Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. I have no money anyway.

Notes/Warnings: I hope you enjoy the story, I've really had a great time writing this multi chaptered fic over the time now. But it does get a bit dark and a bit upsetting at some points so if depressing and slightly shocking material is not your thing...best back off now. It's also a tiny bit complicated.

Live for the Day

By Halina Renata

Chapter 1: In Medias Res

October in Vegas was unbearable. The late afternoon sun still shone without mercy against a sky of cloudless pure blue as Nick got out of his Tahoe and looked around the practically empty suburban area. He looked behind him for a second, now an instinctual habit of his wherever he went in the open. Nick had realized now that his life was run by Murphy's Law. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong and anything from a broken down Tahoe to stalking to being buried alive in a box for a night had made him realized that.

Taking off his sunglasses he walked inside the apartment complex and up the stairs. A couple of students, hung over from last night's obvious partying sat on the stairwell, trying to be coherent. From somewhere else, muffled head banging music was heard. But it wasn't coming from behind Greg's door, Nick realized as he knocked on it and stealing a breath for the job he had come down to do.

After a long moment, he heard, "Go away."

"Hey, G, it's Nick," he said as gently but colloquially as he could. "Open the door, now." He had to admit, he hadn't been round to Greg's apartment often. There was no need to. Greg came to his. Only now the tables had turned and although Nick was still mentally recuperating from his own horrors of being buried alive, Greg was now the one with immediate problem and so he found himself outside his door.

Without an answer, Nick heard the latch of the door being undone and the door opened a bit revealing a tired looking Greg. Quickly taking in what he could see, Nick evaluated the situation. Greg's appearance had shocked him several times. The day he'd met the lab tech with wild shirt, rocked hair and all; his first visit to him in hospital when he'd been blown through a wall of glass; even the more recent toned down clothes and more sensible haircut surprised him when they had bumped into each other in the corridor of the lab. Now, however, Greg looked a whole lot of different. His hair was unnaturally wild as if he'd spent a fortnight in a jungle without toiletries. A pair of baggy jeans and a surprising long jumper practically covering his hands hid most of his frame. It evidently projected someone locking themselves away in their house.

Then, of course, there were the external and unnatural things Nick noticed. Like the darkness of Greg's house indicating the drawn curtains. An almost faded bruise marred Greg's upper right cheekbone with various cuts that Nick assumed must have been there beneath the clothes, given what he'd heard about the incident and the small glimpse he'd seen of him when he was taken out of the house.

"Hey," he said gently, almost expecting Greg to jump at the slightest sound. "Can I come in?"

"Grissom send you on 'check up on Greg' duty?"

"Grissom wouldn't have needed to send me. 'Checking up on Greg' should be generally a friend's duty. Now can I come in or do we talk with all the pissed students around here and the disco upstairs?"

Biting his lip, Greg nodded and stepped back, allowing him into the house. As soon as the Texan was inside, he shut the door and locked it again.

"Sorry. Do you—err—want anything to drink. Haven't really been out grocery shopping but I'm sure I can find something that isn't flat...or foul smelling. Everything here's probably fermented and turned to alcohol anyway."

Nick smiled grimly at the poor copy of Greg's former humour. He looked around the house, noticing he hadn't bothered to clean up. A pizza takeaway was left discarded along with a few bottles of beer. It reminded him of his own lifestyle whenever he felt like hiding away in his home. "I'm all right. I'm more concerned about you."

Greg shrugged apathetically, looking around the room, not wanting to have to see Nick's sympathy. "You shouldn't have done. I'm fine. I'm good, yeah."

If there was ever blatant lying, Nick just heard it now. Given Greg's jittery actions just standing in the corridor—fingers playing with the cuffs of his sleeves, running hands through his messed hair—Nick gathered Greg was not yet fine.

"You don't need to cover it up, man, I can see it."

"See what?" Greg asked tiredly, as if the notion had been told to him a hundred times. "I'm not in the mood for mind games so if you could cut to the chase I'd be grateful because I'm fed up of people 'seeing things' in me."

