We do not own these characters. Anyone reading this knows it is fan-fiction written in a collective heartbreak that the 'real' show does not resolve.
Determination
When it all began, Sara thought she would change jobs, or at least change shifts. She was the one who brought it up, who talked about it, who read departmental policy.
He said they would work something out. Neither wanted to become fodder for office gossip yet both were surprised when no one noticed the changes between them. Days turned to weeks then months and they learned to keep quiet, to be careful, to love each other, to keep a secret, and continue to work together.
She said they were like jugglers. He said it was black and white—work and privacy. For Gil Grissom, life outside of work was always private. For years Sara Sidle had no life other than work.
For months they were happy. All it took was for one to walk into a room and see the other. They smiled—a lot. They could be together for hours and say nothing, or talk constantly for hours on end. When she thought about it, she was amazed at how well they knew each other, how much they had in common, and how happy they were.
Sara noticed his distraction first. Not with her, but with what went on around him. His excitement left—again, not between them, but with work, solving problems, finding conclusions. He told her early one morning he had to leave for a while. He needed a break from work—again, not from her he said, but he ended up leaving her.
Perhaps, she thought, that's when it all started for her. If he could become disillusioned and discontented, the one person in her life whose presence stabilized everything that made her life, she could doubt her own self, discover a weakness of her own character, become uncertain about her abilities.
He returned; happy to see her, to be with her, to love her, to be at work. When he lost himself in work, when he spent a night with Heather—and she met this mystery woman of the dark, when he spent hours working on his own miniature model, she became restless, no longer willing to give up and move on. She became skilled at covering up. When he worried about solutions, she remembered victims.
Sara became a victim, one of the few who survived this kind of event. She thought she had recovered, except for the sleepless nights and her dreams of being a child again and one murder after another. Of course, they became office gossip, their private live became public, and when she moved to another shift, they rarely got to see each other.
The day she watched as a woman walked in with a knife in her back was the day she knew she had to leave. She had seen enough death and dying to last her a lifetime. Of course, life was never simple. A name from her past—more accurately, two people from the past, a death, and a second chance to right a wrong. It did not happen. Instead, she fell, or was pushed, back into the dark night of her abduction. All the questions of her own past circled in her brain until she knew she had to escape. And that's what she did.
A/N: Please read and comment!