Author's Note: My first CSI fic, so please leave me a quick review, but I'm going to have to quote JAG on this one: "Don't be gentle, be good." ;-) The song is "Me and Emily" by Rachel Proctor.
RUNNING
Sara shuffled slowly through the papers, confirming once more that they were all there and her signature had been scribbled on all the appropriate lines. She bit her lip and remembered when her third grade teacher had written on her report card that her writing had "character", and her fingers unconsciously moved to touch the location of the small silvery scar on her upper arm that had resulted. A happy gurgle drew Sara's mind back to the present, and she grinned down at the baby in the stroller next to her.
"Hey, sweetie," she said softly, reaching out to tickle the baby's cheek.
"What can I do for you two?" the clerk asked, smiling at them.
"Change of address," Sara said, handing her the forms.
Floorboard is filled with baby toys
And empty Coke bottles and coffee cups
Sara opened the back door to her beat-up little car, and settled the baby into her carseat, selecting a blue fuzzy bear from the jumble on the floor of the car to hand her daughter, who let out a loud cackle of amusement. Slamming the door shut, Sara pursed her lips to suppress a smile. She turned the key in the ignition and the car rattled to life, windshield wipers flicking away drops of the light rain that had begun to mist down.
Driving through the rain with no radio
Trying not to wake her up
It wasn't as if Sara couldn't afford an expensive car. Her job in Vegas had paid well, she had racked up almost a second job's worth of overtime, most holidays paid double and Christmas was triple. She just wanted something simple, and a little scruffy, like an old pair of jeans that you kept just because they had become comfortable, the denim worn soft.
Well, simple was what she got. The car was no sleek Porsche or all-purpose soccer mom SUV. The cassette player ate tapes, and the FM radio was fried, so Sara kept it on AM at a low volume, just a comforting murmur of voices whose subject did not matter. Even the AM, however, wasn't coming in at this point in time, at the edge of a storm, when the heavy rain and lightning could be smelt in the breeze shuddering through the branches of the trees. Sara glanced at the rearview mirror and was pacified to see the baby napping quietly in her seat.
Cellphone says "low battery"
God, what if I break down?
Sara's cellphone chirped happily and she glanced at the caller ID. LVPD. Go figure. She turned it off, noting the swift drain of power from its battery. Sara turned her eyes to the road again, and listened to the rain that was now pattering gently on the roof.
It had been quite a while since she had first driven out to the coast, but she still was startled when a storm came suddenly like this, starting with a haze of vapor, and ending with large tears of water coming down in sheets that waved and rippled in the gale.
I'm just looking for an exit with a lot of lights
A safe little interstate town
That time it had been late at night, and all Sara had wanted was to put as many miles as she could between herself and Vegas. Eventually she had decided that she had driven enough for the night, and she flicked on her turn signal at the next exit.
Just a cheap hotel with a single bed
And cable TV is good enough for me and Emily
When she had decided she was far enough along in her pregnancy that it was stupid to put it off any longer, Sara pulled up a baby names website on her computer. She figured that there had to be a logical way to go about this task, so she clicked on "Search meanings." She already knew what she wanted, and it took less than two seconds for the browser to bring up the results. Name: Amanda. Gender: Female. Meaning: worthy of love. So that was what Sara had told the nurse to write on the certificate. Amanda Sidle. It had no special ring to it, just an ease, a simplicity that was comforting to Sara, who wanted nothing more than an easy, simple life.
As it turned out, three syllables was one too many for a daily basis. It hadn't taken Sara long to shorten it to a nickname: Mandy.
Someday when she's old enough
She's gonna start asking questions about him
Sara hated clichés, and she knew all too well the feeling of not being wanted, of being a mistake. So she knew that it would just about kill her when the time came to tell her daughter she was the product of a drunken one-night stand.
Some kid at school brings his dad for Show And Tell
And he gets her little mind a-wondering
"Where's my daddy? Do I have one?
Does he not love me like you do?"
