Disclaimer: I do not own CSI, the characters from CSI, or the scenes referenced within. :)
A/N: Another one I won't be updating regularly, so please bear with me. Reviews are loved, and appreciated!
Also, proof-reading will be minimal, fair warning.
Oh, and another thing... I added lines when I switched perspectives, to keep it from being too confusing... this is the only chapter it's a problem in. So, when you cross a line, there's no change in time, just who is thinking/speaking etc. ...hope that's clear.
Thanks! Enjoy :)
They lay in bed, the words they had just spoken ringing in their heads.
His phone was ringing.
"That's the lab again. …Do you want to get it?"
"No."
"Maybe we should go away for a while."
"I can't. We're so short… Why don't you stay?"
"I can't stay here. … It would be nice to take a trip. I don't know… get on the Sea Shepherd… go to the Galapagos. We could… literally walk in the footsteps of Darwin."
She rubbed his chest, fingers running over the buttons, and he placed a hand over hers, but they hadn't spoken since.
He sighed heavily, pulling from her, even though it had been a long time since he'd held her like this. After Warrick's funeral, they had laid in bed together, through the night, awake and in silence.
Before she'd left him, they had always buried their grief in each other's arms… Grissom didn't know if he could still touch her in that way. Her rejection would be too much, with everything else going on. So he had done nothing, and neither had gotten much sleep.
He couldn't leave, not now, with everything that had happened… and she couldn't stay. He quelled his anger, pushing it aside—he hardly had the energy for it anyway. He hardly felt awake.
He did not kiss her, but paused at the door to the bedroom, looking back at her. He had not wanted to leave her, but the lab had already called him twice, and he knew they would be trying again. Without Warrick, they could hardly go without him as well.
Her eyes had locked on his, and he had been forced to break their gaze, leaving without a word. He had heard her sigh once he was out of sight, but he did not turn around. He did not know their boundaries anymore… and before Warrick's funeral, he had been less concerned—now it was a constant worry, a constant pain.
How could he continue to lay in bed with the only woman he had ever loved—who had left with only a letter and a goodbye kiss—and not know how to be with her?
He tried to keep her from his mind that night as he looked over the body of a woman in an alley—between seeing her again and Warrick's death, it felt like he could hardly breathe these days. There was a pressure in his chest that he couldn't shake—a desperation seething beneath the surface of his skin.
How good it had felt to hold her—but how her proximity now shook him to his core. He had returned to find her sleeping—a bit of a discomfort to him; she had never been able to sleep nights before…not after so many years on the graveyard shift. Even when she'd switched to swing after their relationship had come out in the open… she'd had to catch her sleep in pieces. She had always been so tired…
He changed into pajamas, sliding into bed with trepidation, feeling guilty that he was discomforted by the fact that she could finally sleep peacefully. He had wanted that, once upon a time… she'd been having nightmares of her night in the desert, under the car, even up until she left. He wasn't sure when she'd stopped having them, but the few nights she'd been there, she had slept soundly.
As soon as he had settled himself, he felt her curl up against him again. His heart pounded in his chest and he wrapped an arm around her.
"How was your shift…?" She asked him sleepily. A sigh escaped his lips.
"Hard. Warrick…"
He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence, but she understood. And then, as if she knew that she had left him not knowing what to expect from them, she offered them both the relief they needed, capturing his lips in a kiss that burned with everything between them that was so hard and so hurtful and yet unimportant in this moment.
Their lovemaking was passionate and urgent, though it lasted over an hour—neither wanted to give up the contact, the feel of skin, the lost feeling of togetherness that was intoxicating, if unavoidably fleeting. When they finally collapsed, having drawn every last drop of pain and love and unspoken loss from each other, there were no words that needed to be spoken. They had fallen asleep, intertwined.
Grissom's alarm went off too soon, and he reluctantly realized she was no longer in his bed. He showered, again with the pressure hard in his chest, and dressed, making his way out to the kitchen where she sat on one of the bar stools they had picked out together, coffee in hand.
She was more beautiful each time he saw her, but it was not the uplifting feeling he used to have, admiring her beauty—it was as if it added weight to his shoulders, making it harder to move, harder to deal with the suffocating pressure in his chest.
