When the Dead Can't Wait
There comes a time when everyone must face that ghosts that haunt them and hold them back, for Sara – and Grissom – the time has finally come.
Part of the Time series. Follows "The Good Fight," "Closing Arguments," "Reconciliation," "Admitting Impediments" and "Engaging Conversations"
and takes places post season eight, circa February 2009.
One
There was always just something about the hours when it was not quite dark, nor not quite light, that seemed to be good for confessions; something about the time when all the rest of the world seemed quiet and asleep that made it easier to speak of all the things one could not find the words to say in the harsh light of day.
Although that wasn't what Gil Grissom exactly had in mind when he passed Sara a cup of tea and told her without preamble, "I stopped by to see Jack Peters the other day."
She didn't even bother to look up from the newspaper she was reading as she replied, "And how is Jack these days?"
"Well, first, he threatened to have me thrown from the building before heartily shaking my hand and inviting me to have a seat. He then proceeded to accuse me of attempting to abscond with more of his staff."
"That sounds like the Jack I remember," Sara said with a slight laugh.
Grissom sat down beside her at the table, but didn't pick up the pen or the crossword puzzle page she had already laid out for him. "You aren't upset?" His question sounded as genuinely surprised as he was.
Sara shrugged her shoulders as she sipped her tea. "Why would I be upset?" She asked. "You have every right to go and see colleagues when you're in town."
"I didn't go to see him on official business."
Her eyes flicked up to meet his and held his gaze for a long, silent and increasingly tense moment as Grissom's words hung there between them before Sara simply returned her attention to the paper.
After a few more strained minutes, she stammered a little uneasily, "I didn't know you were in the habit of making social calls, Gilbert."
While he distinctly knew that the use of his first name in that particular way, typically signaled that he was perhaps more than just teetering a little too close to being on dangerous ground, Grissom continued gently, "He'd like to see you."
"You told him I was in town?" She asked, her tone slightly testy, in spite of her best attempts to keep it even.
"But not the reason."
She rattled the page a little more noisily than necessary as she turned it and said, "I suppose I should find that reassuring, I guess."
"He was worried about you."
Sara peered up at him and sighed, "And you went to see him because you were worried about me, too."
As that was the truth of it, Grissom merely nodded in reply.
"You I can understand, but why on earth would Jack feel the need to be worried, least of all about me?"
"He said you called to request a copy of your mother's file but that you never picked it up."
"No, I didn't."
"Why?"
Why? Sara's mind echoed almost in disbelief before she incredulously repeated the same word back at him, "Why? Gil Grissom wants to know 'Why?'" She slowly put the paper down and said, "Okay."
She took a long gulp of tea before beginning, "At first, it was mortification. I realized that I would have had to face Jack and I know Jack well enough to know that he would have looked through that file and I guess I didn't want to face his inevitable questions."
"About your family?"
"Yeah and what I was now doing in San Francisco instead of Vegas. Then I realized I couldn't just call and have him mail it, because then I would still have had to deal with the questions, just over the phone, which really wouldn't have made it any easier.
"But as time passed, I realized I didn't need to know what was in that file. That I already knew what I would find there.
"I mean it's just a case file -- autopsy results, photographs, sketches, interview notes and witness accounts, tox reports, weapon's data, data, data, data.
"And those things weren't what mattered to me. They weren't what I really wanted to know. What I needed to know. It wasn't the who or the what or when or how that mattered -- even if I all I really knew or remembered was the bits and pieces that I sometimes still dream about."
Then the words began to flow as uncontrollably as the tears Sara tried to blink back, but came any way; the words Grissom knew better than to interrupt.
"No, it was why. I just wanted -- want -- to know why -- to understand the why of what happened -- to my mother -- to my father -- in the end, to me.
"Because the night my father..." She stumbled slightly over the next word, "died, I learned that there was actually something far worse than all the fighting and screaming and yelling and arguing and crying -- worse than all the hospital trips and the hiding under the bed -- worse than the sounds of the sirens and those strange voices that came and went and later, that seemingly unending stream of questions that came from official-looking strangers.
"No, the worst thing was the silence.
"I mean there was silence before then. And secrets and lies and stories and pretending. But this silence was different. It was an utterly and absolutely deafening deathly silence.
