Disclaimer: I don't own.
A/N: Yeah, yeah, I know, another WIP. Don't hate me. My beta just pointed out-quite logically, might I add-that I was already writing three at a time, and that posting this one wouldn't actually take time away from the others... so she convinced me. Also in that vein-this chapter really only makes sense because of her. Thanks again, Pati.
Hope you guys enjoy this... even if I have two others I've been making you wait on. If it's any consolation, I'm already several chapters in? ...Let me know what you think. :)
Prologue:
She had gone at Grissom's suggestion. He'd saved her job, held her hand, drawn out an explanation that was, though she hated to admit it, long overdue… but he'd been unable to reverse her suspension. So he'd suggested that she take the first vacation she'd had since she moved to Vegas. Sara was not inclined to go anywhere… flashy. She didn't want to be surrounded by people. She didn't want to emphasize that she was going on vacation alone.
She had missed San Francisco, though. She had missed all the clichéd things like the bridge and the hills, the street cars and the fog, and especially the ocean… but she'd also missed her favorite coffee shop just off the Berkeley campus that was always filled with eclectic music and young bohemians in scarves, smoking cigarettes and discussing Nietzsche. She missed the used bookstore that had been near her apartment that smelled of baking bread and was filled with dusty tomes and somewhere in the neighborhood of five overfed cats, though they were never the same ones—the owner did a lot of fostering for local animal shelters. She missed the bakery next door—the cause of the delicious aroma—and the owner, Janice, who had managed to keep the place going even through her husband's lengthy battle with cancer. Last she had heard, he was in remission, but that had been some time ago.
So after checking into a hotel in the area of her old apartment, she had spent some time relearning the sights. She drove into San Francisco to see the big things… and back in Berkeley, she walked to her old haunts. …The coffee shop was exactly as she remembered, although now smoke-free, but she felt strangely out of place there. …It took the young girl behind the counter calling her 'ma'am' for her to realize the problem—she was no longer a young, scarf-wearing bohemian discussing Nietzsche.
When she had left for Vegas, she had been.
Sure, she'd been a bit older than some of the patrons, but she'd also been a bit younger than others… It wasn't so much an age thing, though that was part of it, but a personality thing. Despite her conversion to vegetarianism, which has been perhaps the one characteristic of the new-age hippie-ism that she lacked back then, Sara had exhausted Nietzsche, given up smoking, and wore scarves primarily when she was cold.
She went to the bookstore to find it had been bought out—it now had a shiny storefront and was filled with New York Times Best Sellers instead of tattered classics and obscure novels. She was certain she would find no fluffy, chubby cats sprawled across shelves inside, and turned instead to the bakery. Janice still owned it, but she seemed… beaten down by the years. She smiled at Sara warmly and asked how she was, but she wasn't the same woman. When Sara returned the woman's inquiries, she learned the reason why—Sam had died a couple years before. The cancer had come back and hadn't responded to treatment this time. He'd been in his mid-thirties… the couple had been talking about having a baby. Sara wanted to hug the woman, but the five years since she'd seen Janice gaped between them like a yawning void, so she purchased a loaf of French bread and made her excuses, leaving in awkwardness and despair.
Sara had been questioning for some time now—all the more so with her suspension and her sense of betrayal for Catherine's part in it—whether moving to Vegas had been the right choice.
No, more than that, she'd been wondering whether staying in Vegas was the right choice. She had entertained the idea of coming back to San Francisco's lab, working the dayshift again, sleeping nights, and returning to the life she'd unthinkingly left behind. Her coffee shop and her bookstore and her bakery… her friends and her city and the Sara she'd been before. San Francisco Sara might have her faults, but she was a happier person than the Vegas Sara. …Now she knew how foolish those thoughts had been. Of course people moved on—life moved on—and things she remembered as concrete had changed. Sara had changed.
She walked unhappily back to her room, wishing she'd stayed home during her week off.
The problem was that she was an insomniac used to sleeping during the day, who was now attempting to sleep at night. …She was restless and feeling claustrophobic in her little room and all she could think about was Grissom. She had moved away from this place for him. Changed her life, her personality, her future, for him. And while she had justified at the time that moving to the Vegas lab was a professional godsend… the truth was that she had not been remotely worried about her career when she had breathlessly agreed to stay in Vegas to join his team. And what did she have to show for it? …Not that she particularly wanted to fit in with the people in the coffee shop anymore or that Janice had been so close a friend or that the bookstore would not have closed whether she stayed or left… but she did feel like she had very little to show for herself since she'd gone to Vegas, professionally or personally.
Sure, she was at a better lab, but her career had gone nowhere since arriving there, despite feeling very much that she deserved a promotion. …At the very least, she and Grissom should be together by now. Wasn't that the reason he'd held her back and recommended Nick for the Lead CSI position, all that time ago? Because he didn't want people to think he was playing favorites. If her career was going to suffer for their relationship, they really ought to have a relationship.
