Prologue: Relinquish

He needed to give up. He had to give up ever wanting to not be lonely, to hold his dignity, and to go back to being the man he used to recognize in the mirror. Gil Grissom, who had been the steady column for the lives of everyone around him, now crumbled underneath his own burdens. He needed to give up just to be able to breathe.

The loneliness to which he came home every night used to register painfully and pin itself to his mind with by way of a sharp dart. He used to realize that there was no one who looked forward to his coming home from long hours of work, as he turned the key in its lock. Now, he kept the TV on with the sound on mute, as he read the lips of everyone on the screen, and he sipped from his glass of wine. He had spent another almost-full day at the lab, and it wasn't because he had leftover paperwork, ongoing cases or because he needed the money. He had finished the overdue paperwork months ago, and Vegas was awfully quiet in terms of crime. He had never needed extra money; he was set for life. He was working because he had nothing else; no friends to meet, no dinners to attend, no one to come home to. The lab became his place of residence and at times, he never left the lab for days at an end. But of course, no one knew.

He looked around his abandoned abode, which was cluttered with books, cups, used plates and cutlery and he remembered the meticulous state the house used to be in. He looked at the bug specimens on his walls, and even they did not fascinate him anymore. He lost all interest in almost everything he did, especially when he was drinking, and the things that used to keep him going vanished without a trace. Every little thing he did seemed fruitless, and pointless; no one cared about what he did, where he was, and he knew, at that point, that if he was to be in an accident, no one would know. The pictures on the walls were his most prized possessions now, because his memory was fading. Every picture became animated in his mind and he could see everything in the picture clearly. He was surrounded by pictures of what was, and what could have been. The question of "what if" haunted him every step of every day, and he cursed the concept and the man who first uttered the two fateful words. Gil Grissom felt forsaken.

He was dizzy from the bottle of wine he had consumed, and he slowly felt his control slip from the crown of his head out through his arms and down to the tip of his toes. He shuddered and slumped, his expression becoming blank. There was now no restrain for any emotion that dared to come forth, and the first one was regret. Then followed guilt, longing, and absolute pain. His eye muscles softened and he could feel his tears struggling to form. During all this time, he hadn't cried; he had managed to keep that much of his dignity. However, as he started to tell himself that he needed to relinquish all those things, a tear rolled out of his eyes. It rolled its way down his sunken face, and condensed in his gray beard. He didn't even bother to wipe the tears that followed the first, and soon the teardrops were dripping from his chin after covering his face. But his body did not expand and contract with sobs, as he merely sat there, staring at a picture taken years ago, of himself next to a woman whom he wished he couldn't recognize. He threw his empty wineglass at it, shattering both the picture frame and the wineglass.