I do not own CSI or any of the characters herein. I am making no money from this fic.
Originally posted at the GeekFiction Summer Reading Ficathon. My author prompt was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There are some amazing fics over at GeekFiction. Go check them out.
Thanks to dreamsofhim for the beta; she ROCKS. My take on post "Living Doll" and yes, Mom, if all the other fanfic writers jumped off a cliff, I probably would too.
I tell you, there's nothing makes life so beautiful as when the shadow of death begins to fall across it.
-"Jelland's Voyage", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
He wasn't sure, exactly, when he learned there were worse things than death.
He didn't think it at nine when his father died. He might have had an inkling watching his mother struggle to not only go on emotionally, but logistically.
He had watched his best childhood friend die, slowly and painfully from a cancer that laid waste not only to his body but to his family, inexorably dragging his parents into the grave after him.
His mother's brother had led a miserable life consumed with alcoholism and depression. When the man had died it was the first funeral (sadly, not the last) Grissom went to where there was a feeling of relief. A spoken relief for the suffering man and an unspoken relief for those who he punished for loving him.
Years of watching loved ones screaming in denial, vainly attempting to push death back with a wailed "No!" Tears fell on steel tables and cold tiles while death remained unbending and the remainder of their lives stretched out before them crumpled and crumbling. Irrevocably damaged by the stillness of the sheet draped figure before them. The strong ones eventually went on to live again, but the other survivors did just that, survive. And that was its own pain, its own lesson.
No, he didn't know when he had learned there were worse things than death but he had learned it.
So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it.
-A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
It was thanks to Catherine they had been able to find her. Grissom had been completely undone, unable to think. Catherine had been the one to think to bring The Great Rainone in for questioning. Of course, he had no knowledge of Natalie's activities; he hadn't seen her in over twenty years. But when shown the miniature of the desert scene he had paled and blurted directions before emptying the contents of his stomach in an acidic heave on the floor of Interview Room #3.
The Search and Rescue 'copters were already in the air, so it was just a matter of radioing in the instructions. Grissom and Brass had been on the road before Natalie's father was given a cup of water, leaving Catherine to relay the details via cellphone after she had extracted as much information as she could. It was the site of the crash that had killed Natalie's mother: an overturned car in the desert. "Evidently both Chloe and Natalie were with her. It's a miracle they weren't killed too." She paused briefly and he could almost read her mind. How much of a miracle was it when one girl was dead within the year and the other grew up to be a serial killer. "He said it was a freak accident, driving down a desert road and the car overturned. They never discovered what caused the accident."
"Natalie," he intoned bitterly. The rain of the night before had already burned off under the relentless, unforgiving sun and sand clouded the car like a moving shroud.
Catherine's voice was a hiss and crackled the further they bumped along the desert roads. "Maybe. Or what if it was suicide? What if she put the kids out and deliberately wrecked the car? Seeing something like that could mess a kid up pretty bad."
"Maybe. Or maybe she was just broken to begin with." His voice was flat. He didn't care about the why or the how of Natalie's psychosis. All that mattered was getting to Sara. Sara being alive. Sara, Sara, Sara. Natalie had been right about one thing. It was always about her. Sara.
Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.
-"The Curse of Eve", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
They missed the chopper by minutes. They saw it lifting into the air, sand billowing out clouds as it hummed into the air like a great and terrible insect spewing up a dust storm before it.
Grissom had beaten the dashboard with hardened fists in a fit of frustration and desperation as he watched it rise into the sky.
Brass had pulled up to the site unmindful of the damage and contamination he was visiting on the crime scene and slammed the car into park so quickly the transmission would lock up without warning two days later and refuse to shift into gear. They both leaped from the car while it was still rocking, running towards the four deputies and two Rangers whose faces were raised toward the sun watching the helicopter bearing Sara, what he hoped was a living and breathing Sara, back to Vegas.
It wouldn't have mattered if he had needed to be heard over the helicopter or not, he would still have screamed the question, "Is she alive?" It was all he could do not to bellow obscenities at everyone just standing there.
