Title: Burnout
Summary: -What's the use of fighting, if you know you lost the war- Confessions and Revelations [Post season finale, 5 Elements response]
Pairings: Grissom/Sara angst
Rating: PG 13
Category: Angst/Drama
Author's Notes: Okay, I saw 'Too Tough To Die' tonight, I'm on a caffeine low, I listened to Blue Rodeo's 'Already Gone' too often and the 5 Elements were just so tempting. It's not my fault!
Post-ep of sorts to the season finale, so kind of spoilers for TTtD and Bloodlines.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Consider yourselves lucky, lucky people. I also don't own the lyrics which appear in this story. They belong to whoever owns them, oddly enough. Sung (wonderfully) by Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo is 'Already Gone'.
-------------------------------------
Monday morning waking up, still too
numb to speak
Another night staring at the wall
Last night's conversation knocked me off my feet
I guess today I fall
---
Sara's first conscious thought was that it was Monday morning. It was a habit left over from her first few months of college, when she'd often end up in the wrong lecture hall. Her roommate had found it to amusing, and often facilitated her confusion with a few well placed calendars. She had eventually exacted her revenge, with the aid of a few rubber spiders and a scheming boyfriend. She still smiled at the memory.
Her second thought was a lot less pleasant. A few too many beers, being pulled over. Grissom picking her up like a wayward child. He hadn't even had the decency to be mad, a fact that infuriated Sara. She had made a mistake and he should have been angry. Though the last time he had expressed that emotion was long ago, before the proverbial shit had the fan. Nowadays he was more likely to look right through a person. His passions subdued, he was a lot closer to the robot the other team members accused him of being.
The ride to her apartment had been the loudest silence Sara had ever heard, and she was tempted to beg for him to speak. Anything but that disappointed quiet. A furious 'What were you thinking?' would be a lot easier to deal with. Sara wasn't an angry drunk by nature, but the alcohol had stripped her of her inhibitions. A good knock-'em-down and drag-'em-out fight would have been a release for the pent up rage their relationship had caused. But he hadn't given her the opportunity.
"We'll talk about this tomorrow," he had told her at the door. "Get some sleep."
She hadn't argued. There was no point really; Grissom always got his way in the end.
Morning light streaming in through her living room window, she exited her bedroom and headed into the open kitchen. Rummaging through some drawers, she came up with an old pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She hadn't smoked in over two years, but did she ever want one today. The cigarette was stale, but she really couldn't give a rat's ass.
A knock on her door startled her. Realizing belatedly she hadn't undressed the night before, she guiltily butt out her cigarette and answered the door in yesterday's clothes. The fact did not escape Grissom's investigative scrutiny, but he was thankfully mute on the subject.
"Come in," she invited, social protocol overriding her childish urge to shut the door on his face. Smiling at the thought of the startled expression that would grace his visage, she felt a bit more gracious. "Do you want coffee?"
"Yes, please."
She went to her kitchen, carefully watching Grissom examine the contents of her apartment. He picked up a small item or two, but she bit her tongue before she snapped at him to leave it alone. He spent a long time in the furthest corner, where a wetsuit lay. It had been a gift from her cousin Mellie, a kind of 'ha-ha' humour over Sara's home in the desert. Mellie had always been a surfer girl, and the thought of not living on the ocean nearly gave her hysterics. She was a drama queen, no two ways about it.
The coffeemaker finished percolating and Sara poured two mugs. She added extra sugar to Grissom's, knowing he wouldn't complain in his current mood. Petty, but mildly therapeutic.
She wiped her counter off, but finally faced the facts. She had to face the truth; her actions would finally have their consequences. It was time to rise or fall.
---
I wish that we could agree to look
the other way
Be careful of the things we do, and watch the things we say
Maybe then we'd get somewhere we've never been before
But what's the use in fighting, when you know you've lost the war
---
"Coffee," she announced perkily, breaking Grissom's concentration. He had left the wetsuit and was now examining one of the few pictures she had. It was one of her mother, before the cancer had taken her. Sara thought it was better left unexplained.
He took the mug and sat in an armchair. Sara chose the loveseat, refusing to meet his eyes. He sipped, the noise resonating in the quiet room. She thought about starting the conversation, going so far as to open her mouth. But she closed it again quickly. He came over; he could do the damn talking.
"We need to talk about last night," he finally said.
"I don't see why."
He took another drink before he replied.
"Because that stupid decision you made could have cost you your job Sara and we both know you don't have a life outside of that."
"Like hell you know."
He regarded her, one eyebrow raised. "What was that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what it sounded like. You're sitting in my apartment, drinking my coffee and you don't know the first damn thing about me."
"I know enou-"
"No. You don't. Two years ago, maybe I'd agree. But you don't know anything about me anymore. It's the sad state of affairs."
She had always expected her delivery of those lines would be angry, but they were more resigned than anything else.
"I know that your job is the most important thing to you, and no number of boyfriends will change that fact. And you risked that last night Sara; the one thing you put above all else."
"God, you're hopeless," she sighed, exasperated. "I'm over work. I'm sick of it, truth be told. And why should I care? I could get a job in any lab I walked into, so it's not like I need this job."
"Yes you do. Maybe not financially, and you probably could get a job anywhere. But do you really think you could walk out of law enforcement entirely?"
