Butterflies Mate in Spring, a csi fanfic

Butterflies Mate in Spring
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: The CSI characters belong to CBS. I only borrow for my own amusement.

Author's Note: Thanks to Lynn for name lending. Liberties have been taken with Sara's backstory and some of what is implied here is only the author's imagination. Other facts are taken from the episodes Nesting Dolls and Committed. Spoiler warning applies.

She remembers the cold as a blessing, freezing everything in her, winter in body and mind. Winter doesn't bleed. Winter doesn't cry. Winter is no victim. Winter is still, quiet and muffles all sound. She can rest there, hibernate as a bear would, sleeping beyond dreams.

When warm hands touch her skin, she jerks away. The cold is a blessing. She has to remember the cold.

"I'm going to kill him," her mother says, but the girl doesn't listen.

She is winter and there is only the stillness.

II

Winter's evening over Las Vegas and Sara Sidle hastens to her car, knowing she's going to be late and Grissom will not be happy. He rarely seems to be these days anyway, or perhaps that is merely her. It can be hard to know what Grissom feels or thinks behind the walls he has erected. Only sometimes she thinks she can almost hear him, like an echo passing between them, finding familiarity. Somewhere deep within her, she thinks she might know him, but she doesn't quite know herself.

A cold wind rips at her clothes and she's grateful when she reaches the shelter of her car. The Vegas winters are not the winters of her childhood and have no snow, but somehow they feel colder without innocence. Winter offers the child another wide spectrum of possibilities for play, it only offers the adult the mark of another season passing. She feels old and the wind tears into her bones.

She drives as hurriedly as she dares, not quite breaking the speed limit. She doesn't want to think about what Grissom will say if she gets pulled over for something again. Perhaps he will say nothing, only look at her with that look and she will have to punch him out. She doesn't want pity. Pity is a poison she's drowned herself in before and the taste is still bitter.

She stops for a cup of coffee on the way, if only to taste something other than memories. She'll probably need the caffine anyway, for Grissom's voice sounded like a long night to come. Briefly, she wonders why he's called her tonight - Nick and Warrick are both free and she knows he delights in having his old team back and working with them both. She also knows the season is changing. They are ageing, Grissom is ageing. It will not remain Grissom's team for too long.

And what she'll do then, she no longer knows.

The yellow of the crime scene tape glints in her car's headlights as she pulls over, noting the houses around. A well-off neighbourhood, if not rich. Money doesn't keep death away; if anything, it sometimes beckons it. She's seen enough murders in Vegas to know that.

"What've we got?" she asks as she approaches Grissom, the shape of him seeming more a shadow grown from the pavement than a human. He's dressed in black, only his face is pale in the blue light of flashing police carlights. He looks tired, or perhaps that is just the echo of her.

"Male DB," he informs her, not even looking up. "He's been stabbed pretty violently, yet there's very little blood on the pavement. He probably wasn't killed here."

"Crime of passion?"

"Crime at least," he replies, and then he does look at her. "Could you take the perimeter?"

"Sure," she says, already finding her gloves and slapping them on. "Anything else?"

"Thank you for coming," he says, voice even, and she stares at the back of his neck for a moment, wondering.

Then she goes to work and touches the traces of death through thin latex.

She leans her head against the glass of the window, feeling it cool and a draft from outside curling up against her skin. There is a chill in that, but not enough and she shudders at the warmth burning somewhere deep within her.

Behind her, she can hear her mother scrub at the bedroom wall, yet the smell of iron lingers.

"He's not going to hurt you again," her mother promises, the voice slightly muffled.

He doesn't need to, the girl knows.

Ghosts are forever.

The lab is air conditioned even in winter, a steady stream of cool air hissing at all within. She walks in it and feels her skin curl together, as if trying to seek warmth in itself. She should dress more warmly, she thinks, but somehow she never does.

"The vic's been ID'ed," she tells Grissom as she breezes into his office, and for a moment, she can see a flash of annoyance across his face. He likes people to knock. She doesn't always knock for that very reason. "A neighbour recognised him. Robert Mueller. 46 years old, lives a few blocks down from where he was found."

"Family's been informed?"

She shakes her head. "No one's answered the phone. Brass is about to head over, I'm gonna go with. Wanna tag along?"

The seasons are changing. A year ago, she would be tagging along with him, she thinks. But even if he's still the shift supervisor, he's almost given Greg to her to supervise, given Nick, Warrick and Catherine trust to mange mostly on their own, building the foundation for what will be left when he is gone, even if he's not aware that he is doing it.

"You know I can't resist a drive with you," he says lightly, and she bites back the first reply that comes to her mind.

You sure could resist a dinner.

"My driving skills are that impressive?" she asks instead, proud at the lack of bitterness in her voice.

"No," he says simply and follows her out, the air conditioning hissing softly goodbye behind them.

The police come, looking down at her and smiling smiles of pity. She's not sure why, but it feels bitter, almost like the taste of her father's coffee. She still remembers tasting it one morning in spring, and gathering the broken pieces of the mug afterwards. A little glue and it had puzzled together again and she had been relieved her mother needn't ever know daddy had broken it or know why.

She still has it under her bed. She's come to realise the fractures will always show, like scars on porcelain.

"We're not going to hurt you," the officer says, but the girl already knows the smell of lies. "We're just borrowing your mother for a while."

There is something in the Mueller home that feels like memories. The mother, the dead father and the daughter, who is looking at them all with guarded eyes, a wall of ice across her features. Something terrible has happened in this home long before any murder.

There are no tears at the explanation of Robert Mueller's death. Lena Mueller already knows. It isn't guilt that reveals her, rather the almost violent relief in her eyes. Sara already knows they will find blood in this house, but finds no pleasure in the knowledge.

