xxx
She knew exactly why she had taken him for ice-cream. it wasn't because she felt sorry for him. No, that was the reason she had been taken out for ice-cream after it had happened to her, and she had known it. She had known it back then, she could feel the pity they had felt for her, smothering her.
She hated the way they looked at her, how they could barely speak, and treated her as if she was a child, not a very smart, very aware ten-year-old who had just been a witness to her fathers death. She knew what had happened, and all she wanted was a straight answer, what was going to happen to her. All she got was a series of cryptic answers, and promises that could never be kept.
No, this ice-cream trip with Avery was not one out of pity, it was one out of understanding. He was scared, his mother was dead and now so was his father, he was being uprooted from his life, having to move and go and live with family he had hardly ever seen before. She had been there. She knew what it was like, probably better than anyone else.
"Have you ever been to Wisconsin?" Avery asked Sara as she handed him his ice-cream, taking her own too. She walked with him over to one of the window seats in the ice-cream parlor.
"I've been once, for a seminar. It's a nice place, cold in the winter though, so make sure you pack up some warm clothes." She said with a small smile, trying her best to make him feel at ease. She had never been great at making conversation, and when it came to children, she felt even more out of her depth. This was different though, because she had been where he is now.
He offered her a weak smile at this, and she sighed slightly. "And, if you like sport, baseball and hockey are big there, I'm sure you could get onto a team, and have great fun at that, if you were interested in that."
His smile seemed more genuine this time. "I like baseball. My Dad and I used to watch it together. He liked the statistics, so he used to say, always saying it was an interesting game. I just like how fast paced it is, but he kept repeating to me, every game, to appreciate the beauty, because it's the little things in life that make it great." He said, dropping his eyes to his hands once more.
Sara felt a pang rip through her chest at the memory that brought back to her.
"You just don't like sports."
"That's not true, I've been a baseball fan my whole life."
"Baseball? Well that figures, all those stats."
"It's a beautiful game."
"Since when are you interested in beauty?"
"Since I met you."
It had been a while since she had spoken to her husband, and even longer since she had seen him face-to-face. She missed him. Their work schedules were hectic, and she always ended up pulling doubles or triples and by the time she got home, mostly all she wanted to do was sleep. His dig was really taking a lot out of him, and the funding for his next project, their project, was dependent on what he found in this dig. It was important, she understood that. She also made a mental note to text him as soon as she arrived at the lab, try and organise a time for a call, or maybe even a Skype call if she was lucky.
"What's going to happen to me?" He asked quietly, snapping her out of her own thoughts, staring into his ice-cream, pushing it from side to side with the plastic spoon they gave him.
It was the second time he had asked her that. His eyes slowly met hers, and she sighed softly. "What happens next is going to depend on you, Avery. On what you make of it. It's going to be hard, I'm not going to lie to you. People are going to stare, they are going to whisper. No matter how hard you try and keep things to yourself, sooner or later, people are going to know about what happened, whether you want it or not."
"I don't know what your relations are like, but I can imagine they will be extra nice to you for a while, they'll want to make sure you settle in well, and they will be trying to over-compensate for what happened. it can be a good thing, sometimes, you might get some cool stuff from it, but after a while you'll probably get tired of it, so don't be afraid to speak up and let people know not to treat you like that."
"I'm not saying all of this is going to happen, but you're a smart kid, Avery, you'll figure it out sooner or later. If people find out, they can use it against you, try to hurt you with it, but you have to choose whether or not you're going to let it get to you, Avery. You grit your teeth, keep your head up and work hard. If you do that, give it a few years and you'll be the better of it, you'll be much farther than they will ever get, okay?"
Avery slowly met her eyes once more, and nodded. "How do you know what things are going to be like?" He asked her, his voice wavering slightly.
She took a deep breath, swallowing hard. She had never even told the guys on the team this, only Grissom knew about it. "Because, I have been where you are now. I lost my father and my mother when I was around your age too. I had no family to go to, I was brought to a foster home. Bounced from one to another until I was sixteen and went to Harvard. I've been through it all, Avery, so I know what it's like. You've a very smart guy, there is no denying that. Don't let what happened here define you, Avery. Let it fuel you, let it be the reason you make something of yourself, the reason you get somewhere."
