Title: Circuit
By: Wintertime
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own CSI or it's characters - - they would never give me Nick, certainly, not after this little stunt. Everything belongs to CBS but the story.
Spoilers: "Who Are You?", although this story is an AU ending for it
Summary: In which there is a circuitous conversation, Nick receives the absolute minimum, and Grissom would rather not be grateful.

***

He sits down in the gray chair and watches Nick. Nick is still young and amiable and happy to see him. Nick builds ladders with his hands when he talks, fingers scrambling over each other in a desperate, unending search to reach the sky. It's not a habit that Grissom noticed as often before, but it isn't new, either. He listens as Nick tells him about his day, about the dawn, about the young woman in the next room with her faded smile, and about the birds he can see from his window.

"A sage sparrow," Nick says, pleased. "I don't think I've ever seen one before, and there it was, right outside my window." He reaches for the binoculars by his bed. "It stayed for a while. I watched."

"That's good."

He watches Nick fiddle with the neck-strap of the binoculars, moving the slick leather strap up and down between his fingers. It's a relief, to see Nick's hands no longer constructing castles in the air, but this stream of leather against skin is cold comfort.

"I miss you sometimes," Nick says. "You don't come as often."

He comes every other day, just as he has since the start of this whole mess, and it seems to Grissom that he comes too often. Maybe, with more days spaced between his visits, Nick would appear to evolve, and, in at least the first few minutes, the time would seem different. But he has a regular schedule, and these visits are always the same.

"I'm sorry," Grissom says. "I'll try to make it here again soon."

He'll try no harder than he always does. He won't break his pattern. He knows that people talk about this - - about this lingering penance of his - - but no one tells him to stop, because they know, and acknowledge, with their lowered eyes and quiet, hushed voices, that this is all his fault. They know that Gil Grissom deserves whatever he gets.

Nick smiles, temporarily appeased. "Good. That's cool. Do you think maybe Warrick or Cath could make it, too? Haven't seen them in months."

Warrick visited the day before, Catherine last week. Grissom sits still and says nothing. He catches the inside of his lip between his teeth and nods.

"I saw a sage sparrow this morning," Nick says. "It stayed for a while."

Grissom watches as Nick reaches again for the binoculars, only to realize that they're still in his hands. With a sweet, puzzled smile, Nick sets them down on his bedside table with a fond pat, like his remaining connection to the world is a particularly indulgent house-pet. Grissom doesn't remember who bought the binoculars for Nick, and asking Nick himself wouldn't do any good.

"That's good," Grissom says. "Sage sparrow, huh?"

Nick's face positively gleams with delight. "Yeah! I saw one. Did I tell you? Right outside my window, and just sat there - - well, perched there, you know - - for, like, ten minutes."

He tries. God help him, he tries.

"Nicky. Do you remember Fay Green? The skeleton we found in the foundation?"

Nick's elation seeps away, like water running quickly through a sieve. It's replaced by the kind of vapid sullenness that Grissom has seen before. He looks down at his knees. "I don't know what you're talking about." A small, tentative smile crosses his lips. "Do you want to help me watch for birds? I've been checking them off."

"No, Nick. Talk to me. Tell me about Fay Green. Talk to me about Amy Hendler and the gun."

"Grissom," Nick says, and it's low and soft, almost a whisper. "I don't want to talk about that." He crosses his hands in his lap and looks out the window. Grissom wonders if there is another sage sparrow waiting in the thrush, but Nick doesn't mention it.

"The weapon," Grissom presses. "You saw something. You knew something. Do you remember?"

"I was looking at the picture," Nick says. "I was thinking about crocodiles. My grandfather used to be a carpenter, and when I was a kid, I played in the foundations of his houses, when they were just skeletons. And then you and I found a skeleton in the foundation of a house."

"That's right." Grissom sits straighter in his chair. He doesn't remember having ever gotten so far before, although he's sure he has, just in a different direction. Nick's boundaries are set. "Fay Green's body."

"You said there were crocodiles."

He has no idea what Nick is talking about, but nods anyway. Crocodiles, sure, yeah, why not? There are stranger things, and if Nick, somewhere in the confused, constantly-shifting and cycling area of his mind, thinks that Fay Green was eaten by crocodiles, then Nick can just go ahead and think it.

Nick pauses. "That's not right," he says, as if puzzling out something epic. The answer to a great riddle. Nick is Oedipus before the Sphinx. "Teeth. It was teeth."

They hadn't used dental records to identify Fay Green, and he still doesn't understand Nick, but Nick finally seems to understand himself, so Grissom just keeps watching Nick's joyful grin form, and lets Nick continue, even though he isn't sure this is what he wants.