"And even all these years later -- how many is it now?" She paused and her fingers moved as she counted them out. "More than twenty-four years now -- and that silence is still there -- that same silence -- in all the things you just don't talk about -- in all the words that don't get spoken."
Sara stopped for a moment to take a deep breath and briskly wipe the last of the tears from her face with the handkerchief that Grissom had wordlessly placed in front of her.
When she continued, her voice was slightly steadier, surer, but her words no less unfelt or unrestrained, "For the longest time, there seemed to be a lot of good reasons to stay silent. For so many times I heard people, well meaning people I suppose, who were more ignorant than unfeeling, ask with-that ever present disapproving shake of the head how could someone -- anyone -- willingly let another person hurt them -- abuse them -- systematically destroy them.
"What they didn't understand -- what people don't -- was that it was easy. It is easy.
"But you can't tell them that because they've already begun the next part that inevitably comes, the part where they continue to say so knowingly that no one deserves to be abused.
"As if it were as simple as that. As if it were some innate, inalienable, unquestionable truth that just had to be real. As if it were just that simple to just live in that world, to live within the safety and surety of what they held to believe."
She sighed and shook her head sadly before saying, "It doesn't work that way.
"Maybe there is no reason for it, no rhyme or rationale. It… it just doesn't. Not for the person living in the reality that those words just don't admit to be possible.
"So all you are left with is silence.
"The silence of all that you don't know or understand or comprehend. That silence that you just learn to live with like you did with all the old secrets and lies and now the new ones.
"I mean, have you ever just… ever just wanted the past to be the past, for it to be gone -- over -- done -- to just no longer exist, so that you didn't have to feel it anymore? That you no longer felt you had to sacrifice your future to your past?"
Yes, Grissom thought.
But before he could say so, Sara said with another sad shake of the head, "You know when I started out as a CSI, every time I would see those women, the ones who had been beaten and bruised, both the ones who lived and those who died, I would ache and wonder which ones really were the lucky ones -- the ones who lived or the ones who died.
"I know that sounds horrible. It does. It is. But that is what silence and secrets and lies eventually leave you wondering.
"And then you kept talking about maintaining distance and scientific objectivity and not getting emotionally involved. And you didn't know. You couldn't know because of that same damn silence.
"I tried to do what you told me to do. I did try, Gil. I did. Though to you and to everyone else it probably didn't seem that way. But I did.
"But even that didn't end the silence.
"And in the end, what hurt worst of all was the moment I began to accept that silence. When I stopped feeling horrified or angry or appalled or anything at all.
"Because you see that loss of feeling wasn't born out of objectivity or distance or professionalism, but pain. The sort of pain that makes you turn away and then just walk away and accept that... that there is nothing you can do but wait until the call comes in for you to come back for the body or bodies. That that is just how it works. That is how it ends.
"You know, I always thought that the worst that ghosts could do was haunt you. Until I learned that those ghosts weren't just the dead who had gone before. They were the specters of living people, too, and sometimes they were shadows of myself -- who I had been, who I was, who I could have been, who I was afraid to become.
"And you tell yourself that you can just live with them -- with all of those ghosts. Then as time passes you actually start to believe that they will just leave you in peace.
"But time means nothing to them. Ghosts have all of eternity to wait, don't they? To wait for that opportune moment, which no matter how hard we fight it, always comes.
"And the ghosts I thought were so long and so well buried, eventually returned to haunt in earnest.
"When all the walls I spent my life building to protect me from them failed, I knew that in the end, I had to confront them -- face my deepest fears and darkest nightmares and the memories I worked so desperately to replace.
"'Why?' You ask.
"Because I just want to finally be able to live so that I can say that but for even just one moment that I lived in hope and not in fear.
"But the only way to bury them -- all those ghosts -- to truly bury them -- is to stop being silent -- to stop being afraid.
"I guess that is why I still want to know why. So I can be free to finally stop being silent -- so I can bury the dead and all the other ghosts and perhaps not forget or even forgive, but to at least have that peace of knowing that I tried to understand.
"That's why I go every week to see my mother, each time fully intending to just ask that one question -- the one I came all this way to ask. But it's almost like each visit is some strange perverse sort of dance where you get so close to coming to the why and yet, somehow those twenty minutes that feel at once like an eternity, pass in the blink of an eye and the question just never gets asked."
