A/N: Written directly after watching FMN because I had to do something and because murdering the folk responsible for the storyline seemed too illegal with too much bitter irony even for me, so please excuse any random thought jumping. A warning, this is not a bundle of fluff, it is an enormous ball of angst, read with caution if you want to join me in the corner of emotion I'm currently curled in...

Chapter 1

Love Without Romance

"You've always got us..."

Yes...Yes she did have them...always...But, how could she? If she always had them, she would not have believed that they would have been unable to look at her for daring to end her relationship with Grissom, with their idea of God, she would not have thought they would take his side, that she would have cheated on him she would have told them, would have told them that she couldn't cheat on him...She would have told them about Grissom, would have told them about her and Grissom...Except there was no 'her and Grissom' anymore, he had made that perfectly clear...She couldn't say she blamed him, not for that, they had been unhappy for months, 'If a relationship can't move forward...It withers...'

How could a relationship move forward when its participants were on two bloody different continents? How could this marriage do anything but wither? She remembered, with a feeling similar to watching herself on those grainy CCTV tapes, what it had been like when it had 'worked' when she had been able to honestly assure his mother, and herself that it 'worked'...When coming home to an empty house did not make her dive for the whiskey, but for the phone, when it made it almost impossible for her to avoid jumping on a plane, impossible to wait for him, when the longing in her was for him was pure animalistic lust, not empty, pathetic pining, when every time they saw one another, it was like starting their relationship over again, everything she loved about him, about them, about what they had, hit her like a freight train and filled her with adrenaline and happiness.

Happiness...What was happiness? And how had it turned to this?

She might not have been able to blame him for succumbing to the inevitable, then gun that was their 'marriage' had been locked and loaded for weeks, months with both of their fingers on the trigger, waiting for the other to make the first move, but when it was made, neither of them could have hesitated, allowing it to happen, to allow them to move forward, almost willing it to happen. They had been tying each other down, suffocating the other, drowning them in the misery that their relationship had descended into.

While the romance was gone, the love was not...They still cared about each other, for each other and that was why she was angry now, was why she was pissed, was why the wine glass in her hand went sailing, almost poetically, across the room, smashing into the wall opposite her, echoing her emotions with a poignancy that made her freeze.

She collapsed onto the cold, wooden floor, shaking and sobbing, finding tears flooding from her eyes without permission. Emotions she had been holding onto for weeks, because she had not only been hiding things from Nick and Greg but from herself too, boiled over, uncontrollably overcoming her now...Without warning or want, she found one of the neatly framed pictures sitting on the table beside her showing her and Gil when their faces had remembered what a smile was when in the vicinity of the train wreck that was their relationship, in her hand, and then it wasn't, then it joined the wine glass in bits on the floor, as she herself was, convulsing with the strength of the sobs that now wracked her fragile frame.

She screamed in pain and frustration, no longer caring what she destroyed, she had nothing left, physical property should not mean anything to her anymore...How dare he? How dare he, after everything they had been through in thirteen years, how dare he decide to end it with one phone call, with a few empty, meaningless words mumbled on the end of the dusty telephone line, "Sara...I've been thinking...I think, maybe we should think about a separation..."

He had probably had more to say if she was being fair, probably had some flowery poetry or Shakespearian quote to recite, with some deep insights into the meaning of love and happiness prepared to soften the blow. She had not heard them, slamming the phone down, barely being able to control herself after shakily telling him, "Maybe we should..."

The irony was, she had felt more emotion, more connection to him, that she had then felt the almost sickening desire to sever immediately, than she had done all those times in the past few weeks, always ending with the hollow, meaningless words that they both felt compelled to utter, "I love you..."

This was what she had been terrified of, this was what she had always been terrified of, the thing that he was putting her through, the thing he had known she feared and had still gone ahead anyway. This was why she despised herself, for trusting someone, for loving someone so much that she had become 'dependent' on them..She hated the word, hated the very idea that knew was the truth. But she had done it...She had done it because she loved him...

She should have known better, should have known that she was too damaged, too broken to love someone properly, someone always fucked up in the end...She should have learned, you would have thought the lessons would have been hammered into her by her father...Every time at the hospital, the hollow promises, the empty lies that she swallowed every time, every time the words "I love you" and every time with the same meaning and use as a prayer because every time the promises were broken along with her bones...

