about. Human communication," he explained. "We treat it as an absolute, but really, it's subjective."

"I don't follow you," said Catherine.

"And that's my point," said Gil, "You don't know what I mean or why I'm saying this. Right now, you know you don't, but on another occasion, you might think you did or assume that I meant something other than what I did. Most of the time, we expect other people to mean the same thing we would mean if we were using the words, or tone of voice, or facial expressions and body posture they're using."

"O-kay," said Catherine slowly, "I think I follow you. Where are you going with this?"

"I'm saying that we communicate in language, but language has it's limitations. If someone is talking about facts, about what they did and when and how they did it, that's concrete, but you can only learn so much about who someone is by what they do. There comes a point where you have to try to figure out why. And they can't always tell you."

Catherine narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, thinking. "So what's this have to do with you and Greg?" she asked.

Gil stared downward, absently. "I don't think Greg knows me at all," he said.

Catherine leaned in a little closer to him, watching him intently. "What makes you say that?"

Gil shook his head. "I'd rather not say," he said. "But it's the only explanation I can find for the things he said and did."

"What did he say and do?" Catherine pushed.

Gil waved a dismissive hand. "He...he went too fast. Made assumptions. But what bothers me is that I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't talk about it rationally. I got upset."

Catherine laughed. "It's a relationship, Gil!" she cried, "That's what happens!"

"I said things I didn't mean," he insisted, "I was judgmental in a way I didn't think I could accept from someone else. I insulted him."

Catherine shrugged. "Well, that happens too. Eddie called me a road-whore once."

Gil glared at her.

"Okay, right," she said, throwing up her hands apologetically, "Eddie. Bad example. But it happens with me and Charlie, too. It happens with me and Lindsey," she added. "It's part of being close to people. I've said some pretty bitchy things to you a time or two."

That revelation stopped him in his proverbial tracks for a moment, but Catherine continued;

"Sometimes you do it because you feel hurt, sometimes you do it because you want to get a reaction out of the other person. Sometimes, when I'm hurling insults at Charlie, I think I'm doing it because I want him to admit he's wrong, but then sometimes he does, and it just makes me even more pissed off." She paused and pulled a strand of hair out of her face. "My point is, Gil, it doesn't always make sense. And you can't be in a relationship without hitting all that messy stuff. You have to deal with it when it comes up."

Gil nodded. "Right," he said softly. He shook his head. "Catherine, I don't think I can do this."

"Do what?" she asked.

"This," he said, gesturing vaguely, "It doesn't matter if it's you, or Greg, or someone else. I'm expected to open up, but I don't even know what that means. There are...things I'm supposed to say ...or do, at certain times, but I don't know what they are."

"Gil," said Catherine, her voice holding just a note of weary impatience.

"What?"

"Relax," she said.

Sighing, Gil dropped his head forward. Catherine slid in closer to him and put her arms around his shoulders.

"You'll figure it out," she assured him. "You just have to get back on the horse. And don't expect yourself to be perfect all the time."

He smiled wryly. "I don't," he said, "I'd just like it if I didn't destroy everything I touched."

Catherine frowned. "Did you destroy this?"

Gil nodded. "Yeah. I did."

Catherine's expression became even more confused. "Oh," she said, "well...I talked to Greg, and that's not how I read it."

Gil sat up sharply. "Are you sure?"

Catherine shook her head. "No." Gil made an exasperated noise. "I don’t know. You'll have to talk to him." said Catherine.

"What would I say?" he asked.

Catherine put her head in her hand and shook it slowly back and forth. "You're hopeless," she said. "You tell him you're sorry, and you tell him you didn't mean it, and you tell him you'll try not to do it again. Simple as that."

Gil wasn't sure he agreed. "And that's supposed to work?"

Catherine snorted. "I don't know. It might. People aren't science projects, Gil. They all act according to their own rules. Even you. And those rules? Always changing."

"Great," he said.

Catherine patted his shoulder reassuringly. "I have faith in you," she said.

They sat in companionable silence for a long time, staring up at the stars.

"Thanks, Catherine," he eventually said.

"Hey," she said, "anytime you need me. And Gil?"

"Hmm?"

"Write to me once in a while, okay?"

* * * *

The conversation with Catherine allowed him to finish his shift in a considerably lighter mood than he’d begun it in. Not a good mood, particularly, merely bleak and somewhat confused; apprehensive. But that was something better than despair.