Avery nodded slowly, and they sat in silence for a few moments. "You should really eat up, before that melts." She said, gesturing to the ice-cream in front of him.
He smiled slightly and nodded, taking a mouthful of the vanilla flavor he had picked. "Thank you. For the ice-cream, and for talking to me." He said to her, and she smiled. She was glad she could do something to help him, even if it was something as small as ice-cream and a few comforting words. She had learnt that even now, ice-cream had a calming effect on her, especially on those long nights when she was home alone, with no Grissom to warm her bed, only his velvety voice coming from the other side of the world.
"Come on, how about I help you finish packing, and we'll go meet this family of yours?" She said as she stood up. She paused for a moment, a thought running through her mind. She reached into her pocket, and pulled out her card, a standard issue LVPD one, with her work number on it, ones they were to give witnesses or suspects if they remembered anything. She searched in her shoulder bag for a moment, found a pen and quickly scrawled her home number on the back of the card too. She held it out to him, and he took it from her, examining it for a moment. "Just in case you ever need someone to talk to, someone who understands what you're going through." She said with a smile.
He returned her smile, and put it in his pocket, giving her another soft thanks. She picked up her ice-cream, and led him out of the ice-cream parlor. They walked in a comfortable silence, both eating the rest of their ice-creams as they moved through the casino.
She had grown attached to this boy, and wanted to protect him, protect him from the life she had been through.
She took her phone out, and sent a quick text to her husband, before she forgot to do it later. 'Hey, Gil. Hope you're okay. I'll phone you later once shift is over, and maybe a Skype call if you have the time, but I just want to hear your voice. I miss you. S, x.'
She slid her phone back into her pocket, and turned her attention back to Avery, her heart feeling a little lighter now. "How is it?" She asked as she looked at him, both of them nearly finished.
"Good, thanks." He replied. "Yours?"
"Good." She smiled, just as her phone went off in her pocket. "Oh," She set the ice-cream down on the small table beside them, as Avery sat on the highstool it offered. "Excuse me for a second." Her mind instantly thought of Grissom, and she smiled. She could talk to him now, well, for a few minutes, and organise a better time to do so later.
She pulled her cell out and looked at the caller ID. She sighed when she didn't see her husbands name, but she had expected that, really. He was never that fast in returning her messages or her calls. "Hey Nick, what's up?" She said as she took a few steps away, her back to Avery.
"We got a hit on our suspect." Nick answered.
"Where is he?"
"Sitting right behind you, eating ice-cream." His voice was serious, this wasn't a joke, but she still had to ask.
"Are you sure?" She asked as she turned to look at Avery, who was finishing off what was left of his ice-cream.
"Relative position of features, proportionality, my facial metrics are set. Yeah, I'm sure." Archie offered, and Nick chimed in, "We're sure."
Sara could feel her heart sink, and she could feel the disbelief and anger bubbling in her stomach. She hung up, and slid her phone back into her pocket, as she made her way back to Avery.
She leaned over the back of the chair, her fingers interlocked, biting into one another. "You all done?"
"Yeah." He said, with the same weak smile he had offered her back in the parlor. Now she could see right through it.
"I'll take that." She reached over, hand out for the container.
"Can we go now?" He asked, worry in his eyes.
"Yeah." She breathed, taking the container from him. Her eyes were locked with his now, and he knew what was happening, he knew he was caught. "Yeah, we can go downtown." She said firmly. "Oh, and I'll have my card back now."
She had done it again. Once more, she had fallen for it, too empathetic, to willing to help, to believe the best in people. Hannah West had done it before, and now Avery Keil. Grissom had warned her only a few weeks into her job in Vegas. Maybe she was too empathetic. Maybe he had been right.
xxx
She had showered at work tonight, trying to delay going home. She sat in the comforting darkness of the locker room, the room that had become her safe haven in work. She liked the darkness it had to offer, no blinding lights, no scrutinizing looks, no whispers lapping at her heels everywhere she went. It was rare she met anyone else here, nobody spent long here other than stowing some clothes away, or a purse until after shift.
