Author Note: Edited and reposted 9/18/12. 800 or so words added in total with a few...okay, many...grammatical and spelling errors corrected. No one's perfect. Enjoy.

Chapter One

Warrick Brown waited in the fluorescently lit corridor of the Las Vegas Crime Lab, staring through everyone who walked past as though they weren't there, eyes locked on the doorway before him. He was on a mission, and would not be distracted.

Fellow CSIs Sara Sidle and Greg Sanders had returned to the lab not too long ago, and Sara had asked to talk to him in private for a minute, pulling him aside.

"What's up, girl?" Warrick had asked as they entered the break room.

Sara shut the door softly behind them, like she didn't want to draw attention to this meeting. She'd crossed her arms, her face a curious mix of concern and solemnity. "Have you noticed Nick acting strange lately?"

Warrick walked the length of the room and thought, coming to a rest with a hip propped against the long counter. He frowned; there was no way this conversation was going anywhere he wanted to go. "You mean besides on this case?"

Sara nodded, eyes wide.

"I don't think so. He's seemed fine to me."

"Well, not to me." She relayed to him, with no lack of detail, the eventful interview at the sheriff's station. How Nick had snapped, burst into the room, and slammed Peter Locke into the wall, demanding the final resting place of little Cassie McBride.

Warrick's jaw dropped. "That's not like Nick." His normally reserved friend would never behave that way, never become aggressive with a suspect, especially a kid, and especially in an interrogation. An act like Sara was describing could very well be a detriment the department's ability to put the right perp behind bars.

Sara was clearly worried, for any number of reasons. "No, it's not." She sank into a chair. "I tried to talk to him about it and he kind of blew me off."

She looked up at him with hopeful eyes. "I was thinking maybe you could give it a try."

Warrick sat down across from Sara with a sigh, leaning in conspiratorially. "I can try. He hasn't exactly been Joe-here's-what-I'm-thinkin' lately."

"Doesn't that worry you?"

Warrick felt a sudden pang of guilt. He and Nick were close, or at least used to be, and it was very nearly a smack in the face for Sara to notice these kinds of things in his friend's behavior when he didn't. "Yeah, I guess it does," he said honestly. "I guess I just assumed he was doing better."

"We all did." Sara stared at her hands. "Why wouldn't we? He's certainly been acting like everything is normal."

"Maybe we just wanted to believe that it was." Warrick gave himself a mental slap, but it wasn't anything close to what he deserved. They should have been taking better care of their friend. He knew, however, why they hadn't. Because they'd been afraid that if they coddled him too much, he would just shut down.

They didn't talk about what happened, not when Nick was around. They kept the mood as light as was possible in a job surrounded with death and destruction. They laughed and joked and did everything they could to make Nick feel comfortable, and it had seemed to be working. Nick smiled and laughed and joked back with them. Warrick had wanted to believe so hard that it wasn't just an act…that Nick really was doing better.

He was stupid. It hadn't even been that long since…there was no shelf-life on the kind of mental anguish he had to be going through. Of course Nick was still dealing with things. He was just too smart for them, wasn't allowing them to see it.

The break room door opened and Archie Johnson, the A/V tech, started to enter, whistling.

Sara looked up sharply and gave Warrick a meaningful look.

Warrick cleared his throat. "Hey, Arch. You think you could give us just a minute?"

Archie paused on his way to the mini-fridge. "Sure. Can I grab a soda?" He pulled out a can of Coke and gave them a wave, shutting the door behind him on his way out.

"I'll talk to him," Warrick said.

Sara chewed on her lip, not meeting his eyes. "Maybe we all should."

Warrick shook his head. "Nah, I think that might be too much. I'll do it."

Sara nodded, already appearing as though a weight had been taken from her. "Thanks. I'm really worried about him. I can't stand to think he's going through things that he won't talk to us about."

As if that were something only Nick was dealing with, but Warrick let it go. Sara had her secrets, same as anyone, and at the moment she had her issues under control. One problem at a time, man.

So here he was, waiting for Nick. Warrick wasn't sure what he was going to say, or how he was going to say it. He hadn't been there to witness the crack in Nick's stoic exterior that Sara had, and didn't want to rely on information learned secondhand. That wasn't to say that he hadn't been noticing small behavior shifts, himself, not when he thought about it. He had to admit this latest bit of news was just giving validity to the feeling he'd been having lately that Nick needed someone to haul him bodily back before he went over the edge.

Warrick pushed himself off of the wall as Nick enter the building. His friend's steps were slow and heavy, and he was staring at his feet as if he had to look at them to get them to move. In his hand was a folded piece of construction paper, and he was gripping it so hard that even from where he stood Warrick could see the shadowy indentations in the paper.

Nick nearly walked clear past Warrick, not seeing him, but he reached out and grabbed the arm of Nick's hooded blue sweatshirt and the man jerked away, startled.

"Sorry, man. Didn't see you." Nick's eyes looked a little red, like he had been crying.

Warrick took in his haggard appearance like a punch to the gut. "Can we talk for a second?"

A small smile crept over Nick's features. "We're talkin' now."

Warrick shook his head, not allowing his buddy to wave the seriousness of this situation away. "I'm for real. In private."

Nick's smile was replaced with a cautious, confused frown, and he slowly started to nod. "Yeah, sure."

Warrick led Nick back to the break room. Greg was now sitting there, feet up on the table, flipping through a magazine.

"Hey, Greggo," Warrick said warmly. He jerked a thumb toward the door. "Scram."

Greg looked at him over the top of his magazine. "It's my break room, too. Hey, Nick."

Warrick grabbed the magazine out his hands, rolled it up and smacked him on the head with it. "Come on, man."

Greg stood and took his magazine back. "All right, I'm going. Sheesh."

He left and Warrick moved to shut the door.