"You're not yourself, Greg. This isn't you. You're not fine and you're not holding it together."

"Well excuse me, I didn't see you with a firm grip on yourself a few days after you were taken out of that coffin," Greg snapped back sarcastically and immediately bit his tongue when he saw the expression across his friend's face. Sighing, Greg turned around and put a hand to his forehead. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. I'm just..."

Nick nodded. "I know. I wish you'd open a little more, that's all."

Greg sighed with frustration and walked into his living room, which seemed to resemble a student's pit. Magazines splattered about and dinners left on various surfaces. "Well, what do you want me to say," he answered, his voice quavering slightly as he sat down on the couch and pulling one of his knees up in a protective stance. He knew he couldn't have kept the act up in front of Nick. The Texan had a sixth sense when it came to dealing with people. "That—that I'm such a wuss for still feeling so scared about what happened in there? That I'm too scared to go back to work in case I have to do field work again? Hardly the attitude I'm supposed to present to Grissom."

"Forget Grissom for the moment," Nick retorted. "Right now it's not about how you seem, it's about how you really are and you don't need to present yourself properly to Grissom at the moment so quit pretending. He doesn't care about that. He's crap at saying this but I speak for everyone, including him, when I say we're worried about you."

Nick stopped after the silence that followed and walked to sit in the recliner opposite him. He watched Greg studying the ground ahead of him intently, his hands quivering slightly as they held each other and eyes watered from the fear and lack of sleep. Leaning forward on the edge of the recliner, Nick clasped his hands in front of him and lowered his head. "Greg...you know, it's all right to be scared in this business sometimes. What we see every day would render some people terrified for the rest of their lives. However, it stays with us forever and we learn to deal. And you have been dealing. But on those rare cases where a CSI's life has been in danger, it's all right to be terrified. It's just...human."

Greg blinked rapidly and ran a hand through his hair, the now long strands falling limply by his face again. "How do you do this, Nick? After all the shit you've been through how can you still come out so strong and be here trying to make me feel better." Taking a shaky breath, he ran his hand across his eyes quickly.

Nick gave a sad smile of pity but of melancholy. He supposed, out of all of them, he was the voice of experience on how to cope when cases really do affect you personally. He'd almost lost his job and his life—twice with that one—but had managed to keep his sanity together, for what it was worth.

"Takes practise, I guess. But that doesn't mean it hasn't affected me in a long term way," he informed gently. "There are emotional scars to being a CSI. But you get through it by talking. You're good at that."

Greg let out a bitter laugh, a sound so alien to Nick, one he hoped he would never have to adjust to. "Never had to talk to a departmental shrink, though."

"There's a first time for everything, Greggo. You haven't even tried once." He tried to make Greg look at him but the younger CSI turned his head away and focused on something else. "It is a way of helping...I've used it. But you have to tell someone, you can't keep it bottled up. I don't know what went on in there, Greg, I arrived late at the scene. But you know, you can talk to me if you want. You haven't told anyone what really happened in that house."

Greg shook his head forcefully. "I just don't want to talk about it, Nick. Drop it."

Nick let out a sigh, one of defeat. He could sit there as Greg stared into space for hours but gain no progress. For four days now, he had been cooped up in his house, and left alone with only thoughts for company and Nick wondered what was going through his mind right now. He had always really wondered—Greg was strange in personality, eccentric but with the ability to draw any stranger in. Right now he'd much rather have the old Greg back than the more reserved and serious copy he'd evolved into this last year. Now he was a dilution of his former self; lost his innocence once he went out into the real world and now that he'd been a victim, even more so.

The one person who had seen every cloud with a silver lining had turned it into one of dark grey.

"Come on, Grissom wants to see you."

"I thought I was on medical leave," Greg murmured, flopping his head to the side but making no effort to get up.

"Well...you look like you could use some sunshine pale as you are; this is unhealthy. Get up, have a shower and get dressed. I'll take you to the lab." He stood up and looked down at Greg and feeling like a spoilt child, he rolled his eyes and dragged himself off the sofa to his bedroom.