She sat on the bench opposite her locker, in fresh clothes, her wet hair curling as it dried. She looked at the card she had given Avery, running her fingers along her own writing on the back of it. How had she gotten into this situation again?
It reminded her too much of what had happened with Hannah, bringing her back to that dark place in her life, the one that had been too much, what had tipped the scale. It was cases like this that she wished her she had a more 'standard' marriage, one where her husband was home every night, not in another continent.
She would have loved to go home, to fall into his arms and hear him tell her it was okay, read something to her, and to just hold her. She looked at her phone, no text, no missed calls. She sighed and shoved it back into her bag.
She ran her hands through her hair, pulling at the roots, trying to relieve some of the stress that had been building for the last few hours. The interview had been hard, it had been hard to bite her tongue, to keep herself calm.
She stood and watched Avery led off to booking. He was smart, very smart, but just not smart enough. A twelve-year-old had found his three identical brothers, and plotted with them to kill his father. They all shared DNA, so his understanding was that there was no way to pin it on one of them, it could have been any of the four of them.
He hadn't thought it through well enough. He didn't know about anti-body profiling. He thought he could hide behind the DNA, but they couldn't. The antibodies had given it away. Not only was his father dead, but he had poured a bottle of scotch down his brothers throat, and then some pills, and staged it as a suicide. He was a smart kid.
He blamed his father for the death of his mother, and paid his three brothers 50,000 each to partake in killing him, and then changed it, 75,000 thousand to two of them, to help kill the third brother, and cover their asses.
It had been the perfect crime, he could have gotten away with it, but the science had proved otherwise. Sometimes science was not enough, sometimes you needed to have spoken to the suspect, or a witness, to really understand what had happened. Sometimes it was what they said that made a case, not the evidence. Or, it led them to the evidence.
This time, she had been fooled by what she thought to be one of the victims. He had played her. She had fallen for everything he had said, and her heart had went out to him. She wanted to help him, to try and make a difference, after what she had been through. She didn't have anyone like that, someone who understood what she had been through, but she wanted to be there for him, she wanted to change that.
She had been too caring, too willing to help a child. She groaned as she thought back over it, how easily she had fallen for everything. She took a deep breath, once more running her fingers through her hair, needing to do something. She shifted and sat on her hands, looking down at the floor.
She didn't hear anyone coming in, she only looked up when the door closed over, immersing her in more darkness. The lights flickered on, and Sara winced slightly, blinking against the harsh lighting. She didn't even know that the lights in here still worked, she had never used them in here, preferring the darkness. She hated the lights, the fluorescents, showing every flaw she had. She was too used to the darkness in her life.
"I thought I might find you here." Russell said as he slid onto the bench beside her. "Are you okay?"
She sighed deeply, her shoulders slumping as she did so. She looked up to him, her eyes locked with his. "Over fifteen years working as a CSI, and I still get surprised." She gave a dry laugh. She shouldn't really be surprised anymore.
"Hey, Sara, you couldn't have known, nobody suspects a child, especially in the death of his own Father's murder, and with the evidence we had, nothing pointed to Avery." Russell said, his hand snaking over to her shoulder, giving it a soft squeeze.
Sara nodded. "He played me, Russell. I fell for it. I reached out to him, empathised with him, and all the time, he had organised it all, and I had never noticed. Even when Nick first said it, I couldn't believe him. I let it happen again." She said darkly, clearly angry with herself.
"What do you mean again?" He asked, picking up on the words she had more than likely let slip.
Sara groaned inwardly, shaking her head. "A case we had a few years back. Marlon West was up for the murder of a girl in his class, until his child-prodigy sister, Hannah took to the stand and proclaimed that she killed her. She was a smart girl, and I played into her game, I thought it was her, it was a murder that involved brains, not brawn. She played me. We were split, I thought it was Hannah, and I was trying my best to prove it, but Nick was still gunning for Marlon. I guess it created enough reasonable doubt, Marlon was let off. I went to speak to Hannah, to tell her I knew it was her, and then she let me know, she had played me. Marlon had killed Stacey, and she wanted to make me believe it was her, so Marlon could walk free. It worked. I played right into her game."
