Notes: It is strictly impossible for me to keep away from the Greg-angst for very long, so here’s the Memento-ish story, as properly promised. Thanks go to anansay, krazy, kruemelchen, and toothpicks for being a great sounding board.

Pairing: mostly gen, but a background GSR ‘ship

Disclaimer: CSI still refuses to give me the rights to Greg and the rest of the cast. I can’t imagine why . . .

**

December 13, 2011

The couch was ratty and the cushions were almost torn. Once upon a time, he would have cared about that, and replaced it. Right now, it didn’t matter. Greg sat down anyway, and stared towards the silent television set, wondering if he should turn it on to cover the noise. But it was late, and midnight cartoons weren’t going to drown out the sound of a gunshot. He folded Grissom’s entomology book over his knees instead, expecting that it might intercept some of the spray, but mostly leaving it as a message.

He closed his eyes

(ready steady go)

slid the gun into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

December 12, 2011

Natalie Asher was the assistant librarian. She was twenty-six and pretty. Greg liked her a little more than he liked his other subordinates, and once, three years ago, he had too many beers at the Christmas party, and he almost told Natalie his real name. He was lucky that his secret stayed behind his lips: as far as Natalie knew, the head librarian of the New York public library was a man named Michael Daise.

When Michael Daise got drunk at Christmas parties, he didn’t have anything to confess.

There was nothing dark in Michael’s past, and he never woke up at night with sour memories stamped still in his mind, refusing to fade.

“I’ll do it.”

There were no secrets to be hidden.

“I’m the only one who doesn’t have anything to lose.”

Greg - - or Michael - - smiled at Natalie when she turned the sign on the door to “closed.” She looked disheveled - - must have been a rough day downstairs in the children’s department. She grinned back at him and leaned over his desk, burying her head in her hands.

“Bad day?” he asked.

“Living nightmare,” she said, rubbing her temples. “Do you still carry that bottle of aspirin around?”

He tugged it out of her desk, unscrewed the top, and tilted two pills into her hand. She dry-swallowed them greedily, and he winced. Greg had never been able to master the art of taking pills without some kind of liquid to smooth them down.

“Thanks,” she said. “I needed that.”

He replaced the bottle in his desk. “How’d you know that I kept this around?”

Natalie shook her head in exasperation. “We’ve been working together for six years, Mike. There’s absolutely nothing that I don’t know about you.”

“Go. Change your name. Don’t let them find you.”

The mingling scent of smoke, blood, and leather that seemed to cling to him no matter how many times he’d showered over the years. Somewhere, under his skin, there was a smoldering wreck and a dead body, rotting away, just beneath the epidermis. It would make for an interesting autopsy, at least, and for a moment, he imagined what it would be like - - peeling away the skin in a Y from his chest, and finding every secret laid out.

“Absolutely nothing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said, assuredly. “I know you never take people to your apartment in winter because your heater sucks. I know you drink a lot of coffee - - that’s bad for you - - and that you don’t sleep as much as you should. I know about your. . . problem. The NA. I even know that you’re a scientist at heart.”

“I always complain about my heating, you throw away my paper cups, I have dark circles, and everyone here knows that I used heroin before. I’m curious as to why you think I have an interest in science.”

Natalie shrugged. “You’re always read Gil Grissom’s books the second they hit the shelves. And you still subscribe to Scientific American. I’m a librarian, Mike. I’m bound to notice what people are reading.”

She was probably right, partially, at least. What Natalie knew about Mike Daise could fill a book - - even one of the Norman Mailer tomes she liked. But what Natalie knew about Greg Sanders was barely the prologue of some kind of a life. After all, she didn’t even know that Greg existed - - she just knew the tiny places where Mike and Greg overlapped.

If Natalie had heard of Greg at all, it was likely only in passing, sometime six years ago, when she had heard about how a criminalist in Las Vegas had killed someone.

And then disappeared.

Greg made small-talk with Natalie for another few minutes while he finished checking in the books, and then made a checkout of his own. Grissom’s latest - - a little heavier and less concise, as if he were growing more prolific with age - - a manual on entomologic timelines.

