Lying broken and cold on her tiled bathroom floor amidst the shattered remains of the now empty whiskey bottle, Sara Sidle wept.
The familiar nauseous sensation came back with a vengeance and forced Sara onto her knees in front of the porcelain bowel to dry heave again and again until her throat was screaming in pain and her lungs were sore from lack of air. As her body tried to rid itself of the poison, Sara's knees buckled and she was left gasping for breath. Tears continued to spill down onto her cheeks with each shaking breath Sara drew in. Her arms gave way beneath her and she collapsed to the tiles.
She let out a mirthless laugh at the situation she found herself in as tears marked tracks down her face. Finding hilarity in these conditions surely wasn't normal. But then Sara began to wonder what about her life was actually normal. Coming from a broken home. Seeing violence as a way of life. Forever known as the girl whose father was stabbed to death by her mother. Falling in love with an older man. Having her love spurned so many times. As more and more faults of her life came to mind Sara's giggles grew in intensity.
Alcohol clouding her mind and making her reasoning fuzzy, Sara began to contemplate things she had not thought about since her darkest days in the care system. With these thoughts Sara revelled in the knowledge that she could finally stop fighting with herself. With her ghosts. With Gil. Oh God, Gil! She couldn't leave him. Not like this. Not without first explaining herself to him. Could she? His continued rejection had become like a stab to her heart and there was only so much Sara could take before she finally shattered into fragments so small that not even the great Gil Grissom could piece her back together.
Her pulse racing and sweat beginning to form on her brow, the broken woman crawled into her bedroom and pulled herself up onto the inviting double bed. Sara was lost in these distressing thoughts. Swirling around her head, mixing with the alcohol and confusing her judgement, they tempted Sara to a desperate final solution.
The notion becoming more alluring by the second, Sara reached over to her bedside table to extract the gun case held inside. She removed the firearm from its casing and stared at the cool metal. It seemed to grow lighter in her hand until Sara's whole arm felt as if it was being lifted towards her face. The muzzle of the gun now rested on her trembling lower lip. Drawing in a shuddering breath, Sara opened her mouth slightly to accommodate the large barrel of the pistol. The metal felt cold and foreign on her tongue as she positioned the pistol upwards so it touched the roof of her mouth. Her thumb resting lightly on the trigger, Sara willed some meaningful or potent parting words.
Although slightly muffled by the pistol's barrel, the meaning of her final words was clear enough to anyone listening. A declaration of love and a whispered goodbye.