This is the sequel to Safe In Your Arms Tonight. I've written it for Durban who requested it, hope it gives you what you wanted and thank you for your review and request.

Please read and leave a review because it does make me very happy when you do!

Thanks to everyone who reviewed Nightmare and Safe In Your Arms Tonight.

Riding The Rollercoaster Of Life

"Just tell me." Sara begged, sick of having a blindfold on.

"No." Gil replied with a smile on her face.

"But I don't like surprises, please tell me."

"No."

Finally Sara heard the car pull to a stop. Gil got out of the driver's seat and slammed the door behind him.

"Gil?" Sara asked, not knowing where he had gone.

The door beside her opened and Gil placed his hand on her arm to guide her out of the car.

"Can I look now?"

"No."

Gil took her hand and led her along a concrete path.

"I don't like not being able to see where I'm going, Gil."

"Just a few more steps." He led her another couple of meters before stopping and untying her blindfold.

Sara looked ahead for a second and then turned to look at her surroundings. "Where is everyone?" She asked after a moment.

"Not here, its closed."

"Then what are we doing here?"

"You remember the kid who was assaulted last week and claimed that a school friend had done it?"

"When actually he was just mugged, yeah."

"It turns out that the school friends father owns the park and was very grateful when we proved that his son was not involved. He said he'd do me a favour sometime and was more than happy to open the park up for us to ride this rollercoaster."

"Right." She replied looking bemused at the huge rollercoaster in front of her. "You want me to ride that?"

"With me, yes."

"Ok." She said shaking her head slightly and smiling at him.

"That was amazing." Sara said laughing as she got off the ride and grabbed Gil's hand to help him off. She pulled him close and kissed him gently on his lips. "Thank you."

"No, thank you." He kissed her back. "I love you."

"I love you too." She replied.

"Come on, there is one more place we need to go to." He said pulling her back towards the car.

"Where?"

"I'm not telling you."

"I don't have to put the blindfold on again, do I?"

"No but we need to be quick or we'll miss it."

"Miss what?"

"I'm not telling you." Gil repeated.

"Fine." Sara said, folding her arms and pouting like a child who hadn't got their way.

"Don't try looking at me like that, I'm still not telling you where we're going."

Sara unfolded her arms and Gil as he turned the engine on and pulled away. The sat in comfortable silence for twenty minutes , eventually Gil pulled to the side of the road and stopped. He got out of the car and grabbed something from the back seat.

"What are we doing here?" Sara asked as she got out the car and joined him by the edge of the road.

He spread the blanket, which he had picked up put of the car, on the ground. "Sit down." He said indicating the blanket. Sara sat down and Gil joined her. "We're just in time. Don't ask questions, just watch." He whispered quietly.

Sara looked out at the expanse of black sky which covered the desert laying before her. They sat in silence for several minutes until Sara released a gasp as a few pin pricks of light shone like diamonds on the horizon. The sun rose gradually illuminating the sky into a pale olive green, the clouds hanging high in the sky were thick, white and fluffy like the spray crashing against the shore during a storm.

"It's beautiful." She whispered.

"It is, but not half as beautiful as you are, my dear."

Sara leant against his chest and rested her head on his shoulder, she couldn't take her eyes off of the sun rising majestically before her. Gil wrapped his arms around her shoulders to keep the night breeze off of her.

"It's your turn." Sara said suddenly, breaking the silence.

"What's my turn?"

"To tell me about your childhood, you've heard all about mine, now it's your turn."

"There's not much to tell but ok. I was born and brought up in California, my father was a botanist and my mother ran a art gallery. One summer, just after my ninth birthday, my Dad went out for one of his expeditions to look at plants. I was supposed to go with him but I'd been unwell that morning and had decided not to go. He never came home. Mom wasn't worried when he wasn't back in time for dinner, he often got caught up in the plants and lost track of time but when it got dark and he still wasn't back she got worried.