"Why? can be a very dangerous question," Grissom said softly.
Sara's eyes had lost that far-off distant look when they met his for the first time since she had begun to speak about whys. They were now not inquisitive per se nor challenging, but almost knowing and her next words less of a question than a realization.
"Is that why you always stick to who and what and where and how?"
"Perhaps it's just easier that way," he answered, suddenly a lot more interested in his now cold cup of tea than he had been before. "Or maybe it just seemed that way to me. Besides, the who and what and how are often horrifying enough."
"True," Sara conceded.
"And easier to understand."
"Or at least wrap your head around."
Grissom nodded knowingly. That had been the most prevalent peril of his profession -- not being able to understand the things that people did to each other and why it was so much easier -- necessary even -- to so strictly stick to the science, to regard cases as puzzles or mysteries to be solved on a purely intellectual level, to follow the whos and whats and hows instead of the whys because...
"You asked 'Why?'" Sara said, breaking this train of thought, for which he was almost grateful, despite being unsure of precisely what she was referring to.
"What?" He asked.
"When Ecklie suspended me after my fight with Catherine," she answered. "You asked 'Why?' Demanded to know why I was so angry. Refuse to leave it or me alone. I think that was the first time I had ever hear you ask anyone 'Why?' Weren't you afraid of what the answer might have been?"
"Honestly? Yes," Grissom replied, still focused on the mug he cradled in his hands. "But I was more afraid of what not asking that question might cost."
He left it there, at that. But Sara knew there was more, so she simply waited for him to continue.
"You," he replied finally, simply peering up at her.
Her lips twitched into a sad hint of a smile as she confessed, "Well, I was a little afraid of the answer to that question, too. And what it might cost and what it almost did."
This time, it was Grissom who waited for her to go on.
"You," she answered at last. "I had never told anyone -- not after I got out of the system -- not after no one had to know. But I had a lot of time to think after the DUI and I realized that I... I wanted to tell you. Not because of anything the PEAP counselor had said, but because I wanted you to know."
His face suddenly clouded over as he remembered and realized, "That first shift after you came back -- that was what you had wanted to talk about."
Sara shrugged and said, "Yeah, well 'later' just ended up being a lot later I guess. But it always seemed to work out that way, didn't it? Work was like that. It always was. It always is."
"It shouldn't have been though," Grissom countered.
They were both quiet for a while.
"I'm glad – no, that isn't the right word," he stammered a little uneasily, "But right now it's the only one I can --"
Sara placed a warm hand on his arm. "Sometimes, it's okay not to always have just the right word or even to know what to say at all," she interrupted.
He nodded and took a deep breath, then said, "It meant a lot that you trusted me with that."
"With my deepest, darkest secret --"
"Yeah."
"I think it was the 'Why?' that finally convinced me to do it," she admitted.
"That day," Grissom began, covering her hand with his. "I so wanted to have the words. I wanted so much to be able to take away all the anger and the hurt and the pain and all the horrors of everything that happened to you and just be able to show you the tenderness I never had.
"But I didn't have the words for any of that and I wanted to have them, more for you than for anyone else I've ever known. I wanted to have the words, and yet, I didn't."
"You didn't need them then," Sara replied, squeezing his hand. "'When words are scarce...'"
"'They are seldom spent in vain,'" he finished, a hint of a smile and the slight lilt of tender remembrance in his voice as he did so.
"Not all silences are hurtful or harmful, Gil," Sara said. "You were there. That was -- and is -- what really mattered. You were there and you stayed.
"Believe me, most people would have just left -- thrown up their hands and given up and walked out. Or perhaps even worse, just said whatever they thought I wanted to hear.
"I got a lot of both of those responses growing up in the system. A lot of leaving and a lot of well-meant platitudes. But not from you that day.
"You didn't go or try to say the right thing. You were just there. And that meant more to me than you can ever know. And all those things you just said you wanted to do that day, you did them. Not all right then, but in all the weeks and months since. You did that through everything. And just like you were that day, you're still here."
He nodded and took her hand in the same way he had all those years before and simply said, "Always."
Sara smiled -- a genuine grin that extended to her eyes and made them seem to sparkle -- then leaned in and kissed him gently.
As she pulled away, she said, "You do realize that always usually means for a very long time."
His smile mirrored hers as he replied, "The longer the better."