Title: Glass Caskets (1/1)
Author: Eve (little_grey_woman42@yahoo.de)
Keywords: Angst, oddness. Definitely oddness.
Spoilers: Bully for You?
Rating: G
Author's notes: Please don't ask me where this one here came from. I have no idea.


Glass Caskets
by Eve (little_grey_woman42@yahoo.de)

Sara leaned against the door frame of Grissom's office. It had been a busy night and everybody else had already gone home, glad to leave work behind them for the weekend. She had been on her way to the locker room to call it a night too, when she saw that that the light was still on in his office and stopped in front of the entrance. He didn't seem to be aware of her presence and so she took the opportunity to just let her gaze wander around.

"Beauty conserved under glass," she finally said.

"What?" He looked up from the papers he was currently working on.

She gestured towards the cases scattered on the walls and shelves. "Your butterflies."

"I'm a scientist. I conserve them, I study them. It's what I do."

"I'm a scientist too, you know? But I don't surround myself with death, I don't take it home with me and cover up the walls of my apartment with it - even though I tend to smell like it from time to time." She grimaced at the memory.

His gaze flickered over the dozens of old and new display cases. She could see that he was still confused by her initial cryptic statement and tried to figure out what it was all about. She wasn't so sure herself what made her say it, didn't know where it came from. It was just there.

When she spoke again her voice was soft, almost gentle. "They are nice to look at, all those butterflies, aren't they? Beautiful even in death. But that's what they are, Grissom. Dead. Frozen in time and space. You can see them, look at them, study them in their glass caskets. But you can't touch them."

"Why would I want to touch them?" he asked her. "They've been so long under glass that they would be destroyed, would crumble under the slightest touch."

"You sure about that? How would you -" she asked him, then stopped herself. Sara averted her gaze from his inquisitive eyes for the first time since she stopped by and looked down at her hands. The stark whiteness of her knuckles reminded her of bleached bones and she unclasped them quickly. "Perhaps they would crumble. Perhaps they would." She tilted her head up again and her eyes shimmered. She blinked the moisture away and finally looked directly at the man in front of her. "But perhaps there would be no destruction but deliverance. Salvation. Call it what you want. They wouldn't be under glass any longer, isolated from everything that surrounds them, from the living world. They would be free again," she finished, her voice so quiet that he could hardly make out the words.

"Sara, they are dead. All of them."

She looked at him as his words sunk in. Then a smile appeared on her face, a smile so sad and full of pain that it made him want to cry. "Yes, maybe you are right. Maybe they are."

He silently watched her as she slowly turned around and walked away from the open door, closing it behind her.