In theory, Sara Sidle was not the vengeful type. When she was in the system, she learned very quickly that people would do anything to get a rise out of her; to make her lose her cool, and she made it her mission not to fall for it. They could pull her hair, steal her lunch, spit on her, even taunt her about the very reason why she was in the system in the first place, but all she did was ignore them. Sure, in her mind, she thought of all kinds of horrible things to do to her tormentors, but she found that turning her head and not responding to those lower than her worked better than sinking to their level. It was satisfying to not be like them. When she visited her mother in prison the first time, Laura told her, "You're better than them. Don't be like me, Sara...don't ever let yourself think you're not good enough for anyone."
One boy in particular, a cruel, greasy teenaged boy named Johnny, seemed to have her number. Most of the time he would just point and laugh at her in the cafeteria at the school or throw rocks at her when she was walking back to whatever house her foster parents were in this time.
But one day on the playground he decided to get to the bottom of things. "Hey, Sidle, what are you going to get your dad for Father's Day? I think he could use a couple of band-aids!" He and his friends laughed and laughed and laughed while Sara just continued swinging and reading her book. After they figured out Sara wasn't going to take the bait, Johnny and his friends ran off to taunt some other unsuspecting student, leaving Sara to silently lick her wounds.
And at night, while she drifted off to sleep, she would think of horrible, unimaginable ways to get back at Johnny. There were knifes and guns and, on one occasion, even a grenade involved. Oh, how she loved to think of new and creative ways for Johnny to die, and most of them were quite painful.
So, while in theory she wasn't a vengeful person, when Natalie Davis left Sara for dead under a dark red Mustang in the sweltering Nevada desert, Sara let herself think about all the interesting ways she could find to do something horrible to her captor. And when she wasn't thinking about that, she thought about the irony of being stuck under car after having processed so many godforsaken cars back at the lab. But mostly she just thought about Natalie. The rain fell, the coyote seemed interested in her for a while, and her arm was killing her under the pressure of the car, but still, she thought of sweet revenge. Now that she was older and wiser, and more than that, a trained crime scene investigator, she knew how to hide a body so no one would ever find it. And while she waited for Grissom to come and find her because she knew he would, she thought about it in perfect detail. And then she fell asleep.
When she woke up, she was in a different place. It was not difficult to figure out that she was now in the hospital, and she automatically felt safe. For now, Natalie was far from her mind.
Almost instinctively, she looked around the room until she spotted Grissom, who was sitting in an ugly, uncomfortable green chair. She could tell he was worried--not from his face, but by the book he was reading. He was reading Moby Dick, a book he'd always wanted to reread but never found the time. She knew he'd been there a while, waiting for her to show signs of life.
"Griss," she said, hardly recognizing her own voice.
He looked up at her and smiled. It had probably been a long time since he smiled. His eyes were red and barely open; she wondered if he had slept at all in the past couple of days. Genuine relief was evident on his face. It was a good look for him.
"I knew you'd find me," she said hoarsely.
He nodded, and came over to sit next to her on the small hospital bed.
"It wasn't just me, Honey. It was pretty much all of Las Vegas law enforcement. You really had a lot of people worried for a while."
He held her hand, and they sat in a comfortable silence for a few minutes. They both knew he'd eventually have to let the doctors know she was awake, and then there would be a flood of visitors wanting to see her. But they just wanted these few minutes together; the calm before the storm.
"What are my injuries?" She asked him. "I know something must be wrong with my arm, although I can't really feel anything right now."
Grissom nodded. "Your arm is broken. They've given you some good drugs for that. You also have a shattered left ankle, a few broken ribs, and lots of cuts and bruises."
Sara winced. "I guess I won't be going back to work for a while, huh?"
"Well, that's another thing. I kind of...I kind of told people about us. There might be a few consequences, I don't know yet."
Sara groaned.
"What did you say?"
"I was really just thinking out loud. I said that Natalie blames me for the death of Ernie Dell. That I took away the only person she's ever loved, and now she's going to do the same thing to me."
Sara couldn't help it - she chuckled.
"Wow! I bet that kind of shocked a few people."
"I didn't care at the time who the hell I shocked, frankly. I was so scared," he told her. "We couldn't find you for a long time...and then we did, and you were unconscious...I was just so scared."
