I know I said Wonder Years would be updated by tonight, but I focused more on this story. Sorry if that upsets you. :( Anyway, it's a little longer than the last one and I've had to do some adding of events to this story so I've got more to deal with and quite a few planned out chapters from before.

At least, though, you have this update to keep you company until the next! ;) Enjoy.

"I just can't let you do this, Sara…I'm sorry. I truly wish there was something I could do."

Sara frowned. His words upset her and because of that, she wasn't about to back down.

"I'll give you anything you want," she argued. "Come on, what'll it take for you to let me off the hook here?"

He leaned back in his chair and bit the arm of his glasses. "If word gets out I let you bribe me…it'll make me look bad."

"Oh, grow a pair. You already look bad and you know it. Besides, it'll be our little secret. Name your price."

"Get a few pictures from whatever it's your doing," he caved.

Sara smiled and walked behind his desk. She bent down and gave him a hug. Suddenly, as she attempted to stand up, she slipped and fell into his lap. He had his arms around her waist to keep her from falling flat onto the floor and stared blankly into her big, brown eyes.

Sara gulped and shook the worry out of her head. She decided a peck on the cheek would do, but Grissom had no idea what she was doing. He looked at the path Sara was about to take, which caused him to turn his head, and instead of a simple kiss on the cheek their lips locked.

After thirteen long seconds, they separated and touched their fingertips to their swollen lips. Grissom cleared his throat when he remembered the door remained open. Nobody seemed to care about his office at that particular moment though.

Sara cleared her own throat and pushed off his shoulders to stand. "I should…be on my way. Um, Warrick might be able to take my case. If you can't pawn it off on him…I guess you'll have to take it. Sorry."

She rushed out of the office with her fingers hovering in front of he lips. She was confused to say the least and now she was terrified she might have ruined her future with that little accident.

It was no matter though, because she needed to pack and book her flight. She looked up all the necessary information and knew there would be one flying out at eight a.m.

--

The airport filled at the gates as the early morning sun shined its death rays on all non-morning people. Sara squinted her eyes against the piercing light and hauled her suitcase over to a seat at her assigned gate.

Within a matter of minutes, as she barely made it in time to catch her flight, boarding began. She mentally sighed with every step she inched to take. She especially knew how departure took what seemed like an eternity and the fact that she would be thousands of feet in the air for just as long a time with everything to do, but no heart to sit still.

When she took her seat there was already a baby whining and two people discussing whose ass really belonged in seat 23B.

Though Sara wasn't claustrophobic, she had a heavy feeling by the time she reached her final destination she would have a requited love for the fear.

She drifted off three quarters of the way through the flight to the beat of her music blasting out the rest of the place on her iPod. And she would have stayed that way if the guy next to her wasn't slumped over her on her shoulder with drool pooling on her clothes from his mouth.

Sara startled herself awake with the stranger's presence and shoved him in the opposite direction. The woman in the opposite direction was pushed by Sara's act of zero tolerance and shoved Drool Man back at Sara. Soon it escalated to game of "No Take Backs" with both participants ignoring the other one's dislike toward possession of the slumbering fool.

"Keep him on your side, lady," the older woman, who looked no day over fifty-three, demanded through gritted teeth.

"The hell I will," Sara mimicked the older woman.

"Damn it!"

"You can…have him," Sara exclaimed as she gave one final, harsh push at the woman.

The man awoke with a loud snort and reflexively punched both women in the face. The older woman took most of the guy's left fist while got off easy. She only sustained a slap at the same time the other woman suffered a bloody nose.

"Look what you did now," the older woman yelled at Sara with a pointed finger. She then mumbled something that sounded to Sara a lot like "bitch", but she couldn't be one hundred percent sure.

Ah, yes, I feel right at home. It's like a never left, right Catherine, Sara thought by addressing the other woman as her harsh coworker.

The clock read 10:52 p.m. when the plane touched down in Burlington, Vermont. Sara needed a rental car to take her south into Killington and that would take at least another hour. The first thing Sara did when both her feet were firmly planted on the ground was to grab a bite to eat at one of the fast food places in the airport. She went to one of the little snack bars and bought some kind of vegetarian sandwich, basically a salad without meat stuffed between two sub buns, and a lemon Gatorade.

