Title : WHEN THE DEAD AWAKEN
Chapter Two
*****
The violent onslaught of the sun greeted Grissom as he stepped out the house,
forcing him to shield his eyes for a moment. He felt a moment of strange rage at
the cheerful rays burning down at him. Inside, parents wept for a child the sun
would never kiss again. The sun did not care; it shone on always, even when the
dead seemed to outnumber the living.
He turned as Catherine exited as well, looking radiant in the bright day, even
if sadness marked her features.
“Too young,” she said quietly.
“They always are,” he replied.
Tara MacNichols. Murdered at nineteen. As far as the parents knew, going out
with a friend. Instead, she had met death while bleeding in the cold grass of a
night time Las Vegas garden. Alone with the stars, her life had dripped away,
one blood drop at a time. Yet she had smiled. That bothered him. There must have
been pain and desperation. Why would she smile? She had not even had the chance
to live her own life yet.
“Brass said he’d get us an address on the friend,” Catherine said as she walked
to him and fell into step beside him as they headed to the car, a slight breeze
whipping her hair out of shape. “How is Sara doing?”
“What?” he said sharply, almost stumbling and catching himself at the last
moment. How was Sara doing? She barely spoke to him since the DUI, unwilling to
discuss the problem or to discuss the job or even look at him as used to. He had
not even realised how much she did look at him and how often he returned the
look.
“On the clothes, Gil,” Catherine replied, giving him a look.
“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll check when we get back to the lab.”
“You are going to have to talk to her.”
“I will when we get back to the lab.”
“No.” Annoyance flickered across her face. “You have to *talk* to her, Gil. You
are her supervisor and she’s struggling. I see it, Warrick sees it, Nick sees
it. Do you?”
“Of course,” he snapped back. He bit back just how closely he had seen it and
how it had filled him with fear and anger and pity and a fervent desire to
somehow fix it.
She shook her head at him, almost fondly. “Sometimes I wonder why you just don’t
sleep with her and get it over with.”
“What?” He looked at her, wondering if the sun had somehow melted something in
her brain. She met his gaze with the uttermost calm and eyes as bright as the
sun, seeming to shine right through him.
“It’s… Trouble,” he said awkwardly.
She smiled faintly. “Sometimes trouble can be good. Trust me.”
He knew that smile. It usually meant she had done something he would not approve
of. “What are you doing, Catherine?”
“I’m living, Griss,” she said simply, and patted his hand. “You will get the
hang of it.”
*****
She wasn’t sure how long she had worked. She had touched the blood with her
gloves, blood that life had left to become stains on valuable clothing. She
taken samples, noted size and brand of the clothing, looked for trace evidence
and catalogued it all in her neat handwriting. And somewhere behind her, she
could almost feel the dead watching, demanding perfection. Always perfection.
Anything less would not give them rest. Would not give her rest.
“Hey.”
She didn’t look up. Grissom stood in the doorway, but she didn’t look up,
refused to look up. She wondered if he even noticed. She wondered if she even
wanted him to notice.
“Is it her?”
“Yeah. The parents confirmed.” He sounded slightly guarded as he spoke, almost
as if he expected her to try something, ready to flee if she would ask awkward
questions. She wanted to laugh bitterly. Did he think she had no pride? That
failure after failure meant nothing to her?
“About that night…” He sounded hesitant, almost shy, something she usually found
strangely attractive in him. Even now, somewhere in her mind, she felt
something. She just wasn’t sure what.
He cleared his throat and started again. “I know you said it was your problem
and I shouldn’t concern myself… Sara, I am concerned. If it was anything I did
or Ecklie…”
She almost smiled at Ecklie’s name being mentioned. Conrad Ecklie would drive
Grissom to drink, not her.
“I never drank because of you,” she replied, finally looking up.
“Then why?”
“Because I could not feel. Because I felt too much. Because I was alive, because
I felt dead. This isn’t science, Grissom. There isn’t just one cause to effect.”
He stood quietly and just looked at her and for once, she felt as if he truly
did see her. His eyes were clear and his face held an expression of sincerity
and something she had no idea what was. How many times had she stood like this,
trying to understand him, trying to… She didn’t know any more.
“You are alive, Sara,” he said slowly. “You come into a room and give it life
more than any other I know.”
And as always, his compliments came out of the blue and slammed into her,
leaving her baffled and breathless. She merely stared at him, his eyes warm and
honest. No lie. Never any lie. Sometimes she almost wished he would. Lies would
help her not love him.
There were so many things she could say, but they all seemed vain and silly and
echoes of what she had said in the past that he had simply brushed aside.
“I’m tired,” she finally said and realised it was the truth.
He blinked and she lowered her gaze, exhaustion seeming to seep into her bones
and weigh her down. She wanted darkness and sleep and quiet and to wake up, to
really wake up. To live again, free of the abyss that had become her mind.
She vaguely felt herself stagger and his warm arms catch her, but that might
have been a thing of the dream, blanketing her mind as it came.
And somewhere deep in the abyss the dead were screaming at her.