Young Emma Mueller sits very still in a chair, skin like porcelain and eyes like winter. She knows too, she must know.

"We're just borrowing your mother for a while," Brass says and somewhere inside Sara, a wall breaks.

The hand that holds hers is cool and she clings on to it even when she knows they want her to let go. She's not going to see her mother again. What she'll always see now is her father's blood on her mother's hands and the look of relief on her mother's face, blazing like the summer sun.

She'll always see a murderer where she once had a mother and know why.

And so she clings on to the hand and the cool and hopes it a wall against the future.

Dawn is crawling across the pavement, taking no heed of the crime scene tape. There is no warmth in the sun yet, but it'll come, as it must. Seasons are as predictable as Grissom's bugs and they too leave a mark on human skin.

"I think we've fully processed this scene," Grissom says behind her and she feels him walk up even without turning.

"Yes."

A pause, a breath, a gush of wind. "Would you like to be taken off the case?"

"Haven't we already solved the case?" she asks, remembering the pattern of blood the wall had clung on to.

"We still have to process all the evidence," he points out and for a moment, she longs to take his offer, rebuild the wall, pretend she never saw the mirror, change nothing.

"No," she says firmly, feeling the pain crawl into her, but not destroying her. She is strong now. It is time to let the child go. "I'll handle it. It's time I handled it. Maybe it's finally time to change."

When he looks at her, there is no pity, only reassurance and the echo of admiration and she almost finds herself hoping.

Her mother smiles at her, lies on her lips, shadows in her eyes.

"It's going to be fine, honey. They'll just look after me here for a while."

Lies. The girl knows it's lies. The places smells of it; fake smiles and warm words that have no heat. No truths sound so sincere.

"You shouldn't come here," her mother goes on, the words now so insincere they must be true. "You have a new family you should spend time with."

'I don't know what a family is,' the girl doesn't say. 'I've never known.'

"Yes, mom."

She sits in the back of the room and listens to the jury's verdict, a fan's hissing mixing with the words. Guilty. No getting off on temporary insanity, no pity strong enough to give innocence. This is justice and she serves it.

Lena Mueller is going to jail. Emma Mueller is already in foster care and a prison of memories. There'll never be any justice for her. Maybe she'll even be driven by the lack of it to serve justice herself, work to find the guilty and attempt to correct the wrongs.

For some wrongs, there can never be a right again, Sara thinks and walks out into the cold sunshine of winter's day.

He's a year older than her, golden curls and smiling blue eyes, and she loves him from the moment she sees him. He's moved in across the street, and his bike glints in the summer sun. Sometimes, she sees him letting his friends ride with on the back and it looks almost like flying.

She dreams he will ask her to ride with, and she'll wear her blue scarf and the cold wind will lift them and they'll never have to stop.

One day, she hears him call her 'that creepy little kid with a killing mom' to his friends and she sits still behind the garage until the night's cold has made her hands feel like ice.

He hurts her and she loves him more still, and she wonders if she's her mother's daughter after all.

II

"You're leaving?"

He stands on her doorstep and has delivered the words as if they were about common everyday occurances and she just stares at him, disbelieving it for all she's seen the signs it had to come.

"Yes," he confirms, looking undisturbed by her surprise. "I'll still be teaching and come in as a special consultant on cases needing my entomology expertise. I've worked it all out with the Sheriff."

"But... Your job! It's the most important thing in your life!" she exclaims, biting back the rest.

Once, it meant more to you than me. Doesn't it still?

"Maybe it's time that changed," he says simply, calmly, eyes bright in the spring sun and no wall. "Maybe it's finally time to change."

The years have marked them both, mother and daughter, seasons come and gone in lines across the skin. There is still instant recognition, even for all the years passed apart.

"You look beautiful," the mother says, smiling faintly. "My little girl."

"Not anymore."

"Always. I love you. I did it for you."

"No," the daughter says. "I was your excuse. The action was yours. I'm not carrying your burden anymore. Not on top of everything else."

A silence, a slow nod, a shift of power.

"Are you happy?"

Faintly, the daughter smiles. "I hope to be, mom. One day."

He's waiting for her outside, as he said he would, and still it surprises her. He doesn't know all, but he knows enough and still he is there.

"Hope you weren't bored," she says as she walks towards him, and Grissom only smiles.

"I studied a nymphalis antiopa fluttering by," he replies, slipping his shades off. "Also known as 'mourningcloak', one of the species of butterfly where the adult survive the winter in hibernation and mate in the spring."

"Fascinating," she says, a hint of sarcasm in her voice that he only smiles wider at.

"I'll get you one for your walls. It'll brighten up your apartment."

"It needs brightening up?"

"Yes," he says, his hand brushing against hers. "It should be a home."

She dreams of the cold, freezing everything in her, winter in body and mind. Winter doesn't bleed. Winter doesn't cry. Winter is no victim. Winter is still, quiet and muffles all sound. She can rest there, hibernate as a bear would, sleeping in dreams.

Winter is no life.

When warm hands touch her skin, she opens her eyes and exhales, the dream fleeing, but the memories not.

"I was going to wake you with morning coffee," Grissom says, his hands still warm on her naked back, "but the only clean mug I could find was broken and not glued very well together."

She lifts her eyes to his and sees only brighteness in his face. He doesn't know yet. Perhaps one day she'll tell him and he'll understand, as she's always known and feared he would.

Maybe they've needed this long to crash the walls and change the season.

"Would you like me to get you a new one?" he offers, kissing her shoulder.

"No," she says firmly, thinking of fractures and scars and skin and hurt. Some wrongs have no right. There is no new life to get when something terrible happens. And still the seasons do pass, scars fade, glue holds and the butterflies mate in spring. "I'm keeping it."

FIN