July 8, 2010

Greg rinsed off his face in the bathroom, clearing away the last hint of pain. He curled his hands around the rim of the sink, but his knuckles were already white, even before applying the pressure. He stared bleakly into the mirror, evaluating his own appearance - - red-rimmed eyes and the dark plains underneath them, brown hair, and the hints of stubble that he kept forgetting to shave. He looked like a thousand other men in New York. Joe Ordinary.

Mike Ordinary, anyway.

He wanted a fix. He deserved one. It had been so long since anyone had said that name to him - - and then, out of the blue, some kid, handing across his book, saying, “Grissom publishes just about annually.”

His hands had started shaking, but he’d been able to control it until he could hand some time off to Natalie and go on break himself, and since then, he’d been barricaded in the bathroom, relearning how to breathe, as it suddenly seemed so very difficult.

“I told you, didn’t I? I promised, didn’t I?”

In and out. Slow and steady won the race.

“I stood up at your wedding and told you that you’d be happy now.”

He’d been doing this for years. He knew how to calm down when he started hyperventilating: he couldn’t think about Vegas, he couldn’t think about promises, and he couldn’t think about how he would tear off his right arm for a fix.

“And I promised - - that I’d always do whatever it took - -“

Going to go crazy pretty soon.

“ - - to make sure you stayed happy.”

He’d gone from Vegas to New York because of that name, and it tore out of the lips of some kid in a library thousands of miles away. Because, of course, you couldn’t escape Gil Grissom. Scientific impossibility, and Greg had always been very good at science.

This many miles away from Grissom, and the man still had the power to make his skin itch. Make it pull tight, and make him crave heroin so badly that he was almost clawing his arms where he was sure there were still needle-tracks. Fix. A yammering in his brain - - fixfixfixfix.

Nownownownow.

But the need for Grissom was even stronger. It hadn’t been so long since the NA - - it had been longer since he’d talked to Grissom. Five years since he’d seen Grissom.

Five years since the bloody clothes in the suitcase.

Five years since he kissed an unconscious woman goodbye.

Five years since Grissom’s hand on his shoulder.

Five years since he watched blue eyes turn steel gray.

Five years since he closed his eyes and touched a needle to his wrist.

Five years ago, Greg watched a wedding and made a promise. He picked up two tickets for a flight to New York. He got in the car with Grissom and Sara to drive to the airport, and somewhere between the lab and the runway, everything changed forever. Greg got on the plane alone with a blood-soaked jacket stashed in-between his socks and his toothpaste, and at touchdown in New York, he changed his name and went to his hotel to watch the news broadcasts about the girl he’d killed.

Five years.

It felt like five seconds.

Natalie knocked on the door. “Mike? How are you doing in there?”

Michael Daise looked in the mirror and blinked. Greg Sanders vanished in an instant - - became just a shadow on the surface of a very deep lake. He smiled. The last traces of tears had faded, and the itch on his arms was gone.

He opened the door. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just needed a little break.”

She gave him a brief once-over. “You’re the boss,” she said, shrugging. He watched the way her shoulders moved underneath the tight melon-colored sweater.

He could have fallen in love with her, if she didn’t look so much like Sara.

March 24, 2009

It was cold, and the heat in his apartment was broken. Again. Just like last time, he wouldn’t bother to get it fixed, because he liked the cold. Sometimes, when he could see his own breath form even inside, he shrug off his jacket, curl up on his sofa, pull the covers off his bed, and watch the snow move across the television set. He would fall asleep like that, cramped and uncomfortable, but the lights would be on, the doors would be locked, the shades would be drawn, and when he slept on the couch, there were never any dreams.

He dragged the pillow from his bed and eased down onto the pillows. A spring poked right between his shoulder blades, and he adjusted away from it, staring into the cushions. They smelled like old locker rooms and bad cheese.

After a few minutes of staring at his knees, he sighed and pulled himself upright. No need to flick the lights on - - he never turned them off, no matter how high the electric bills soared. He didn’t like the way shadows gathered around the furniture, and the way phantoms clouded up in the corners.

