Exhausted. Helpless. Confused. Lost. Stranded. Numb. Scared. These were all the things Sara Sidle was at this, this dark hour. Hardly able to function due to the mind-crippling pain that shot up through her back and legs, she scrounged for air, lying underneath a car in the middle of what she guessed was the desert. Clumps of wet sand and grit stuck between her fingers and under her nails and she feebly clawed at the ground. No hope of becoming unpinned. Life seeping from her body.

Oh, my little one
Sleep doth come to whisk you away
And ever shall you go with a lightened heart
I will see you there and say
In my arms, if you will, stay, until we part
Another day.

She could only think of Grissom. Words he'd spoken to her, whispered to her over warm bedsheets and peaceful sighs. Such a quiet, peaceful, secret happiness they'd shared, unbeknownst to anyone. She had waited her entire life for such an envious tranquility. How romantic it was. Strange and seductive. Subtly powerful and consuming. Comfortable.

How is it that she was where she was? She remembered only a girl, unfamiliar to her. She had a remote suspicion of recognition. Who was she? It didn't matter. Where was she? Her mind presented no answers. In instinctive defense of her body, she resolved that there was no sense in wasting her energy on indeterminate questions. She tried to focus on breathing.

Idle minds suffer long. She was cold. The pain was unbearable. Was she dying?

So cold.

Water was siphoning into the recess where she lay, pinned. The flooding pushed filth and mud onto her face and lips, and into her hair. Her eyes stung with grit and tears.

As the shock wore off, she began to understand her fate. Regardless of how she'd gotten there, she was stuck. Probably no one knew where she was. She felt a heat that was either pooling blood or her imagination. She might never be found. She might never see her apartment again. She might never be at CSI again. She might never say goodbye to her friends... She might never see Grissom again; a love she had waited so long to have reconciled.

It was too real.

A recent interest in the writings of William Shakespeare sparked a memory of a sad and desperate quotation she had once read. Absence from those we love is self from self -- a deadly banishment. She felt so intolerably alone.

Her head was hurting. The weight pressing down on her was unbearable.

She tried to speak, if only to hear a voice; her voice; any voice. She gurgled a bit. A small, muffled "Help" was all she could sputter. She closed her eyes to protect them from the rain. She shivered.

I will see you there.