Title: Round and Round
By: Mortifyd
Rated: PG
Slash: Gil/Nick
Spoilers: Identity Crisis
Feedback: Please! Please! Please!
Disclaimer: CSI, Gil Grissom, et al belong to other people with lawyers and money and stuff. I'm just borrowing him for a little while, and I'll put him back when I'm done. Not making any money, yada yada yada. Criminologists do it.....intently.
Summary: Coasters are the best places to think...

The car lurched forward up the track, but the familiar rattle and clank of the ride did nothing to settle Gil's restlessness. As usual, he had the coaster to himself this early in the day, one of the few perks of his schedule, such as it was. He looked through the sunlit city below him, lost in thought, oblivious to the alien nature of the Strip by day. He took a deep breath as he reached the top of the first drop and sighed as the bottom dropped out of the world.

Sometimes it was too hard to feel, to let the waves crash over him from the inside out. He had to turn it off, to bury himself in the job, to do anything to keep the storms from washing him away. The rush of the ride took the edge off, freeing his mind to feel quietly while his body was occupied with the drops and the twists of the track. As he whipped through the first drop and prepared for the next climb, all he could think about was Millander.

Same birthday, such different lives. One misstep in the endocrinal hoedown and there but for the grace of God goes anyone, really. The car jerked back and forth, slamming him against the harness as gravity did its mindless, exacting work. How could Millander live like that? One person outside, another inside, home a battleground of identity.

He remembered being shuffled back and forth between houses, between lives, tossed on the surf of adult emotions. How much more did Millander have to deal with if his parents didn't agree on what he was, much less who he was?

He leaned forward into the shoulder harness, the better to challenge the laws of physics as he flew over the city. It scared him how calculated it all was, how easily he had been lead around by Millander. No matter how he tried to look at it, Millander had taken him for a ride. The comforting rattle of the coaster seemed less musical somehow, the formerly cheerful clack took on a shadowed note. Millander had left him powerless, even with the evidence in hand. An uneasy feeling crawled in his gut, slithering along the rise and fall of the ride.

It wasn't the tremor of anticipation, like a ride or a case, it was stinking, naked fear. He lost the familiar rhythm of the coaster for a moment, gasped as the harness caught him in the chest and the strip spun like a kaleidoscope beneath his feet. He struggled to breathe, to control the rip tide of panic that washed away rational thought. An image floated in his mind unbidden and unwanted; not Millander's body in the tub, but his own, lifeless and cold.

His rational mind struggled to reassert itself in the chaos, a whisper in a roar of madness. He blinked in an effort to erase the vision, ignoring the salty evidence of fear and self pity, breathed deeply and leaned into the rise of the coaster again. Millander wanted a witness. He wanted someone to take his place, to carry the guilt and the helplessness, to remember because he couldn't live with the pain anymore. Becoming another person hadn't freed Millander from being a victim, it had simply made him a monster.

As he came round for the last time, the car jerking as it slowed, Gil realized he had found his answer. Millander needed HIM to be everything he hadn't been. That is the true Doppelganger syndrome, oddly in reverse, but true to Millander's style. A confessor, a witness, a victim and a survivor. Millander needed and looked for it in the one person he had chosen to bear witness, to be his replacement, who shared the beginning and would witness and comprehend the end. Same birthday, such different lives. Round and round we go.

When he stepped from the car, Nick was waiting for him, his face drawn with concern. This case had been a nightmare for them all, but the thought of losing Gil so soon after finding him had made it almost unbearable for the younger man.

"I thought I might find you here. You okay, Gil?"

Gil nodded his head slowly, then sighed. His heart was still pounding in his chest, adrenaline screaming through his system, but he understood now. He had never been intended to die, only to speak for those who couldn't. Millander understood him better than he had even imagined.

"Millander?"

"Yeah."

"Wanna talk about it?"

Gil smiled softly, then reached out slowly and took Nick's hand, grateful to be alive, grateful to be loved by someone so generous, who understood his quirks. He didn't know if he would ever be able to talk about it, but he knew Nick wouldn't press the issue.

"No, Nicky. Let's just go home. It's good to be alive."