"I wasn't," she said honestly. "I knew you'd find me." And then she thought about what he'd said.
"Wait...Natalie, the completely psychotic woman that kidnapped me...she was the miniature killer?"
He nodded.
"And she was Ernie Dell's foster daughter?"
He nodded again, although the look of relief was fast being replaced by worry.
"Yes, but, Sara...it's over. You don't have to think about it anymore. She won't be able to hurt you again."
She tried to smile to show him she had no intentions of thinking about it again, but she knew that was a path she was going to have to explore, and soon.
He smiled nervously and kissed her forehead. She wanted a better kiss, a bigger kiss, but a nurse came in and saw that she was awake, and then there was a sudden flurry of activity. Sara patiently smiled at visitor after visitor, happy that so many people cared about her well-being. Jim, Warrick, Greg and Nick all chipped in for the biggest, gaudiest flower arrangement she'd ever seen. The card read, "From the boys." She loved it.
Catherine came in by herself and sat next to Sara on the bed. She told her how happy everyone was to know she was basically okay.
"Grissom dropped quite a bomb on us, Sara," she said, avoiding her eyes. "I mean, obviously I always knew there was something going on there, but I didn't know you were actually in a relationship. I mean...well, congratulations. I'm so happy my friends have found something to make them happy."
Sara smiled and touched Catherine's hand.
"Thank you. That means a lot to me. To us, actually."
"And I'm so, so sorry about what I said when we were on that Lady Heather case. If I'd have known..."
"I know, Cath. Don't worry about it."
The two women smiled at each other, an understanding brewing between them, until the nurse came in and interrupted their moment.
"Okay, Sara needs some sleep now. Please come back during visitor's hours," the surly woman said. Catherine rolled her eyes and left the room.
Sara was about to ask the nurse if Grissom could come back in before she went to sleep, but the nurse injected her with something before she had the chance.
While she was in a state of unconsciousness, she dreamed about what horrible things she could do to Natalie Davis. Natalie wasn't like the bullies that taunted her as a kid. Natalie was brutal; out for blood. She had a mission, and Sara was going to be a part of it whether she wanted to be or not.
When Natalie cornered Sara in the parking garage, she babbled incoherently about many different things before finally grabbing Sara and injecting something, much like the nurse just had, into her arm. From the babbling, Sara only figured out 2 things: the girl's name was Natalie, and she was pissed at Grissom.
Over the next few days, Sara thought a lot about Natalie. She knew Natalie was the miniature killer, what she didn't know was why the girl targeted her. It was Grissom who Ernie Dell chose to speak his last words to, not her. But Grissom's words came back to her. He'd said, Natalie blames me for the death of Ernie Dell. That I took away the only person she's ever loved, and now she's going to do the same thing to me.
And so it occurred to her that Natalie left Sara for dead to get back at Grissom, and the anger mounted once again. Sara thought of how Grissom would feel if she died because of something he did. Grissom worried about her when she came home 10 minutes later then she said would, how would he feel if she disappeared, well, forever? He had high blood pressure. Stress caused his heart rate to sky rocket. If anything, she was mad at Natalie for stressing him out. After all this time, after all they'd been through together, to have their time cut short by a mentally unstable woman...it just wouldn't have been fair.
Because she and Grissom? They'd finally figured it out. They lived together. They brushed their teeth together. They took turns doing laundry. They had an understanding about sleep cuddling, which was they just didn't do it. Cuddling before and after was just fine, but during the sleeping process, it was off-limits. They just weren't sleep cuddlers. And sometimes, if Sara had a good day, she'd cook him a steak while she just make herself some pasta or something. The look of bliss on his face when he ate it was worth it to her.
They even had a dog, Bruno. He was a boxer that used to belong to their neighbor Carl. Carl had just gotten divorced, and his ex-wife, the dog lover, moved out of the country. He didn't care for dogs, so he asked them if they wanted him. They immediately said yes, not knowing they'd just gotten themselves into a lifetime of wiping off his drool.
Sara found herself consumed with hate for a woman she didn't know anything about. She never told anyone about it because she didn't want to worry them, but she knew Grissom figured something was going on. Still, she didn't say anything. That was always how their relationship had worked, right?
