Summary: Motor oil on her father's hands as they tinkered with the engine, as they slammed across her face, as they stole down her body.
A/N: Hey look! I beta'd myself! All by my lonesome! (I still love you Marlou.) Thanks to the gang, you know, the Advocates, my Lauren, my Morg, my Karen, my Mel, my... Sara, Emma, Marlou, Sheila, Holly...
RESPONSE TO THE QUEEN'S CRAZY CHALLENGE OVER AT GEEKFICTION!
She was a veritable jack-in-the-box of tension. Wound, she was wound, around and around until the pressure was just so great that it was impossible not to spring free from the emotional bonds she had placed on herself. Amazing the pain one inflicts on one's own body.
Her headaches had subsided and laid dormant until he'd chosen to berate her in front of Grissom and Greg, calling her irresponsible and a waste of the department's resources. There were many more like her, he'd said. It was easy to replace her, he taunted.
But she knew there weren't and she knew it wasn't. In that moment, however, nothing really mattered.
A headache tickled the base of her skull, spurring sweat to prickle along the hairline of her neck. She batted at it with a hand, but before long, her entire face was enflamed and sweat began to tickle the dip of her temples and the hollow of her back. The familiar urge to massage the taught skin there was nearly overwhelming but she kept it at bay and gritted her teeth instead.
There wasn't a pill on the market that would still the inevitable influx of brash rage, so she let it flow straight out of her mind and assault the front of her skull. Rage, it pounded to get out; it was hopeless.
It was moments like this that Sara wished she could divine her future. She wanted to know if all the shit she'd put herself through the ringer for would pay out in the end. Did it matter... but did it really matter? Did anything matter in the grand scheme of things? She could see herself on the phone to Ms. Cleo, asking her a whole number of questions, getting obtuse answers, and hanging up in a rage, pulling her phone from the wall. What a crank, what a waste, what a silly thing life was. What a silly thing recognizance was.
She felt commercialized and dramatized and realized. She felt it all and laughed at the utter anguish that was living life.
It made her laugh; it made her project. "Jesus, this sentimentality just doesn't look good on me." It was a muse that hung on her shoulder and plagued her to glance at the stars. But nothing, nothing. Nothing but...
Sometimes it came full force, just the urge to need to be mad at something. Mostly, it made her feel alive and strangely feminine and it was becoming increasingly difficult to mask the relief she felt when she released it all. Glorious, all-encompassing freedom.
Scents assaulted her, so many at once. Spaghetti sauce, the best Italian around. Her mother would cook batches of it for the guests. They'd eat buckets of pasta slathered in it, all the while sipping down the house wine at outrageous prices. It was how they made their money, it was how they made people they were happy, healthy.
Motor oil on her father's hands as they tinkered with the engine, as they slammed across her face, as they stole down her body. Motor oil.
Sound was secondary to it all for her. Sight played no part; she could close her eyes and relive every millisecond, recall every miniscule detail in one moment and none the next. When her eyes closed, memories assaulted her, bringing her to her knees.
A rubber mallet to the back of the head, she, a demented Daffy Duck, stars rotating around her head from the blow, keeping her dizzy and swaying in the constant flow of remembering.
Some were large, gigantic files of memories that took hours to sift through. Sometimes she'd dream of them, read through them without ever coming to the end. Other times, they'd smack her on the side of the head, the size of a post-it and be gone before she could process the true meaning of them.
They varied, all shapes and sizes, colors and textures. All she knew for certain, the memories were flooding her lately, flash flooding. No warning, no precursor.
She'd taken to looking at the stars, or attempting to. The lights of the Strip tended to impose on her gazing so, on some nights, she drove out to the desert in order to catch a glimpse of the shimmers in the sky. Tonight, however, she found herself unable to leave the parking lot, rooted to the spot staring at the sky as if something was holding her there.
"Ecklie again?" Grissom stumbled upon her in the parking lot, gazing up into the stark infinity of night. He needn't see her eyes to sense something was wrong. They'd long ago begun to succumb to the other's emotions, the other's misery.
"He's vile and inhuman. He eats quiche for 'chrissakes and he's... he's... bald!" Though she was seething, positively volatile, he couldn't help but smile at her, at the innocent apprehension etched on her face as she glanced at him.
And there were the stars; tiny pinpricks fighting against the screech of Vegas lights just to be seen. He couldn't comprehend her under such wonders.
And there she was, thinking she was getting to be herself again. That facade crumbled when he walked up behind her; that facade was washed away when he stood beside her, doing nothing but stargazing alongside her.
The pure absurdity of the moment made her want to collapse in a fit of giggles and sobs and sink into the battered concrete.
"Do you want me to take you home?"
The question was forced, and somehow not. She didn't know what it was. It came out like 'Would you like some ice cream?', 'What's your sign?', 'What shall we call our son so he does not get the shit kicked out of him at school?' It was loaded and simple and it made her head spin. She found oh so many implications nestled in the delicate crescent of that one sentence and yet found it empty, obligatory.
Sara unfolded her arms and regarded him casually; she licked her lips and brushed the wrinkles out of her pants. A forced smile was her last vestige of hope for him. "Nah, I got it."
And she drove away, carrying years of flurrying memories with her.