Never Finished Fic: From the Past (Unrelated CSI Snippets)

[rsadelle]

Greg's Past 1

"What've we got?"

"LA businessman, here on vacation with his wife and son." Warrick gestured at the body. "They came back from the pool and found him here."

"All right. Let's see what we can find." Catherine snapped on gloves and started combing the hotel room for evidence.

"Poison, maybe," Sara suggested, holding up a glass.

"Maybe. Bag it." Catherine bent and snapped a picture of the carpet. "What color is the wife's hair?"

Warrick shrugged. "Haven't seen her."

Catherine chose a pair of tweezers and bagged the hair.

***

"If you'll just come with me, Mrs. Donahue." Brass' hand on the woman's elbow guided her toward an interview room.

"Yes, yes, of course." She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue clenched in her hand. She glanced down the hallway and caught sight of a pair of CSIs talking in the hallway. She broke away from Brass and flung herself at Greg. "Greg. Oh, Greg, you have to help me." She stopped trying not to cry.

Greg put his hands on the woman's shoulders and pushed her away. "I can't help you, Maggie."

"But Greg--"

"Maggie," he said firmly. "Whatever it is you've done, I can't help you."

Brass reclaimed her elbow. "Mrs. Donahue, we need you to come with us."

***

"You know the wife?" Sara asked.

"Yeah." Greg hunched over his microscope.

"You can't be involved in the case." Sara started putting blood samples into test tubes. "Brass talked to the vic's sister. She says he wanted a divorce. Claimed the kid wasn't his." She held up the blood sample in her hand. "We're doing DNA tests."

Greg looked up from what he was doing. "When was the kid born?"

The question surprised Sara, but she looked at her notes. "November 4, 1997."

Greg swore under his breath and began to roll up one sleeve. "You'd better take mine too."

Sara just looked at him. "What?"

"Maggie's my ex-wife," Greg explained.

Sara gaped at him. "Your ex-wife?"

Greg nodded. "She would have been pregnant when she left me." He glanced up at her ruefully. "We were still sleeping together. The kid could be mine."

"Well. Okay." Sara pulled on a pair of gloves. "Let's take your blood." She tied off a band around his arm and tore open an alcohol swab. "Have you eaten today?"

"Yeah." He gave her a faint smile. "I won't faint on you."

She returned his attempt at a smile with a tight smile of her own. She swabbed the inside of his elbow with alcohol and tore open a syringe. She tapped his skin to bring the vein up. "You've got great veins," She said as she pushed the end of the needle through his skin.

"Thanks," he said dryly, and she glanced up at him and smiled in acknowledgment of the absurdity.

"All done." She pulled the syringe away and pressed a cotton ball against his elbow. "Hold that." She untied the band.

Greg pressed his hand against the cotton ball. "I got it." He retreated back to his own microscope and half-watched Sara put the tubes into the centrifuge.

***

Sara sat down across from Maggie. She pulled a sheet of paper out of her file folder and put it in front of Maggie. "We did some tests. Your late husband is not your son's father."

Maggie glanced at the paper and shrugged, unconcerned. "Then he must be Greg's." She smiled slowly at Sara. "We had sex right up until the end. We had sex the morning I moved out."

Sara tried to hide her disgust. "If you were leaving him, why did you have sex with him?"

Maggie's smile bloomed again. "You're obviously not sleeping with him." She leaned across the table. "Greg is incredible in bed." She sat back and tossed her hair. "Jason must be his."

Sara took out a second piece of paper and put it next to the first. "We ran a DNA test on Greg's blood. He's not Jason's father either."

Maggie bristled. "That's impossible. If it wasn't John, it had to be Greg."

"I'm afraid not," Catherine said. She leaned across the table. "Who else were you sleeping with, Maggie?"

"No one," Maggie protested. "Maybe there was a mixup at the hospital when he was born. That kind of thing happens."

Sara added a third piece of paper to the growing stack. "We checked that too."

"Jason is your son," Catherine informed her. "Come on, Maggie. It's just us girls." She shot a glance at Brass. "He's just here for show. You can tell us who else you were sleeping with."

Maggie refused to play. "I wasn't sleeping with anyone else."

***

"There had to be someone else." Catherine, and her heels tapped angrily down the hall.

"If it wasn't her husband, and it wasn't the guy she left him for, then who was it?"