"Teeth," Nick continues happily, "and I found them. In the picture."

"A picture in the Hendler house?"

"Rocks," Nick says, and again, Grissom can't connect it to anything. "There were rocks, and I was standing there, thinking about crocodiles." His open expression slams shut, and, sulkily, he stares at his hands again. "That's it."

"Everything, Nicky? You can't tell me anything more?"

"I saw a sage sparrow this morning," Nick says. "Right outside my window." He reaches for the binoculars and takes them into his hands. Holds them like a crucifix, like they're going to shield him from some kind of harm, although it's much too late for that.

He looks at Grissom. Smiles.

"You don't come as much anymore. How come?"

Grissom closes his eyes. "I'll try to get here more often, Nick." And he answers the next question, because he knows it's coming. "Next time, I'll bring Catherine and Warrick along with me. Sara, too. They all miss you."

"Man, that'd be great. I don't see them a lot."

Yesterday. Last week. He feels his own sanity slipping away, as if it were Grissom, and not Nick, who had received a bullet to the brain in the well-ordered living room of Amy Hendler. As if he were the one who had awoken with his memories jumbled and his learning capacity shot to hell. As if he weren't the one desperately in need of salvation.

"What do you do here all day?"

"I look out my window," Nick says, and adds nothing on to the list. Grissom supposes that it must be enough - - when your head gets shaken like an Etch-a-Sketch every few minutes, you could see a thousand sage sparrows a day in one bird, and each would seem new.

"Bet you see a lot of birds."

Nick nods, enthused. "Yeah, I do. Saw a sage sparrow just this morning."

There is a scar near Nick's hairline that Grissom doubts Nick has ever found. There are no mirrors in his private room, and if he's found it in the bathroom, he's never mentioned it. If Nick knows about the existence of the scar, that knowledge (like so many other things) has gone from his mind.

It's white, thin, and just a few centimeters long. It goes up just slightly into Nick's hair.

Shootings are messy things. They don't always go as planned. Sometimes bullets glance off, and sometimes they shatter. The bullet that was supposed to kill Nick went horribly wrong, and instead of tunneling through skull and brain, tore over the surface of the bone and was removed.

The doctors were so pleased.

The absolute minimum of brain damage.

And Nick sits there, talking about sage sparrows, and moving his hands so rapidly over those damn binoculars that Grissom wants to throw them throw the window and smile as they hit the ground. He doesn't. He curls his hands into fists and knocks those fists against his thighs, and thinks, The absolute minimum of brain damage.

Nick offers him the binoculars.

"Can you see it? The sage sparrow?"

Grissom touches them to his eyes and goes to the window. Outside, Las Vegas is dry and desert-hot. The air scorched him on his way inside, but in this place, everything is cool and creamy-white. He doesn't see the sage sparrow, but that's probably because his eyes are screwed shut. He doesn't want to see. He doesn't want to feel the start of tears. So he closes his eyes until he can turn from the window, lift the binoculars away, and hand them back to Nick.

"Oh yeah, it's still there," he says, and his voice seems to break a little.

Nick grins. "I thought it would be. I just saw it this morning."

Grissom collapses into his chair. He feels as if his bones have liquefied. He breathes slowly, and evenly. He watches Nick play with the binocular cord.

The absolute minimum of brain damage. This is why they were so pleased. This is what I should thank God for, what his family should thank God for, what Nick should be on his knees thanking God for. This eternity of sage sparrows and talking in circles, and thanking God because this is the absolute minimum of brain damage sustained.

Nick crosses the faded tiles and stands at the window. He's absolutely still, his hands riveted to his eyes, holding the binoculars and watching for that sage sparrow again. The sage sparrow that, for all Grissom knows, may not have existed for months. Nick has trouble getting things into his head, but when he does, they don't like to leave.

Grissom stands. "I should go," he says.

Nick turns in a quick heel spin. His slippers squeak on the floor. "Grissom!"

He sits down again. "Yeah, Nicky." His voice sounds hopeless, forlorn. He never thought he would have that tone. Not about Nick. "It's me."

"Good to see you, man." Nick pumps his hand, as if they didn't go through this whole rigmarole twenty minutes ago. Nick is still happy to see him. Nick is always going to be happy to see him, for the rest of his life. Grissom has come to realize that he, like that sage sparrow, is one of the things that is stuck with Nick forever. And so he has an obligation.

"I saw a sage sparrow," Nick informs him.

Grissom smiles weakly. "That's good, Nick. That's good."

***