She told me that she was going to find Dad and that I should go to bed, that she'd be back later. I laid awake in bed for hours waiting to hear them come in but eventually I must have fallen asleep, when I woke up I could hear a sobbing, it sounded like an animal in distress, I ran downstairs to find out what the noise was and I found my mom being held up by a police officer and a neighbour. I'd never heard her make that much noise before, she's sometimes call my name to get my attention if I wasn't looking at her but other than that she never spoke.

I asked her what was wrong but she wouldn't answer me. When she wouldn't answer the police officer came over and said that he had some bad news, that my father had died."

"What happened?" Sara asked gently.

"They weren't sure, it wasn't suspicious so they didn't do an autopsy, they thought heat stroke or maybe a heart attack. My mother had gone to the police station with our neighbour and they'd gone out looking for him, but he was already dead. If I'd just gone with him maybe..."

"You can't think like that, you were just a child, you couldn't have saved his life." Sara said sternly, knowing that blaming yourself for a parents death was dangerous.

"I could have got help, at least he wouldn't have been alone. I let him down, he'd always been there for me when I needed him and when he needed me I wasn't there just because I had felt a bit ill that morning. I'd promised him that I would go and he was so disappointed when Mom told him that I was ill. If only I'd been there."

"You'd have had to see him die, at least you can remember him how he was."

"I just wish I'd been there for him, I wish he hadn't been alone. Everything was different after he died, my mother became very isolated, without him I was the only person who she could easily communicate with. She hardly went out, barely ate, wouldn't even talk to me, I tried to be strong for her but I didn't know what to do. I tried to be the man of the house, I wanted to look after her but I didn't know how."

"You were only nine, you can't expect yourself to be an adult then."

"Mom didn't like me being away from her after that, apart from school the furthest I went was in the garden. I'd always been a bit of a loner but after that I drifted away from everyone at school. Mom would take me to the library at weekends so I spent all my time reading and playing in the garden. I suppose that is how I got interested in entomology, I used to capture insects and then identify them using library books. During the holidays Mom used to take me to her gallery, I'd spend hours looking at the art.

I was a teenager before she'd let me out without her, by then I'd lost all of the friends I had before my father's death but I loved the freedom of being able to wander around alone. The other kids in the neighbourhood though I was a bit strange, spending all my time alone, looking for dead animals and finding out how they died, they all used to keep away from me and I'd keep away from them.

But I used to watch the other kids sometimes, I really envied them. I was jealous of how easily they got on with each other, I didn't know how to talk to them. Communicating with words had become alien to me, all I was used to was sign language, I only ever spoke to my mother. I'd watch them laughing and talking, and I'd feel so lonely, so isolated. I was a ghost at school, I went there, did my work and left again without talking to anyone. I started reading more fiction because it made me feel less alone, reading about other people made me feel like I wasn't missing out on so much. I loved Shakespeare, his language was beautiful and human and unreal all at the same time. I felt the same reading Shakespeare as I did looking at the art in my Mom's gallery like the beauty is threatening to overwhelm me, the same feeling as I get whenever I see you.

When I graduated high school I was desperate to leave California and study somewhere else but I knew that I would break my mother's heart if I left her alone so I stayed nearby and went to UCLA. Even after I finished my degree, she wasn't happy about me leaving California. I love my mother but her worrying all the time was, was suffocating, I had to get away so I left California to do my PhD in entomology then I fell into criminalistics and never went back."

They sat side by side in silence for several moments the sun had now risen completely and was hanging motionless in the sky.

"I've never told anyone all of that before, never really thought too much about it." Gil said quietly.

"I'm glad I was the first one you told, Gil. I love you."

"I love you too." He replied kissing her gently on the cheek. "So we both have emotional baggage left over from our childhoods."

"I guess everyone does. Life's like a rollercoaster, it has its ups and downs."

Appolgies for any mistakes regarding Gil's life but I've only actually seen seasons 1-5 and so may have missed something. What did you think? Please leave me a review to make me smile when I'm supposed to be doing my forensic anthropology and odontology assignment (except I'm actually writing fanfic...ssh!)