Illogically, he remembered his mother making him memorize ponderous sections of the Bible as a child and how he had thought the idea of "gnashing of teeth and weeping" comical, the "rending of garments" wasteful. But now, in this moment, he understood: there was no expression of sorrow too great, no expression of pain enough. Sara was hurt, Sara was in danger. Sara, Sara, Sara.
Slowly, the Deputy closest to him, Grissom thought his name was Roberts, "I don't know how, but she's alive."
Science seeks knowledge. Let the knowledge lead us where it will, we still must seek it. To know once for all what we are, why we are, where we are, is that not in itself the greatest of all human aspirations?
-"When the World Screamed", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The drive back to Vegas, barrelling towards the hospital as fast as Brass could maneuver was no less tense, even knowing she was alive.
"Catherine said you announced you loved Sara in the middle of the lab."
Grissom grunted. "I don't remember; I may have."
"You know Gil...it might mean trouble for one or both of you...career-wise, I mean." Brass's gaze never wavered from the endless sand and scrub in front of them.
The CSI shot him an incredulous look. "You think I care about that? At this point, do you honestly think I give a damn about my career?"
The detective's shoulders relaxed minutely. "Good to know." He nodded. "I was worried. About you. Before her." He risked a quick glance at his friend but saw no change in his demeanor; he turned back to the road. "You're a guy who likes order and control, you like your world shiny and neat. Love," Brass paused as the car bumped from hard packed sand onto asphalt and he increased his speed, "love is messy."
Grissom snorted without humor. "Tell me something I don't already know. And hate." He scrubbed a hand down his face and watched the speedometer climb. "Is there a point to this?"
"Yeah." His grip tightened on the wheel. "Go ahead and embrace the mess. 'Cause it doesn't matter how many degrees you have or how much money you have in the bank or whether you have your books arranged by the Dewey freakin' decimal system, chances are still pretty good you're going to shit yourself when you die."
But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.
-The Sign of the Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
She was already in surgery by the time they got to the hospital. Greg, Catherine and Doc Robbins were already there, Nick and Warrick arrived less than five minutes after Brass and Grissom. Al had spoken with the surgeon. "Internal bleeding, they're not sure exactly where, lungs maybe, she had a couple of broken ribs. Or, it's possible it's the spleen or liver. Right now, their goal is to stop the bleeding."
Grissom had not lost his desire to scream. Yes, he was glad she was alive and being taken care of. But, god in heaven, he needed to see her...he needed to look at her face, he needed to see her breathing. "How long will it take? How long will she be in surgery?" His skin felt as if it were on fire, as though it could no longer stand to be a part of this useless stuttering corporeal form.
The coroner shook his head. "I don't know. A few hours."
Disheartened, he slumped into one of the hideously orange and brightly ugly molded chairs, his legs refusing to support him any more.
The rest of the team watched, sadly stunned as Grissom hunched over, resting his arms on his thighs, his posture weary and defeated.
How did they get here? This ugly cold room with all of these people around him who never knew he loved her. Never knew they could lay naked and entwined for hours not needing anything but the feel of the other's breath on their skin. And the one person he needed, the only one that could offer comfort was nowhere near, couldn't be seen, might not be all right.
The fear was agony.
Grissom was afraid and Grissom was a fool. He knew he was a fool. He had told himself for years he couldn't love her: he was attracted to her, but love between them would not be possible. When he finally allowed himself to become involved with her, it had been more from exhaustion than impetus; he was tired of fighting his desire for her, tired of being alone, tired of all the "what ifs." At first it was just companionship, he didn't think he was capable of loving anyone, not the way Sara deserved to be loved; but he would take what he could get. Sara knew he wasn't meant to be in a long term relationship; no harm, no foul.
Nearly a year later when he would think of letting her go, for her own good, so she could move on with her life, he would feel sick and sweaty and not want to think about it ever. EVER. So, he ran away to Massachusetts to prove to himself he could live without her.
"No, no, it's an opportunity, I need to get away. It doesn't have anything to do with you, with us."