Grissom took her home a week later, trailing behind her patiently as she tried to figure out how the crutches worked. When they got back to the townhouse they shared, Bruno greeted her with an exuberance she'd never experienced before. Grissom tried to get the dog to calm down, but Sara liked his display. It gave her something to be happy about, which was a nice change of pace.
But when he went to work and she was left to her own devices at home, she did some research on Natalie. And over the next week or two while she was being forced to stay home against her will while she recovered, she learned a few things about Natalie.
While she knew Natalie was Ernie Dell's foster child, she didn't know why she was in the system. When Sara found out it was because Natalie killed her sister Chloe at a very young age, it sent chills down her spine. And something else. Something she wasn't quite expecting. Along with an urge for revenge was now quite the opposite feeling--empathy. Sara empathized with Natalie, and it was making her feel, well...strange. It wasn't like they ended up in the system for the same reason, which they did, in a way, but Sara knew they had some of the same experiences growing up.
And that's when Sara made it her mission to talk to the girl.
At first, she began to scheme behind Grissom's back, but she quickly gave up on that. They didn't have secrets between them anymore, and besides, it was hard to do anything behind his back when he kept such an intense watch on her. She didn't blame him; she gave him quite a scare going missing like that. But sometimes she just wanted to scream, "I'M OKAY! STOP LOOKING AT ME!"
When she finally returned to work, things weren't much better. First of all, Catherine was going to be her supervisor now that Ecklie had been alerted to the relationship. She didn't mind that at all, really, but she did mind the constant whispering and staring that was going on. What were they, in high school or something?
Her colleagues treated her gently at first until she told them, not very politely, to stop it with the "Sara's broken" act. Everyone was getting on her nerves. Well, mostly everyone. Catherine made it clear that she wasn't going to baby Sara in the slightest unless Sara needed her to, in which she would do it gladly. This surprised Sara, but she'd take that over the way Nick was treating her any day of the week. She loved Nick and she treasured his friendship, but he was driving her nuts. He wanted to get her talking. He wanted to compare abduction stories and talk about how she felt about being so vulnerable and scared. He thought they had the same experience, and Sara couldn't believe he didn't see the obvious difference: he was taken by chance. She was not. This was personal. She kept waiting for him to figure that out, but he never did.
Greg followed her around like a damn puppy dog, constantly asking if she was okay, constantly pulling out chairs for her and giving her water and anything else he anticipated she would need. She thought it was cute at first but it soon became very, very tiresome. It was going to have to stop soon or she was just going to have to tell him to knock it off. She didn't want or need any help from anybody, why didn't they get that?
After a few days back on the job, she walked (well, hobbled) to Grissom's office. She closed the door behind her, and he looked up from whatever he was looking at so intently at his desk.
"Hi, Honey. Are you okay?" He was always wanting to know if she was okay.
"Yes, I am. But I have to ask you something, and I need you to keep an open mind. I need you to think about it before you say no."
"You want to see Natalie," he said in his typical know-it-all style.
"And of course you already knew that. How did you know that?"
He sighed.
"Because I know you, Sara. I know you feel like you have something in common with her, and yes, you both were foster children. But you have to know that she had it much different then you. She murdered her sister. And even if she was a little girl, she still understood the meaning of her actions. Natalie is not like you, and if you do go see her, you're not going to get what you want."
Now it was her turn to sigh.
"Don't you think I know that? Don't you think I've thought about it over and over again? It's something I need to do, Griss. I need to know why she did it. I need to know if she knew I spent some time in the system, too. I can't just be collateral damage, that's not okay with me. And I need to get over this...this...this crippling hatred I have for her. I need her to be just a person instead of a horrible thought in my mind."
He looked at her, concern clear in his eyes. She knew she was asking a lot here, but she also knew he was going to give her the support she needed to do it. After so long of never communicating the way they wanted, they now had it down to a science.
"Is that why you have so much trouble sleeping lately?" He asked softly. "We were doing so well there for a while."
It was true. For years, Sara had issues with insomnia. Sharing a bed with Grissom hadn't been an instant cure, but the backrubs and sweet nothings and naughty times certainly were helpful in her battle with sleeping. But since the "accident", it went right back to normal.
