The Good Fight
After months of tension, Greg finally tells Grissom exactly how he feels about him and his part in Sara's departure.
The first story in the Time series. Takes places post season eight, circa the end of January 2009.
"Greg. My office. Now!" Grissom bellowed angrily, finally having had just about enough of Greg's far from pleasant demeanor as of late.
The room fell deathly silent as the young man stormed out without another word.
"Catherine, take over," Grissom said, his voice quickly returning to its usual professional timbre. He handed her the sheaf of assignment slips, pointedly ignoring the curious and questioning glances of his staff.
As he reluctantly followed the furiously retreating figure down the hall, Gil Grissom tried to puzzle out how it had all gone so wrong so fast. Although he knew all to well, that the truth of it was, that this outburst had probably been long in coming, too long in coming.
Originally, he had thought that if he just gave Greg some space -- and time -- the problem, like all the things he really did not want to deal with, would resolve itself in the end.
If anything, it had just gotten worse.
Warrick's death and Sara's continued absence had only seemed to exacerbate what had started out as a bad case of the silent treatment into a far more virulent form of open hostility which frequently skirted the boundaries of insubordination.
Grissom knew he was mostly to blame. He had let Greg's persistent bad attitude go on for far too long.
Like it or not, he knew now was the time to deal with it.
Even if it meant opening a can of worms he really did not want to open.
While he knew that the loss of Warrick had been difficult for all of them to deal with, Grissom was sure that this outburst didn't have anything to do with Warrick, but rather Sara.
As hard as Sara's second and equally sudden departure had been for him, he now understood that it had also been equally -- if differently -- as hard for the rest of the team.
After the first time she had left, he had merely resented their attempts and bristled at their well-meant actions, when he should have seen that when they were reaching out to him to provide some measure of comfort, they were longing for that same comfort in return. He had just been so lost in his own private pain and disbelief that he couldn't see it.
Catherine had been right -- somehow over the years the team had become a family.
Although when Sara first came to Vegas, Grissom had serious doubts as to whether the young woman would ever really fit in.
He knew he was mostly to blame for that, too.
Catherine had resented Sara's presence in the lab. Nick had been fairly ambivalent and well, he could understand why it took a while for Warrick to warm up to her. Greg, on the other hand, seemed to have always been taken with her.
As loath as Grissom was to admit it, he had often been envious of the easy camaraderie the two shared. Ever since Greg had moved to field status, the two had looked out for each other.
And now Sara was...
Gone --
He could understand why Greg was upset.
Hell, he was upset.
Still upset.
Not at Sara, but at himself.
Not a day went by when he still didn't wonder why he hadn't picked up on what was going on sooner.
With Warrick, it had been vaguely understandable, but with Sara it had been utterly inexcusable. He should have known.
For a man who made his career out of following the evidence, he sure as hell hadn't been paying enough attention to the warning signs.
Before she had left, he had known that Sara had been more unhappy than usual, that work had been particularly draining, that she was quickly becoming quieter and more reserved.
He just hadn't known what to do about it.
Besides, between the fact that they were on separate schedules with days off that never seemed to coincide and that single shifts were rare to virtually nonexistent, they had had precious little time together those last few months.
As much as he wished he could point the finger at Ecklie and the fact that the assistant director had split up the team, Gil Grissom knew where the real blame resided -- with Gil Grissom.
He should never have let Sara persuade him into letting her move to Swing Shift. If she had stayed on Nights, the rest of the team could have looked out for her for him. She would have been surrounded by people who loved and cared for her, instead of being partnered with some obnoxiously green newbie who didn't know how to handle a swab the right way up.
No, Catherine and Nick and Warrick and Greg, they would have seen that Sara was falling and said something before it was too late.
Too late.
Hadn't Sara once told him that it really would be too late by the time he figure out what to do about the two of them?
For a long time, those words haunted him.
Often, he had feared that her pronouncement would prove prophetic, but after their relationship had moved beyond friendship to something more -- a lot more -- and they settled into a hard-won and yet infinitely comfortable -- and comforting -- intimacy, he thought he could put that old fear aside.
His optimism had proven dangerous and costly.
It had cost him Sara, perhaps not completely nor entirely, but it still had.
He rubbed his eyes wearily, wishing he could wipe the exhaustion from his face; wishing he could face himself in the mirror.
For now, he had to face Greg.
Grissom closed the door behind him as he stepped into usually soothing dimness of his office.