Liar. She made a liar out of him, but he made a fool out of himself. He could live without her but only, only because he could count the days until he saw her again, only because he had shamelessly stolen one of her scarves (it smelled like her hair), only because he had carried a picture of her she didn't know he had tucked into a book of sonnets. He masturbated to her memory, sent her a cocoon, finally admitted to himself he loved her and wrote her a letter that the memory of her face in the locker room the night he left wouldn't let him send.
He didn't look up when the limping metal gait stopped beside him or when the warm hand squeezed his shoulder. "She's strong, Gil. She's a fighter, she'll be all right." Robbins' voice was hesitant, not with disbelief, but from being out of practice with offering comfort to the living.
Grissom felt his heart seize and resume beating. "She has to, Al. She has to."
This love which I had thought was a joke and a plaything--it is only now that I understand that it is the moulder of one's life, the most solemn and sacred of all things.
- The Adventures of Gerard, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Four hours of boring torment, stilted conversation, terrible coffee and the surgeon appeared, clad in scrubs, somber faced and looking impossibly young to Grissom, who felt impossibly old. "Family of Sara Sidle?"
They all stood and gathered around the doctor. The night shift CSIs, Brass, Robbins, David, Wendy, Mandy, Archie, Hodges, Henry, Ecklie. And Grissom thought that is what they were, a family, her family, his family. And he also thought he would trade every one of their lives for just another day with Sara. Another smile, another kiss, another touch, another laugh, another sigh, another embrace with Sara.
He listened numbly, let Robbins ask the questions. Phrases like "hemorrhagic shock," "Class III Hemorrhage," "perforation" and "normalization of hemodynamic parameters" floated through the conversation untranslatable, untenable.
Layman's terms finally appeared for the benefit of the masses. "She was bleeding internally because of damage to the liver. We've repaired the damage with the surgery, but the anesthesia has to be processed by the liver." The young surgeon shrugged. "The next twenty-four hours are critical. If she makes it through that, she should be fine."
An hour later they moved her from Recovery to a private room full of steel equipment and blue and white textiles. They let him sit with her and hold her hand. He thought her room was cold, but he didn't want to mention it in case it wasn't and shock had finally settled in and they might make him leave her side. He settled in to the blue vinyl of the padded chair and tried not to shiver.
The others came and went; giving blood, bringing coffee (hot coffee, thank god for hot coffee) and sandwiches, tentatively asking how he was doing. Carefully, he shook his head at the question.
He felt for the first time in his life, fragile. Unutterably weary, he moved with cautious deliberation, lest he shatter and in his breaking damage Sara for she was, after all, his heart, his soul, his center.
Sara, Sara, Sara.
I was discreet. I tried to curb my own emotions and to discourage hers. For my own part I fear that I betrayed myself, for the eye becomes more eloquent when the tongue is silent.
- The Adventures of Gerard, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The words "I love you" had last passed his lips at the age of nine when he had pressed a kiss to his father's cheek in exchange for a promise to play catch when his father woke from his nap. He never woke up and Gil Grissom never said the words aloud again. He signed them to his mother but he would not speak of love. Love was like the most delicate of butterflies, if you startled it by calling its name it would leave, silent as breath, leaving nothing behind but grief.
He knew he was resistant to it and he knew why. He knew she probably needed to hear it, but he couldn't say it, couldn't even write those simple words. He could tell her he had difficulties expressing his feelings, he could copy a sonnet that spoke of love. He could give her a word problem (sex with out lovesadness)+(Sarasex with Sara+life with Sarahappiness)(I love you but I won't say it).
He would spell it on her skin with his tongue. Trace it with his fingers down her spine as she slept pressed against his chest. Lightly mouth it against her hair as they watched a movie wrapped around each other on the couch. He told her when his middle fingers were buried in her, as his hand formed the ASL sign for "I love you" against her sex and he imagined her gasping cries to be her own song of love to him.
Now he watched the monitors, the rise and fall of her chest, the steady drip of morphine and saline and said the words over and over. "I love you. I love you. I love you."
It was nearly sixteen hours after they wheeled her back from Recovery she was able to mumble through parched and cracked lips, "I love you, too."
She wasn't really capable of saying more than that, but she gently stroked his hair when he pressed his head against her and cried.
You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.
- The White Company, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle