Survivor's Atonement
by Camilla Sandman
Author's Note: For Nirix, as requested. Mentions within of Boromir from Lord of the Rings, as well as the Silmaril. Knowledge of said story is helpful.
II
I've always know sooner or later I would pay the price. My father died. My mother killed. Both died in their own way and I was left to a life that wasn't so much life as merely survival. And somehow, it became easy to touch death, knowing it would beckon me too. Perhaps it already has. Perhaps falling for all the wrong men was just another way of feeling death.
And when Regina Dickson's parents were found dead and she was declared missing, I felt alive. A wrong to right, a victim to save. A way to atone for living when others did not.
I always knew sooner or later I would pay the price.
Sooner is today. There is no tomorrow.
II
Hurt. It hurts. Fire and ice and thorns and my body the battleground. Breathing kills me and keeps me alive, and somewhere inside, I wonder what would happen if I just stopped. Just... No breath. No pain. No life.
"Sara," the voices urges. "Sara. Breathe for me, Sara."
Grissom.
His face is stricken as he looks at me, my pain mirrored in his eyes. There's blood on his face, blood in the shape of a hand. My hand. I've touched him and it's my blood and it hurts and I'm dying I've been shot the blood is mine mine mine...
"Sara," he urges again, trying to lock me to life with his gaze, pressing a hot kiss to my forehead. "Hold on, the ambulance is on its way."
"Did I... Did I..." I try to form the words, try to remember. The guy, little Regina, his gun on her... In a moment, I am Regina and it is my father dying. A distorted mirror, a mirror broken as I bleed. I'm dying. Grissom knows it, it's in his voice, his calm. He's trying to will me to life, but the human will is not great enough for that. I know, I've tried.
"You shot him. Regina is safe, she found me and told me you were hurt. Just stay awake, Sara. You did good."
I want to ask him if he loved me, just a little, but I have no breath. I have no life. The pain fades, I fade, it all fades and darkness spins until it is light, light, light...
II Light. Light everywhere. But no family to greet me, as if I've lost them here too and I cry, because there is nothing left in me now but tears. "Don't," a voice says and a shadow falls on me. For a moment, it is almost my father, but the face I look up at is a stranger's. Younger than Grissom he is, but with deeper scars and marks of battle, his hair dark as it clads him like a shadow. For a moment, I think him an angel, but an angel would not carry such scars.
"I'm dying, aren't I?"
He looks at me, understanding and envy and pity in his eyes. "Yes. But you are not dead, as I am."
"I'm just imagining you," I say. Ever the scientist, ever Sara Sidle, ever trying to find the logic. "I'm dying and I'm having delusions. You're not real."
"Maybe. I am not of your time or place. But like you, I sought death to redeem myself."
"Boromir," I say. He nods, his face so bright, so bright. I know him, remember crying bitter childhood tears at his death in the book. Boromir of Gondor, dying to save the Hobbits, atoning for his mistake of wanting the Ring. I remember.
All I wanted was silence. And my father died and the silence was deafening.
"My guilt was real," he says softly, evenly. "Yours is a survivor's. It is not your fault your mother killed your father. You do not have to atone for the murdered."
"But I do," I whisper. Mother. Father. I lived, they died.
"No. Listen to me. Perhaps I am not real, perhaps I am you, speaking to you in a form you will listen to. You lived. There is no atonement for life."
"There is death."
"Sara," he says and spreads his hand, filling it with light. "This is a Silmaril. You remember. You read. It holds the light of the Two Trees."
"It's all that is left of them after Morgoth's strike."
"Yes. And the Elves clung to it and though it was fair and bright, it destroyed them."
"I know."
"Let it go, Sara. Atonement is good, but obsessions destroy. Even when they are for good things."
He closes his hands even as I reach for it, and the light fades, his voice fades and I return to the pain and the dark and hear a different voice, calling my name.
"Sara. Come back to me... Please come back to me."
II
I always knew sooner or later I would pay the price. I just didn't know what the price was.
I'm going to live, all the doctors tell me. Grissom tells me, as if convincing himself too. They all tell me, until I'm almost tired of listening. I'm going to live. The hurt will go on, the guilt will go on and I will live.
Perhaps that price is even higher.
Grissom comes to see me one day, looking awkward as he sets the plant on my table. I wonder what it is meant to be - comfort, an offer of a new start, an offer to redo the past, an offer of him? I don't ask. He will tell me and it will be all the more important unasked for.
"What are you reading?" he asks instead.
"Lord of the Rings."
"I didn't know you like fantasy," he remarks, picking up the book, weighing it in his hand.
"I used to dream of other worlds all the time when I was younger," I reply casually. "We all wish for an escape sometimes."
He nods, still holding the book, his fingers whitening as he clutches it. "You almost escaped me."
"No," I say and shake my head. "I came back to you. I came back to me. I'm here."
"Are you?"
"Yes," I promise and his hand finds mine. I see the scars on his face now, invisible on the skin but still there, scars of fear and hurt and chosen loneliness. A mirror to me, distorted, but still possible to see. I am Grissom. I am Boromir. I am Sara. There is no atonement for life, but we may still be redeemed for the crimes we convict ourselves for. Being the son of a father who left. Being the daughter of a murderer. Surviving. Living.
I'm alive and there is today.
FIN