Greg tapped his fingers nervously against the arm of the chair as he sat in front of Grissom's desk. There was always a sense of apprehension when he was called in. Many times he'd wondered whether he'd been fired or about to be banished back to the lab when he came in. At the moment, that seemed like a good idea. Greg remembered times he used to be able to joke mildly with Grissom along with try impress him. Neither really worked but he still continued. Now, he didn't care how his image or attitude came across. He figured that unless someone was an enemy of Grissom or had known him for over a decade, they were liable to be nervous.

"Nick says you don't want to talk to a psychiatrist," Grissom started.

Blunt, Greg thought. But that was Grissom, straight to the point. Somewhere Greg was certain that Grissom was concerned about him but his boss always had an inability to deal with intimacy. He was the opposite of Nick or Catherine. "Not particularly, no."

"I recommend it but I'm not going to force you," Grissom continued lightly, taking off his glasses and taking a good long look at Greg, not trying to avoid it by having paperwork in front of him. Grissom knew he was unable to deal with human emotion, but he was a good observer and a good analyst therefore just by just looking at the young CSI, it was evident Greg wasn't coping and didn't know how to cope with what was going on and in the back of his mind, Grissom mentally kicked himself for not talking to Greg properly about what the horrors of a CSI entailed, let alone all the dangers. Given his fondness of the young man, despite his harsh personality towards him, he'd hoped his enthusiastic, bouncing attitude would have been enough to protect him and help him to deal with the situations.

It seemed not in this extreme circumstance.

"Greg," he said and the young man looked up from where he had been staring at his hands, waiting for the uncomfortable silence to disappear. For Grissom to give up and dismiss him. "I want to tell you I'm sorry."

A flicker of surprise appeared in Greg's eyes. "It's not your fault..."

"It is," Grissom replied sternly. "I let you go into a crime scene that I hadn't entered at all and which I wasn't completely sure was clear and safe. In doing so I risked your life because it wasn't. And I want to apologize and let you know if there's anything you need you can ask me for it."

Greg looked away. "You don't need to wash away any guilt. I don't need help."

"Greg, stop making out that you can handle this," Grissom said, in a voice that was still calm but had a slight edge to it and always had the ability to make Greg quieten. "You were in a house with two murderers at a crime scene for six hours and that is enough to affect anyone, especially a CSI One. You don't get brownie points for trying to appear brave." Greg didn't answer; he looked down at his hands again, forcing his breathing to come out steady and to not get emotional again. It was the last thing he needed in front of his boss, tears. For a few moments he remained silent, trying to sort out the tangle of thoughts in his head, convincing himself everybody was doing this because they cared. Everybody's concern felt like standing in an alternate universe.

"Did...did Nick ever tell you...what he was thinking and feeling whilst he was in that box?" Greg asked quietly.

Grissom nodded. "Yes, he did. It took a while but he confided in me how scared he was for himself the most whilst he was trapped. How he thought of every worst case scenario."

Greg swallowed and took a deep breath to let it out shakily as he tried to repress the images that had started appearing in his mind since that day. "Yeah. He told me too. I guess talking for him helps. And when he told me...whilst I was in that room with those two, I realized that must have been how Nick felt. It felt the same as being trapped in a box." Quietly, he got up from the chair, unwilling to sit there any longer in this ever increasing uncomfortable atmosphere and for once left Grissom to ponder over the significance. Greg could take the long winded paths to the golden answer, but he was rarely cryptic.

"Greg!" Grissom called out before he reached for the door. He stopped but didn't turn round. He heard Grissom sigh. "We all have to make sacrifices as a CSI. We sacrifice our time and sometimes we have to sacrifice our sanity. No one can do this job and act like nothing penetrates them. You may be starting to see and experience what a cold world may be but it doesn't have to turn you cold as well. No man is an island..."

"John Donne?" Greg turned his head slowly. Grissom nodded.

"I wish you could help me, Grissom. I wish you had the ability to erase what's been done or at least make me forget. But I'm damaged now and no amount of talking will stop me from forgetting about this. I'll come round eventually, Grissom. Maybe not in a full circle. There's a part of me that's been left behind now. But let me come to terms with what's happened first before anyone else." And with that, he disappeared out of the door.