"Yeah," she replied, voice icy. "Yeah, I could."
He shook his head slightly. "No you couldn't. You're too much like me."
She was amused that he drew the comparison. It was common knowledge around the lab that Sara Sidle was the younger (and, if you listened to some of the lab techs, much hotter) version of Gil Grissom. But in all the years she'd known him, he had never admitted someone was similar to him. It was potentially damaging to his isolated existence. Either way, he was wrong.
"I used to be like you. I thought it would gain your respect. Call it a bad case of hero worship if you will. But it didn't get me anywhere, and I'm tired of this job. Burnout. Happens all the time; nothing you can do to change that. Have you seen the stats for suicide rates in female law enforcement officers? They're staggering."
"Sara Sidle burning out?" his tone was uncharacteristically sarcastic. "That's not something everyone and their aunt Susan didn't see coming."
She just sighed. He wouldn't even try to understand. Everything was an uphill battle with him, and she was frankly sick of it. It was an exercise in futility anyways; one step forward and six steps back. She wasn't even going to try anymore.
---
Every time we walk away, we lose a
little time
Pretending to each other everything is fine
After all the lies I use to get myself to sleep
I still wake up to the promises I know we'll never keep
---
"You're an asshole," she told him, quiet but firm.
"It's better than what I expected."
If the circumstances had been different, she probably would have been amused by his statement. But she really couldn't bring herself to care at the moment, so she let it pass with a simple "I'll have my resignation on your desk by the end of the day."
"Can I ask you one question?"
The gentleness to his tone shook her. He wasn't supposed to be nice about this. He was supposed to be the bad guy. He had certainly filled the role often enough in the past.
"Could I stop you?"
"You were always on the track to burn out. It was an inevitability, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But Las Vegas seemed to speed things up. I talked to your supervisor in San Fran; you didn't put in half the hours you do here. You still maxed out most months, but not in the same way. Was it something I did or didn't do?"
"Why do you care?" she asked, still casting him as the villain. It was an easier way to deal with him.
"As a supervisor, I don't want to repeat the same mistakes; I don't want to lose any more of my team if I can prevent it."
"If you ever have a Saturday free Griss, go to Havenview. Room 307. There's a woman there, Samantha Rochester. If you're lucky, it'll be a good day and she'll say hi. But she won't remember who you are, even though you go and visit her every week. And you can look at her, and you can still see her potential," she was clearly empathic about this topic; her voice wavered but she didn't stop. "She was majoring in English at Harvard when her boyfriend beat her into a coma with his bare hands; her parents brought her home to die. That was... 12 years ago last month."
He watched her carefully, analyzing the subtle nonverbal clues she gave away. He had seen that look on her face only twice before; the day the lab exploded and the night she saw Debbie Marlin. The first time he had gone to her, examined her injured hand and let her go. She had asked him to dinner after that and he had turned her down. The second time, he saw her in police headquarters after interrogating Dr Lurie. She had jumped, looked startled and hurried around a corner. He hadn't needed Catherine's confirmation that Sara had seen the body and was aptly unsettled by the uncanny similarities.
He had missed two wakeup calls. What happened if he missed the third? What if he already had? He probably had, he realized. But it never hurt to try.
"Come with me."
---
When something's gone, it's gone for
good
Maybe I could look away, back to where we used to be
One more time, I wish I could
Never mind the reasons that tore us
all apart
We've both done things I know we can't defend
What's the use in tracing it all back to the start
There'll still be something missing in the end
---
Samantha Rochester's hair was a dark auburn almost unheard of outside of bottled colour. The years since her college days had aged her. Her body had begun to rebel against itself; muscles had begun to atrophy despite physical therapy, her skin was sallow, her body thin and undernourished. Green eyes stared straight ahead, unseeing. She had been a pretty girl, it was obvious. For some reason he suspected she had been vivacious; now the only sign of life was the beeping measured through the pulse oximeter. Sara affectionately ran her fingers through the other woman's hair.
"I'm still not used to it," she told him, giving a shaky smile. "Her hair used to be waves down to her hips. She usually braided it, but not always. A few times we'd go to parties and she'd leave it down. And she'd dance… right Sammy? You used to dance so well."
Her voice had cracked a little at the last part, but Sara hid it efficiently with a smile and a quick aversion of her eyes. Pulling up a chair, she sat beside her college friend and talked. She began by introducing Grissom, then telling Sammy about her week. Grissom tried not to eavesdrop. A cursory examination of the room showed little. Two smiling girls stared out at him from a photo frame; he realized too late that one was Sara. Not his Sara though; this one was more vibrant in a single picture than he had ever seen her. Besides the silver photo frame was a cluster of pinecones.
"It's a rabbit," Sara explained, still at the bedside. "She's not always like this. On her really good days she does crafts."
"I see," he said. He left the table, not giving it a second glance. He looked out the window instead. It was the back of the building, overlooking a service entrance. Below him a man sat on the stoop, head bent and sobs shaking his sturdy frame.
Hospitals and nursing homes had never bothered him before, but all of the sudden Grissom wanted out. Things were in perfect clarity; Sara had burned out. She didn't want to be saved. Her drinking hadn't been a cry for help he could answer. The friendship they once had was gone; memories were all that was left for him. They had both made mistakes and laying the blame wasn't going to do any good.
In the end, there would always be something missing.
………
=FINI=