Greg hadn’t had dinner. He found the wax-wrapped peanut butter sandwich he’d left on the table, and ate it slowly, scattering soft bread crumbs over the blanket. The nutty taste curled over his tongue, warm and sweet, and the shells crunched between his teeth.

Nick hated peanut butter.

He flinched, and his hand crimped around the sandwich. His fingers dug deep pits into the bread. How long since he’d thought about Nick? A few days, at least. Maybe even a week. Sometimes, he went around believing that he really was Mike Daise - - that was easy when he was at work - - and when he did think about Vegas, it was usually just enough to remember his last day there.

“You’re going to need money. Here. All of it. It’s all I have on me.”

Crisp hundreds, wrinkled twenties. A stack almost as thick as his arm.

“It’ll be enough to buy me a new name. I don’t know about a new face.”

Sticking the money into the pockets of his old denims until the seams were practically bursting, and passing through all the metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs with a giddy terror rising in his stomach until he settled into the plane seat and hyperventilation kicked in for real. . .

Tearing himself back to the present, Greg finished his sandwich.

He reached for the phone. Nick’s number was still in his mind. He told himself that he wouldn’t have to say his name. He wouldn’t have to talk at all. He could just hear Nick answer and then hang up - - just one word, just one voice from home . . . He had, after all, promised Grissom that he would stay away. Somewhere in the mist of smoke and blood, he had promised that he would disappear.

He put the phone down.

He always kept his promises.

November 17, 2008

The wedding video was still in Las Vegas. Sometimes, it was the thing he most regretted having to leave behind, which was idiotic, but true nonetheless. He just wished that he could go home from the library, shiver into his pajama bottoms and cheap cotton tee, and turn the VCR on and watch the reason he threw his life away. The wedding video would have reminded him - - when he needed reminding - - of what he had done this all for. It would have been nice to see it again.

Those brief flashes of happiness, caught on film. He remembered laughing as they kissed, and knocking his own lips against Sara’s cheek in brief but firm congratulations. He had loved her, of course, and loved her very much. But she had wanted to be a friend, and a friend was what she needed, so he gave that to her. It was what she wanted; what she needed from him.

He was good at giving people what they needed. Always had been.

He closed his eyes; remembered:

“Here’s to the happy couple. Gil and Sara Grissom,” Greg said, grinning as he raised his glass of champagne. The bubbles caught the light and tore it upwards to the surface, where they exploded against his lips. “It took them long enough to be happy, and I’ve gotta say, if anyone messes this up, I’ll do whatever it takes to fix it. Because, boss, you’re way more fun with a woman.”

Grissom looked positively dopey, with his arm wrapped around Sara. “That’s probably true, Greg.”

Sara leaned against his shoulder, looking lovely in her ivory dress. Her ring sparkled. Greg kissed her on the cheek, and whispered, “I love you, Sara. I’m glad you’re happy.”

She gave him an unexpected hug. “Thanks, Greggo.” She was beaming. “We’ll find you a girl now.”

The video in his head blurred and mixed with unexpected footage - - where Nick and Warrick should have been making their own toasts, and Catherine should have been catching the bouquet while rolling her eyes, there was the sudden, sharp scent of smoke and blood. There was the sound of tearing metal.

“What are we going to do?”

“I’ll do it. I’m the only one who doesn’t have anything to lose.”

The taste of blood trickling into his mouth.

Wadding his jacket up so that he could fit it into the suitcase.

“You’re hurt.”

“Hey, aren’t we all?”

He had been bleeding just a little when he’d walked through the airport, but his face had been clean-shaven and he had scrubbed the blood out from under his nails, and he looked like any other young guy who had had to make a run for the gate - - a sheen of sweat on his face and neck, and his knuckles white from clutching his suitcase handle. Besides, the dogs that sniffed him didn’t bark, and he passed through all the detectors without any problems.

No one had suspected anything until it was too late.

Then, hours later, he sat in a sports bar outside his hotel, breathing secondhand smoke, and watching a brief news blurb about the police in Las Vegas pursuing a Greg Sanders for murder.

But he was already Mike Daise by then, and his hair was blonde, and no one at the bar gave him a second look even when they flashed his photograph.

“Here’s to the happy couple.”