She opted to get to her desired destination in the morning after she spent a night in the closets hotel. The flight, for the eleven hours and thirty-seven minutes it was, had worn her out. She attempted to get comfortable under the dirty sheets of her hotel room's bed. The single thought that ran through her mind at that particular moment was who slept in the exact bed the night before, what activities, if any, occurred in the half-ass washed linen, and why the government wouldn't give hotel's enough money to afford new sheets for every bed every time someone checked out. To Sara, it was the only sanitary decision.

"Why do you always have to be like this around me," Sara shouted at Catherine with tears in her heart. She hated to fight and she hated the disrespect from her superior.

"What do you mean," Catherine scowled as she protested against the harsh accusation from her colleague.

"I can't believe you have the nerve to ask me that! Everyone else gets the soft side of you while all you do is bitch about my emotional ties to certain cases. I'm not the only one with that fault, Catherine, and you of all people know that!"

"I don't have to deal with this," Catherine huffed off in the opposite direction.

If I could just get my hands on you, I thought with malice as things grew dark within my mind. A new night strolled in and I prepared to rip Catherine to shreads.

----

I rang the doorbell to Catherine's house and clenched and unclenched my fists several times. It took her a minute to come to the door with her heavy lids and bewildered expression. She wore light pink pajamas shorts with a matching light pink shirt promoting the fight against breast cancer. I almost rethought my violent plan.

"Can I help you," she asked in a snippy tone.

It was two in the morning so I understood so I understood the hostility, but something inside me snapped. I charged at her, as I planned, and pounded her into the wall, my right hand tightly coiled around her neck. She began gasping and I grinned. Her feet dangled a few inches off the ground at the point where her toes hardly touched the hardwood.

Both her hands weakly pried away at my threatening hand as her face contorted into an awkward mask. She looked helpless and apologetic, not herself.

"P-p-please…stop," she begged to the best of her abilities, her voice as light as air.

My grin stretched and I swear my face split. I had reached the point of no return: I was my abusive father.

----

Sara sprang straight into a sitting position in bed, gasping for new life in a cold sweat. Nightmares were the epitome of her existence since the first day her father ever laid a hand on her.

Damn this filthy hotel bed, she thought with an inward groan. She tossed and turned with no hope to a solid slumber the rest of the night.

For breakfast, Sara bundled up in her favorite sweater and covered her jeans with sweat pants. She was nowhere near ready to fully experience east coast weather. She grabbed one apple and one lemon pastry, part of the hotel's continental breakfast, and head south for the wedding.

Sara hardly stopped for a bathroom or food break with the exception of the one time during her drive when she almost fell asleep at the wheel. She She wanted to get to her friend's house quickly, seeing as how she hated travel, but she needed more time. All her energy went toward her cases back at the lab so as she did anything else, she forced herself to ease off the gas and hit the brakes.

She found a rest stop twenty minutes from the town and inhaled her first breath of icy air in a long while. If her past addiction to cigarettes hadn't given her bronchitis once or twice, the snowfall would by the end of her visit.

"You're not from here, are you," a friendly, elderly man asked with a smile. His hair was pearl white and his face was coated with wrinkles as his age determiner.

"How'd you guess," Sara flashed a polite smile.

"Not many people around here wear all those clothes. I remember back when my daughter came to visit from Arizona. Boy, she sure had a heck of a time adjusting," he lightly chuckle.

Sara smiled and nodded. "I'm starting to get that I'll freeze my butt off before I can get used to this cold."

Again, he laughed. "Well…maybe you're a tough one and you won't feel a thing."

"Maybe, but I'd have to be lucky for that."

"No, I see it in you. You've got fire. I'm sure you'll do fine," he smiled wide enough to flaunt his dentures and touch both his ears with the corners of his mouth.

Sara mimicked his action only with the slightly different out come of her gap teeth. "I didn't want to stay too, so I'm going to head back out now." Though she hated to think about it, the man reminded her of Grissom, which brought her to their last shared moment. It was far from something she wanted to remember.

"Fine by me. You take care now," he held his and smiled as he stood and headed away from the picnic table Sara seated herself at when she first got to the area.

She glanced over the thin layer of snow coating the top of the trees and dying out grass as she got into her rental. The place was peaceful and she was happy to be out of the consuming desert heat. She punched the radio dial on the car and slipped in one of her mixed CD's. The first song to play filled the Nissan Maxima that Sara automatically recognized was sung by Dave Matthew's band. Oddly and unfortunately enough, it brought her mind to Catherine yet, she still sang along as she continued to her weekend getaway.

Your turn. Let me know what you think with an awesome review I keep telling you I would love!! :)

Thanks for reading as usual. ;)