Hello my dear readers! To celebrate the start of Season 14 of our favorite crime show, I'm uploading this short story! There are some spoilers going around that Greg will have to face some legal problems with a case from seven years ago. I allowed myself to take these hints as inspiration for my story and came up with the following. I really hope you like it! And don't worry, I have another story waiting to be uploaded soon!

Now enjoy and if you want, let me know what you think!

Big Love,

pikapikatchu

"But were you able to prove that?"

"My report reflects so."

"Did you remember checking it yourself?"

"It says so in the files. I checked her alibi on Monday, and..."

The defense attorney, Ethan Wenham, interrupted Greg. "Do you remember doing it yourself?"

"Well, I... it's been seven years, I..."

"So you don't even remember talking to the defendant's colleagues at work?"

Greg was getting nervous as he was sitting in court, trying to defend his own work from a few years ago. He felt everyone's eyes fixating on him as he was desperately looking for a way to explain himself. "I know I did it."

"Are you sure? Maybe your colleague did it for you. You were, after all, new to the job at the time."

"I wasn't new, I had plenty of experience already." Getting cocky sure didn't help him now, but that was his way of dealing with being cornered.

"You don't remember much from that time, do you?" Wenham walked over to the bailiff to hand him some medical files. "How could you, after a vicious attack from a group of teenagers that sent you to the hospital?"

Greg looked surprised at the attorney. The case they were revisiting right now was one of the last cases Greg had been working on before getting beat up. There were quite a few memory lapses before and after the beating and he found it very hard now remembering any details about that case. "N-no, I-I... This... this didn't influence my work performance at all, I..."

"Really? Because you came back to work quite quickly, didn't really give yourself much time to recuperate."

"I was feeling fine, so..."

"But maybe you weren't. Maybe you were still tremendously disabled by the horrific beating. Maybe that's why you don't remember talking to Ms. Grace's colleagues. Maybe that's why you don't remember interrogating her." Greg was trying real hard to remember that interrogation. He was back to work three days when he interrogated her together with Warrick. He remembered doing it, but not what was said. "Is it possible, Mr. Sanders? That the severe hits on your head and face caused this memory gap?"

"Hey, how'd it go?" Nick asked with a smile on his face as he walked up to Greg in the lab's hallway.

"How'd it go?! I tell you how, the D.A. really screwed up this time!" Greg replied, angrily walking on.

"What do you mean?" Greg had kept his memory problems a secret, Nick didn't know they were relevant in the case.

"Our suspect wasn't the one on trial, I was!"

"N-Now hold on, Greg." Nick grabbed his arm to keep him from walking. "What do you mean by that?"

Greg sighed deeply. "This trial was about how much I could've messed up instead of how guilty she was."

"But wasn't this a pretty clear case? She didn't have an alibi, you found incriminating DNA at the scene, her fingerprints on the gun... No signs of self-defense..."

"I know! But they're questioning her missing alibi right now and claim me and Warrick pressured her into a confession. Can you believe that?!" Greg started walking again, but Nick stopped him.

"Well but you told them that you didn't, right?" When Greg didn't answer, but instead put a weird face on, Nick went on, "No, come on, man! Warrick would've never done that!"

"Of course not."

"Then why didn't you tell them?"

Greg contemplated telling his friend for a moment, but then instead rolled his eyes annoyed. "I hate lawyers! This guy was such an annoying know-it-all."

"...You don't remember, do you?"

Greg stared at Nick. "W-what?"

"Sorry, I know you didn't want anybody to know so we played along."

"...We?"

"Yeah. Grissom, Catherine... all of us, actually. The doctor told Grissom, he told us because he feared it might influence your work..."

Greg interrupted him. "But it didn't!"

"...Wow, calm down. I didn't say it did. But you picked up pretty much right where you left off when you came back to work. Grissom needed us to know that there might be things you wouldn't remember. It wasn't nearly as bad as the doctor made it out to be."

"...What do you mean?"

Nick shrugged. "Well, we imagined you might forget how to run certain tests or something, we kept an eye on you the first few weeks. But all you seemed to have forgotten were little unimportant details."

"...Like what?"

Nick thought about it for a moment. "I remember Warrick saying you wanted to go talk to your suspect's colleagues but had done this a few weeks before, anyway."

"...God dammit!" Greg exclaimed annoyed as he walked into the break room.

"What's the big deal?" Nick followed behind.

"The big deal is that they're trying to get that woman out of prison and they have a pretty good chance with Warrick obviously unable to testify and me not knowing anything!"

Nick nodded. "I see. But you have proof that you talked to her colleagues, don't you?"

"Kind of. Her colleagues back my story up, but I'm not very convincing if I don't even remember things like that. They'll try to discredit my whole work."

Russell asked Greg to meet him in his office. The young CSI had a hunch that he wanted to talk about the court date. "So how'd it go?" Russell asked, offering Greg a seat.

He sat down. "Horrible," he replied with a sad smile. "But I bet you already know that."

Russell smiled. "I do. And I want you to know that I hate what I'm about to do, but... I need to put you on paid leave."

"...What? Why?"

"Because as long as this court dilemma isn't solved, I can't have you work any cases."

"What are you talking about? This is a case from seven years ago, whatever they say..."

Russell interrupted him. "They're trying to prove that you're still having difficulties remembering. I know Ethan Wenham, he's a very... talented and ambitious lawyer. He'll take a look at every case you've ever worked on, trying to find the littlest mistake you made. He'll blow it out of proportion, causing the jury and the judge, maybe even the D.A., to question your credibility. Trust me, I'm doing you a favor."

Greg looked at his supervisor rather terrified. "I didn't do anything wrong."

"I know that, Greg. And I'll defend you whenever I need to. And I'll protect you any way I can, which is... in this case, pulling you off your cases."

"She's guilty, Russell. She did it, she told me so seven years ago. There was enough evidence for a judge and jury to believe it. Denham will go as far as to endanger my job to get this murderer out of jail?"

Russell nodded. "People like him would probably sell their own mother for the right amount of money. Go home, try to relax. This will be over soon."