Title: On the Road (yes, continuing to prove I can't come up with a decent title)
Author: idreamedmusic/Frumpy
Disclaimer: Not mine, alas! Where can I buy a Grissom, though?
Pairing:Grissom/Sara.
Rating: general
Spoilers: I'm going to say it's spoiler-ish, so advance with care. Nothing specific from any upcoming ep, more speculation, but just to be on the safe side.
Summary: "He had forgotten what it felt like coming home"
A/N: My muse apparently fled the country and neglected to tell me where it went a long time ago, so I'm trying to stretch my lil fingers and actually write something. Anything.
This also isn't beta-ed, before I lose my nerve, so please feel free to point out any mistakes and laugh at me.

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
Thoreau, Walden (Conclusion).

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It had been two weeks since Sara had left for San Francisco. They had talked about it before, of course. And naturally, had been aware Ecklie had signed the leave of absence. He had helped her pack, for god's sake. Putting the blue blouse he liked so much on top of her clothes.

But it hadn't truly sunken in until he had held her letter in his hands. The neat writing almost masking the pain and need that radiated so clearly from the words she had written and even more so from the ones she couldn't write. Not yet. The open wound the death of her father had left still present, always present. That was something he understood. Which was also why he understood her need to go to San Francisco and find some answers, as answers was what they lived for. He had conquered his demons with her help and came out a better man at the end of it. Letting her go to conquer her own was the least he could do.

Intellectually, he knew all that. Yet still, there was always that nagging feeling at the back of his mind that he should do more. Be there for her and help. But the he also knew that sometimes the best support one could give was letting the other go, letting them find the answers they needed to find and could only do so on their own.

Turning his car onto the highway towards San Francisco, Grissom recalled the first time he had driven that road. He had been 18, at the end of his senior year at high school, ready for university and young. Almost unbelievably young, looking back at it now. One evening at home, his mother had taken his hand and placed some crumpled dollar bills in his open palm. Then, in the ever-present silence of the house, she had started to sign to him, gently knocking his hands down as he tried to reply until he finally gave up and just took it in, at the same time silently wondering what gene was responsible for stubbornness.

He had been reluctant the next morning as he packed his duffel onto the backseat of his car. His mother had handed him a copy of Walden which he had placed on top of the sandwiches she had made, balanced precariously on the empty passenger seat next to him. He genuinely hadn't liked the idea, not when he could instead be preparing for university, but when his mother said take a trip, there was no way around that, so a trip he took. From LA to Las Vegas and then back via San Francisco and down Highway 1 back home. Ironically, that had been the first time he had seen Vegas and boy, had he hated it.

Sometimes life did turn out differently from how one thought it would.

Driving that same road now, Grissom started to remember that summer in an almost startling clarity. Maybe because it had been the last summer in which he hadn't felt alone. Maybe because seeing the familiar sights did that to a person's memory. And maybe just because he let himself remember, unencumbered by some case or a conference and instead looking forward to a whole week in San Francisco and the one person that gave him a purpose now.

He had forgotten how he had stopped at a desolate stretch of highway in the middle of the desert so many years ago. How he'd let the sun beat down on him and had revelled in the sheer vastness of the landscape around. So unlike the ocean he had grown up next to, yet still the same in the way it reminded you how small you truly were. Good old Thoreau his steady companion as he had read about his walks into Concord along the railroad track, not unlike Grissom's walk along the highway; the only sign of human meddling for miles around.

He had forgotten his surprise at seeing snow in the middle of summer as he had steered his beaten up old car over the Tioga Pass. The feel of the cold, wet snow under his bare feet after he had taken off his shoes; almost as if to reassure himself it was indeed real after the heat of Death Valley only hours before and nothing would ever feel this real again for years to come.

He had forgotten how truly beautiful and serene Tioga Lake was, as he had sat and watched the water, reading old Henry and the magic the old sage had felt upon watching the sun rise over Walden Pond; the sky and the earth almost becoming one for a fleeting moment and nothing had seemed out of reach then.

He had forgotten how lush and green the Central Valley was on the way to San Francisco, with its soft rolling hills of vineyards and orchards. Thoreau still his steady companion, he had read the poetic prose of telegraph wires coming alive through the music they held when kissed by the wind. And for a moment, he had thought he could hear music, too. He had felt emboldened enough to commit the one criminal act of his life and had stolen some grapes, savoring their taste as they exploded in his mouth and he would never feel this alive again for a long time.

He had forgotten what it felt like coming home, thankful for the gift his mother had given him by sending him away.

And he guessed he had purposefully forgotten how it had been the last summer he had spend with his mother. First preoccupied by his courses and work, then signing a silent goodbye at her grave and for the first time, discovering what loneliness truly meant.

But actually, he had never truly known anything before the loneliness. There hadn't been anything worth forgetting. There hadn't been anything he had truly seen. Heard. Tasted. Experienced. All that had been paled in comparison to all that he had now.

Grissom had thought he would be lonely when Sara had left, but he wasn't. He felt alone, for sure. More than just a few times. But never lonely. For her presence, though not physical, still colored everything he saw and did and the moment he brought that to his mind again, he didn't even feel alone anymore. All the previously forgotten memories all the more pleasant now; even the painful ones, because he knew that finally, he had someone to share them with.

So he had taken a week off – to no one's surprise this time. He had made sandwiches which he placed next to him in the car. And he had taken Thoreau with him, of course. She'd get it. It wasn't about being alone on top of his pumpkin. It wasn't about her retreating to find solace in solitude. For her, it was all about finding herself. And in a sense, with them being apart, that was just as true for him.