Nick looked at him quizzically. "What was that about it?" Then a look of realization settled over his features and he sighed. "Do not even tell me that you dragged me in here to give me a lecture, man. I don't need it." Nick fixed him with a glare.

Warrick gave it right back. "You do need it, bro."

Nick put his hands on his hips, the laugh lines around his eyes making him seem older now, weathered. "Sara talked to you, didn't she? That was nothin'. I just lost it for a minute."

"You never lose it, Nick," Warrick said.

Nick rolled his eyes. "Don't you start with that, too. This had nothing to do with that. It was about Cassie."

"Why?"

"Because it's my job, Warrick," Nick said angrily. "I'm sorry that I wasn't as quick to give up on her like the rest of you."

"We were following the evidence."

"That's great. I'm sure Grissom will be very proud of you." There was venom in his words, and Nick turned to leave.

"When are you gonna stop shutting us out and admit that you need help?"

Nick whirled to face him, features contorted with a dark look that came from somewhere deeper than the McBride case. "I do not need help. I show up to work, and I do my job."

Warrick crossed his arms. "How are you sleeping?"

Nick raised his eyebrows and shook his head. "What does that have to do with anything? It's not affecting my work."

"I think it is. Since when do you threaten a suspect?"

Nick took a step forward, drawing himself up. Warrick cocked his head and clicked his tongue. His threatening stance was a prime example of the changes in behavior they'd been seeing in Nick lately, carelessly disregarding them, afraid to being anything up and risk bringing him down like a precariously constructed house of cards.

Their voices were rising, and people out in the hall were slowing as they passed, or stopping altogether, listening to the muffled shouts coming from the room.

"I told you – that was not about what happened!"

"'About what happened'? Say the words, man. You can't even talk about it!" This was not how Warrick had intended for this talk to go, but maybe, hopefully, the message was getting across.

Nick clenched his teeth. "There's nothing to talk about, because I'm fine."

Warrick threw his hands up in frustration. "Fine. But how do you expect us to help you if you won't talk to us."

"I don't need your help with anything, because I'm fine." Nick turned and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him with enough force to rattle the window. The blinds swung in the wake of his departure, clicking against the glass.

Warrick stood in the middle of the room, mind racing, regretting every word he'd said. Kind of. It was all of things that he'd been wanting and waiting to tell Nick for months, keeping his mouth shut instead because he was wary of this exact reaction. He could only hope he hadn't driven Nick even further into himself. He'd give anything for things to get back to the way they were.

Damn you, Gordon, Warrick's mind cried out to the dead man who had ruined so much more than he could have hoped for.

Nick stormed through the lab, ignoring the looks he was getting from colleagues he passed on the way to the locker room the CSIs shared. Much to Nick's relief, it was empty. Over the past few months, rooms had a very annoying habit of being occupied every time he wanted to be alone. He lashed out a foot and kicked the closest locker. Satisfied with the dent he put there, he stood still a long moment, hands balled into fists at his sides, breathing hard.

Suddenly he felt an enormous weight bearing down on him, and he sank to the bench that ran between the rows of lockers, and put his head in his hands.

What am I doing? Sara, Warrick…they were all just concerned about him. Instead of letting them, Nick was writing off their very well-meaning concern, and not letting them in. He'd hoped that if he just focused on the job, if he didn't talk about it, if he just took it a day at a time…things would be fine.

Things weren't fine. Hell, the sight of a single damned bug on his arm caused his heart rate jump, his skin to be covered in gooseflesh, his hands to shake uncontrollably.

And that bunker. That damned bunker. Nick didn't know how he'd managed to keep from running right the hell out of there.

Yes, he did. Keeping his composure in front of the others was more important to him than giving into the complaints and demands of his mind and body. He'd fought that urge to dart back to the truck and hide his discomfort, a fancy word for fear. He hadn't wanted to let the others see just how hard a time he was having. Apparently, he was doing a really crappy job, because they were still anxious, still walking on eggshells around him, no matter how hard he'd been working to give off an air of indifference during such situations.

He knew they were all waiting for him to be the same old Nick, and he was trying really hard to be that for them. It was a vain attempt, because he wasn't the same guy, and expending the amount of energy he was trying to put up that façade, he was losing sight of the man he now really was. No drastic changes, as far as he saw it, but he was under the impression, and had been told by no less than three different medical professionals, that it was normal after something as traumatic as what he'd been through. No one could come out of that box the same person as when they went in. That was the mantra that helped him sleep at night, on the nights he did actually sleep.

He didn't know what had gotten into him with this case. It was just the thought that the people around him were giving up on Cassie, who had been waiting, cold and helpless and alone, for days. For a rescue that, if Nick hadn't had his way, would not have happened.

What would have happened to Nick if they had given up so easily on rescuing him? He spent a lot of time and energy not asking himself that question. He didn't want to think about how close he had been to pulling that trigger. Inches. Seconds. The space of a blink of the eye. He had been the one who had almost given up, not them.

Nick couldn't keep in the small sob that caught in his throat. He didn't hear the footsteps coming up slowly behind him, but felt the balance of the bench shift as someone sat down next to him, and he didn't have to look over to know it was Warrick.

Nick turned his face into the shoulder of his sweatshirt and roughly wiped his eyes. He couldn't think of anything to say. He wanted to apologize, his anger and frustration dissipated in kick to the locker, leaving only the guilt. He looked away, not making eye contact with his friend.

After several moments, Nick composed himself and was finally able to turn to Warrick. "I'm sorry, 'Rick," he managed before his voice caught in his throat and he was forced to look away again. He focused on the homemade card still clutched in his hand.

"It's all right. Take all the time you need, man," Warrick said, patting Nick on the leg. "We'll wait."

"I know." And he did.

To be continued...