How could she have been so stupid as to allow another human being to get so close to her? How had she allowed him to affect her so much? How had she been so naive as to think that he loved her, that he actually gave a damn about her, that they would grow old together?...Well they would grow old together wouldn't they? Since their idea of 'together' was being thousands of miles apart...In truth, they had been separated long before that phone call...

The door went.

She ignored it.

The door went again.

She ignored it again.

The door went for a third time.

She took a large slug of wine to allow her to ignore it as opposed to just shooting it.

The door opened.

She got to her feet, every muscle in her body suddenly tensed like a drawn bow string, and grabbed the gun from its case in the drawer at her elbow, hugging the walls as she prepared to confront her intruder,

"Sara." He exclaimed, shocked to be staring down the barrel of a gun.

She collapsed into his arms, relief draining her of the adrenaline hat had made it possible to stand as he gently removed the trembling gun from her hands, "Here, give me that...Jesus Sara..." he breathed,

"Oh Jesus had very little to do with it..." she replied throatily as he steered her with difficulty to the sofa, delicately avoiding the bits of broken glass and furniture that carpeted her living room, the cold embrace of the chair felt too good for her..."What the Hell did you expect after the week I've had?" she demanded, shakily,

"Yeah, sorry about that, but I think that if I'd have had to have relied on you to let me in, I'd have had an easier time selling religion to The Devil..." he told her ,pointedly,

"Well she is here and listening, go for it." She replied darkly,

"Have you called him?" he asked her softly, ignoring her jibe,

"No I bloody well haven't 'called him'." She snapped, looking disgusted,

"You should talk to someone..." he told her softly,

"I can't...I'm sorry Nick, it's just not me, shrinks or siblings, doesn't matter, it's all the same thing, it goes against everything I am so if you came here to 'talk' then you can leave now, it would be better for both of us..."

"We don't have to talk, I can listen, or we can just sit..." he said, stubbornly,

"No." She said bluntly, too miserable and exhausted to tart it up to spare his feelings, "I don't want to 'talk' I don't want you to 'listen' or 'just sit', I don't want you to hold my hand or my hair while I drink myself into oblivion, I don't want you to offer me philosophies on love and loss and I don't want you to see me in this state while I fall to pieces and drown in self-pity. I want you to go, now." This would all have been far more convincing if her voice wasn't shaking like a bloody naked Eskimo, she thought, bitterly, something that was not lost on Nick who murmured softly, gently taking her hand,

"I think you need me to stay."

Well that did it.
Before she knew or consented to what was happening, she was sobbing like a child in his arms, trembling violently while he tenderly rocked her backwards and forwards, stroking her hair and soothingly murmuring words that she could not understand.

"You need to call him..." he told her, once her crying had subsided to a level that a level that allowed her to understand English once again.

"'Need to'? I don't 'need' to do anything, I don't owe him jack-shit!" she snapped, the furious effect of her words ruined by the choking tears that continued to fall.

"Not for him for you...Tell him, well tell him I don't know that you found someone else that ended up dead because your crazy stalker tried to frame you for murder and then almost killed you and that you blame him, tell him you don't need him, tell him he's a jumped-up idiotic asshole and that he should never have left you, tell him something..."

"Why?" she whispered,

"Because if you don't I'm afraid that I'm holding onto a human bomb and that I'm really too young and pretty to die that way..."

She laughed weakly at this, incredulity filling here as she realised that he had managed to remind her how to, as she gave him a friendly shove, sniffing and muttering, "Idiot.."

"Maybe...But I'm right, you know that...Call him, this is non-optional Ms Sidle!" he said, firmly, thrusting a phone at her insistently.

She dialled the number, irritated with herself because she still bothered to keep it in her memory, amazingly, he answered after only three rings, something she had not expected and that now caught her off guard,

"Gil?" as she breathed his name, her eyes fell upon the wedding ring that she was still wearing...

A/N: Was only supposed to a one-shot but I shall continue if you want...Hopefully this reflected Sara's feelings more than it did mine! Reviews, as ever, would be very much appreciated.