Title: Sara 12/25
Author: Dandelion Lint
Archive: Let me know where : )
Feedback: Very much appreciated!
Season/Spoilers: none
Disclaimer/Author's Note: Firstly, the characters do not belong to me. The arrangement of words, however, certainly is. Secondly, the idea of an art exhibit about death is not mine either. There is an actual exhibit which I have not seen that I read an article about in the newspaper. No infringement is intended there, either, especially on the one particular art exhibit upon which the idea for this fiction was based to begin with. I made it a point not to actually go to the art gallery, though, so this is as much from imagination as possible, with allowing for some leakage from the newspaper article. : ) Lastly, please forgive any imperfections–this was posted as a last-minute thing because I thought it would be fun to coincide the dates, so I finished writing it very quickly and very early in the morning.
Summary: What it's like for everyone who doesn't die on Christmas.
There were bunches of people here and there, trickling between the art displays and whispering in hushed voices. If one listened carefully, one would have heard the rain washing down upon the vaulted ceiling from outside, heard the steady hum and flicker of florescent lights illuminating horrendous masterpieces, heard the click of high heels and the shuffle of waterlogged boots, heard the darkness pressing in and curling around the edges of the doorframes, smug and satisfied while November roared through tree branches and scraped against the windowpanes. The gallery was painted white, with hardwood floors and comfortable benches along the walls. It was warm enough inside that people were shedding winter coats and scarves, and the occasional puddle of muddy footprints lingered on the pristine floor in front of several works of dissonance.
People were drawn to this place because they were curious. Advertised here as works of art were the warnings of a dozen seers, the introspections of a dozen sociologists. Here, a lurid painting of a decomposing skull, glorified in cotton-candy colors. There, a sculpture of what it must be to drown...and up, up, leering at you from the ceiling, a morbid joke of grinning children's skeletons wearing nothing but daisy-chains and butterflies. A petrified mouse tucked behind an upside-down chair takes you back to Flowers for Algernon, and the mixed psychology of this being here, in a warm room with comfortable benches, is what people take away.
People came here because it was written up in the newspaper, or because they heard about if from a friend, or because they took a shortcut through the downtown alleys after hitting some bars and found themselves suddenly, horribly sober, and staring through wide windows into the gaping maw of something incredibly familiar.
A hooded figure sat on one of the comfortable benches, and watched himself in a television screen.
The area of muddy footprints, the one with the most sand and grit and salt and water, blurred itself into a dark smudge beneath the black and white images grainily marching across the television screen in blacks and whites and greys. It was a scene of an apartment hallway, sectioned off by itself in crime scene tape. Behind the black letters declaring CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS lay a woman, black blood from her neck wounds making her features unidentifiable. The hooded figure watched himself crouch over her from afar, still grasping for her soul as the coroner removed her body.
The dead do not bleed.
He didn't have to remind himself of that. She would have been happier, perhaps...
Often, thoughts are better left to finish themselves in other places.
Video clips of interviews with the police detectives, the medical examiner, and the crime scene investigators had been compiled and put in a circuitous playback loop. (Sara's foster mother came only to explain why she couldn't claim the body–her picture wasn't there.) There were news clips of the investigation, with pictures of Sara half-smiling, and mug shots of the suspects.
Gil Grissom looked up, startled, as a hand on his shoulder woke him from his reverie. Catherine sat down next to him and half-smiled. She spoke slowly, and he read her lips.
"Ten years..."
He knew what she was going to say, and said it for her.
"It seems like yesterday."
She nods, the lines in her face so much deeper than he remembers.
"She was off-duty."
He looks at her eyes. Not so blue, not so alive...they all feel like that, and he wonders if it's old age catching up, or if it's because of Sara. He hunches his shoulders in defeat and stares at himself in the television again, watches himself calmly give statements to the press with his jaw clenched and eyelids twitching behind his reflective glasses.
"I know." He says, to Catherine, to himself.
"I know..."
His thoughts again pinch themselves off and slither towards the rafters, and he is left with an ineffable sense of loss, and the sorrow that comes with forgetting faces.
Ten years ago on December twenty-fifth Sara Sidle was brutally murdered while entering her third-floor apartment at three a.m. Several suspects were detained, but no one was officially charged with the murder. Light snow had covered any forensic evidence outside the building, and indoors there was only a partial muddy footprint that was not matched to any of the suspects' shoes.
The artist smiled and looked over at the video of his handiwork. It was such a political statement, if given the correct forum. What kind of monster could kill in such a fashion? What kind of human being could kill at all? And what kind of twisted genius could get away with it?
Fishing his gloves out of his coat pocket, he wrapped his checkered scarf tighter against the anticipated cold and bent down to tie the laces of a worn and waterlogged sneaker. His smile widened into a grin of pride. He knew a little something of forensics. He only wore them when it rained.