"Coffee's fresh…" she muttered to him, not glancing up from the magazine before her. He tilted his head, pouring himself the obligatory cup.
"Since when do you read Cosmo?"
Her smile was cynical, harder than he remembered. "I had to stop reading forensic journals, and I avoid news from Vegas like the plague…"
She did not say 'Vegas' like the tourists did—an exciting way to reference an exciting place. It was expressionless, but still fell from her lips with distain—it was shortened because to say the entire name would prolong the bad taste it left in her mouth—the city of sin had no place in her heart.
Grissom drank without responding—was he not an intrinsic part of the city of sin? Could she separate this city in her mind from him himself? He doubted it. She had moved here, entered this life, for him.
When he didn't respond, she continued. "So, what case are you working on?"
"Woman found in an alley…blunt force trauma… We're going to try to get ahold of her family today, see if they know anything…"
She nodded, wanting to know about his day, what was occupying his mind, but not wanting to hear about the crimes. It was still too hard for her—the suffocating feeling now in Grissom's chest was what leaving Vegas had finally freed her from, and she had no wish to endure it again. She would not get her wish, however; the city sucks you in.
Grissom left without eating, stopping to kiss her before he had gone—the heat between them electric, but somehow thin and brittle, fragile. Her phone rang just shy of ten minutes after he had gone, and then she was driving.
Greg had been called to the scene of Pam Adler—she had been a rape and assault victim whose case Sara had been very personally involved in. She was beaten nearly to death but, having been 'too strong to die,' they hadn't been able to convict her assailant with murder—he had spent some time in juvenile detention.
Sara had visited Pam for years, getting to know her husband Tom fairly well—she had felt for him, because he had been so happy that she was going to live, he hadn't even realized that she was so severely injured that she would be in a vegetative state for the rest of her life.
Apparently, Tom had disconnected her breathing tube and killed her. Though she hadn't wanted to be involved in cases, Pam had been one of those cases she had nightmares about—one she would never be able to distance herself from, even if she never spoke of it again.
When she arrived, she was told that Tom had been harassed—told that his wife had been assaulted again, when he wasn't there, but there was no evidence to back up his claims. She told him she would be with him, and help him, and followed him down to the police station, arguing with the detective who arrested him for the murder of his wife.
When he would not back down—saying that he was looking into the man's claims, but that the law was clear that disconnecting someone from life support was felony murder—she instead went to Grissom. She just could not be uninvolved—could not let this man, who had been terrorized, take the fall for the asshole who had taken his wife from him in the first place.
He looked surprised when she entered, and cautious, but not displeased.
She sat down almost aggressively in the chair before his desk, the chair she had sat in so many times before now, and explained the situation. Grissom sighed, remembering the case and also how emotionally involved Sara had been—he did not agree with her complete faith in the husband, not least of all because there was no physical evidence… but how did he explain this without her getting upset? The pressure under his ribs intensified, but he continued anyway.
"None of the calls to Tom Adler's home phone could be traced back to Tony Thorpe."
"Well, he could have used a pay phone or a disposable phone…"
"There's no evidence Thorpe was ever in Pam Adler's room. No trace of him on her or in her… and Doc Robbins found no sign of sexual assault."
"Yeah, but we don't know when that happened, and we both know that semen deteriorates within twelve to twenty four hours…"
He pursed his lips in frustration. "Sara, you have to consider the possibility that the husband made up the story to justify his actions."
"No. Absolutely not."
"I'm not saying he didn't love her; he loved her so much that he kept her alive for eight years. You're still a scientist. You know that after that many years of atrophy, she wasn't coming back to him. …I mean, sooner or later, a relationship in stasis withers. You get angry. … You need more than the safety of knowing that you're not alone."
"Then he should have just walked away."
"Well, maybe he couldn't… maybe he needed her to leave him."
"Who are we talking about right now?" Grissom looked down, met her eyes again, but couldn't hold them. He wasn't sure if he wasn't talking about Sara and himself. He wasn't really sure of anything. She got up as aggressively as she had sat down, leaving him alone.