Catherine would be well on her way to Italy by now. He wished she could have stayed longer; he would have loved to have her over right now, her and Charlie and Lindsay. A little socialization would be a welcome thing at this moment, something to distract him while he wrapped his head around the business with Greg.

Normally, he preferred solitude when something was weighing on his mind, but at the moment, the thought of his large, empty house awaiting him was a little daunting.

He packed up for the night reluctantly, glancing up and down the halls as he locked up his office. He’d stayed late; there was no one left here. No reason for him to stay, either, try as he had to find one.

He did think of one more thing he could do before he went home; the parents of his latest case’s victim had called his voicemail to ask if their daughter’s body had been released for burial yet. The matter was not technically his responsibility, of course, but they’d asked him, and it was no great matter to stop by the morgue and see if David had posted the release.

Gil padded down the halls to the mortuary quietly, the buzz of the back-up lighting system the only sound. He’d been alone in this building after hours hundreds of times before, so why did it feel so cold and strange now?

Once he stepped inside the morgue, he stopped dead in his tracks.

"Oh," he said, mildly startled.

Carol stood in front of one of the latched metal doors, motionless, eyes closed, and leaning forward with her palms pressed flat against the metal surface. Inside that particular freezer, Gil knew, lay the body of Alice Werner, age 8. Beneath her hands, he saw the paper notice taped to the door, stating that the corpse had, indeed, been released.

He approached her quietly. "Carol?" he said. She came out of her reverie abruptly, quickly straightening up. "Did you want to look at something on the body?"

"No," she said. "No. We have everything we need, I’m sure. I'm on my way out."

"Is everything all right?" he ventured.

"Yes," she said, "I was just..." She shrugged and smiled in an embarrassed sort of way. "I was talking to her."

Gil cocked his head to one side, curious. "What were you saying?" he asked.

Carol gave him a hard look. "Don’t make fun of me," she said.

For once, Gil decided to defend himself. "I wasn’t," he said.

Carol deflated a little, staring forward again. "I told her we got him," she said, "and that I was sorry we didn’t get him before he hurt her." She turned to Gil. "Does this sound stupid to you?"

"We all cope with what we do in whatever way we can," said Gil, shrugging. "Did she say anything to you?"

Carol shook her head. "Not much. She wanted me to know how scary it was, but I told her I knew." Carol was still for a moment, then her face crumpled a little. She sniffed as a sudden tear rolled down her cheek.

"Sorry," she said, wiping it away.

Gil regarded her silently for a moment, concerned. It was strange, just how differently this job affected different people.

"Carol," he said gently, "you shouldn’t expect yourself to take everything in stride."

Carol smiled sadly. "That’s not what this is, Grissom," she said.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Yesterday and today are the first times I’ve seen you get upset about a case."

Carol said nothing.

"Carol," he continued, "Not acknowledging how you feel can be just as bad as dwelling on it. The things we face in here are difficult…they’re not part of reality as we know it. Not at first."

"They were part of my reality," she said softly.

So that was it. Gil watched her and listened intently, wondering if she would say more. He was not surprised; some of the most devoted criminalists he’d ever known had chosen their profession because of personal experiences or tragedies in their lives. Sometimes, it worked. Sometimes, it didn’t.

Carol looked at him thoughtfully. "Do you remember the first time we met?"

Gil thought for a moment. "Let me see," he said. "I know you saw my lecture in L.A., and the one in Denver." She nodded. "But we’d never met or spoken until your interview."

Carol smiled. "I always loved your work. When I was in college, I read everything you wrote. When I had my interview to come work here, with you, I was so excited about finally meeting you that I forgot to be nervous." She laughed the tiniest bit at the memory. "But that was the third time we’d ever met."

Gil blinked at her in confusion. He had no recollection…

"The second time we met," she continued, her voice expressionless, "I told you how I got these." Carol held up her hands; they were lightly scarred all over, so much that they'd had to call upon Jaqcui to reproduce a complete print from partials when Carol had been printed for the job a year ago. "And you had to leave our living room to go throw up in the bathroom. That's funny, because now, I know that enclosed decomps don't even make you throw up."

A tiny flickering of memory was stirred in his mind by her words, but he couldn't place it; it was disconnected. He stared at her blankly. Reading the lack of understanding in his face, she continued once again.

"The first time I met you, Gil Grissom," she said, "You pried up a floorboard and pulled me out of a hole."

Grissom's eyes widened as he finally made the connection. "Carol," he breathed, "Carol Hunter."

Carol's smile was somehow both sad and overjoyed. "Hello, Gil."