She nodded, and he frowned slightly.
"You know I'd rather you not see her, but if you really feel like you need to...I'll make it happen."
She smiled, and while the door was still closed, walked over and gave him a kiss, a promise of things to come, a way to tell him it was all going to be okay, even if she wasn't sure it would be. Of course, the knock on the door put the lovely kiss to a halt.
However, ever since learning about the relationship people had been knocking and actually waiting for Grissom to tell them to come in. So Sara adjusted herself and walked an appropriate distance from her boyfriend.
Chuckling a little, Grissom said, "Come in."
Catherine came bounding in, giving the two of them The Eye.
"I'll just...go now," Sara said. Grissom and Catherine watched her walk out, each thinking wildly different thoughts about the woman who had gone through so much.
It wasn't until September, more then 3 months later, that Sara came to visit Natalie. She'd been so busy at work trying to catch up, trying to show everyone she was still the investigator she was...except it still hurt, and it was hard. Her arm hurt like a bitch, actually, and though she tried to hide it, she wasn't doing a very good job. Everyone knew her limits, even if she didn't, and whenever they saw her trying to move or lift something, or in general try to do something she wasn't ready for, they were quick to help. At first it irritated her to no end, but when she finally gave in, she found it actually was much easier to let people do things for her every now and then.
But that was only one reason. She fought a constant battle with her emotions. Sometimes she was empathetic to Natalie, wondering what the girl went through in foster care, what it was like to finally find Ernie Dell, the man that was going to take care of her when nobody else would. And sometimes, when her ankles would swell up and ache just before a thunderstorm or when she tried to open a jar of peanut butter and her arm throbbed, she thought about all the reasons why she wanted Natalie Davis dead. Most of the time, though, she drifted between these 2 feelings, wondering which one she was going to feel today.
As the summer progressed, so did Sara. She did feel pain, physical and emotional, but the anger was starting to subside. She'd have long talks with Grissom about it, and he was always telling her not to take it so personally. Natalie was mentally unstable; she would have done anything just to get back at him. It wasn't about Sara, it was about getting even with him. And inevitably, she'd tell him that's what made her angrier then anything.
"The fact that she wanted to damage you by hurting me...it makes me crazy, You didn't do anything wrong! You thought Ernie Dell was the one who killed all those people, and you were just doing your job. It makes me so crazy!"
And he would have to calm her down again, and he would succeed, and it would be okay until the next nightmare she had, and then they'd have to go through it again. This happened until she finally thought she could manage to see Natalie without wanting to throttle her.
It was a summer of record highs, some days even going over 110 degrees. It was still 104 degrees in September when Sara came to visit Natalie. As Sara drove with her air conditioner blasting on all cylinders, she wondered why this city attracted so many millions of visitors when it was stuck right in the middle of the desert. Walking anywhere in the heat made her feel like she was standing in a microwave. Whoever said Las Vegas was a dry heat, they'd never been there. If it wasn't for Grissom, she'd have nothing to do with this godforsaken town. Of course, she would have gone anywhere if he asked nicely, desert or not.
After a few wrong turns, Sara made it to her destination--Desert Sands Mental Institution, where Natalie was awaiting her trial. Sara ID'd herself as a criminalist to the receptionist at the front desk, although she wasn't exactly there because of the job. It was just a slight technicality she hoped no one would call her out on.
The guard escorted her to Natalie's room. Sara looked into the window to her cell-like, windowless room. At first glance, she couldn't help but notice how young and innocent this girl looked. Natalie was almost beautiful, if you looked past the crazy.
Before the guard left, he looked at Sara intently and said, "We don't usually let people do this, but Gil Grissom from the crime lab told us it was important for her trial. Just be careful. We're watching--" he pointed to the camera in the corner of the room--"and if she gets handsy, it's over. Understand?"
Sara nodded. Grissom made it a point never to give her any special privileges, but this was one thing he felt he could do for her. She was never so happy to be teacher's pet in her life.
"I don't know what you're hoping to do. Miss Sidle. She keeps singing this creepy song over and over again. Nobody, not a single person, has been able to get through to her."