"Then, two years after that, a college girl, Kira, turned up dead, and Marlon was in the frame for that again. Hannah was trying her best to play me, and I warned her, I wouldn't fall for her games. She had killed Kira, spiked her lube with GHB and pushed her out a window, and tried to frame it on her brother, so that she could keep him to herself, so that he wouldn't fall in love with this girl. Marlon tried to help me to get a confession out of her, but she knew he was wearing a wire. After that, Marlon hung himself in the cell. She was never charged on that either. They weren't going to charge a young girl, a genius, who had lost both parents in a car accident, and now her brother."
She sighed, and shifted on the bench, pulling her hands from beneath herself and flexing her fingers. "I left Vegas after that case. I had a lot going on at that time, and I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't understand why we worked so hard, yet the guilty still walked free, even if we had the evidence to prove otherwise. Just because she was a child. She still killed a girl, where was her justice? I left a note for Grissom, and I walked straight out of here. I feel like I'm back there all over again."
Russell watched her closely, her eyes focused on the locker opposite her, fidgeting with the buttons on her shirt. "Look, Sara, it is no surprise by now that we don't win them all. Sometimes they guilty get to walk free, I know you know that. But most of the time, they don't. Whatever happens with Avery, whether he is sentenced or not, we know the truth. He can't run from that forever." He paused for a moment, his hand still on her shoulder. He could see the tears that had formed in her eyes, tears of frustration, and she blinked hard to fight them off. She was angry, and he knew she had every right to be angry.
"Why did you come back to Vegas, Sara? If you left, what made you return?" He asked her softly.
She swallowed hard, and turned her head to look at him. "I missed my job." She answered honestly. "I missed solving the puzzles, and getting answers for the victims, for the families, and putting the suspect behind bars. I missed helping people."
"You still get to help people, Sara. You got the answers, you spoke for the victim, and you an give peace to the family he left behind." Russell tried to soothe her.
"What difference does it make?" She snapped, standing up and walking away from him, her hands curled into fists by her side, her nails biting into the soft skin on her palm. "What difference does any of that make if he still walks the streets, if he can do it again?"
"The truth has a way of catching up on people, Sara. It isn't as comforting as you might want it to be, but take what you just told me. Marlon west hung himself, because his sister framed him for murder. This was after he got to walk from killing Stacey."
"I never wanted him to die." She said as she turned to look at him, the tears spilling forth, despite how she tried her best to stop them. She angrily swiped them away, leaving faint red scratches lingering on her skin. "I just wanted justice for her family."
"You did that, Sara. You did that tonight. You closed the case. We all know he did it, and the jury will too."
"You don't know that."
"You don't know that they'll find him innocent, either."
That did little to comfort her, but she felt right now, nothing would. "Yeah." She answered blindly. "Thanks, DB, but I think I'm just going to go home." She said as she picked up her bag, and slung it over her shoulder.
"You're not going anywhere yet." He said firmly, his eyes on hers. "What else is happening here, Sara? There is something else under your skin about this case."
"I don't want to talk about it." She said as she grabbed her leather jacket out of the locker. Just as she did so, her phone started to ring. She glanced to Russell who nodded at her, and she dug through her bag and pulled it out, glancing at the caller ID. Gil Grissom. She swallowed the lump that burned in her throat, and pressed the decline button. She didn't have the energy to talk to him right now. His words would do nothing to comfort her. Not empty words, filled with empty promises of a reunion soon. she shoved it back into her bag, wiping away the tears once more. She couldn't deal with the obvious cracks beginning to show in their relationship right now.
"Come on, how about we got get some coffee?" He said as he stood, and she knew it was non-optional. She nodded, too tired to argue with him now. If she went and had coffee, she could go home and move onto something stronger, wash away the memories of today, before she would allow sleep to swallow her.