Greg guessed he didn’t need that wedding video after all; the memories were still pretty fresh in his mind.

May 8-30, 2007

Dear Grissom

Griss

Dear Gil

Grissom - - I know that right now, I’m probably the last person you expect to hear from, and I hope that you didn’t let Sara open this letter. I don’t think you would, because I’m the only person you know in New York - - I think so, anyway. Am I? Maybe if you gave me some kind of address, I could . . . no, that’s probably not a very good idea, right? I’m not him anymore. I can’t find anyone you left behind, and I can’t touch what I left behind, either.

I miss you sometimes, you know that? I spend half the night staring at the ceiling and wondering if - -

No.

Never mind. This was my choice, right? And I promised, didn’t I? I always keep my promises, Grissom, and if you didn’t know that then, you ought to believe me now. I’m not going to give up the game, don’t worry about that. Kiss Sara for me. I mean, you know, don’t tell her, but. . . never mind, it doesn’t matter. I just hope sometimes that you don’t all hate me. That maybe someone - - I worry about the others, too - - whether they would understand at all. . .

This isn’t a social letter. You’re just the only person I could ask.

I need some money. Rehab’s expensive. I know, last letter, I told you that I hadn’t touched heroin in months, but I came across some a few weeks ago. Not your problem. But if you could lend me something - - and I could pay you back - -

He found a bottle of bourbon somewhere between starting the letter and ending it, got horribly drunk, trying to drown the need for heroin, and scrawled down things he couldn’t remember later. All he knew was that he signed the letter, “Love, Greg,” and that he sent it, and he knew, a week later, when a return letter arrived, stuffed full of money, and a single note:

You’ll never need to pay me back.

I’m so sorry for all of this.

It was unsigned, but the hand was familiar, and the tearstains on the letter were even more familiar, and after all, Grissom was the only one who ever wrote him at all, since Grissom was the only one who knew where he was.

He saw Grissom on the news a few days later, doing some interview about forensics. Grissom looked a decade older and his hands shook when he held up the microphone. Greg had spent almost half of Grissom’s money on more drugs instead of on the rehab that he’d intended to use it for, and he’d shot up in front of his television and screamed at the screen that this wasn’t what he’d given himself up for, this wasn’t what he’d thrown it all away for.

Grissom was supposed to be happy. Grissom was supposed to be smiling still. He wasn’t supposed to look so damned.

His withdrawal-dazed mind wandered through the connection that maybe, if Grissom wasn’t happy, than it had all been worthless. That his exile to New York had all been for nothing. The packs of needles . . . the apartment with the shot heating system . . . the fake name . . . the way he’d lost so much weight that he could see all the bones in his hands. . . the tears and the liquor . . . knowing he was a wanted man. . . had all been for nothing.

He went in for rehab with the last of the money and almost went crazy to get clean again. He drained the drugs out of his system and prayed that the doubts went with them.

It had to have meant something.

He wasn’t going to live with the knowledge that he’d done this for nothing.

Maybe Sara was happy. Maybe she didn’t even realize that anything was wrong. Maybe sometimes, she even thought about the time he’d kissed her at her wedding, and maybe she remembered it with fondness instead of pain. Maybe she didn’t hate him for running after the girl died on the street corner. And maybe sometimes, when the sun came through her windows and her wedding ring caught the light again and patterned rainbows off her and Grissom’s skin, she smiled just as brilliantly as ever.

He only hoped that Grissom had never told her the truth.

The truth was the single thing could ruin all their lives. If Sara ever knew what had happened that day in September two years ago - - if the others found out - - if the news got their hands on the true story of the blood, the smoke, and the promise - - all things would fall apart.

And they didn’t deserve that.

I’m so sorry for all of this.

He wrote back. He put the letters against the page so hard that his pen tore the paper and he had to rewrite it three times. His tears fell down on the sheaf of paper just like Grissom’s had, and by the time he’d sealed the letter, he had no idea what he’d written. He had to tear it out and read it again, his lips moving in soft patterns as he rocked back and forth on his sofa.

He read the words that had been screamed into the paper, and he tore it to pieces and tossed them into the trash. He wanted fire, to consume and to purify, but he had no fireplace and no matches.