Grissom leaned back in his chair, holding his glasses in his hands and a small frown painted upon his face as he watched the door Greg had disappeared out of. Nothing in this line of work was fair. It wasn't fair to the victims of the families they had to see. It isn't fair on them. He had watched them change. Sara...Nick had definitely changed over the last two months...and now Greg. It was hard to imagine people he knew were once so full of life and so jovial be dimmed.

"Hey," Sara said, by the door and walking in slowly when she saw Greg leaving looking despondent. She had waited for the moment to talk to Grissom and Greg, perfectly aware how this was affecting the co-worker she had been particularly close to recently. "How did it go?"

"With little progress. I think he was shocked by my concern. I'm not a natural at this."

"Helping someone getting through a rough time isn't supposed to be easy," Sara said thoughtfully. "But do you think he's holding up? I passed him down the corridor and well...let's just say my off days are nothing compared to that."

Grissom shook his head from side to side slowly not registering what Sara said. "But he made a good point. He has to accept what's happened to him. It just annoys me that he wants to do it all himself. When I know that something bad happened in that room."

Greg walked briskly down the corridor of the lab. He tried to ignore the looks of the swing shift lab techs that he was certain were looking at him as he walked past. Maybe some were concerned; maybe some thought that once again Greg Sanders had fucked up. The last person he needed to see when he was feeling like this was Hodges. When he came in today, he hadn't been expecting an apology from Grissom. He didn't consider it anyone's fault. It happened, he had told himself. He'd followed orders, gone into a crime scene which was believed to be cleared and landed himself as the hostage of the killers. Who was to know? He'd just been unlucky.

Pushing the door to the bathroom open, he silently thanked the air it was empty and walked over to the sink to stare at himself in the mirror. He hated the blemishes on his face; the dark smudges on his face caused by the bruising from fists and the obvious lack of sleep and as he pushed down the side of his shirt, the obvious red swelling of a bite and finger-shaped bruises adorning his neck. Just looking at himself reminded him of what happened. To him, the marks were a timeline of those six hours. Each one mapped the progress of his ordeal. The skin would eventually heal with no marks left. That was the easy part. What he remembered inside was harder to erase.

Greg had never really felt the metal of a gun before. He'd never even trained with a gun. But when he felt the cool metal pressed against his head, it paralysed him. He remembered their voices –he always will now. The gruff sounds in his ear that practically held his life in their hands as they contemplated with desperation how they would get out of this situation. How many times had they threatened to kill him? Greg didn't know? He remembered fists against his body, the punishment for back talking. The way they'd touched him...

They may have the whole fucking department out there, kid, but there's no way you're getting out of here alive...not unless we do.

For six long hours, Greg wondered if that minute was going to be his last; if they would truly kill him when they said; if his fate would be like the boy.

"Greg?" Nick called, opening the door to the bathroom after he'd spent some time talking to Warrick. Greg didn't answer but remained with his palms pressed against the sink and looking down, his face turned away from Nick to cover his growing emotions. He felt a hand pressed against his shoulder and he flinched slightly. "Sara said you went down here—hey, hey, what's going on, are you all right?"

Greg shook his head, closing his eyes tightly and knowing he was failing at keeping his tears at bay. His body shook slightly but with what emotion, he did not know. With a shaking breath, he whispered, "Take me, home, Nick. Please?"

Nick was rendered stunned by Greg's slip in bravado. He didn't think he'd ever seen the young CSI practically crying before. Greg had never really felt the need to. He'd watched Sara become emotional with rape cases involving women or Nick when it came to abusive situations with children. He'd sort of understood but never really felt the empathy whilst stuck behind a microscope in the lab. In fact, he used to joke about things from his position. Once upon a time he may have danced around halls and found interesting ways of presenting evidence. Now it seemed that had been sucked out of him. Now he had a reason for being helpless and he hated himself for appearing weak in front of anyone, including Nick. But he remembered how emotional, how scared Nick had been the moment they'd opened up that box and thought if there was anyone he was going to break down in front of, it could be Nick.

