I've never written anything quite like this before so I hope it plays well and I also beg your forgiveness for any mistakes as I'm about to fall asleep on my keyboard. Just had to write my own speculation for the finale-movie-whatever we're calling it.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not yours. Definitely Bruckheimer's because if it was mine there would be 100% more GSR and 110% less science.
Two years before she moves to Las Vegas.
Worrying the end of her pen between her teeth, she taps the toe of her boot against the seat in front of her while tugging anxiously at her ill-fitting jacket and cursing the dark curls that fall from the ponytail she threw them in as she raced out the door that morning; sitting in the second row of the lecture hall she feels like she's back in high school and if there's one thing Sara Sidle distinctly remembers about high school is that she did not belong. At the lab the crime scene investigator stands out like a bright and shining star among the rest of her team but here, at the Forensic Academy Conference, she is just one very small fish in a large pond. She is the youngest by a bit of a margin; she's barely a level two and most of the crowd is made up of level threes or higher and even among her contemporaries she's still the baby of the crowd having graduated two years ahead of schedule. Add her youth to the fact that she's still poor little Sara with a rundown car bought with funds from when she was still working as a waitress at Harvard and clothes bought from the outlet mall. In her mind she knows she's making mountains out of mole hills and nobody in the room cares where she bought her clothes or the fact that she drives a Chevy Celebrity that looks like something they'd find at one of their crime scenes but it doesn't stop the feelings of insecurity and inadequacy.
The double doors open and a man with wiry silver hair and piercing blue eyes step inside and the noise causes Sara's head to jerk up and pulls her from her self-deprecating thoughts. Another man from the opposite side of the room stands up and makes his way to him, shaking his hand before ushering him across the room. Doctor Grissom, Sara presumes. The second man makes his way to the podium and taps obnoxiously on the microphone to grasp their attention before he speaks. "Welcome all. The Forensic Academy Conference is pleased to welcome all of you to this lecture on entomology and it's relation to forensic sciences. Speaking to you today will be Doctor Gilbert Grissom. Doctor Grissom is the assistant grave shift supervisor for the Las Vegas Crime Lab and holds a doctorate in biology from the University of Chicago. Will you all please join me in giving Doctor Grissom a warm welcome?"
Sara hooks her pen on the wire of her spiral bound notebook and joins the rest of the room in applauding Doctor Grissom as he crosses the stage and waves off their applause before shaking the man's hand and stepping up to the microphone. "Thank you," are the first words he speaks and the twenty-seven year old crime scene tech finds herself hanging on his every word. "I'm glad you all were able to join me here today. As Robert said, I'm here to speak on entomology and how it relates to crime scene analysis and, even more so, how it can be an advantage to crime scene analysis and help make or break our cases."
Doctor Grissom's lecture was slated to occupy the room for seventy-five minutes but he goes over by ten in no small part due to the questions coming from the brunette in the second row. Sara had felt awkward, like she hadn't belonged, before the lecture began but there was something about Grissom that just made her relax and she found herself asking questions and the doctor found himself indulging her questions, urging her thought process on as she connected the pieces of what she was talking about. As the crowd dispersed, Sara found herself scribbling a few questions on the edge of her notes and hoping that Doctor Grissom could indulge her for just a few moments longer – she didn't want to go make small talk with people who made her feel inferior at a lunch that was destined to be mediocre at best. Standing, she pauses to redo her ponytail before slinging her bag over her shoulder and clutching her notebook to her chest as she makes her way down the row and to the front of the room. An older man is talking to Doctor Grissom and Sara wonders if she should wait, see if he can talk to her, or if she should bite the bullet and go to the luncheon, hoping that she stumbles across his path later in the conference. He solves the predicament for her when he calls her name. "Detective Sidle, right?"
"Yeah," she tells him with a small grin – he remembered her name. "Sara."
He claps the man he was talking to on the back before making his way over to her and extending his hand. "Gil Grissom," he introduces himself to her formally. "Most people call me Grissom."
"Nice to meet you," she tells him as she shakes his hand and barely refrains a rather girly giggle when he clasps her hand between both of his. "I enjoyed your lecture."
"I'm glad." He gives her a smile then and she wants to kick herself because she is not the heartbeat stuttering kind of girl but this man brings out something in her that she's never tangled with before. "I was wondering if I could trouble you to accompany me for lunch? I'm never a fan of what they serve at these things and you're local, right? You said you worked at the lab here?"
"Yeah," she mumbles dumbly. " I mean... Sure. You like fish and chips?"
"Love it."
