Disclaimer: I don't own 'em…
A/N: I've always wondered what happened to Sofia. She just disappeared without an explanation. And for the record, I'm sure my timeline for how things happened on the series is a bit wacky, but who cares.
XXX
I suppose I had always known that it would never work. He was her everything and I, well, I was nothing compared to him. I knew that going into this.
We had immediately clicked when I joined the dayshift. She, of course, spent as much time in the lab during the daylight as she did at night. She'd been on the nightshift for five years and had yet to really become friends with the other lone woman on that shift, Catherine Willows. Female companionship was what she craved and I was more than willing to give it to her.
The connection we shared went beyond that of mere friends—even best friends. Five months after that first dinner together, we shared a kiss. It was a drunken kiss, but a kiss nonetheless. The next day brought awkwardness and ultimately, protestations that it was only a kiss and nothing more.
Two weeks later, it happened again. And this time, there was no alcohol involved. There was nothing to blame for that kiss except ourselves. When her hand slipped behind my neck and held my lips against hers, I saw everything with a clarity that I once thought impossible.
The feelings of friendship I had for her were still there, but I needed more. I wanted her to need more, too. I was already the person she turned to when she needed a shoulder to cry on, but I wanted to be more. I thought that given enough time, she'd see that I meant as much to her as she meant to me. And that the kiss could be so much more.
And then she had that blow-up with Catherine in the lab. Greg called and told me what happened. Once my shift was over, I headed to her apartment. I had just stepped around the corner from climbing the stairs that I had taken many times to her apartment when I heard the elevator doors slide open and the boorish figure of Gil Grissom stepped off and turned in the direction of Sara's apartment.
I turned and headed back down to my car, deciding that I'd wait for him to leave so that I could go to my friend. An hour passed and then another. And his car was still parked only a row away from mine. I picked up my cell and called her. The phone rang until finally the machine picked up.
It wasn't until I walked into my apartment and stood in front of the mirror alone in my bathroom that I realized I had been crying. I'm not sure if I cried over the fact that I would never have her or the fact that I never really had to begin with.
Little by little, I cut her out. And then one day, I left. I ran away. Boulder City was safe and put distance between us—distance between my reality and hers. Distance between my dreams and her ability to snuff them out completely. But even distance couldn't dampen the feelings I had for her. And in the end, Vegas beckoned once more.
The first time she saw me after I came back, her face lit up like a Christmas tree. It warmed my heart and gave me hope. Unlike everyone else though, I did notice the subtle changes between Sara and Grissom. Where others were oblivious to the touches, I was highly attuned to them. I noticed the fleeting glances and the mundane gestures that for Grissom were extremely intimate and revealed just how he felt about her.
She had never revealed that they were together and I never let her in on the fact that I knew about them. It was the pink elephant in the room that we didn't discuss.
I tried. I tried to bring our friendship back to the level it had been at before I had fled Vegas. But my attempts were half-hearted and eventually, the elephant stampeded through our friendship. I wasn't completely comfortable having only part of her when someone else had all of her. Little by little, I pulled back until the anger I felt towards her was replaced by numbness. I could deal with feeling numb, but I couldn't deal with anger.
After the shooting happened and I didn't know whether I had killed a fellow officer or not, it was Grissom that I turned to and not her. The surprised and angry look on her face couple with the derision in her voice when she found me standing in his office betrayed what her eyes said. Her eyes showed that she still cared. I saw her fighting the impulse to reach out to me, to make sure I was okay. Instead, she reacted with anger and hostility—lessons she had clearly learned from Catherine. I didn't call her on it. I just took it.
I left and sought refuge in my apartment. Our relationship after that was icy. The kindred spirit I had found in her was gone. The solace I had in our closeness has ceased to exist. And as she had so many years ago, I found myself utterly alone in Vegas.
Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but it didn't. Time only affords us the opportunity to learn to deal with the pain of those wounds. And so I did. My way of dealing wasn't the healthiest—even I'll admit that. I self-medicated with meaningless sex and alcohol. Both of which helped keep me numb.
I was ready to leave again—ready to take off and find a different place to hang my hat and my heart. And then Grissom took that damn sabbatical. I don't think his plane had even landed in Massachusetts when she called me. And like a fool, I went to her.
I didn't care that it was his home or that it was the bed that he shared with her. The only thing that mattered was that I finally had the opportunity to be with her. It was discreet and lasted only the length of his sabbatical. In those four weeks, I was able to hold her and make love to her as I had only fantasized about previously. In a nutshell, I worshipped her. And still, that didn't convince her of anything.
When he came back, I was back to being the dutiful detective and she was the faithful girlfriend. We didn't speak about it. It was never brought up. It was harder than ever to meet her eyes without remembering how dark they were when she'd look up at me from between my legs. It was hard to hear her voice without thinking of the staccato sound it had when her orgasms overcame her.
Frankly, I was proud of myself. I didn't think I would handle the situation as well as I thought I did. And then the damn Miniature Killer struck again and I sat there in the safety of another room while an officer took her final breaths with me watching. For me, it brought back the Bell shooting. On some level, I knew I wasn't at fault—that there was no way I could tell what was going on from the surveillance feed I was watching. But still, I blamed myself.
I went home. I was emotionally spent and needed the safety and security that the walls of my home would give me. In the waning hours of night, a knock on my door roused me from my couch. A tumbler of scotch was in my hand when I opened the door without even checking to see who was there.
Sara looked from my hollow eyes to the alcohol clutched in my hand and stepped inside. She shut the door behind her and locked it. With no words being spoken, she took my free hand in her and then the glass in the other. As she led me deeper into my apartment, she put the tumbler on the kitchen counter. When she pulled me down onto the bed beside her, I didn't know how to react. But her open arms and understanding nod told me that she was there to comfort me. I fell into her arms and as sobs shook me, she held on, grounding me.
When I woke the next morning, she was gone. The pillow I clutched tightly against my chest still smelled like her and when I drifted back off to sleep, I convinced myself that it was her I was holding.
It would be only three short months later when I was certain that we had lost her. Having been kidnapped by Natalie Davis and left for dead in the desert, I feared that it would be a body that we recovered—if we ever even found that. Grissom was taking it all very personally. He even let it slip that he and Sara had been involved. The entire team had been taken by surprise—even Brass. But I hadn't. Yet, I managed to remain stoic.
When Nick had me turn into the desert and he ran toward her prone figure, I said a silent prayer. As convinced as I was that we'd find her dead, it seemed that she had barely manage to cling to life. And as they loaded her into the helicopter with Grissom at her side, I knew that I never really stood a chance. I had been able to hold her body, but I never possessed her heart.
When Brass spread the word that Sara would be okay, I breathed a sigh of relief and made my mind up. I loved Sara, no, I love Sara. But I couldn't love her the way I wanted to and be so close to her. I couldn't stand the daily reminders that Grissom was the one whose hand she took in the helicopter or that his face was the one she saw when she opened her eyes.
I walked into the LVPD and left my department issued gun and badge on Jim's desk. Although Sara had lived, a part of me died in that desert. And that the part of me that was still living, needed to find a way to keep living or the idea of Sara—the romanticized love of my life that I had created—was going to kill the rest of me.
I couldn't help but think how poetic it was that the sun set behind me as I drove east out of Vegas. It hadn't taken long to pack the few possessions I actually valued and pack my car. I didn't know where I was going or what I would do when I got there. In fact, the only thing I knew was that I had to get out of there. Vegas was in my past and now I had to find my future.