Title: Leaving Las Vegas
By: Amanda
Feedback: sweety167yahoo.ca
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or anything CSI related. But if I did could you imagine the possibilities?
Spoilers: 8/07 "Goodbye and Good Luck"
Summary: Sara knows this isn't her.
Completed: November 22, 2007

'This isn't me.'

That's the only thought going through her head as she packs her bag. Squeezing the pieces of her life into a luggage case. What stays, what goes? What's worth keeping? What gets left behind? She has to keep it light.

She's not a runner.

But she's running now.

This isn't her.

It's not like her to pack up and run. To give up. To let go of the one thing she's ever truly wanted now that she has it.

Gil was going to marry her.

The Sara of seven years ago would have been ecstatic. She would have planned a quiet ceremony – something far from the loud noise and bright lights of the strip. Just the stars and them. She would have smiled. She would have made love to him without fear: openly and honestly. She never would have let go.

Not now though.

All Sara could muster now was one kiss. One venerable moment where she squeezed every last drop of love and pain and goodbye into a single point of contact. Like her life into this suitcase.

Maybe this is her. Now anyway.

Parts of her have been dying for years. Drying up in the desert sun and blowing away in the sand, and she's used to it. She doesn't even feel it anymore. She doesn't feel much of anything.

Leaving should hurt. But than why it is more planning than pain? Why isn't she breaking in two? Why is it cold and calculated? Why doesn't she feel it? Why isn't she crying…

Is this what she survived for; just to give up now? Maybe she gave up a long time ago but forgot to tell herself.

This isn't her.

These thoughts aren't hers. She's a survivor. She's a fighter. That's what Sidles do. They don't sit around feeling sorry for themselves; they fight to keep moving. But do they ever live? Her father didn't. Not her mother either. Not really.

Is this what she's afraid of? Becoming them, or fading away to nothing. She's sure that being nothing would be better than becoming one of them.

The old Sara would never stand for being nothing. And Gil deserves more than that, much more. She deserves more than that.

She's got to find herself. Find what is she now. Find what's left.

If this isn't her, she'd got to find out where she went.

She's not in Vegas. Not anymore.

This isn't her.

- end -