The trip down to the wharf is filled with endless chatter as they discuss everything; they're both native Californians – she hails from Tomales Bay while he grew up further south in Santa Monica, the schools they attended and he's adequately impressed with Harvard and Berkeley. On a bench near the water, they eat their fish and chips while throwing the occasional chip to the seagulls that eye them viciously. "Preventative measures," Sara claims as she tosses the first one and then another. "They'll come steal all of them if you don't throw them the occasional bone."
"Logical," Grissom agrees as he tosses one of his own to the birds. "Do you like San Francisco?"
"As opposed to," she asks.
"Tomales Bay," he suggests. "Boston?"
"Mmm," she hums as she mulls over the decision. "Definitely better than Tomales Bay but sometimes I really miss Boston. This far north we get slight changes in the seasons but there is nothing like autumn in Massachusetts – though I was never a big fan of the snow up to my neck in the winter."
"Chicago had the worst snow," he laments. "I thought I would die of frost bite on more than one occasion during graduate school."
She laughs. "You can take the boy out of California but you can't take the California out of the boy?"
"Something like that," he tells her. "Nevada suits me fairly well though, I must confess, I miss the water."
"Anyone who lives in the desert probably does."
The side of his mouth lifts into a crooked grin and he gives her a slight nod of ascent. "Probably."
"You know we're kind of blowing off the conference that my boss made a really big deal out of me attending," she mumbles. "He's going to ask what I did."
"Just wax poetic about my lecture," he suggests with a twinkle of orneriness in his blue eyes as he pauses to take a bite of fish. "And lament that you had to rub elbows with all those stodgy old men."
"You're a stodgy old man," she fires back.
He lets out a bark of a laugh. "I suppose I am to someone of your... youth."
"Nah," she tells him with a shrug. "You're... you're distinguished. A silver fox. Surely you saw the way all the women in that room were fawning all over you."
"Were you one of them," he dares to ask.
She quirks an eyebrow in response. "So what if I was?"
They sit in silence for a long moment.
"Can I... Would you like me to take you on a tourist trap tour of San Francisco?"
"I would love that."
–
Two years after the divorce.
His plane landed in Las Vegas at a quarter til five in the morning but he was wide awake, still running on Parisian time. It felt foreign to be back on US soil but even more off-putting was the feeling of being back in Las Vegas – though it hadn't been one of their terms, it had felt like Sara had gotten Las Vegas as part of their divorce settlement. Pinching the bridge of his nose as he disembarked, he cursed the migraine he felt coming on. Dry swallowing two of his pills that he had carried with him on the flight, he pushed his way through the paperwork for the rental car company and contemplated his next move. There was still more than an hour before she would be off shift at the crime lab if she was working that night and, well, he remembered how grumpy she could be by the end of her shift and he wondered if he should go to the hotel and sleep, give her time to come down from the end of shift grumps before hunting her down. He hadn't seen her in two years. Their lawyers had handled everything. He had thought it was better that way; had known it was better that way because he wouldn't have been able to go through with the divorce if he had seen her, seen the pain he had known he was putting her through.
It was horrible, what he had done, and he was fairly certain that he was going to get a door slammed in his face when he did find her – maybe even a smack across the face. He had left her. He had broke her heart and told her it was what was best for her. Because he was selfish. Because he didn't want her to see what came after. For so long he had considered it a selfless act but it hadn't been; he had said he didn't want to put Sara through that but really he didn't want to watch her watch him go through what had come after their separation.
He needed to see her; even if she slapped him, even if she slammed the door in his face. It had been two long and painful years before he had last seen his wife and he missed her. So he pointed the rental car in the direction of the home they had once shared, the home he had turned over to her in their divorce because he'd thought he would have no use for it. Her car was in the driveway when he pulled up to the curb and parked but he was surprised to see her, in the hazy morning distance, making her way toward him with Hank on his leash. Hank. He had missed that drool bucket.
When his blue eyes flitted from the dog to his ex-wife he was met with a look of fury (and pain, buried deep but definitely there). She had her teeth gritted and her jaw was set when she reached him like she was preparing herself for a war. "What the hell are you doing here, Grissom?"
"Can I talk with you," he asked quietly.
She narrowed her eyes and shook her head ever so slightly. "What could you possibly say to me now that would make any sort of difference in my life?"
I miss you. I'm still in love with you. I'm an idiot. He cleared his throat. "I was sick, Sara. The doctors told me that I wasn't going to make it six months and... I was-"
"Sick," she cuts him off.
"Cancer."
"Cancer," she repeats. "You were sick. With cancer. Told you have six months to live. And your answer was to divorce me?"
And then she slaps him.