Note: This is a companion piece to His Shadowed Path by CSIBuckeye. We recommend reading that first.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to csibuckeye for being collaborator, beta, and zenmaster. And to Carie for putting up with me for the last month and a half.

Author's Note: One day, when I was innocently betaing His Shadowed Path for csibuckeye, she said "hey wouldn't it be cool if you wrote Sara's story?" The next thing I knew, I was writing this. I think I nearly drover her nuts during the following weeks, but hopefully you will enjoy the results.

Her Shadowed Path

Tamales Bay, California
1983

I didn't expect to find myself there; usually I know where I'm going, my path carefully laid out before me. But every once in a while there is a bump in the road, an unexpected curve on the horizon, and that was how I came to know Sara.

She had smelled blood before.

The scent of it had filled her nostrils as it dripped from a cut above her right eye. It had nauseated her as it soaked into a cloth she held against her mother's cheek. She'd held her breath to avoid even the slightest whiff of it while wiping spots from the floor and spatter from the walls. All the while ignoring the ache inside that threatened to consume her.

But this time was different; it was everywhere, and it was all his.

There would be no erasing this, no amount of cleaning that would make it go away. Her father was laying face down in the middle of the floor, barely ten feet away from her, blood pooling around his body.

Sara squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block the image from her mind as she slid further back into the dark corner she was sitting in. She wedged her narrow frame between the wall and the heavy oak wardrobe, wanting only to make herself small enough so that she might disappear.

She'd been hiding there when the fight had started; it was where she kept her notebook after all. Many a fight had been weathered in that tiny space as she let the darkness envelope her like a cocoon, an invisible barrier between her and the storm that raged between her parents.

It was when she thought she was safe that it happened; her father was passed out on the couch and her mother was crying in the kitchen when she decided it was safe to make a break for her room. All she saw was a flash of silver, a river of red, and then a stillness fell over the house, one that she had never known in all her life.

At first she didn't believe her eyes, but then there was the all too familiar smell that intensified with each breath she took; a metallic stench that invaded every part of her being, robbing her of any lingering doubts about what had just happened. Pulling her knees into her chest, she rested her head on them as she closed her eyes, willing herself to another place and time.

It was hours later when they found her shaking in the dark corner, coaxing her out with lies and promises she knew they couldn't keep. Her place in the world had vanished along with the illusion that anyone could love her, leaving in its place a heart so broken she doubted the pieces would ever go back together again.

Las Vegas, Nevada
2000

A lot had changed for Sara since the first time I'd seen her. She'd developed a rapport with the dead that was beyond anything I'd seen before. So it came as no surprise to me that Kaye's spirit clung to her from the moment she arrived at the crime scene until Sara folded a sheet over her face for the last time. It did make me wonder though, if Sara would ever be able to find a place among the living.

Kaye Shelton haunted her.

Since the moment Sara had seen the web of fractures across the x-rays in Autopsy, she had felt Kaye's presence more acutely with each piece of evidence she processed. She wished she could say it was the first time, but the dead seemed to have a habit of speaking to her. It was what made her so very good at her job, and so very bad at everything else.

Pushing the back door of the lab open, she shifted the bag she had slung over her shoulder and hurried across the parking lot. She could see Grissom moving around in the middle of a pool of light off in the distance. The simple knowledge of what he was doing stirred something deep inside of her, something she though had died long ago.

She paused when she reached the chain link fence marking the perimeter of the lot and watched him hunched over his notebook, meticulously filling it with his observations. She almost wished Grissom had taken her up on her earlier offer, wondering if he would be the one who could finally keep the nightmares at bay.

He looked up at her as she approached, and in the split second when he met her gaze, she realized there were so many things she wanted to tell him. But as she wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and knelt before him, she knew words were an inadequate measure of things between them.

"Thanks." She looked up into his eyes, and knew he understood. When he smiled back at her, she suddenly saw what it was that drew her to him; he made her feel something besides other people's pain.

The hours passed by more quickly than she could have imagined as the conversation wandered away from death and decay. By the time dawn broke, they were both huddled under the blanket; their bodies pressed so close together that she could feel the heat of him against her and his voice soft and low against her ear. She smiled a little at the sense of completeness that came over her. Something vaguely familiar fluttered in her chest, and warmth radiated through her.

She wondered at the feeling even as understanding dawned on her. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had touched her heart.

Modesto, California
2005

In all honesty, I was surprised to see her there. More than a decade had gone by since the day her mother and I met, and Sara had passed the time holding tightly to the past, determined to keep it from ever seeing the light of day. But now, after all these years, it looked as if she had finally found a reason to let it go.

Sara took a deep breath before stepping onto the grass; she felt the beat of her heart heavy in her chest, full of the knowledge that she should have done this a long time ago. Her list of excuses was a work of art, long and winding, crafted with the utmost care while lying alone in the dark. But as she stood there, looking at the neat rows of grave stones that seemed to extend into the horizon, all those things evaporated in the face of what she knew to be true.

Watching her mother waste away after her father's death had horrified Sara almost more than the act that had caused her undoing. And once her mother was gone, she knew she only had one chance to survive the legacy her parents had left her, and that was to bury the past.