She allowed him to lead her out of the locker room, to his car, in a way that reminded her too much of how Grissom had done the same one night.
xxx
Just over twenty minutes later, they found themselves sitting in one of the corner booths at Frank's diner one coffee each, and Russell had even persuaded her to share some pancakes with him.
"So, how do you feel up to talking now?" He asked, now that she had calmed down a little.
She laughed ever so slightly, a ghost of a smile appearing on her thin lips. "You don't give up, do you?"
"I'll never give up where you're concerned, Sara. You mean too much to me for that." He said carefully to her.
She was silent for a moment, honestly touched and shocked by his words. They had a lot in common, and a great understanding of the other. They were the only married ones on the team, and they often seemed to work a scene in the same way, not having to communicate much to know what the other meant. It was different to her friendship with Nick and Greg, but it meant just as much to her.
"I... I tried to offer him support and advice. I gave him my card, my home number, I told him to call me if he needed anything, I would talk to him." She started off gently.
"Of course, I've done that myself, Sara. we're only human, we want to help -"
"This was different." She cut him off. "This was different, because when I was ten-years-old, I was him." This time she met his eyes, she didn't look away from him. She watched it register in his mind what exactly she meant, and watched the gears started to turn, just as if he was trying to figure out a case.
She sighed softly, wondering if she would regret this move later. "My father was an alcoholic, my mother was too. When they were drunk, they were volatile. They would argue all the time, over the smallest things. it didn't take much to set either of them off. He was abusive, first towards her, only her. Then it stretched to my brother, David, and then to me." Her voice was low, her mouth was dry. It never got any easier for her to tell this story. "I had been to the hospital more times than I think I can even remember as a child. My father didn't seem to care if I cried, if I begged, it only seemed to spur him on. Eventually I had learnt not to cry, and not to show the pain afterwards."
"One night, though. After a particularly harsh beating, that left me with two cracked ribs and a broken finger, unconscious after being thrown down the stairs. I woke to silence. I could hear nothing, which was very unusual for my house. I got up, and slowly crept into my parents bedroom. There was blood everywhere. The smell of it clung to me. My father had fallen asleep after he had finished with me, and while he slept, my mother had gotten a kitchen knife, and stabbed him to death. She stabbed him seven times. She was sitting beside him still when I came into the room." She paused, needing to take a drink of her coffee, letting the hot liquid burn down her throat, soothing her.
"I was taken into foster care that night, and I haven't seen my brother since, I don't even know if he's alive. I've only seen my mother a handful of times, too." She met his eyes this time, no tears in hers. "I thought Avery was in the same position I was, I wanted to try and help him, because nobody had helped me." Her voice was raw as she spoke.
Russell leaned over, and took her hands in his, giving them a soft squeeze.
She slowly raised her eyes to meet his, terrified to see the same look of pity and sadness that had she had received from everyone else. Once again, DB Russell shocked her. She was met with compassion and understanding.
She was even more surprised at the feeling of relief it had given her. She suddenly felt like the compressing weight on her chest had been lifted, or at least relieved, not as smothering as it had been earlier. She had never expected it to benefit her, that by telling Russell it might help her.
He didn't judge her, he didn't comment. He just nodded, understanding now why this had gotten to her. It gave him a much clearer understanding of what she had been dealing with throughout this case, but it also made the already complex character of Sara Sidle even more complex. She had never told him much about her private life, but he had always known not to ask. Now he knew why she never spoke of it. It didn't answer his questions though, it only left him wanting more answers.
Now, though, was not a time for those answers, it might never be the time. He would never push her to reveal anything that she didn't feel prepared to reveal, or didn't trust him to talk to him about.
He stood up, drawing his wallet and throwing down enough money to cover their meal, and a tip. He held his hand out to her, and she took it this time, with no hesitations. He could see she was relieved he didn't ask anything else, he didn't make any comment. It was enough for her to just talk to somebody, to talk to a friend, and have no judgement made, to not be pitied. Just to talk was enough. For now.
"Come on, I'll take you home."
xxx
A/N: Once again, a major thanks to the wonderful Lauren, without whom I would not still be writing. Would love your thoughts on this one, guys!