Title: Fading
Author: rowandaze
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Pairing: Nick/Warrick
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Season 9
Summary: Nick struggles to cope without Warrick but he will never let anyone know how much.
Disclaimer: They belong to CBS.
A/N: Thanks to Columbo for all her help.

He watched as a suspect fell to his death. A suspect he had chased. In the eyes of the law and all witnesses the suspect‘s death was brought about by his own actions. No great loss, just another criminal dead. Nick agrees, in fact he finds that it doesn’t even bother him, he genuinely doesn’t care. Another scumbag is off the streets, another family won’t fall victim to his crime. Win win for Stokes, he didn’t even have to process evidence to remove the creep from society, he did that all by himself. If only all perps would jump out of windows.

The old Nick Stokes would have felt guilt and remorse. He would have felt sorry for the dead man’s family and thought long on how if the man had have lived and gone to jail he may have left rehabilitated and perhaps have learned how to do some good in the world. The old Nick Stokes would have cared. But the old Nick Stokes is dying. His heart began bleeding the moment Mckeen pulled the trigger. It is a slow bleed that he knows will eventually become fatal but the new Nick Stokes just doesn’t care.

He is loosing part of himself but he really doesn’t care because he has already lost the biggest part. He has lost his constant, his companion, his heart. He has lost the only person who made him feel safe, the only person he has ever loved. Without Warrick, Nick is less than half the man he was and everyday he looses a bit more. He is fading. He feels part shadow, part ghost and soon he fears he will no longer exist.

He does his job with precision, without fault. He is perhaps the best he has ever been at his job because his job is all he has. Work keeps him sane, keeps him occupied. He has something to focus on and he cannot loose focus. He works not because he enjoys it, not because he wants to do right by the dead but because he has to. Everything he believed in has been taken from him. Everything has become starkly black and white. Criminals are bad people, they need to be punished.

He can’t see the victims with compassion anymore. If he lets himself see their suffering it will break the last of his control. He has been a victim of crime one way or another so many times in his life and he has always fought it, fought the label, fought the consequences but he has no fight left. If he listens to the hurt of those left behind, if he lets himself see the pain in their eyes or acknowledges the horror of their stories a dam will burst that no levee will support.

Crime has left him as the tragic figure, the handsome man who has had the love of his life cruelly stolen by two bullets. Everyone talks about him, cops, lab techs, the little old lady who lives next door. He hears them talk of his hard life, of the traumas that he has faced and how he had found love and laughter and happiness and of how no one ever deserved a good life as much as him and how tragic to finally have peace and joy and to lose all that in the most violent of ways.

He has become the lonesome cowboy that movies and books depict, the romantic, tragic figure and everyone is happy to see him that way and he is happy to let them believe it. They tell him how well he is coping, that Warrick would be so proud that he hasn’t given up and how everyone would understand if he did. He smiles politely at their words, accepts the handshakes and the nods. It is what they expect from him.

He works doubles when he can, triples if he can swing them. No one argues or tries to stop him. Sure he looks exhausted but that is understandable. Good ol’ Nick is the kind who works through things, a true survivor. But try as he might he cannot work all the time and he is faced with the agony of going home to their house. He hasn’t disturbed any of Warrick’s belongings. The last c.d. Warrick played is still in the stereo. The book he was reading is left open on the coffee table where he left it. His empty coffee cups sits on the counter top unwashed.

Nick spends hours staring at their empty beer bottles in the recycling box. He is fascinated by Warrick’s fingerprints on the sides of the glass. He keeps meaning to print them but can’t quite bring himself to touch them. He thinks it’s odd that a fingerprint is forever while the body it belonged to will turn to bones then dust and given enough time, fade to nothing.

He does the clichéd thing of lying in their bed holding tight to Warrick’s pillow, memorising his scent before it too fades. He does this day after day and sometimes he just lays there holding so tight his fingers hurt and sometimes he cries so hard he believes he will never stop. Sometimes just sometimes he laughs because he can hear Warrick’s voice telling him he is a sap, to get out of bed and go to the gym and work it off and then he cries again because he knows he will only ever hear Warrick’s voice in his head and never again for real.

He hates the word survivor. He hates what he has become. He hates that he can feel no joy, that his famed compassion is all but spent. He hates that he is a grieving partner, a broken man but he keeps up appearances and raises his head. He knows his heart is bleeding but he cannot let them see it break. He cowboys up, fights the bad guys and crosses his fingers that he can get through another day. Without Warrick he is lost but he has become the lonesome cowboy and he has to play the part.