"Sure." Pulling Greg away from the sink and his own reflection, he turned the younger man around so he was looking at him. "Greg," he said as sincerely as he could, trying to make Greg understand the truth in his words. But he found them so difficult to say. Just looking at Greg he could see a different negative aura about him. "I...You're going to be fine. Come on, now, let's get you back."

As Greg allowed himself to be lead away by Nick to his ride, he remembered what Sophia had once told him about dealing. It seemed so simple to just hold a pillow, watch a movie, drink a few beers and wake up the next day feeling refreshed. Greg had been doing that for over a week and a half now, trying to start over and he came to realize that it wasn't working. Like it or not, this time he was the victim and it was going to take more nights crying into a pillow to get over this one.

He didn't know how everyone else could be so certain of his recovery when he didn't believe it himself. Riding back in Nick's truck, the red sun lighting up the sky in vibrant colours, Greg wondered how a routine crime scene investigation had gone so wrong...

Catherine walked into the lab Warrick was working and spread her hands. "Tell me we got something."

It had been three days since mob boss Sam de Marinez, along with his wife and mother and law had been killed whilst at breakfast. That was the initial crime they were called out for. What happened afterwards was a tangled mess they were trying to amend along with the original. Two men found at the scene were currently in custody but refused to talk and the forensic evidence they had was doing little to help in convicting them for the actual initial killings. That and the motive was still unclear. For the sake of getting close to knowing why Greg had to be held captive, they needed the whole story.

"We got Bobby Dawson confirming our suspicions that the gun was an automatic rifle. They're only used by members of the US Army but I wouldn't be surprised if a mobster couldn't get his hands on one. The way the de Marinez family was killed, the killer literally kept his finger on the trigger and swung back and forth, pumping them full of lead."

"And we have no idea who the gun could belong to," Catherine sighed, feeling defeated. The length of this case was taking her toll. She wished it could be over right now. But little odds and ends seem to be constantly coming lose, causing their case to complicate. She put a hand to her head and thought of all the missing pieces. "There's someone else involved. If those two guys we have were looking for something, they wouldn't have been concerned in ditching the gun."

"Yet we didn't find the gun on them," Warrick pointed out. "I think I agree with you there. Which means the real murderer is still out there. Maybe these two are just the 'need to know' employees."

Catherine shook her head. "Nothing about this feels right."

Warrick paused over the microscope and looked up at Catherine who sat with her elbows resting on the table and head in her hands. At first oblivious to her distress, it was quite clear now. He got up from the desk he was working at and sat beside her, wishing to get to the heart of the problem. Knowing he shared an understanding connection with Catherine, he hoped she would open up to him. "You wanna tell me what you're thinking 'bout?"

Catherine took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders to flick her hair behind her. "Doesn't everything feel like it's falling apart?" she asked quietly, looking up at Warrick who in turn, cocked his head to the side inquisitively. "This whole department...the whole aura around it feels different now."

"Catherine, you're not...?" Warrick broke up, not wanting to voice the worst.

"You know, I knew there sacrifices came when it comes to being a supervisor. And although I was happy to get the position, I didn't want it to split us up and make things so tense between us all. There's this invisible power struggle between Grissom and I. Now, after what's happened to Nick and now Greg, of all people...don't you wish things could go back to how they were before? It feels like we don't connect anymore." Catherine looked towards the ceiling, not wanting to believe she was saying the words. But after living in denial for over a year whilst being supervisor, the recent events in the department had allowed her to question the benefits of swing supervisor.

Warrick looked at the table and bit his lip. "I don't think a day has gone by that all of us has thought 'there had to be a better way.' We can't dwell on what happened. There have been advantages to this as well. But even in the current situation, there has to be a way to make it better." He remained silent when Catherine didn't answer. "What brought this on, huh?"

