Title: Masquerade
Author: Blaze
Rating/Spoilers: PG, Dead Doll and Case of the Cross-Dressing Carp
Summary: When he asks, she doesn't hear the desert. Post-ep for Dead Doll, filtered through Case of the Cross-Dressing Carp.
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, and neither is the tiny reference to Imagine Me and You.
Feedback: Please!
A/N's: Wow, it's been ages since I've written anything for CSI. I've been meaning to write a post-ep for Dead Doll since it first aired, and it took me almost a year (and a Labor Day marathon) to find a good way to do it. Bad grammar is like that on purpose. Enjoy!
--
When Grissom asks, it is so casual, so nonchalant, that it doesn't sound like the first time he really thought about it, he had his hands buried in sand, digging desperately for her god-please-please-don't-let-her-be-dead-I'll-do-anything-please-she-can't-be-under-here-I-love-her-she-can't be-alive-under-all-of-this-she-can't-be-dead-under-all-of-this-this-can't-be-it-for-us-I-can't-be-without-her -why-can't-we-get-through-all-this-sand-she's-under-this-alone body.
He asks like he didn't ask for the radio cars to drive into the desert with their sirens on, so she could hear them coming, trapped under that car.
He asks, and it doesn't sound like he wanted to be the one to push his hands into the soil and touch the rough fabric of her vest, to pull it out of the sand without her in it.
He asks, and his voice doesn't give away that he couldn't think as he followed her footprints and her stacked rocks; that he stood on that rock and couldn't breathe when he saw what she saw, when he saw the scuffed earth where she had tumbled down.
He asks like he didn't see her grinning at him when the hiker's boots caught his sight, like he didn't feel her hair running through his fingers as he peeled mud from the hiker's body, like he didn't remember the weight of her legs over his when she fell asleep as he and Catherine pulled the hiker face-up.
He asks like he never gave up for a minute out there in the heat; like he never thought they weren't looking for her, they were looking for a body; like he never thought they weren't going to find her until some hikers stumbled on human bones two or three months later.
He asks like he didn't feel faint when Sofia's voice crackled over the radio, like he didn't feel in the way when Nick and Sofia and the medics were working to get her out from under the bush, like he didn't think he was going to watch her die.
He asks, and it doesn't sound like he nearly cried when her eyes opened, and it doesn't sound like he did when they closed again.
He asks and the question doesn't hold the silence of the waiting room, or the cool air raking his sun-burnt skin, or the grit between his toes, or the sudden realization that he wasn't looking for her anymore.
He asks like he wasn't puzzled when the doctor explained they weren't out of the woods yet, and his sun-addled brain never thought we weren't in the woods.
He asks and it doesn't sound like he made up his mind when she rolled over and thumped him hard with her cast in the middle of their first night home from the hospital; that he laid in the dark, biting his lip to keep his pain from waking her, and thought yeah, this is it, this is right.
He asks, and in the question, she can't hear the desert, or the oppressive, heavy heat or his sun-burnt skin or the ache in his feet and his fingers or the thrumming fear that he would be too late.