Rating: T, for violence
Spoilers: None, although I do assume in this that Sara survives.
Disclaimer: The characters on CSI are not mine. This story is.
One
It was summer the first time I tried curry.
My mother brought the Singh family to our house for dinner. Now I realize how revolutionary it was to have someone of another race in a white home, even in the 70's, even in California. Sara was just a baby then. She'd be angry if she knew I was thinking about our age difference again.
I was fifteen that summer and I hated the curry; it made my eyes burn, my nose sting, my stomach revolt. My mother gestured for me to clean my plate (so as not to offend her artist clients) and I'm remembering how helpless I felt knowing that my glass of milk was almost empty already.
I'm thinking how the thought of losing someone you love more than yourself feels just as helpless; that the burning this time in my eyes and chest wouldn't be helped even if I had a whole gallon of milk.
I feel every bit as powerless now as I did then; sitting here, unable to contribute to the search to find her, wondering how she is. I'm wondering if she's awake, or if she's been drugged. If she's holding up well; if… well, if she's in pain.
I hope she isn't. The idea of Sara being helpless is enough to bring me to my knees emotionally; the thought of her in pain does something to my heart I haven't experienced in two years, since my mother's death.
Looking at it objectively, I believe I might be in shock.
A part of my mind has already registered that it's raining over half of the county; and while I hope that she's close enough that the search perimeter is reasonable, I'm also hoping she's well away from the rain. I wouldn't want her to drown in a desert; she'd never forgive herself for being in that situation.
I can't… I'm just not strong enough to think of a life without her.
I don't think she knows that, and at the moment I hate myself for not telling her. I hate myself for a lot of things right now. At the same time, I'm relieved that she doesn't have the guilt of knowing her death would devastate me. Sara claims that she over-talks around me; truth is, I over-think around her.
She would laugh at me if she knew I was sitting here, in the dark, thinking in ever-expanding spirals this way. She would say something so… so down to earth, and yet profound in its own way that I'd be forced to stop and pay attention to her. She just has that way.
Where are you, Sara?
Did the interrogation fail or did I fail? What kind of man am I that I want to tell Brass "Yes. Yes, use the bleach." Where is that moral code I pride myself on? Where are my ethics, my dispassionate approach to every suspect and every case? Any case has the chance of becoming personal to an investigator, but I built walls around my heart long ago to keep that from happening; still, I grabbed Natalie, and I shook her.
God help me, I wanted to shake her until she was broken. Broken like a life without Sara.
I guess Sara is that chance for me, that one personal case that I can't let go. I need to think rationally, clearly, and all I can think about is curry, and the burning feeling in my chest, and a miniature doll that stopped moving an hour ago.
Sara.
I'm worried about Sara.
Two
It was summer when my mother stabbed my father to death.
Waking that morning to the unnatural silence, my windows cracked open and the salt-smell of the sea pervading my room, I wondered at the stillness around me. Even at daybreak, there was always someone up and around in our small home. My brother liked to slip out to the beach to catch waves before my father woke up. My mom could usually be heard in the kitchen, trying desperately to make breakfast as quietly as possible around whatever broken bone she was favoring that day.
I was always a late riser back then; before.
But on this particular summer morning, all I could hear was my own breathing; uneven and hitching, as though I already knew today would be the type of day that called for hysterics. Or maybe some unusual sound had woken me and my body was responding appropriately.
Like today, I woke that day to the sense that something was wrong; I was dry that day, clean, whereas today when I woke I was wet, sandy. But like that day, there was a pervading smell of ozone in the pre-dawn air; and unease and a weight that wasn't easy to define.
Then, the weight was an emotional one, psychologically damaging; the weight of finding that my mother had already woken my father with her cooking, and had stopped slicing bacon and decided to slice my father instead. (A part of my mind agrees that they were easily confused; both maybe not deserving their butchering, but it was inevitable that - being what they were - they would find it regardless.)
Today, the weight is physical, palpable; but unfortunately, just as hard to remove as the one placed on my psyche at 12.
There was no one to remove the weight back then. I carried it alone for over 20 years; then I learned to share it with the man I loved. If he were here, he'd remind me of how a weight shared is a weight halved.
But he's not here.
(Not yet, my mind whispers.)
And I'm… concerned… about this weight.
Three
It was a startlingly wet summer night when our friends found out about us. They were equal parts shocked, concerned, and angry. Angry at us for keeping secrets, angry at being excluded, angry for being deceived; angry for not being trusted like we should have trusted them. We had good reasons – so we thought – for keeping our relationship secret; but in the end, it was an inexcusable lie to almost everyone.
A lot of healing processes took place that summer, culminating in shared histories and a divided team.
And a wedding.
Departmental policy may have encouraged a marriage certificate, but the dictates of our hearts demanded a wedding by which we could reach out to those around us, those we loved, and include them in what we had so long denied them – and ourselves.
Acceptance and belonging. Our love, our hopes, our life together; all secrets we had guarded so carefully, but which had almost become our undoing. We both could have died from our secrets; it was a lesson learned the hard way, but nevertheless learned and remembered.
Taking it to heart, we agreed to keep none from each other again.
So here, wrapped around one another, all tangled limbs and tousled hair, safe in our own bed with the afternoon light spilling around us – dust motes dancing above our naked, lethargic limbs – we begin our new life with shared histories:
"It was summer…"
Author's Note: This story was begun originally as a response to a prompt at gsrdrabbles. This story could not have been posted without the urging of a handful of friends and the beta work of the lovely mingsmommy. As usual, if there's anything worth remembering in this, it's due to those who encouraged me, most especially her.