Gil's head was suddenly filled with images, details of a case eighteen years ago. He'd been young, only a CSI 2 at that point, and not a primary on the case. In fact, he'd only joined the investigation when the victim count had climbed to three; two dead, one missing. All children.

The case had affected him profoundly. It had been his first of that kind, one of the first to grab hold of him in the way it had, to fill his thoughts, day and night, until it was solved. His supervisor at the time had praised him as brilliant for discovering the case-breaking evidence, but he knew it had been sheer doggedness that had been his salvation, not brilliance.

That same persistence had paid off after they'd made the arrest, when their suspect had clammed up, refusing to confirm any involvement with the disappearance of the third missing girl, 11-year-old Carol Hunter. Gil had stayed at the crime scene for hours, searching every inch of the house, looking for any clue that might help them. But instead of evidence, he'd found the victim.

She'd been hidden inside a crawl space, its entrance through the floor hidden by a rug. He'd gagged her and wrapped her in a sleeping bag, so tightly that she could not make a noise to alert her would-be rescuers before they had left the house. Gil had been standing right over her, felt the vibrations through his feet as she'd kicked fiercely, but soundlessly, against the top of her tiny prison.

Though his mind had been a white haze of fear and shock, he'd somehow done everything right; he'd freed her, spoken soothing, reassuring words, checked her for injuries and found second-degree burns on her hands - her kidnapper had placed them in hot cooking oil as a way to keep her from using them to escape. She'd clung to him while he'd carried her to his car and radioed for help.

After that, the only time he'd seen her had been at her parents home, where he'd been present for her interview. It had been just as she’d described it, though she had been speaking to an advocate and not directly to Grissom or his partner. And Gil had excused himself to be sick, had gone to the bathroom, where the girl’s older brother had found him minutes later. He’d brought Gil a glass of seltzer water, eyes wide with quiet confusion, no doubt grateful to be of some small help in the midst of the tragedy around him.

And that girl…that broken, frightened child he’d last seen cowering in her mother’s arms…how could she be the same as the woman who stood before him now?

"Do you remember?" Carol asked him.

Gil nodded. "How could I forget?" His mind filled with at least a dozen questions he wanted to ask her, but the one he gave voice to was, "Why didn’t you tell me?"

Carol shrugged. "It’s not the sort of thing you tell people right away," she said. "You wait until they know you. Know that you’re not made of glass. I haven’t even told Warrick yet. Not the details."

Gil was still trying to piece it all together, to bring it home to his heart and believe it. His mind made an unpleasant connection…

"That day," he said, "when I made you climb into that tunnel…"

She waved a hand and shook her head, dismissing him.

"I told you, that wasn’t your fault," she said. "I chose to go in there. We have to face the things we fear," she added.

"Is that why you became a criminalist?"

Carol nodded. "Among other reasons. I love the work for its own sake, but yes; what happened to me has a lot to do with it. And so did you."

Gil blinked. "Me?"

"Yeah. Do you think it’s a coincidence I ended up here, working for you?" She leaned back against the lockers, settling herself in for what was fast becoming an involved conversation.

"It didn’t happen right away," she said. "I think I was 15 or 16 when I first started to consider it as a career. A science teacher I had suggested it to me, and I remembered you. I…wasn’t as screwed up then as you might have expected," she said with bleak humor, "just angry, mostly." Her simple words, Gil knew, were probably a gross understatement. He couldn’t imagine, never had been able to imagine, just what it would mean for someone to go forward after being touched by something like that.

"When I was in college," Carol continued, "I saw you on the news a few times, and I made the connection." She smiled. "You know, you never could make it on TV without saying something interesting." Gil frowned at this observation. He didn’t like to be reminded.

"How could I do anything else?" Carol asked, animatedly. "How could I be anything else? I saw you…remembered you…This," she gestured vaguely around her referencing the room, the lab, their lives in general, "has made sense of everything that happened to me, somehow." After a pause, she added, softly. "So thank you."

Gil looked up quickly at those words. "You’re welcome" hardly seemed an appropriate thing to say.

"Carol," he said. "I…" He tried to find words, but his brain seemed to have jammed up.

Carol took pity on him. "What is it?" she asked. "What are you wondering?" Her voice was still soft, and she was smiling.

Gil thought for a moment. "I’ve been a criminalist for over two decades," he said. "Before that, I was a field agent. Before that, a coroner. I see people on the worst days of their lives, and I see what it looks like when someone has their entire world dismantled. Then, I never see them again."

