Disclaimer: I don't own or represent CSI in any way. The characters, and the setting are not mine, and I am not exploiting them for financial gain. I promise to put the toys back where I found them!
Warning: This work potentially contains examples of same-sex affection/relationships. If this is a problem, read no further.
Thanks,
WRC
Staring at Walls, 1: Sara
Once, when she was a child, she'd gone to school with a broken wrist. When the teacher had realised why she couldn't write, they'd sent her to hospital, and she'd sat in a small room with a doctor and stared at the wall. She hadn't been scared. That doctor had been the first person to treat her with kindness since her father had stopped Grandma coming round. He had a soft voice, and gentle hands, but he asked too many questions. She wasn't allowed to talk to strangers; and her parents had told her that doctors, and police officers, were the worst kind of strangers; so she couldn't answer. She didn't even look at him, just stared at the wall.
There'd been a picture on that wall; a Mediterranean sea scape. It was still the clearest part of her memory from that day - little wonder given how long she'd spent focused on it, trying to block everything else out. She could remember being fascinated by the colours of it. The dazzling white of the small buildings, the golden sand, and the calm green-tinged sea; It was so different to the turbulent grey ocean she lived by, and the mist that hung over it. Like a different world. One where there were no hospital visits, no screaming parents, or beer bottles smashing against the walls, and no beaten, silent children. There was just peace; and a blue sky, so clear, and deep, and bright that it almost hurt to look at it. She'd thought that she'd never see that colour in reality. Until she'd looked into her eyes.
As an adult Sara Sidle had looked into Sofia Curtis's eyes and she'd seen all the things she couldn't have. There was hope, and warmth, and passion, and a promise of shelter in those beautiful eyes; and because Sara had always thought she couldn't have those things, she turned away from it all. She'd convinced herself that the world could be explained by logic and science, and had fallen into something with a man who believed it was true.
It was fine, for the most part. Calm and ordered, hidden away from everyone else, like he insisted they had to be. When she was feeling playful, or snarky, or just plain spoiling for a fight Sofia was still there, at arms reach. Her needs were met with a wry smile and a quick mind, sometimes even a gentle brush of fingers as files were passed between them, and afterwards she could melt back into her not-quite-life with Grissom. So what if it wasn't exactly what she wanted; she was content. It was OK. She just needed to avoid Sofia's eyes in those odd, quiet moments; and stop herself getting distracted by the seductive roll of the blonde's hips as she swaggered across a crime scene.
She managed to live like that for nearly three years; not quite happy, but better off than she'd been before. Then it fell apart. After being abducted and left to die in the desert, she'd found herself back in hospital, staring at a wall. There was no picture this time, so instead she thought about eyes the colour of an Agean sky, and the woman they belonged to. A woman who had, apparently, disappeared.
Sara knew that Sofia had been there when she was found. She could remember hearing the strain in her voice as she radioed for help, and feeling cool elegant fingers against her own before they lifted her into the chopper. Then nothing. Grissom, and the paramedics, had whisked her away to safety, leaving the detective far behind them. She never visited.
Every time Sara saw a flash of blonde hair, or heard a soft lilt in someone's voice, she hoped. She longed to run her hands through that hair, to spend hours listening to that lilt, just trying to work out where it came from. It always turned out to be some nurse, or another patient's visitor; and every time it happened she got more disappointed. After a while even Grissom noticed. When he asked about her mood, though, she just shrugged her good shoulder and blamed it on the medication. He accepted her explanation without question, and went on telling her about the lab. She just tuned him out, like she'd learned to do with Sofia's crime-scene-babbling, and stared at the wall some more.