Sara nodded. Grissom told her about the song Natalie kept singing. He said she sang it in the interrogation room when he was trying to get Sara's location out of her.
"I actually shook her, Sara," he'd told her wearily. "I was trying to hurt her. She just kept singing and singing, and I couldn't do anything about it. I'd never felt so helpless in my life."
The guard unlocked the door and slowly opened it. As everyone told her, Natalie was sitting Indian-style in the corner, singing her song. When she saw Sara staring at her, she stopped for approximately 12 seconds. Then she started again.
"Something is wrong with my little inside..." Natalie sang softly. Sara was slightly put off by the vacant look in the girl's eye, but this did not deter her. She sat on the floor across from Natalie. She watched as Natalie kept her eyes closed and sang her little heart out.
Sara knew Natalie was capable of carrying on a conversation. Brass talked to the woman who hired her at the employment agency. The woman said Natalie was a little spacey, but not completely unintelligent. She described, in full detail, the waiting room at the agency. The woman was very impressed with Natalie's attention to detail. Sara wanted to use that to her advantage.
"Natalie," Sara began, talking loudly over the singing. "Natalie, my name is Sara Sidle, but you probably already knew that. I'm here because I want to talk to you. I want to know why you did what you did."
The singing continued, although a little softer then it had been.
"Did you know I was in foster care, too? For 7 years. It was for different reasons then you, although it was kind of the same circumstances, in a way...my mother killed my father."
Natalie opened her eyes. She looked right at Sara, the slightest smidgen of interest hiding on her pale face. But she still didn't stop singing.
"I didn't have the same fear of bl--well, that cleaning stuff they were always using. Me, I had 2 quirks, if you will. First of all, I was deathly afraid of knives. Still am, really. When I see somebody use a knife in any kind of capacity, it takes all I have not to run and hide.
"But what I really hate more then anything is the smell of fried chicken. It was my dad's favorite. My mom would make it for him all the time, and that was what was cooking the night she stabbed him. If I smell it now, I just have to leave. It repulses me. It makes me sick."
"Meatloaf," Natalie said softly. "Meatloaf."
Sara tried not to show how stunned she was. "What, Natalie? Meatloaf?"
Natalie didn't say anything. But she didn't continue her song, either.
"Was it...Chloe liked meatloaf? And you didn't like it?"
"I hated it. I hated meatloaf. But they always made meatloaf, all the time. They made me eat it. She liked it, I didn't."
Sara nodded, feeling something resembling excitement. Natalie was talking to her! And somewhat coherantly! It was a small victory.
"I don't like meatloaf, either. I don't like meat, actually."
Natalie went back to vacantly staring at Sara, but she didn't go back to singing her song.
"Yeah, I'm a vegetarian. My mom wasn't a vegetarian, but she kind of wanted to be one. One night, she told my dad she was tired of eating meat all the time, and could they maybe have something without meat once in a while? I don't know why she told him that. And I think he was so drunk at the time, he probably didn't even know what she was talking about. But we ended up in the hospital, all 3 of us, me and my mom and my brother, that night. It was the last time we were in that hospital, though."
Natalie looked at her, fascinated.
"Natalie...please say something. I know these people, everyone around you...I know they think you're incapable of talking. I know they think you lost the ability to put a real sentence together a long time ago. But I think you can talk to me. I think you can help me understand what happened. I want you to give me some answers. Do you think you can do that?"
But she didn't say anything. Not for a long time. She hummed her song and glanced around the room from time to time. Sara studied Natalie for nearly 10 minutes, figuring out what she would say, how she would say it. How could she get into this girl's head? She felt like she was there, but then she lost her again.
"Natalie? You hurt me. My arm, it still hurts. My ankle hurts when it rains, so much so I can barely walk. I used to love to make pasta, and now it's painful to even do that. Why did you hurt me?"
She saw a spark in Natalie's eyes, recognition of some kind.
"It's always about her," Natalie said, looking at Sara. "It's always about her."
"Yes, but now it's about you. I'm asking you why you hurt me. Can you tell me why?"
Natalie shook her head. Sara sighed, and waited. Nothing. So she tried a different tactic.