With difficulty, he returned his thoughts to the now known-to-be-missing child of the dead woman in the alley. He had never been one to let his personal life interfere at work, even if he took this mantra too far at times—it had almost cost him the time he'd had with Sara which, angry though he might be, he would not give up now for anything.
To Sara's relief, Greg had come through for her as Grissom had not. The statute of limitations had changed—when Pam Adler had been assaulted, her assailant could be charged with murder if she died from his attack up to a year and a day after it had happened. Now, if she ever died from reasons related to his attack, he could be charged with first degree murder—that gave him motive to provoke the husband to try and protect her in any way he could.
But if they could prove it, it would be murder by proxy—the husband would go free.
She talked to the detective, burning in her indignation and the rightness of her convictions, and they called Tony Thorpe in for questioning… He was in a wheelchair. He had been since last Christmas—there was no way he could have assaulted Pam Adler.
The burning indignation went out like a flame in the wind, and she suddenly felt a sickness in her heart that the fire had left in its wake… Tom must have lied. She went to Tom then, in the investigation room, but there wasn't the righteousness in her words anymore… she just felt empty, hollow.
She sat down. "We, uh, found Thorpe. …Why'd you lie to me, Tom?"
"I can't win for losing. People told me I was selfish keeping her alive for so long, and now look at me. Mostly I was pissed that he's out walking around. And whenever I wasn't working or paying for her care, I was just sitting by that bed. After a while, I realized the only one feeling any suffering was me. I just wasn't living. But I just couldn't move on and leave her there like that…"
"You could have asked the doctors to help you."
"By telling them what? That I was tired? I wanted them to kill my wife so I could… have a weekend to myself?"
"…At least that would have been honest."
She got up and walked away from him, nothing but disgust filling her up, her hands shaking. She couldn't think straight, could hardly breathe, and arrived at the townhouse she and Grissom had shared without any real comprehension of how she'd arrived.
She was hyperventilating as she packed her things, and took a moment to calm herself—Grissom, she knew, was in an interrogation room with the previously missing child's teenage father. She had a minute—she wouldn't have to see him before she left, and she had a minute. She stopped, breathing in an out, and then looked at her bag.
On top was a silky, medium purple nightie, trimmed in white lace. She hadn't been much for lingerie, but she had purchased it the day that Grissom had asked her to marry him, and worn it that night, to make up for the bee suit... She had brought it with her on a whim, and this morning had even had it in her head that she would be wearing it when he returned home the next morning, at the end of tonight's shift…
She hesitated, and then took it from her bag and tucked into his underwear drawer. That's where it had lived, before she left… that's where it belonged. She could never wear it for anyone else…
She double-checked her bag, zipping it closed, and then retrieved it, her jacket, and her purse from the bed. She had made it before leaving—she had told herself it was to be nice… Grissom had liked coming home to the house being cleaned, even though he was a little messy himself.
In the back of her mind, however, she feared that her old neuroses were coming back. Before she had left, she had never left the house without making the bed and taking out the garbage, just in case she was killed and someone would be in the house, investigating.
She paused in the kitchen, scratching Hank behind the ears, and contemplating leaving another letter. Her lips twisted—she couldn't bring herself to write another one and she was not foolish enough to believe that it would help anything. Grissom would be hurt again regardless.
She took one last look around the home they had made together, saddened by how little it had changed since she'd gone—Grissom really wasn't dealing with her leaving—and then left, locking the door on her way out.
Grissom sat in the interrogation room, confronted with the eighteen year old he now knew to be the woman's lover, not her son… she had been his guidance counselor, and they'd run away together when he was fifteen. The missing child had been his… and he had killed his lover, when she gave their baby away for a gambling debt.
Grissom was calm—it was hard to get him riled up in an interrogation—until the boy asked him "Have you ever loved someone so much you would kill for them?"
He looked up in surprise, his brunette beauty swimming in the forefront of his mind.
"I do. And even if Lexie can't be with me, she's better off without her! …She promised me everything… and then she took it all away."
The boy broke down crying, and Grissom felt Sara's leaving all over again, deep in his core. He didn't have to wait to return home that night to know she had gone again.
He collapsed on the bed, the pain of it crippling, tears falling unbidden down his face. The boy's words rang in his head. She promised me everything… and then she took it all away.