Summary: Post Nesting Dolls. Sara left Vegas three and a half years ago. Why did she leave, and will Catherine be able to convince her to go back?

AN: I'm probably messing with the time line a little, but you'll just have to deal with it. This chapter has not been beta'd because I don't have a CSI beta. If anyone's interested, let me know. I hope you like the story, and that you let me know if you do!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything connected to CSI… except the first season on DVD, but I don't think that counts.

1 – Good morning, Sunshine

As the morning light slowly woke her, Sara stretched out in the bed, enjoying the feel of the sunrays on her body. Looking over at the alarm clock next to the bed, she noted that she still had twenty minutes before her alarm would go off. She loved mornings like these, when she had a few moments to herself. Especially today, since it was a special day.

As she lay there, she began contemplating her life. Or, at least, her life so far. Some time ago, Sara had realized that she had started counting days instead of weeks, months and years, when it came to the important things in her life. She didn't know why, just that she prefered it.

One thousand, three hundred and sixty. That was how many days it had been since that day in Vegas, the day that had changed her life on so many levels.

xxxxx

"Do you think there's a murder gene?"

He looked at her a moment before answering.

"I don't believe that genes are a predictor of violent behavior." He replied finally.

"You wouldn't know that in my house. The fights, the yelling, the trips to the hospital. I thought it was the way that everybody lived. When my mother killed my father, I found out that it wasn't." She could feel herself starting to break down, but at that moment it didn't matter. All that mattered was that she had finally told someone about her past, her childhood, and they hadn't turned their back on her.

As the tears started streaming down her cheeks, she noticed how Grissom uncomfortably moved beside her. She knew he wasn't used to seeing this side of her, the weaker side, and he didn't know how to react.

When he put an arm around her shoulders, she was too tired to process the simple act. Instead she just leaned into his semi-embrace and cried on his shoulder.

Whether minutes or hours had passed, Sara didn't know, but finally the tears seemed to fade. Pulling away from Grissom, she wiped her eyes.

"Sorry for crying all over you." She apologized, putting on a small smile.

"That's what I'm here for." He replied, looking deeply into her eyes, as if searching for more tears.

"I'm OK now, you don't have to stay here." She attempted to stand up, but he grabbed her arm.

"What if I want to stay?" He asked, using his free hand to brush a strand of hair from her face before caressing her still damp cheek. Sara felt her heart start to race.

"Why... why would you want to stay?" She wondered, amazed that her voice was more than a whisper. He only smiled before pulling her closer and kissing her.

xxxxx

When Sara woke up, the first thing that she noticed was that she was alone in the bed. She hadn't been when she fell asleep. Her stomach immediately dropped as she turned on the lamp on the bedside table to find what she already knew she would. An empty spot beside her.

Getting out of the bed, she tried to tell herself that he had just gone into the kitchen to make breakfast, or that he was watching the news on the TV. Anything to keep her mind from forming the conclusion that he had left before she woke up.

Finding the living room empty, Sara continued to the kitchen, where the rest of her hope was destroyed. He wasn't there. Of course he wasn't there.

Dropping down on a kitchen chair, she sighed deeply. She should have known that this would happen. She shold have stopped it before it went as far as it had. But she had been hopong that maybe, just maybe, he had finally overcome whatever fear it was that kept him from her.

She had been wrong.

xxxxx

"So, this is where you're hiding?" Sara tried to joke, taking a step into Grissom's office. He looked up at her briefly before returning to his notes.

"I'm not hiding." He replied.

"I was kidding." Sara said. "I just figured, after the way you took off before, you wouldn't really want to see me."

"I'm sorry, I just... sorry." He didn't look up from the case file.

"I think we probably need to talk about this." Sara stated.

"There's nothing to talk about." He told her, and Sara felt her stomach drop even more.

"Are you just going to act like nothing happened?" She wondered, and he finally looked up.

"It's for the best, Sara." He said.

"The best for who?" She demanded. "As much as you don't want to think about it, something did happen, and we do need to talk about it, if we're going to work together we have to..."

"It was a mistake." He interrupted her. "It was a mistake and it shouldn't have happened." Sara just stood there dumbstruck for a moment, trying to process what he had just said.

"OK." She nodded, feeling tears rise in her eyes. Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry, she turned and left the office. He made no effort to follow her.

xxxxx

Sara sighed, shrugging the memory off. So many times she had wondered to herself what would have happened if they had never taken that step, if he had never shown up at her door that day. She wouldn't be where she was today, that was for sure. She would probably still be in Vegas, trying to make Grissom notice her.

In many ways, that life might be easier than the one she lived now. But she wouldn't go back and change anything if she could.

She still remembered the look on his face when she told him she was leaving, two months after that day. At first, he looked like he didn't believe her, like he thought she was joking. When he realized that she wasn't, he had looked... not hurt, but... disappointed, that's it. Like she hadn't lived up to his expectations. In his eyes, she had let him down. If only he knew how much he had let her down too.

xxxxx

"What's this?" Grissom asked, picking up the piece of paper Sara had dropped on his desk. She said nothing, instead waited for him to read. "Are you asking me to approve your transfer?" He looked up at her.

"No." She shook her head, and he looked at the paper again. He must have found Ecklie's signature, because he dropped the paper.

"Is this some sort of joke?" He wondered.

"Of course not." She huffed, a little insulted that he would think that of her.

"Then what is it?"

"I just wanted to tell you, before Ecklie made it official. There's an opening in the San Francisco crime lab." Sara explained. "I'm leaving in three weeks."

"What do you want from me?" He asked, and Sara knew he wasn't just talking about her leaving.

"I want you to let me go." She replied, though it was the farthest thing from what she really wanted as you could possibly get.

"What if I can't do that?"

"Then I need you to give me a reason to stay." He didn't respond for a full minute, and Sara knew that he wouldn't. "I thought so."

She left the office, closing the door behind her. This time she didn't expect him to follow her.

xxxxx

It had been so hard to leave. Not just him, but everyone. It wasn't until she had been in San Francisco a couple of weeks that she had realized that the reason she was feeling so lousy was that she had not only left a job in Vegas. She had left her friends and her home. Her life.

Luckily, she had been too busy with life and her new job (or old job, depending on how you looked at it) that she hadn't been able to dwell much on what she had left behind. She just tucked it away somewhere in the back of her mind, locked the door and threw away the key. For over three years, or the one thousand, two hundred and seventy-eight days since she had left Vegas, it had worked. Even if a day hadn't gone by when she hadn't thought about it.

She was just contemplating getting up when something, or rather, someone, landed on her stomach. Looking up at the little girl, she smiled.

"Good morning, sunshine."

"Get up, mommy, it's my birthday!"