A/N: I really do own nothing. It's a sad reflection on society, I think. Anyway, as a rule I don't post CSI fanfic because well… I'm not very good at it but this just came to me.

Yes, it would be in the same trend as a lot of other fics at the moment because, frankly, I'm depressed. No CSI Vegas until Feb next year for the UK.

It's a sorry state of affairs.

Anyway, wow I go on. Just a one shot. Fairly short, not great, just in my head.

Everyday

Everyday you haunt me.

I walk into the doors at work, feel the cool of the air conditioning unit wash me of humidity, but nothing can wash me of your memory. I make my way through corridors of shattered illusions and broken colleagues, the ones that believed so fully that this could never happen, not to one of our own.

We got to Nick in time. We're one of the best labs in the country.

I don't feel like the best anymore, no one in the lab does, and it is all because you haunt me. I'm strong and I battle, I have had a life of fighting for one thing or another, pushing my way through all of the things that living has thrown at me. This has left me feeling defeated, deflated and worst, demoralised. Suddenly, fighting what is evil seems pointless, the countless hours of labour, of studying evidence, of interviewing and analyzing, it no longer seems to matter.

It is because you haunt me.

Everyday you haunt me.

The very little light that shines into the lab through the high windows seems duller now, almost non existent. There is no light since you have been gone, Sara, everything around us reminds me of this everyday.

I could have been something more to you, more than your colleague, we could have been friends, real and true friends, if we had only tried. This eats at me now as I sit in the break room cradling my cup of strong coffee. Greg no longer bothers with the special stuff anymore, now we all drink the sludge the state offers us, but no one complains.

I guess coffee isn't that important anymore.

Everyone has lost their sparkle, their little bit of life, their optimism but the only person who has lost it more than me is Grissom. He loved you, Sara, and the fact that he didn't tell you before you left us breaks his heart every second of everyday.

Everyday you haunt him.

What breaks me the most, as I see him walk past, is that I love him with every fibre of my soul. Not the way you did, Sara, I know that, but it's the way only a sister can love someone, the way only a true friend can love someone. I see him trudge past, his head low, there is no glimmer in those blue eyes, he is not the Gil I know, he is not the Gil I love and I miss him.

And therefore, I miss you.

Maybe even more than I would have had you just gone away.

Seeing him hurt, seeing him struggle, seeing him die a little bit every time he walks past the plaque with your name on it, sends daggers through my soul.

I know that everyone here sees me as the strong one, the tough one, the one who stands up to be counted when everyone else shrinks away but the truth is, that isn't me anymore. Not since you died, not since you were taken from us. I feel as though my own life is being tugged away from me, little by little. Losing my father was bad, I thought at one stage that that might finish me. I thought that watching Lindsey cry for Eddie might crush me but I had no idea that this could be worse.

It is so much worse because of what it has destroyed here.

Everyday you haunt this building as though you are still here.

You should be here.

Everything has changed since I found you. I wonder if you know that it was me. I will never forget that moment, I won't forget it until the day I die and even then I'm not so sure. The sight of your hand dug into the ground, not moving, cripples me in my dreams, breaks me when I open my eyes.

I remember them lifting the car away from you, I remember waiting for you to scream in pain, I remember there being no sound escape you. You had been dead only a couple of hours.

David came out to the body, no one else could bear it, and as it happened, neither could he. The mere sight of your body, still and lifeless, made his body convulse and he ran to the furthest point he could before throwing up. When it became obvious that no one in our office could conduct your autopsy the L.V.P.D hired a consultant from California.

He was very clinical about it.

Your autopsy was hard to watch but something pulled me there, something morbid, something painful, something like gravity. You had suddenly become the centre of my world and I could not let it go. We all knew we had already caught your killer and we all knew that she was not going to jail. She would spend the rest of her life in an institute for the criminally insane.

It doesn't make it any easier to know she is locked away somewhere.

That can't bring you back.

'Catherine,' I look up and Gil is standing at the door, his eyes downcast, his body slouched. He has no energy left, there is no life in him. 'Assignments,'

He does not say anymore. I stand and follow him, expecting him to walk to the conference room but, instead, he darts into his office and slams the door closed behind him. I debate it for a moment in my mind, knowing that I should follow him, knowing that I should not.

I knock on the door gently and push it open, he does not call me in. He is sitting with his back to the wall, staring up at me as if I might have some answers. I allow the door to click shut behind me.

'Are you okay?' I ask, knowing how stupid the question is, knowing that he will never be okay.