Smiling slightly, Catherine shrugged her shoulders. "Grissom. Always one to get you thinking. On the day of the...de Marinez incident, I found out that he'd requested a meeting with Ecklie. He wants to revise the current situations with us. Never thought he'd be the one to get the ball rolling on that one."

Warrick looked down and couldn't help a melancholy smile grow on his lips. Raising an eyebrow he looked over at her. "Well, how did you get to where you are now? Maybe Grissom has opened his eyes as well and realized that sometimes you need to fight for the things you want and it ain't gonna make everyone happy."

Nodding, Catherine gave Warrick a look of understanding. "And the thing about it is, I'll probably give it to him. I'm tired of fighting and causing this rift." Feeling Warrick's hand on her back, she felt reassured. She had no idea what the outcome of the meeting would be and although the dread was welling up inside of her, she could only hope for the best.

Greg thought that maybe he was dying.

He could have sworn that at some point he was in Nick's truck, staring at the rapidly setting sun casting an orange glow against the sky. A moment later he was on the ground, feeling the rough surface of the floorboard against his cheek. A voice sounded in his ear gruffly although he couldn't quite know what was being said to him. The words barely mattered compared to the sound of that unforgettable voice.

Greg was crying, he realized. Somewhere to being on the ground and the voice in his head he had started crying and although Greg could admit to showing emotion, appearing weak wasn't one of them. Had he cried in that room? He couldn't remember right. Somewhere further off he could hear the wail of a child. Some voice of innocence of a six year old was begging and pleading for help and he was trapped. Turning his face to the side, Greg figured he'd scratched his face against the headboard.

They may have the whole fucking department out there, kid, but there's no way you're getting out of here alive...not unless we do. You're our new pawn and god, are we gonna make good use of you so sit tight and shut up! This nightmare of yours has only started and you'll soon wish it was you with the bullet in the back.

Now Greg suddenly realized. The child wasn't pleading for help anymore. The child wasn't begging. He was.

"Greg?" he heard, like a sound from beneath water. "Greg! Greg, can you hear me, wake up?"

He felt someone grab his arm and immediately opened his eyes to pull away. "DON'T TOUCH ME!" he screamed loudly and the silence that followed resembled that after a gunshot. Looking around and taking in gulps of air, Greg noticed he wasn't lying on the floorboards of a small room. He was in Nick's truck, outside his own cubby hole apartment with Nick looking at him from the wheel slightly startled.

Raising his hands, Nick nodded. "All right. I won't. You were just tossing and turning and getting a little uptight in your sleep there."

Greg shrugged as he opened the passenger door to get out. "Well, I'm liable to some heart frightening nightmares every now and again. Thanks for the ride."

Unwilling to let the young CSI get off so easily Nick got up to race after him and stood to block his path to the stairs which lead inside. "These nightmares are every now and again or night after night?"

Greg raised an eyebrow incredulously. He already felt the overbearing sense of Nick suffocating him. "If you're about to lecture me on going to the psychiatrist, then don't waste your breath. Besides, this doesn't happen to be any of your business."

"Well, I'm making it my business!" Nick cried back at him. "I had nightmares too, you know. It's all part of the package. But if it's the nightmares that are making you cranky and scared and unwilling to go to sleep but play x-box all night then maybe that's where your problems lie. You can't be afraid of going to sleep, you know, because how else are you going to get better."

Greg now narrowed his eyes. His couch and high energy caffeine sounded so appealing right this instant. "Get out of my way, Nick."

"No. Let me help you, Greg."

"But I don't need your help!" Greg shouted back, flailing his arms around wildly. "I need you to go away and leave me alone to get over this in my own way, in my own time. Sorry if I sound arrogant, Nick, I know you're not used to this having not hung around with me that much, but I don't need you or any psychiatrist helping me on a path of happiness." Pausing he took a deep breath and tried to calm his irrational and heated body. Slowly and calmly, he then said, "I don't need or want your help." And with that, Greg walked back into his apartment, slamming the door behind him and leaving Nick standing on the sidewalk.

TBC...

A/N: I know it feels as though I've just dumped you right in the deep end. This story does continue and it will make sense, I assure you. XD