Tonight, however, the dark brought with it little comfort. He sank heavily into the chair behind his desk. It was several long moments before he looked up and said as calmly as he could to the young man who paced his office, "Greg, if you have a problem with me as a supervisor, you take it up with me privately."
The almost ugly scowl that had shadowed the man's face in the break room was now alight on his face, as he intoned icily, "I don't have a problem with you as a supervisor."
Grissom arched an eyebrow at this. "Then..." He began, but Greg cut him off with an almost spiteful --
"I have a problem with you as a human being, Grissom. Although for you to be even that is stretching the definition."
"Excuse me..." Grissom stammered.
"No," Greg replied with a violent shake of his head. "There's no excuse for you or excusing you. Look I don't care if you suspend me -- hell, transfer me, fire me, right now I just don't care," he bellowed. "You make me sick. When I started here, everyone talked about how callous you were, how it was all just evidence to you, that people didn't matter.
"And being young and stupid and naive, I didn't want to believe it -- and for a long time I didn't. Turns out I was wrong.
"Turns out that you really are a sorry son-of-a-bitch who cares more about himself and his work than you ever did for another person."
Grissom's gaze faltered at this accusation.
How many times had he heard this charge directed against him -- from Catherine and Warrick and Nick -- even from Sara?
Sadly, he wondered that if enough people believed something to be true, did it actually turned out to be so?
He almost missed Greg's next words, which although unfamiliar were no less disconcerting.
"You know I knew. I knew you two were together for the longest time. Oh, don't worry Sara never said anything, she didn't have to and you sure as hell never would have.
"But with Sara I could tell. She was happy or at least happier. So, I didn't say anything. Because after all the shit you put her through all those years, she was finally happy. Now I wished I would have. Sure, she would have been pissed at me for a while, but I would rather have her mad at me, than what you did to her."
"And what precisely did I do, Greg?" Grissom finally hazarded to ask in a distant sort of voice, still fairly sure that Greg's indictment could never be as harsh as the one he leveled against himself.
So he was surprised and strangely confused when Greg answered, "You let her win."
"Who?"
"Natalie," Greg spat angrily. "You stood there in front of all of us and said that she was going to take away the only person you ever loved. And you let her do it. You just let her do it.
"We may have found Sara alive out there in the desert, but Natalie still completed that miniature -- it just took her a little longer than she planned."
Grissom found he had no reply to this -- it was too close to the truth to deny.
He had seen it himself in Natalie's face that afternoon in the courtroom as she passed by. That look in her eyes and that faint twinge of a satisfied smile that played about her lips, told him she knew. That somehow she knew exactly what had happened, that she had done exactly what she had intended to do.
It was a look that still haunted him all those weeks later, haunted him now. But Greg's almost hoarse and more hurt than righteously angry words cut into these thoughts,
"You didn't fight for her. You should have fought for her," he maintained. "You should have told Ecklie to kiss your ass and the rules be damned. At the very least, you should have been the one to go to Swing."
"I know," Grissom conceded.
"But you didn't."
"She insisted," he offered and then more to himself than to Greg he whispered, "I should have known then."
"And now instead of fighting for her, instead of going after her, you just sit in your damn office acting like none of it ever happened -- like she was never here -- like you never even gave a damn."
"She didn't want me to go after her," Grissom murmured.
"Really?" Greg asked incredulously. "How do you figure that?"
"Because she said so."
Resignedly, Grissom withdrew from his wallet a creased and well-worn sheaf of notepaper that appeared as if it had been frequently unfolded and then carefully refolded again. His face fell as he almost reverently laid Sara's last letter to him before Greg, knowing that of all people, Greg deserved the whole truth, even if it made Grissom's heart break all over again to share it.
As the young man leaned in to read, Grissom closed his eyes. He did not need to look at the letter again to know what it said. Every loop and curl of her handwriting had long been burned into his memory. He knew every word like he knew Shakespeare or Poe -- better even -- for these had been her words and were a treasure beyond value.
Gil -
Despite what he knew came after, he almost smiled each he read his name.
There was just something in the way she called him by his first name -- something that almost made him want to stop breathing every single time.
You know I love you.
Yes, he did. Neither of them said the actual words that often, but there never really had seemed the need. He knew -- it was in every look -- in every touch -- in every kiss they ever shared.
I feel I've loved you forever.
He had been serious and perhaps more honest than he had ever been in his life, when he had told Ecklie that he and Sara had been involved ever since they first met all those years ago.
... I've spent almost my entire life with ghosts.