Carol nodded. "Am I the first, then?"

"Yes," said Gil.

"What do you want to ask me?" she inquired. "If I’m happy?"

Gil nodded.

Carol’s expression was thoughtful for a moment. She cast her eyes downward, staring at the floor. "I was kidnapped when I was eleven," she said, "I was held in his house and sexually assaulted. I thought he was going to kill me, and later I learned that he almost certainly was. I lost the year in school I had gained by skipping second grade because I was afraid to leave the house. I thought it was over, but then I had to re-live it, to tell people about it. My parents, the cops, every shrink I ever saw. I’ve been through extensive counseling. I’ve been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and been medicated. I had regular nightmares for years, and sometimes, I still do. The same with the panic attacks. I was a wreck socially; I had no friends in high school. And I couldn’t date until I was 23 because the thought of intimacy was unbearable." She looked up at him then, eyes bright and defiant.

"But yes," she said. "I’m happy. Because one day…I think it was the summer before I started college…I realized that the event itself wasn’t what was hurting me anymore. What was hurting me, what was making me unhappy, really, was the person I’d become in response to it. I started to wonder if I could just…stop." She dropped one of her hands down against her thigh. "Stop reacting. Stop being what I’d become and just start being who I would have been if it had never happened. And it seemed crazy, or stupid, like it would never work. But it worked. It was the first thing I’d done that had ever worked." She shook her head. "Not…instantly or anything. I couldn’t just ignore all the stuff in my past, but…I stopped letting my past write my future for me."

She sat back on her heels and watched him then. Several long moments passed as Gil could only silently regard the young woman before him, filled with awe.

"And you…" she said, then laughed. "I wasn’t fair to you. I expected you to be different, and I was angry when you weren’t."

"What did you expect?" He couldn’t help but ask it.

Carol straightened up and stepped closer to him, closing the distance between them.

"I expected you to know what I had such a hard time learning."

"And what’s that?"

Carol smiled. "That the answer is ‘yes.’"

Gil frowned, desperately confused. "The answer to what?"

"Whatever you want," said Carol, then she hugged him.

His head couldn’t make any sense of her answer, and yet…and yet. She melted into his arms and stayed there for a long time. This was a new feeling for him, yet somehow familiar. This was a piece of it, he knew, a piece of what he’d been missing. And it was not lost to him, had not passed him by; it was still waiting for him.

"Thank you," Carol said again. "For finding me."

Gil nodded, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. He was not unused to tears, but this was thicker, deeper, a feeling in his throat and chest like he was about to burst. She was thanking him, yet somehow…he felt as though he’d been forgiven.

The tight feeling passed, as did the embrace, but Carol could see the brightness of his eyes still, he knew.

"Thank you for telling me," he said, once he knew he could speak.

Her own eyes held unshed tears of their own, but she smiled. "It was the right time," she said. "Things…come together at certain times. For certain reasons. I believe that."

He nodded. "I think…" he said thoughtfully, "I think I could believe that too."

* * * *

He got in his car and headed home.

He felt he as if he were in a trance-like state as he drove him, his focus white-hot, yet seeming to be centered outside himself. The road, the car, his own body, all seemed different somehow, like the look of a re-filtered camera lens. He felt warm, but it was not a physical sensation. He felt a nervousness, a twinge of excitement, and yet, the core of his being was of the utmost calm.

When the time came to make the choice, he took the road that would take him to Greg’s apartment, not to his home. He felt as though he were watching himself do it, not taking an active part in the choice.

Arriving at the apartment building, he experienced a moment’s trepidation at the idea of having to call up to Greg and be buzzed in. It was an unnecessary worry, though; he soon discovered that someone had propped the door, stuck a shoe in as a stop. Normally, the sight would have made him cringe, made him shake his head in wonder at the carelessness of people who obviously never saw the sorts of things he saw, but not this time; this time, it seemed right, felt acceptable and appropriate, almost as if it had been left there for him.

He climbed the stairs to Greg’s floor, made the journey he had never made alone before. Greg had always been with him when he had walked this way. Was that why this place felt so different now, like the walls themselves were welcoming him, like the floor was urging him forward, telling him that he was exactly where he needed to be?

He came to Greg’s door and knocked. Outside himself, he felt his own nervousness as he heard the sounds of shuffling inside, of footsteps approaching the door.

A moment later, Greg opened it and peered out at Gil, not saying a word.

Gil cleared his throat. "May I come in?"