She pulled her wallet out of her back pocket and pulled out a picture. It was taken last summer, when she and Grissom managed to get away for a few days. They went to Lake Tahoe and stayed in a ridiculously nice hotel, staying awake to sit together and watch the sun rise and later watch it set. The picture was taken by a waiter at the vegetarian restaurant they managed to find hidden away in the blocks and blocks of hamburger and steak joints.
"This is me and Grissom. You know Grissom, you were trying to get revenge against him, right? Well, I love him. I really, positively love him, Natalie. Do you know how much it would have hurt him if you killed me? Man, Natalie, I gotta tell you, it pissed me off when you tried to take me away from him. I really wanted to hurt you like you hurt me."
Natalie shrugged. Sara wanted to shake her like Grissom had. But she couldn't give into that temptation. She wanted Natalie to talk to her. It had become way too important to just let go.
"I know you were close to Ernie. Right?"
"I was his special girl," Natalie said, smiling. "He said I was the only thing he ever got right."
Sara tried not to let her face show how shocked she was.
"Oh, yeah? And how did that make you feel?"
"Good. I liked being his special girl. It made me feel...special. Chloe was special, I never was. I wanted to be special."
"I can understand that. Can you understand that I love Grissom? In a different way then you loved Ernie, but I still love him. With all my heart. And he loves me."
Natalie nodded.
"I know. The crime scene...he touched your arm. Nobody's touched me like that before. I knew."
Sara's heart broke for the girl. Natalie would never know true love, and it was all because of something strange going on inside her head, some sort of faulty wiring.
"So why did you try to take me away from him, Natalie? Please help me try to understand. I know you were mad because of what happened to Ernie, but that's not Grissom's fault. You're a smart girl, you know that. Don't you?"
"I just wanted...I just wanted him to know what it felt like," Natalie said. "He didn't think of me, right? When he watched my daddy kill himself, he didn't think about the people who loved him. I wasn't thinking about you."
"You didn't know I was in the system?" Sara asked hopefully. "I mean, Natalie...we have that in common. We could talk about. Maybe I could help you out--"
"No." Natalie said simply. "No."
She didn't know what Natalie was saying no to, but that was apparently the end of anything coherent she'd have to say. Natalie stopped looking at Sara and looked at the ceiling instead. She rocked back and forth, singing that haunting little song.
"I've got a pain in my sawdust..." she sang in a little girl voice. Sara didn't want to leave. She wanted to help this girl. But it wasn't about her. Natalie made that clear. Collateral damage was all she'd ever been, and it didn't matter that they sort of shared a past. Sara meant nothing to Natalie, she was just someone who got in the way of revenge. And it broke her heart.
Natalie had her trial. Sara testified against her. The whole time Sara was on the stand, Natalie would smile at her peacefully, like they had some kind of understanding. It was unnerving.
She was found guilty and given a life sentence for the murder of Izzy Delancey, Penny Garden, Raymundo Suarez, Officer Kamen, and the attempted murder of Sara Sidle. Something inside Sara wished they'd given her the death penalty, but seeing there was only 11 people on death row in Nevada at the time, there didn't seem to be any chance of that.
"It's so sad," Sara told Grissom when they watched the news of the conviction on TV at home. "She could have done so much with her life. If somebody had just given her a chance..."
"Ernie Dell gave her a chance," Grissom told her. "And she was killing people anyway. I know you're too close to it to understand, but there was something wrong with her, Sara. She was not a normal girl. Most kids that go through foster care come out damaged. She was broken. And we don't know why."
"I could have been like her," Sara said. "Just a few things different in my life, and I could have been like her. My mom was like her. They both killed people they loved. And I could have been like that. Griss...I could still be like that."
"Come here," he told her. She snuggled up against him and he put his arms around her. "You aren't like them, Sara. You don't have a murder gene. They were born to be the way they were. You were only damaged by your childhood, not broken."
"I know, Griss. I know. It's just hard...to put the pieces together sometimes, you know?"
He nodded, and kissed her softly. Later, they both slept peacefully. But even though the sleep was peaceful, Sara's dreams were not. Because even if it seemed like everything was right again, Sara dreamed about getting revenge on Natalie. She liked to think she wasn't a vengeful person, but maybe she just had to deal with the fact that she was.