"We could ask Greg," Sara suggested.

Catherine and Brass exchanged glances. "We could," Brass said slowly.

"There doesn't seem to be anyone else to ask," Sara pointed out.

"All right," Catherine relented. "We'll talk to Greg."

"I'll get him," Brass offered. "Make sure the wife's gone and the room's clear."

"I can't believe Greg was ever married," Sara said, as she and Catherine took seats at the table.

"I can't believe he's incredible in bed," Catherine replied, and the two of them shared a moment of laughter that cut off sharply when Brass pushed open the door and ushered Greg in.

"This has to be official," Brass said apologetically as Greg took the chair across from Catherine and Sara.

"I know." Greg looked resigned. "You want to know about Maggie."

"The kid's not yours," Catherine told him. "And he's not the vic's either."

"Who else could she have been sleeping with?" Sara asked.

Greg shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't even know about John until the afternoon she moved out."

"Take us through what happened when you two split up," Brass suggested.

Greg rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, sure. We got married after sophomore year. We'd been together almost two years. The day she left, it was just like any other day. We woke up and had sex." Greg flushed. "Before you ask, we used a condom." He looked down at his hands. "I had class in the morning and work in the afternoon. It was her day off. When I got home from work, she had the movers carrying boxes down the stairs."

"Did she tell you why she left?"

Greg laughed bitterly. "Oh, yeah, she told me." He tapped his fingers against the table. "I took the MCATs and sent in all the med school applications, but then I had this chemistry class, and I loved it. I decided I wanted to do this instead of being a doctor." He gestured helplessly. "That wasn't what she planned on. She wanted a *rich*, Stanford-educated husband."

"Greg," Catherine said, "I know this is hard for you, but I want you to think. Is there anyone else she could have been involved with?"

Greg shook his head. "I went over and over it when she left me. I never knew she was leaving. I thought everything was fine." He spread his hands on the table. "I don't know who else it could have been."

***

Sara's Past

The part that would be before this would be an investigation into a teenager. The team thinks maybe he's involved in a murder (he discovered the body); he tells them he's adopted and he's run away to Vegas to find his real mother.

O'Riley found them sharing pizza in the break room.

Brass noticed him first. "You find her?"

"Yeah. The kid was right; she's in Vegas."

"We checked for Sara Thomases in Vegas," Warrick said. "There weren't any who'd even been to Boston."

O'Riley hesitated.

"Spit it out," Sara said, resigned. When he still hesitated, she nodded at him.

"In 1993, Sara Dylan Thomas legally changed her name." O'Riley paused. "To Sara Jane Sidle."

There was a stunned silence in which they all turned to look at Sara.

"You knew?" Brass glared at her. "You knew all this time and you let us go chasing down the name?"

Now that it was out there, Sara found that she was surprisingly calm. Or maybe that was shock.

"I hoped we'd find something else and no one would ever have to know."

Catherine studied her carefully. "You were, what, nineteen?"

"Eighteen."

"That's what we were missing," Nick said. "He moves like you."

In the part after this, Sara would tell them that she was date raped, and she refused to think about her options until it was too late for abortion to even be an option.

***

Greg's Past 2

There was Chinese food in the break room, but everyone had files with them.

"Hey, Sanders," Nick asked, "why is your phone number in our vic's cell?"

Greg swallowed down his Kung Pao chicken. "Who's your vic?"

"Matthew Harrison."

Greg put down his fork. "What happened to him?"

"He disappeared," Warrick said. "His boss called when he didn't show up for work for the third day in a row."

"Shit."

"You know him," Nick said.

"Yeah." Greg picked up his fork and pushed his food around his plate. "I know him." He shrugged. "We went out a couple of times. It didn't work out, but we're still friends."

"You went out with him?" Warrick asked.

"Yeah." Greg dropped his fork again.

"What happened?" Nick asked.

Greg shrugged. "Nothing, really. We just knew it wasn't going anywhere. We still get together sometimes to hang out or whatever."

"Whatever," Warrick repeated.

"Yeah," Greg said, "whatever. Matt's very inventive."

"More than I wanted to know," Nick said. Then, "You always flirt with Sara. Were you doing it when you were going out with Harrison?"

"Binary's for computers," Greg said. At the look on Nick's face, he relented. "Sara'll never say yes. It's not like I was cheating."