Past Mistakes, Future Dreams

Disclaimer: If Sara were mine, she'd be happy for once. But she's not, so she isn't. Sigh.

Rating: K

Spoilers: S8 through Goodbye and Good Luck

A/N: I hate this fic, but I needed to get some of this out.

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Have you ever sat in the dining room of a restaurant and just listened? All around you, you can hear tales of other people's lives. Tidbits of information from people you'll never know. Some are happy, some are angry, some are sad. It's never quiet. If you sit and just listen, it feels as though the world is moving around you, yet you remain still. You're a stationary observer as life goes on around you. That's what it was like when I went back to work after the desert. Everything was going on as normal, but I felt removed. It was as if I was watching all of these people who I knew going through the motions of their daily lives, except I was no longer a part of it. I was different from them. I was the one who had almost died. I was the one who was in a relationship with her supervisor. Whether those differences were only in my head, or whether other people felt them too, I'll never know. I never asked. Don't ask a question that you don't want to know the answer to.

Eventually, I became accustomed to the constant buzz of life that was around me. I actually started to enjoy my place as an onlooker. When you're really paying attention you can notice a lot of things about people and the things that they do when they think no one is around. It wasn't until I started hearing Natalie's voice mixed in with the daily mumblings that I thought anything of it.

"Ernie loved me more than Grissom could ever love you," I could hear her say.

I never told anyone. I never told them about the conversation Natalie and I had in the car, I never told them the things I thought about while I was in the desert, and I certainly never told them that I was having flashbacks. What would they say? "Oh, Sara. You need to talk to someone. You need to let it all out," or, "I'm worried about you, Sara."

That would have been worse than thinking I was crazy. Especially if it were Grissom. I will never love anyone else in this world the way that I love Gil Grissom. He is the only one for me, and that's exactly why I couldn't tell him. When I came home from the hospital, he was so happy. For a while, I was happy too. A new life had been injected into our relationship. Not that it was bad before the desert, but sometimes it takes almost losing something to realize what you really have.

At some point along the line, I started having nightmares. Not about the desert, but about my mother and father. Some were based on real events, but others were manufactured in my mind. Those ones terrified me the most. Somewhere, some how, I had taken about twenty steps backwards. I was a scared little girl again, going from foster home to foster home. I hadn't felt that way in a very long time. I never told anyone that I was having nightmares.

That's when Grissom asked me to marry him. To be honest, I hadn't thought much about marriage. There was never a question as to whether or not I'd say yes. I just never thought that the time would come where I'd have the choice. That was the happiest day of my life, but it was also the day that I realized I was making a horrible mistake. I couldn't believe I never told anyone.

Something was very wrong. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't think. I couldn't feel. Once the happiness over our engagement passed, I felt nothing. The world no longer buzzed around me, I was no longer an onlooker. I was just… There. I'd set sail on this ocean determined to make it on my own, and it wasn't working. I tried so hard to fight it. I tried harder than anyone will ever know, but every day, no matter what I did, the walls got a little closer. I was no longer an onlooker on everyone else's lives; I was watching my own spin slowly but steadily out of control.

That's not the person who I want to be. That's not who I want Grissom to see, that's not who I want him to marry. Grissom loves a strong, caring, independent woman who is stubborn to a fault, and loves him more than anything. I've always known that I am damaged, but I have never wanted him to see it. It's not because I think he'd love me any less, but because I thought maybe if I buried the hurt deep enough, it would go away. That was another thing I was wrong about.

I left. I had to leave. I couldn't breathe anymore. Leaving Grissom was the hardest thing that I have ever done in my whole life. I have never known a love like that, and I never will again. I did this for us. I can't move on until I've let go, and I couldn't let go while I was in Las Vegas. I've spent my entire life determined to move on from my past. I've been determined to leave it behind and become a different person. Only now, when faced with an amazing future that I never thought I'd have, did I realize that the past will always be there. Who I was and what I went through will never go away. I have to learn to let it be a part of me. I need to be a whole person so that I can be at peace. That isn't something that anyone can do for me.

I set out on my own, to heal myself. It took two days for me to realize that I was making another mistake. Every battle that I've fought in my life, I've fought alone, and this is where I ended up. Before, it was never by choice. Now when given the choice of how to deal with this problem, I made the wrong decision. I walked down the same path that I've been down countless times before. Only this time, the stakes were much higher.

It took me one more day after my realization to call Grissom. One day filled with an all-consuming fear. Fear that he hated me; fear that he wouldn't care to hear from me. Fear that I'd broken him just as much as I'd broken myself.

It took him three seconds to answer the phone.