He looks at his hands, his head stays dipped for what could stretch to eternal seconds, before he lifts his eyes back up to mine. They are red but no tears roll down his cheeks. I know that if I asked he would tell me the exact date and time that we found your body.

'I'm not okay,' he manages to say, but the words are a choked imitation of his voice.

I nod and sit next to him.

'You didn't let me see her,' he says, quietly.

I have no answer for this, I simply shake my head.

'I wanted to see her,' he says, desperately, almost childlike. I want to hold him but somehow I don't have the energy. I see the man I love hidden behind sad eyes and it breaks something inside me, I actually feel it snap.

'I know,' I choke and there are tears now, not his, but mine.

'Why?' he says, he's staring at me but I can't bring myself to look at him again.

'You couldn't,' I say, trying to stifle the building sobs.

'Why?' he asks again, vulnerability surrounds us.

'She wasn't Sara anymore, Gil,' I manage to say as I lift my hand to swipe a tear from my cheek.

'She really isn't coming back,' he says, shaking his head. My hand finds the curls of his hair and I stroke gently.

All I can do is shake my head.

'What do I do?'

The loss of you has made him this shell of a man, this hollow, cracked shell. I have never heard Gil Grissom ask anyone what to do before, I have never seen him so lost, so alone, so desperate. I don't know what to say to him because what I do know is that nothing I say can ever make this any better.

I have felt loss before and sometimes those losses haunt me… but you haunt me everyday.

'I don't know,' I whisper. 'We move on...' but it sounds empty, even to me.

He shrugs my hand off him and stands up, turning his back to me. Does he resent me so much for not letting him see your crushed body, for not letting him see the horror of what had happened to you?

I suppose he does.

Nothing is the same now that you're not with us, in the lab. You are around us, haunting us, everyday, but we all know that you are not really here. Greg lost it completely, like he was somehow at part of you and you were a part of him, you took his spirit with you when you left us. He doesn't bound around here anymore, I know that he was damaged before, but now he seems so... fractured... shattered. This is not the Greg I know, this is not the place I know.

Nick is different too. He has called in sick a lot lately, when I speak to him he sounds tired, almost drunk, as if it's just too difficult for him to talk to me. Oddly, no one asks questions of him, Gil least of all. When I do see him I notice that he doesn't even look like Nicky, he just doesn't look the same. His eyes seem almost empty, if that's possible, I think you would have told me if it was.

I wish you could tell me now.

Warwick is gone.

That hurts, too. One day he just walked in and gave his notice to Grissom. He took the month as holiday he was owed and I have not seen him since that day. I'm not sure what bothers me more; that he didn't say goodbye to me or that he didn't tell us why. Saying that, I think we already know that the reason he is gone is because of you. I heard he is now working in a lab somewhere. Somewhere safe, somewhere not in the field, somewhere far away from your memory.

Brass is still here, though what part of him it is I really couldn't say. After he was shot, not a lot changed about him. He was still the Jim Brass that I knew and loved, always ready with an off the cuff wisecrack. It always picked me up. There are no jokes anymore, Sara, you have no idea how badly this has affected us.

'Catherine,' Gil says, and his voice briefly pulls me away from my thoughts of you, when I see his face, you are there again.

'I'm coming,' I say and stand to follow him.

'I think I might leave,' he says and I know that this means he has already decided. Did you know that he gave your dog away? I did not even know you had a dog until that day but he couldn't bear the sight of it anymore, couldn't stand to see that basic reminder of you every night. Gil gave him to a good home, you know how he is.

'Okay,' I say, lacking wisdom but it's the best I've got.

He stares at me. 'Not going to talk me out of it?'

I shake my head. 'Do what's right for you,'

'I don't know what's right for me,' his voice is strained again, you're in his thoughts, always in his thoughts, everyday.

'Maybe you should take some leave first,' I say. 'Decide,'

'Home or at here, I still won't know and Sara will still be there,' he says, chokes even. 'But she isn't there,'

'Where will you go?' I ask, though I'm not sure that I want to hear him say he is leaving. I don't want him to go, I didn't want you to go.

'I have some savings,' he says, as if it answers my questions. Neither of us think it's a good idea to let the conversation continue. 'Assignments,'

'Assignments,' I nod and follow him back into the corridor, checking my reflection in a glass cabinet as I leave, just to make sure my eyes aren't too red.

Greg is gone, Nick is gone, Warrick is gone, Brass is gone, Grissom is gone...

I am gone.

You haunt me every second, of every minute, of every hour... everyday.