He’d written something - - words he hadn’t known he could spell - - and he’d told Grissom something dark and powerfully important . . . something about love and costs and sacrifice. Something about having to get what you wanted instead of what you deserved, and something about grand dramatic gestures of tragedy that so frequently went wrong.

Too much honesty. Too much pain. And somewhere in the middle, love and hate blurred, and he didn’t know if he was writing to Grissom, to Sara, or to himself, he only knew that he was gripping the pen so hard the angles cut into his hand.

He washed the blood down the sink and sucked on the tips of his fingers. A salt taste gathered in his mouth - - the ancient feeling of longing and regrets.

“Now look what you’ve done,” he said to the mirror, and giggled. The sound echoed in the tiny bathroom. The face in the mirror was far too thin, and it had shadows under its eyes. He touched the glass with his bloody fingertips. “Here’s déjà vu all over again.”

January 1, 2006

Things that were different:

He lived in New York now. He had an apartment with bad heating and a door that he locked every night. He slept with his lights on and shivered all through the night. He always looked over his shoulder on the streets, but he was never entirely sure who he feared might be behind him. He had to slog through snow to get to work, and work was the library instead of the lab, thanks to a forged degree in library science, and he was nowhere near as close to becoming rich as he used to be.

He didn’t date now. He’d had girls off-and-on back in Las Vegas - - sometimes serious, sometimes not, but thhey were usually present in one form or another. It was never hard for him to get a date. But now he even saw himself as breakable, and he didn’t want to know how women saw him. The prospect of love was too intimate. Natalie from the library was pretty, and sometimes (but not very often), he’d think about asking her for coffee after work. But that kind of thing was dangerous.

He didn’t have friends now. Well, he had people that he was friendly with, but that was about it. Friendships required love too, and as previously noted, love was dangerous. Loving your friends made you do crazy things. Sometimes you even ran away to New York and changed your name.

He was high most of the time now. His first two weeks in New York had been spent making sure he could avoid old friends, and finding new ones at parties where he never needed an invitation - - people pressing coke into his hands, and later heroin, and it felt so good that he didn’t even care that he was killing himself with it. Every time he slid the needle through his skin, he prayed for an overdose, something to come and end the pain, the never-ending cycle of can’t-go-home and can’t-look-back.

He slurred into the mirror, “Just a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down . . . the medicine go down . . . the medicine go down. . .”

He was a murderer now. Close enough, anyway.

Things that were the same:

Nothing.

Another needle.

Somebody fix me, I’m broken.

“Just a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down,” he whispered, “in a most delightful way.”

September 14, 2005

“Ready to go?” Grissom asked, tapping Greg’s nose. “Sara’s been waiting in the car for the last ten minutes.”

He tilted his head up, surprised. “Sara’s here? I thought you were making her stay home from work. She’s seven months along, Grissom. She shouldn’t just be running around, coming to work - - “

“She isn’t coming to work,” Grissom said mildly, “she’s just driving us to the airport. You’ve got the tickets for New York? The seminar won’t delay my speech if we’re late just because my aide - -“

“Sure, rub it right in.”

“ - - forgot to buy our plane tickets.”

“I bought the plane tickets,” Greg said. “Two. And the hotel reservations. Two. And I was actually gonna call a taxi so we wouldn’t have to make your very pregnant wife drive us to the airport. She should be home, in bed, eating crab legs, and making you move your TV into the upstairs bedroom.”

“I don’t have an upstairs bedroom.”

“I apologize. I don’t spend a great deal of time hanging around your house, looking in your bedroom windows.”

“You’re forgiven. Never do that. May we leave now?”

Greg finished shutting down the computer systems. “Let me say goodbye to Cath and the guys. Two weeks is a relatively long time to spend away.” He patted Grissom’s shoulder and left to find the others in the break room, sitting amidst a cluster of coffee cups and cake-plates.

“So, you bought us a cake for a ‘congratulations, you’re going to a seminar’ present,” Greg said, eyeing the icing-smeared platter.

Nick grinned. “But we were hungry, and you didn’t show up.”

“Sorry,” Warrick added, completely unrepentant.