That's what he had been for so long, for all those wasted years that he could never get back -- a ghost -- a phantom who haunted the halls of the lab -- an apparition who spent more time with the dead than with the living because the dead were less likely to cause you pain – simply a specter who incessantly chased the how because the why was often just too heart-rending to bear.
... It was time for me to bury them.
He had buried his feelings for Sara for so long, keeping them under lock and key, setting up walls and barriers he had hoped would hold -- and almost had.
I'm so sorry.
He had so many regrets when it came to Sara, but not once in all the years, not even now when his heart still ached, did he ever regret loving her.
I have to go.
Maybe that's why she could never have told him in person that she was leaving. Because she knew he would have wanted more than anything to ask her to stay.
Even the second time, he knew he still couldn't.
... I'm afraid I'll self-destruct...
More than a year later, he still felt as if his life had imploded that day.
... and worse, you'll be there to see it happen.
He didn't know which was more heartbreaking -- that she was too afraid to let him see her fall apart, or that she wanted to protect him from that pain. And yet, hadn't he done exactly the same thing?
Know that you are my one and only.
So are you, Sara -- always and ever.
I will miss you with every beat of my heart.
She had taken his heart with her. No wonder it hurt so much to feel anything at all.
Our life together was the only home I've ever really had.
He felt the same. How wonderful it had been to come home to her after a long shift. How comforting it was to know she would be there.
No wonder he still assiduously avoided returning to his townhouse -- it just wasn't the same without her.
Even now, he still hadn't gotten past that momentary hope that fluttered in his chest each time he slid his key into the lock -- that vain hope that this time, she would be there waiting for him with that welcoming smile of hers that always made everything all right.
I wouldn't trade it for anything.
He would trade everything he had -- even his very life -- for just five more minutes with her. Hell, for just one more look, one more touch, one more moment.
Just one more kiss.
That one kiss still haunted him -- if he had known --
He should have known. But he had been so surprised at the gesture that by the time he understood, she was gone leaving behind only --
Good-bye.
Why anyone ever thought there was anything good about good-byes he would never know.
He wondered if Sara knew that the expression good-bye was an Early Modern contraction of the phrase God be with you.
For some reason he found solace in that particular gloss of the word.
God be with you.
Although he might not in practice be a particularly religious individual, the thought that there was some higher power that was with her when he could not be, was, however slight, a comfort.
At the very end of the letter, just before the thin margin of blankness that always threatened to overwhelm him, was her first name inscribed in that all too familiar, half-scrawled way she always used to sign off on things.
He shook his head as he realized that they had never gotten a chance to talk about her name, if she had wanted to keep her own or if she planned to take his after --
"We were going to get married," Grissom said softly, carefully taking the letter back from Greg and reverentially refolding it. "I asked her a few weeks before…" his voice trailed off as he absently ran his thumb over the paper as if he could still feel the warmth her fingers left upon the page when she closed it.
He either didn't hear or didn't register Greg's faint, "I'm sorry."
"She seemed so happy that day," he whispered, a half-sad smile on his face. "She was laughing and smiling and it was as if Natalie and the desert and everything else that happened after had never happened. It was as if we had our whole lives in front of us and then..."
Then there was silence, a long aching silence, that even Greg's whisper of "Grissom," did nothing to dispel.
It wasn't until the young man put a tentative hand on his boss's -- no, his friend's -- shoulder, that the older man looked up.
"You know," Greg said, shaking his head in exasperation. "There are some times when I really have to wonder how the hell the two of you ever finally managed to end up together."
Grissom pulled off his glasses and pinched his nose wearily before taking a moment to reply, "I guess I ran out of good intentions."
"You know what they say about those --"
"The road to hell is paved with them?" Grissom supplied with a sigh.
"Yeah."
Grissom nodded knowingly, then asked in a pensive sort of tone, "What is the road to heaven paved with I wonder?"
"No clue," Greg replied, shrugging his shoulders. "I leave the philosophy to those highly intellectual guys like you." He paused and then taking a deep breath hazarded to add, "Sara never actually said she didn't want you to come after her."
With that, the silence returned again, but it was of a different sort quiet this time, as if Gil Grissom were seriously considering the younger man's words. After a long moment, a slight slip of a smile, one that betokens the beginning of a return to hope, began to appear on his face. Greg gave him an encouraging grin in response.
"I know you always say that sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing," he continued. "But sometimes, Grissom, it's a lot harder to do something."
Series continued in "Closing Arguments."