A/N: Songfic to 'Leaving Las Vegas' by Sheryl Crow; no relation to the episode of the same name. This takes place before everyone started being buried alive and taking sabbaticals. I don't own CSI, more's the pity.

Life springs eternal
On a gaudy neon street
Not that I care at all
I spent the best part of my losing streak
For what, I can't recall

She'd always imagined that, if she ever gave up on Gil Grissom, it would be the result of a huge, angst-ridden argument. She'd tell him how much she loved him, how much she'd always loved him, and he'd struggle with his inner turmoil over whether he could forsake his solitary life and his single-minded dedication to his work in order to admit the love she knew he had to feel for her. In the end, he'd want to choose her, but she'd see how it tore him apart, and she'd nobly sacrifice her own happiness for his, assuring him that just the knowledge of his love was enough for her.

It was funny, she reflected as she shoved the last of her clothes into a hastily-packed duffel bag, how life never quite turned out like she imagined it would.

I check the odds
And I place my bet
I pour a drink
And I throw the dice
I wonder what I'll find

She'd come to Vegas on the strength of his plea for assistance and her own insanity. She'd truly believed that he'd called her - Her! Out of all the criminalists in all the world, he'd called her! - in his time of need because he thought of her as more than just a trusted colleague. After all, he had many trusted colleagues who would have jumped at the chance to work alongside Gil Grissom in Las Vegas, most with years more experience and pages more credentials than her. She'd decided that he had to have another reason to want her on the case, and she'd dropped her old life without a second thought, gambling on finding a better one in Vegas. With him.

She snorted, balling up her bed linens and stuffing them forcefully into her laundry bag, which was already close to bursting. She'd been a fresh-faced, love-struck idiot. She wasn't sure when, exactly, she'd realized that, but the last few years had proved it to her in force.

I'm standing in the middle of the desert
Waiting for my ship to come in
But now no joker, no jack, no king
Can take this loser hand
And make it win

She'd known that over the past few months her feelings of restlessness and resentment had been growing, that she'd been more and more discontented with her life in Vegas. She hadn't been prepared for today, though. It was a day like pretty much every other day, with Grissom being remote and emotionally distant in response to her tentative overtures, and she couldn't have pinned down exactly what it was he'd said or done that had been so different than the thousand other times he'd been remote and emotionally distant. Something inside her had simply snapped.

She'd walked out of CSI in the middle of the night shift, setting her badge and gun down on the table in the break room on her way out. Grissom, who hadn't followed her when she'd left his office in the middle of their non-conversation, probably still hadn't found them. She wondered how he'd feel when he did, what he'd say when he realized he'd lost her, and then she wondered how after all these years of yearning it could be possible that she didn't really care what his reaction would be. She was finished waiting around to watch Gil Grissom's reaction, to try and analyze every stray comment and offhand remark to figure out if they had any deeper meaning.

Such a muddy line between
The things you want
And the things you have to do
And now it seems like
Nowhere is far enough away
So I'm leaving Las Vegas today

She ought to be angry, she knew. She ought to be furious that she'd wasted so many years of her life on a man who would never, could never, love her the way she loved him. She ought to be devastated and livid and wistful and a million other things, but as she grabbed the last load of bags to carry them down to the car, she realized that she was just tired. Tired of waiting, tired of agonizing, tired of loving someone who was never going to love her back. It was time to move on.

And so, at three-fifteen on a Tuesday morning, Sara Sidle left Las Vegas for good.

She never looked back.

I'm leaving Las Vegas
And I won't be back
No, I won't be back
Not this time.