“I tried to save you a piece,” Catherine said, “but Grissom took it.”

“Grissom betrayed me?”

“Grissom came in, asked if that was the last piece, I said yes, he asked if you’d had any, I said no, and he said that was your bad luck.”

“I have absolutely no friends,” Greg said morosely, sitting down on the table. Warrick, at least, had the consideration to move the plates around to give him some more space. “I just came to tell everyone goodbye. I mean, aren’t you going to miss me? Aren’t your lives just going to be dull and unexciting without your Greg?”

“Positively uneventful,” Nick said.

“Dull as dirt,” Catherine offered.

“Hellish,” Warrick added.

“Thank you,” Greg said, pleased. “Maybe you do all count as my friends, after all.” He gave Catherine a quick kiss on the cheek, and was suitably bear-hugged by Nick and Warrick, who offered their consolations over having to spend two weeks alone with Grissom, even in New York, where there were likely to be attractive women.

“No,” Greg said patiently, “that’s why I’m glad to be going with Grissom. He’s not going to be chasing ladies when he has Sara.”

“I’m not going to have Sara much longer if you keep everyone waiting,” Grissom said from over his shoulder. “Let’s get a move on, Greggo.”

Greg smiled up at his boss and finished saying his goodbyes in polite order, and got a few more hugs, for good measure. He and Grissom headed out to the car, and Greg slid into the backseat as Grissom sat down next to Sara, in the passenger’s side. Greg squirmed near the front to kiss Sara.

“How’s the baby?”

“Kicking a lot,” Sara said happily. “The doctor says that everything’s going to be okay, and we’ve got the names picked out, and I’m turning into a big giant dork over all of this - -“

Grissom smiled at her. “We’re both dorks, honey.”

“Dorks with frequent displays of sultry affection,” Greg said. “Come on, airport. Drive-drive-drive. I don’t want to miss the flight.”

They made idle banter for a few minutes, and then Greg turned the conversation to Sara’s baby, which was the most frequent topic in the lab, of late. Between cases, half the building was running in and out of baby stores to buy the couple everything they might need when Ashley-or-Joel arrived. Sara duly informed him of all her cravings, while Greg listened devoutly, and Grissom gave them both amused smiles, his hand resting protectively over his wife’s, on the gearshift.

And then, suddenly, Grissom was saying, “Sara, look out,” and Sara’s eyes were moving from Greg to the road, and there was a wet, slippery sound of tires squealing over the rain-slick pavement, and the next thing Greg knew, he was thrown forward, the seatbelt snapping taut across his chest, and his mouth was striking against the back of Sara’s seat. The fresh taste of blood slid over his tongue. There was a sudden, sour odor of smoke that joined the acrid, coppery scent.

“Sara. Sara. Honey.”

His head was swimming. “Grissom? Sara? Are we okay?”

Grissom was shaking his wife’s shoulder. “She - - she’s unconscious,” he said, his voice growing steadier. “I think she’ll be fine, if we can get her to a hospital soon. As soon as possible. I’ll drive, let me just - - “ Grissom was already unbuckling his seatbelt when Greg put a hand on his elbow.

“Grissom. We hit someone.”

Grissom turned in his seat, his blue eyes smoky. “What did you say?”

Greg swallowed. His throat felt horribly dry. “We hit someone, Griss. There’s a dead girl on the road.”

Fate was heavy that day. The road was, for the most part, deserted. Sara had been taking a detour, Greg saw, and the girl on the road looked to be about nineteen, probably walking across the road to get to the library opposite. Her skin was newly pale, and the blood had stopped dripping from her.

“Dead,” Grissom said, like he’d never heard the word before. He looked at Sara with wide, terrified eyes. “She’ll never - - she won’t be able to - - the baby - - “ He sounded like he might be close to hyperventilating. He closed his eyes, and Greg could see the tense lines in his face grow. “I don’t want her to have to take the blame for this. What are we going to do?”

“I’ll do it.”

Again, Grissom’s eyes on him, unfocused. “What?”