She knew that part, at least, wasn't really her fault. He knew how she felt. Hell, he knew how he felt… Hadn't she heard him admit as much to Lurie?
And she didn't believe the professional bullshit—that much, she knew, had been for the doctor's benefit, trying to connect the two and provoke a confession. Grissom hated the paperwork and hated politics even more. He wasn't ambitious and he headed up the team because it had made the most sense at the time—Catherine was the only other one on their team—or, their former team—who had been a CSI long enough to be a viable option, and she would not be a fair leader by any means. He had taken up his position for them—a martyrdom, almost—but it would not be enough to keep him from being with her. He had a decided disdain for rules he didn't agree with, Sara knew.
No—it was the age thing. Either he was convinced that she deserved someone younger or that she would eventually leave him, for someone younger. It didn't really matter which he believed—neither was true, but he wouldn't listen regardless. Hadn't she proven, time and again, that she loved him? That age was just a number and that if it hadn't meant anything when she was twenty-six and foolish—like the kids at the coffee shop—and it still meant nothing when she was thirty-three and… what? Thirty-three and unhappy… then it wasn't ever going to matter?
…If he knew that, and still clung stubbornly to his fears, there wasn't much she could do to stop him.
She climbed out of bed and into a pair of jeans, not sure where she was going, but certain she couldn't remain in the tiny hotel room. She hurried out to her car, immediately regretting her haste—she had thrown on pants, but was otherwise only clad in a tank top, and it was cold. She drove without any real sense of direction, fiddling with the radio and turning up the heat and avoiding thinking about Grissom for as long as she could… until finally the car came to a stop. She glanced up, seeing the looming outline of the bed and breakfast in which she'd grown up, and shuddered. Even after she'd moved from Harvard, back into the San Francisco area… she hadn't come back to Tomales Bay.
She hadn't wanted to come back to this place, and yet here she was.
A sign in front told her the home had been on the market, and had recently been sold. A glance at the darkened house told her that she had a good chance that the previous owners had moved out and the new ones hadn't moved in yet. Despite the cold, she turned the car off and slid out of it, moving up the porch to look through the picture windows in front. The large living room was empty and she could see through the broad archway into the entryway and through another archway into the dining room. There wasn't any furniture to be found. She shivered, not certain why she was here and knowing she couldn't go inside, but unable to turn back to the car yet. Instead, she followed the porch around.
It still had the big back yard she remembered and she could hear the ocean from this side of the house, through a row of trees and down stone steps that had been in bad shape when she'd lived there. Likely, they'd been replaced by wooden ones by now. The wide back porch was also empty and she hurried across it, not wishing to look through the glass of the back doors. She had watched her mother unravel in that kitchen, finally seizing and knife and moving up the stairs to end life as Sara knew it.
There was a flashy playground set now, all shiny painted metal and soft, inviting sand. But it was new, and so it meant very little to her. Behind it was something she did recognize—her old tree house. Her brother had built it, but by the time Sara had been interested in it he'd been busy getting high and taking girls parking… so it had been hers. It looked like a couple boards had been replaced and the windows now had real glass instead of being gaping holes, but it was the same structure. She thought about climbing up, getting so far as to place a hand and foot on the boards nailed to the trunk, when something else caught her eye.
An old, worn, white wishing well. It had been a present for her seventh birthday—one of the few that were remembered and celebrated—and had been her pride and joy for a long time. It was actually a planter her dad had picked up at a hardware store, but he'd removed the bottom and dug a hole in the yard beneath it until he reached water, so she could have a well like in her fairy tale books. Such an act of kindness seemed strange, now, in the aftermath—she remembered mostly horror, but there had been good moments too.
…She had wished countless times in this well for the craziness in her house to end—for her dad to stop hitting her mom and for someone to make her mom take the medicine that made her less scary. With a bitter smile, Sara realized that she had gotten this wish, though it hadn't been what she'd expected.
Be careful what you wish for.
She snorted and dug into her jean pockets, finding the change she'd received from her bread purchase earlier in the day. Carefully, she picked out a shiny penny—she had never had quarters when she was little and it only seemed right to stick with tradition—and held it firmly in her bare palm. She turned her thoughts to all the things she could wish for and toyed with her options for a moment—Ecklie getting fired, or better yet, caught in the act of some disgusting fetish… dressed as a Furry or a Plushy, maybe. She snorted again and disregarded that. She didn't really want to cause harm to anyone, not even Ecklie. Or Sofia. Her lips twitched, but she pushed those thoughts away too.
…She could wish their team back together… or wish she'd never moved to Vegas…or that she'd never known Gil Grissom at all.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before tossing the little coin in, waiting for the reassuring splash at the bottom before she headed back to the car, suddenly needing to put this place far, far behind her. The upper half of her body was absolutely freezing. She blasted the heat and stepped on the gas, turning the radio up loud. None of these things got rid of the echo of her wish—her real wish—as it resounded in her head.
I wish we were the same age. …I wish we'd gotten a chance to see if we could work, without all of the obstacles. I wish we'd met each other earlier in our paths.