Title: Build Up
By: Read 300300
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG
Note: Response to Telephone Challenge.
Disclaimer: I don't own them.
Summary: Angst. Nick and Greg processing a body.

A flash of lightening shook the lab while in the dim light of the morgue, Nick and Greg set to work processing the body. Jane Doe, about thirteen, pretty young girl until whoever had gotten hold of her had mutilated her face.

There was silence as they worked in tacit agreement of duties, Nick pulling fiber samples and Greg scraping the young girl’s fingernails for traces of her attacker, the grinding sound of metal against the nail plates sending slight shivers up and down their spines. Greg tried to ignore the slight weight of the small hand in his, turning his mind away from anything about how it should have felt warm and soft, gentle and alive.

Most of all, he tried not to look at her face.

He’d seen it at the scene that Nick had taken him to; her light pink lip gloss was smeared and stained with trickles of blood and her beautiful grey eyes, irises the same color as the storm clouds outside, were wide open and dulled. In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but wonder when parents had started letting their children grow up so fast; children her age were supposed to be innocent and playful, not wearing make-up and dressing like Barbies.

The blood rushed through his head as he thought of what had been done to the little girl, of the pain the she had felt in her last hours; in the back of his mind, he wondered why he couldn’t just let this one go like he did all the rest. Certainly, he had seen enough horrors and mutilated corpses to become numb to the entire thing.

He couldn’t help it; he jumped and dropped his instrument when a cell phone went off. His now free hand automatically went to his pocket and pulled out his Nokia, but it wasn’t his phone going off. From the look on Nick’s face, it wasn’t his either.

Both sets of eyes turned uneasily back to the girl, and Nick gingerly removed the phone from the girl’s pocket.

“Hello, this is Nicholas Stokes. May I ask who you are trying to contact?” Nick’s voice was somber. “I see, and you are? Her mother? Well, ma’am, I… Your daughter was found underneath the bridge on 12th street. No, ma'am, I'm sorry. She passed away... I can't tell you anymore while there is an investigation going on.”

Greg felt the blood surge through his head once more as he pulled his gloves off and ran out of the room, trying not to hear the woman screaming at Nick on the other end of the phone. He moved quickly through the hallways, ignoring the odd looks he was given; within minutes, he found himself outside, rain-drenched.

Everything seemed to swirl around him, his hands becoming her hands, the dark clouds forming into her eyes, the rain becoming the tears he couldn't allow himself to shed for all of those bodies he had seen. He fell to his knees, curling in on himself, trying to push the images away. Yet they refused to leave, taunting him with the fact that he should have done something more for those who had passed through the morgue, that he should have saved them from their fates, even though it would have been impossible for him to. He couldn't help but feel that he should have been the one to be killed instead of that young, innocent child.

And then suddenly, it all disappeared as someone else knelt down in front of him and hugged him. His arm sought the person out, squeezing for all he was worth.

In the back of his mind, he realized that he should have been the one comforting Nick instead of it being the other way around, but it felt so good to just be held. It felt good to not have to be a hero.