“I’ll do it,” he said again. “I’m the only one who doesn’t have anything to lose. You’ve got a family now. You and Sara. You’re going to have a kid. You have a life that’s worth too much to lose.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and slid over the seat, hating how he was in the back, hating that it made him feel like a child. “You both deserve better than this, and you’re not going to take the fall for something that - - that probably couldn’t be prevented.”

“Greg,” Grissom said helplessly, “that’s not how we do things. You know that.”

“Yeah, but it’s how we’re going to do things. Just this once. Just this time. I’ll take the fall. I’m going to catch a flight, and you’re going to take Sara to the hospital, and once I’m in New York - - I’m not going to be coming back.”

“No.”

He pushed the door open and stood in the bleak desert heat. He waited for Grissom to join him, and when the door finally opened, he said, “I’m going to move the body. I’m going to move her and I’m going to get her blood all over me and my jacket fibers all over her. And then I’ll put it my suitcase. And then I’ll say goodbye.”

“You shouldn’t do this,” Grissom said, but his voice was weakening, and Greg couldn’t blame him for that, because he had been right - - Grissom had more to lose, Grissom had a family, Grissom had a life. “You shouldn’t. It’s not right.”

“It’s going to be right. It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I told you, didn’t I? I promised, didn’t I? I stood up at your wedding and told you that you’d be happy now. And I promised that I’d always do whatever it took to make sure you stayed happy. And ergo, it’s going to be all right, boss. Because I promised, and I keep my promises.”

He moved the girl. She was young, blonde. Her hair, sticky with blood, fell against his arms and patterned his jacket. He stripped it off, almost tearing the sleeves, and stuffed it in his suitcase, right between his boxers and his toothpaste.

Grissom touched his shoulder. “You’re hurt.”

“Hey, aren’t we all?”

“Your mouth - - you’re bleeding.”

Greg wiped absently at it. “I don’t care about that.”

Grissom’s voice was icy. “You’ll never get through the airport checks with a bleeding mouth and bloody clothes in your suitcase. Get yourself cleaned up.” Grissom was already going through his own pockets. “You’re going to need money. Here. All of it. It’s all I have on me.”

He took the money that Grissom had been saving for the trip, and tucked it into his own pockets, his hands shaking.

He tried to make himself smile. “It’ll be enough to buy me a new name. I don’t know about a new face.”

“Don’t change your face,” Grissom said, suddenly alarmed. “I wouldn’t - - I’d never be able to find you. To see you again. You’d be . . . someone else, Greg. You can’t want that.”

“That’s what this is going to be, Grissom,” he said. “That’s what this is going to cost. For you. For her. For me. We’re in it together.” He smiled at Sara, not recognizing the own goofy expression on his face, just feeling it take him over. It was a delicious blur - - he was getting a chance. He was going to be special. He was going to get to do something no one else had had the chance to do: he was going to save them. “Even you, Sara. You’re in it with us, okay, so don’t say anything?”

Grissom’s eyes looked grey in the light. It felt like it should have been colder outside, but the heat was stifling.

“God forgive me,” Grissom said, the words sounding archaic and antique. “For this. For letting you do this. It’s unforgivable.”

“It’s gonna be worth it,” Greg said. “I promise.” The heat was baking him, and he wanted to run, but there were goodbyes to be said. He grabbed Grissom’s arms and clenched them tightly. “You’re going to get your happy ending. The one that you both deserve. Promise.”

“Stop promising me things, Greg,” Grissom said softly. “They cost too much.”

“Wishes are horses,” Greg said. “And beggars are riding tonight. I’ve got a plane to catch, if you don’t mind.”

“Go. Change your name. Don’t ever let them find you.”

“Goodbye, Grissom,” Greg said. He stepped towards the car, and bent near the open door. Sara was lovely, even unconscious, and he kissed her cheek, the skin smooth and warm beneath his lips. “I love you, Sara. I’ll miss you.”

Half an hour later, he caught his flight at the same time Grissom was telling the police how Greg had been driving, and how Greg had ran at the sight of the body, and Sara, whose own memories were fuzzy, accepted this as truth.

Greg sat in the plane and watched the skyline of his life vanish.

And he didn’t feel noble at all; just cold; but a promise was a promise.

He would keep his for as long as possible.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep.

- Robert Frost