And Then, It Stopped Raining
Summary: "If you called to ask if I miss you, I don't." Sara and Greg have a life-ending conversation. Metaphysics and angst run rampant in this.
Author's Note: Dedicated to LaughableBlackStorm for just being so damn awesome. She also provided the beta. Inspired by Jason Mraz's "Please Don't Tell Her."
It was raining in Las Vegas and the cool pellets sizzled as they hit the hot pavement. I was not a fan of the humidity, or the rain for that matter, as it ruined my hair while I tried to jog down the street, hoping Grissom wouldn't be too pissed that I was late. Cars whizzed by on the street I was jogging on. I slowed to a speed walk when I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket and pulled it out, imagining it was my boss who had called to yell at me.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm like, two miles away, OK, my car broke down."
"What?" said a confused female voice on the other end.
I blinked and noticed raindrops were clinging to my lashes. I wiped my eyes and coughed. "Um… who is this?" I asked, glancing at my display, only to read Restricted flashing back at me.
"Greg, it's me."
She didn't have to identify herself further. I knew that soft husky voice and not even the heat from the moist air could melt the ice that suddenly consumed my heart. "Oh. Hi, Sara."
"You don't sound too happy to hear from me…"
"Well, forgive me if I'm a little bitter about the whole you-leaving-without-a-word thing," I snapped.
"How are you doing?" It was a quiet, timid question. A peace offering.
I threw it back in her face. "When did you care about how I was doing?"
"Greg…"
"No," I said quickly. "You have no right to ask me how I'm doing. You're not in my life anymore, Sara. You walked out and severed contact, and that was your choice. Not mine."
She sighed audibly, and the rain continued to flatten my hair. My eyes rolled up to the sky in a silent prayer to God to turn off the waterworks.
"Greg, I'm sorry," she said simply. "I was—"
"I don't care why you did it," I interrupted. "You did it. And I don't care." It was a lie, but she didn't need to know that.
"I just—"
"If you called to ask if I miss you, I don't." I paused, waiting for her to retort, but she said nothing. I took longer strides as my anger began to get the better of me. "I don't miss you, Sara. None of us do. Well, maybe Grissom, but you said goodbye to him, didn't you?"
"Now that's not fair—"
"I don't care what's fair. You clearly didn't when you walked out on us."
"Would you stop throwing that in my face? I tried to apologize—"
"There's no point," I said, shaking my head rapidly despite the fact that she couldn't see me. My hair tossed raindrops back into the air. "Apologizing, I mean, there's no point. OK, you know what, I forgive you. Is that what you want to hear? You are forgiven, my child, and now you'll go to heaven. Bye."
"Don't hang up!" she insisted, and in spite of myself, I lingered. I clenched my jaw and cursed under my breath at the fact that she still held power over me. "You may not miss me, but I miss you. Please, Greg. I called because I wanted to hear some good news. So how are you?"
I churned over my answer in my head a moment. "I see. So I'm just the comic relief to your tragic life, am I?"
"No. I care about you, Greg."
"Well, I don't care about you."
"Please…" The tiny hint of desperation in her voice created a fissure in the ice cube that encased my heart. "For old time's sake?"
I sighed. "OK. You want to hear a joke, right? Here's a joke. There was a guy, and there was a girl. And he did everything to catch her attention, kind of like a hyperactive puppy dog in a home full of somber lawyers. Funny yet?"
"I don't know what the punch line is yet…" she said slowly.
"Damn, the lawyers part was supposed to be funny," I said. "Guess I'm not as amusing as I used to be. Alright, so anyways, this… puppy dog. He barked, he begged, he played dead, he did anything she said. And one day, when he broke his little puppy leg, she held his little puppy hand. But then, not long after that, he found out that she didn't care about him, not like he cared for her anyway, that there was… another dog in her life which she hugged and petted and loved. Top dog, too, around those parts anyway, and there was no way the little puppy could compete. He didn't even understand why he even tried—"
"Greg—"
"Don't interrupt, I'm about to get to the funny part," I insisted. "So anyways, this girl, and her top dog, they were pretty tight. They knew all of each other's secrets. And she told him that she had to go. Abandon him and all the other dogs in the pound. She left him to bark the message to the other less-deserving mutts that she didn't care about them anymore. But you know the funny thing about dogs, Sara? They have short attention spans. And they soon forgot about her. And all was well at the pound."
"I didn't find that very funny," Sara said flatly.
"Ha! Then clearly, you lack my perspective."
"Greg…" The tremolo in her voice still effected me and I forced myself not to break down and apologize, not to tell her that I was lying, that I missed her so much I couldn't stand it, and that I would do anything she asked if she would just come home, let me hold her, just hold her, in a completely platonic way, so I could smell her hair and feel her body against mine and pretend for just a moment that she was my whole world and that world would never come crashing down around me because it was solid and complete and invincible, so safe that we could crawl inside of it and play pirates or tell ghost stories with flashlights if she wanted to, so warm that we would never need blankets, so close to the ocean that we would never have to leave the beach, and we could drink piña coladas out of funny looking glasses with pineapple on the edge of it, and we would never be—
"Are you still there?"