She looked down at the bouquet of flowers she held in her hand, breathing in the heady scent of the pale pink roses as pieces of her childhood flickered to life in the back of her mind. Flashes of things she hadn't thought of in years flared to life: from the aching pain of a broken arm to the rare sound of her mother singing along to the radio. It was all there, as real as if it had happened yesterday.

Shivering a little as she walked, she glanced over her shoulder even though the parking lot had disappeared from her view. Grissom had promised to wait there for her; it had only been a few weeks since she'd told him the story of her life and she could already feel the walls between them starting to disintegrate. There hadn't been a nanosecond of hesitation when she'd asked him to make this trip with her. He'd simply asked when she wanted to go.

And now she was here, counting gravestones while wondering at the wisdom of it. Ten rows down, sixteen plots over, and she found what she was looking for. Sara knelt down, brushing her hand across the cement slab set into the ground, as she placed the flowers beside it. She covered her mouth, trying to hold back a sob as grief erupted from deep inside of her. "I hated you." Her voice was quiet, weighed down by a lifetime of secrets. "But I think I loved you more."

Her fingers dug into the soft earth around the stone marked with her mother's name. An ache spread through her chest as her tears slowly uncovered a part of her that had been lost for a very long time. The world seemed to slip away under the weight of her pain, and she wondered if she would ever find her way back.

But then she felt a warm hand on her back, and he was pulling her into his embrace. Nothing had ever felt as good as the moment his arms wrapped around her, and she melted into him, letting him share in the depth of her sorrow.

"You aren't alone anymore." He whispered, his beard brushing against the soft skin of her cheek as he pulled her closer.

She nodded, as the truth of his words threaded their way through her, and for the first time in her life, she believed it.

Las Vegas, Nevada
April 2005

I wasn't there for her; instead I'd been called by the man who held a makeshift knife against the delicate skin of her neck. But there was something about her that drew me in and for a moment I forgot my calling as I watched the demons swirl around her; they were as unmistakable as her will to live them down.

From the instant she walked into Desert State Mental Hospital, she knew deep in her heart that she wouldn't be leaving without a fight. With every step she took, the walls seemed to move in just a bit closer, and each breath was a little shorter than the last. Memories that had once been cloudy returned with startling clarity, and it was in these moments when she felt such an acute sense of loss that she almost forgot to breathe.

So it wasn't really a surprise that it all came down to this; the sharp edge of a blade pressing into her throat, bringing with it her chance to bury one more piece of the past.

Panic rose up in her chest, until she felt his eyes on her, even through the thick glass, drawing her to him. In those brief moments, she saw everything that her life was going to be reflected in his eyes, and her heart broke wide open as she found truth in a place full of lies. There was a promise in his eyes, and even as she was forced to tear her gaze from his, she found strength in it.

A few heartbeats later, she saw her opening, and it wasn't so much the hold Adam Trent had over her that she escaped from, but the one she held over herself. Pushing away from him, she ran, and with each step, she shed a little bit more of the past.

Her heart was still racing when Grissom appeared at her shoulder, a wild look in his eyes, as if he had no idea what had just happened. He brushed his fingers across her cheek, the barest of touches signifying everything that had just passed between them.

Much later, after they had closed the case, and she lay in his arms watching the sun rise through his bedroom window, she finally understood that once she had opened her heart to him, there was nothing that his love could not keep at bay.

Nevada Desert
2007

Sara woke with the taste of blood on her tongue.

Emptiness echoed through her as she lifted her head from the water pooling on the ground around her. It was dark, and she was alone; she shivered not from the cold or the water, but from the familiarity of it all. All her life she'd been running from this feeling, it always seemed to be lurking in the background, ready to swallow her whole if she stopped, even for a moment.

She'd felt the darkness closing in since the night Cammie had died in her arms. Thoughts of death had crowded her mind; making her wonder what it would be like in that moment right before everything ceased, the things she would remember, and the ones she would forget. She found it ironic that now that she was the one who was looking death in the eyes, her mind seemed to be blank.

Stop thinking about death.

Sara shuddered slightly as the words wove their way through her; they seemed to come from somewhere outside of her. Peering into the darkness, she shook off the thought that there was even the slightest chance there was someone or something nearby. No matter where the thought had come from, though, she could not heed it.

Death had been invading her life since she was a child. A day rarely went by that she didn't feel its cold hand in one way or another. Death had taken her childhood, become her livelihood, and without it, she never would have loved Grissom.

This is about living.

This time the words whispered down her spine, raising goose bumps on the back of her neck. For a moment, she wondered if she was starting to lose it, but there was too much truth in those words for her to deny them.She had loved him from the very first, but her heart had not been hers to give back then. The parts that weren't broken were too full of other people's pain to let his love in. But somehow he had breathed new life into pieces of her she had long ago given up for dead; no matter how deep her wounds, he had healed them all with the slide of his hand over her skin and the whisper of his voice in her ear.

Tears stung her eyes at the thought of him, and as she looked back over their life so far, she suddenly saw her place in the world, the one spot that fit her like no other. She had been looking for it her whole life, and yet she had failed to see it when it was right before her eyes. Now all she could think of was getting back to him, back to the only place where she knew she was home

Sara clung to that feeling as the water began to rise around her, and she began looking for her way out. Digging her fingers into the wet, sandy earth, she knew exactly what she needed to do. Nothing was going to stop her from getting back to him, in her heart, she was already there.