Sara had not had an upstanding father, and she had yet to figure out whether not having one at all was much better, but it seemed at to have least a little improvement over living in fear. The man Sara was forced to call her father had been a man whose life had been taken over by drinking and violence, and who Sara couldn't help but love. All she had ever wanted was someone to love her in return.
And now that she thought about it, her life was just a chain of men who had not. Her father. Almost every foster father she had had. Her boyfriends in college. Grissom. Hank.
Oh, maybe I'll find someone to love the both of us
And I'll tell her when she's old enough to know the truth
A twisting, sick feeling took over Sara's stomach when she thought about the years to come, years that she would spend alone. She knew she could never date while her daughter was in the picture. She had heard the stories, seen the cases, met the victims. She knew what happened when Mom brought home the wrong guy, and she knew she wasn't going to let it happen to her or her daughter.
Will it break her heart?
Will she understand?
That I had to leave
It's what was best for me and Emily
Sara pulled neatly into the two-car garage, one car's worth of which had a half-constructed storage unit lying in a hapless jumble on the floor. She gently lifted Mandy from her backseat perch and entered the little house.
His house was never clean enough
His dinner never warm enough
Nothing I did was ever good enough to make him happy
So, I guess, he gave me what he thought I deserved
But it would kill me if he ever raised his hand to her
As soon as she crossed the threshold, the cellphone rang again, rousing Mandy from her sleep with a distraught sob and wail. Sara cursed under her breath, and pulled it out of her pocket, glancing at the display. LVPD again. She pressed 'talk,' then 'off' to stop it from ringing and concentrated on getting the baby to stop crying.
She never answered the phone when they called, because she didn't want to deal with the pressure. It had been a year since she was in contact with most of her old friends at the crime lab, but she knew for a fact that there was one computer at the lab that they kept constantly updating, running a search on her. Currently it was dead-ended, because since she moved out of Vegas she had only rented temporarily, and had not filed for change of address.
She knew all this because once, just one time, she had accidentally answered her cell without checking the caller ID. Brass' voice was calm. He'd asked her not to hang up, saying that he knew she was there, and she should know by now that he wasn't planning on judging her or playing Spanish Inquisition, and he was going to do most of the talking anyways, and he thought she needed to hear him out.
So she did.
Big rigs are throwing rain on my windshield
And I feel like they're laughing at me
Finally the storm is letting up
And the mornin' is breaking free
And it had been nice, in a way. Hearing a voice she knew, just listening to what Brass had to say. But it had been a one-time thing. Mandy had cried, and she told Brass she had to go. She wasn't even sure if Brass had heard the cry, or if he would connect the dots if he did. She didn't worry about it, because that was a few too many "ifs" for her to bother. She knew that he wouldn't hang up from talking to her and run off to tell the entire lab.
"I warn you, this is going to sound very cliché, but- you know the number, Sara. We're all here."
"Yeah," she had said. "Yeah, I know."
And that had been the extent of her communication with Vegas.
It's a brand new day
It's a second chance
Yesterday is just a memory
For me and Emily
The baby slept well that night, and Sara woke in the morning, dressed in sweats and went for a walk with Mandy in the stroller. She fed the baby, ate breakfast, took a shower, and changed into jeans and a shirt. A glance at the clock showed it to be eleven.
It came as no surprise to Sara when the doorbell rang, even though it never usually did. She knew that she hadn't needed to answer the phone yesterday.
Floorboard is filled with baby toys
And empty Coke bottles and coffee cups
She had known that as soon as she had filed her change of address forms, at least one of her old team would be on a red-eye flying east. So she opened the door, Mandy on her hip.
At least there's one good thing that he gave me
And she's starting to wake up
Sara smiled softly at the man standing in front of her, and, without delay, stepped forward to wrap her free arm around him. He slid both of his around her and she rested her head on his shoulder.
"Now, who is this?" he drawled, glancing at Mandy, who crowed, reaching out pudgy baby fingers to tightly grasp his earlobe. "OW!"
Sara offered him a hesitant grin.
"I see you've met Mandy."
THE END