"What?" I was breathless, even though I hadn't said a word. I had come to the intersection a block away from the lab now and stepped off of the curb.
"What can I do that would make you forgive me?" she asked.
Come home, I thought, but I banished it from my mind, grasping at my anger like a security blanket I could hide beneath until all the monsters had crawled back under my bed and hung up their cell phones. "I told you, if forgiveness is what you want, then I forgive you. You are absolved of sin, and guilt, so goodb—"
I don't remember finishing that sentence. All I remember, is the next moment, we were on that beach, inside of that world, where she was mine, and we were never alone.
She wore a white bikini and a blue and white floral sarong as she reclined on a wooden beach chair. One of her ivory legs was bent, pointing skywards at the clear blue, the other lazily straight. She held a piña colada in one hand and reached up to lower her sunglasses with another, where she peered at me over the rims. A light, tropical breeze tousled her prefect silky hair as she watched me.
"What do you want, Greg?"
"You. I want you."
She gave me that classic Sara half-smile and shook her head. "Not an option, love."
"Why not? This is my fantasy, isn't it?"
"I am not who you think I am."
Sharp, merciless pain fractured my entire being, and I didn't understand what was going on, or why, or where I was, but it wasn't the beach, and she wasn't there, not even in my ear anymore, no, no, where was my cell phone? What had I done with it? Had I hung up on her? Why? I couldn't hear, couldn't speak, couldn't see, could only feel the jabbing icicle tendrils of that mind-shattering agony, and I couldn't think and my whole world was red, but not the color of blood, it was the color that you couldn't really grasp, the one that dances in front of your eyes right before you fall asleep, that you can never hold onto for long.
And I was losing grip.
There was something wrong, but I didn't know exactly what I had lost. I had lost my cell phone, but there was more to it than that. I had lost something else, too, something that at one time had been important, vital even, and yet now didn't seem even remotely significant. But what was it? The red, the color I clung to, the color that clung so closely to those curves, a red dress, red lips, sweet charade—she had dressed as Miss Scarlet for Halloween once, and Archie had talked us in to a murder mystery dinner, and that dress—she had always been beautiful, in her plain, earthly way, and I loved it, and she wasn't herself in that dress, it didn't suit her at all, and yet I can't get that image out of my mind, of my earthen goddess, my Hestia, my soft sienna serendipity, looked like a scarlet harlot, and yet she made even a harlot seem conservative, because she was simple, and elegant, and she didn't need a red dress to be sexy.
Ow. There was that pain again, that angry stabbing at everywhere I could still feel, everywhere that wasn't numb, I was going numb, rapidly, and I felt I should be afraid, but I wasn't sure what exactly had occurred, what I was losing, who I had lost, the rubies that were dripping out of me, that red, that elusive red, everywhere and yet nowhere I could hold, nothing I could breathe—I wasn't breathing—for some reason this didn't alarm me.
"So what do you want, Greg?"
"I can't stay." The realization was simple, it consumed me.
She smiled, gentle and yet sharp, the blade of reality cutting into me with those chocolate brown eyes. "What do you want, Greg?"
"Why does it matter if I can't stay?"
She took a sip of her drink. "What do you want?"
"Her. I want her… to be OK." That was a tiny epiphany too, but everything seemed so clear when the red curtains fell away.
The pain climbed, higher, higher, faster, deeper, darker, steeper, sharper, and then, and then, and then—
It broke. Like a fever in a mirror, shattering in billions of tiny red pieces onto the pavement upon which I rested. Only I didn't rest there anymore.
There were sirens, there was shouting, there was blood, there was water, the rain, washing it into the gutters, clinging to my lashes—his lashes?—its lashes, flattening its hair, which was matted with crimson, its body contorted, its eyes wide open in shock, the bus that had hit it had come to a halt right at its side, and it didn't even cause a dent in the vehicle, and the driver was waving his arms in the air, and no one was moving, and even the medics were shaking their heads, lifting its wrist, searching for me, but I didn't live there anymore. It belonged to someone else, something else, and I don't know what, but I've seen it before, in the eyes of the corpses I spoke for, and Sara, after she came back from the desert.
"I want her to be OK."
She sipped coyly on her drink. "Good answer."
"Will she be OK?"
She didn't reply. She just watched me with those saber eyes.
I saw my cell phone, lying open by the curb. Miraculously, it was intact, unlike its owner. There was a static sound coming from the receiver. Someone asking, frantic, desperate, hysterical, and clearly not OK yelling about sirens and crashes and What's going on? and Are you still there? and I won't hang up until you answer me!
She stayed on that phone for a long time. But I couldn't stay. She would be OK. She would have to be OK. Because I felt they owed me that much. I felt she deserved it.
And if they didn't keep their promise, if she wasn't OK, I would possess a corpse and kick their omnipotent lying asses before haunting her for the rest of eternity, just to make sure she was fucking OK.
That was my last thought.
And then, it stopped raining.