Leaving, This Time
Spoilers: Through 9x2
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Grissom found her sitting on the stairs in the foyer, staring out one of the small windows beside the door, waiting for her cab to take her away, back to where life was simpler, monotonous, stable.
"Is this because I didn't take out the trash?" Grissom glared at her, unceremoniously dropping his keys into the dish beside the door and traipsing past her. "Was there one too many tarantulas in the cage?" he seethed as he paced. "Did you wake up this morning to find an old man lying next to you? Or was it the sex? Because sex -"
"Without love is sad. Yes, I know, Grissom." Sara jolted to her feet, dropping her bags in her ascent, and moved to push past him.
Grissom grabbed her arms to halt her before she could flee. "I'm sad."
Eyes blazing at one another, revealing the pent up emotions they both fostered since her previous departure, they held the ultimate faceoff.
Breaking away, emerging from the minutes of molasses, Grissom trailed his hands down her arms and loosely grasped her hands before returning his hands to his sides. Whispering, Sara broke the silence. "I..." she glanced at his clenching and unclenching fists. How it pained her to know that she was the source of his frustration, his agony. "I love you," she spoke loudly, clearly.
"Sometimes, love is not enough."
She ceded, "The world wouldn't be enough, would it?"
"All I've asked for is you." His fleeting gaze brushed her bags, haphazard on the floor. "You've made it quite clear that's not possible."
Tight on words, Sara shrugged. "You have me."
"I just can't have you here, is that it? That's not fair."
"I look at Pamela's cold, haunting eyes, and my father looks back, testing, taunting. Look again, and then there's Greg's sullen semblance, checking around corners, watching, waiting for fate to be revised, revealing Warrick smiling back. That inescapable hope - it's echoed in every one of you." Suppressed spectral images threatening to tussle and bear down on her troubled mind, Sara pursed her lips and took pause to abate them. "There are too many ghosts to stay."
Having said her piece, Sara eased toward the door.
Seething with anguish from another unsolicited invitation to watching her leave, Grissom burst. "You're afraid of ghosts, Sara? Goddamnit, you don't want me to be your ghost."
His desperation froze her before she could walk out the door. Uncertainty plagued her as she fiddled with her hands and attempted to formulate a response. "I'm already yours."
It was a statement; she knew the eyes looking back at her veiled the wariness from her previous departure, but underneath his indignant façade cowered a man churning with grief.
Grissom dropped his head in confirmation of her worst fears.
Their collective exhaustion swelled and spilled over his trembling cheeks, her embracing strength keeping him upright in the foyer. Once again it was her moment to be strong for him, the past few weeks of her return leaving her with the feeling that she rescinded the right to ask for comfort and quietude the day she had parted. "I need you," he emphasized, holding her tighter.
Previously, those three words had brought her to Vegas, but they now brought despair from what she'd left behind. Grissom pulled her down the wall, enveloping her in his arms, and whispered kisses and words of understanding down her neck. "I'm here for you." Her chest shook with sobs she tried to withhold, but Grissom's knowing hands and coaxing voice were on a mission to free her mind's suffering. "Let it out."
A deluge of sorrow flooded her cheeks, each tear leaving a unique imprint of her misery through the pocket of Grissom's shirt. Grissom soothingly rocked her as she cried, futilely trying to hold her tight enough so he could somehow dispense the will for her to stay from his heart to hers.
Once her sorrow abated from shudders to sniffles, Sara faced Grissom and admitted her solemn truth. "I don't think I'll ever be well enough to come back here."
Grissom closed his eyes, formally acknowledging what he already believed. "I'll need some time, wrapping up things here at the lab, but we will go to the Galapagos."
Sara nodded in assent. "Then..."
"Then we'll take things as they come. Sara, I'm not tied down to Vegas, but please keep this in mind: what happens if your car gets broken into, or our house gets robbed, or we encounter any one of the myriad of other things that life brings - pick up and move again?" Grissom shook his head. "That's not logic I can follow."
"I never wanted to leave. I needed to."
"While we're apart and you're embarking on jaunts back into my life, know I never wanted to love another so completely that I'd share a proposal - until you showed me you're all I need." Grissom smiled and Sara smiled in return. "How about a goodbye next time, okay?"
Sara's smile spread into a grin. "I think I can handle that."
"Handle this!" Hearing the cab's horn in the driveway, Grissom sealed her lips with his and wrapped her into a bear hug, glad to have her in his presence just a moment longer and knowing when she left this time, she would be at a distance but not out of reach.