A/N: Thank you guys so much. I can't even begin to express how much your reviews and comments and emails mean to me. I'm so happy that you guys are enjoying the story! Anyway, I know you guys thought I was evil with the cliffhanger from last chapter, so I promise no more of those. I hope you guys enjoy this new chapter :)

Sara's screams of pain were the most horrific sound Catherine Willows had ever heard in her entire life.

Somehow she had managed to lift Sara up off the ground-- kicking and thrashing-- and threw one of her arms around her shoulders to keep her up. Because of her bad ankle she couldn't carry her on her back, which made things a lot more difficult than they already were.

Sara's wound was bleeding so much now, and Catherine was internally berating herself for not noticing it before now. Either she had the world's worst observation skills, or Sara had been damn good at hiding it. And she knew she had hid it from her. There was no way she couldn't have known she had been hurt... but Catherine would chew her out for that later.

Right now all that mattered was getting them both somewhere they could stay that was safe where she could clean Sara's wound.

"It's okay Sara, it's all going to be okay," Catherine continued to whisper to Sara in some attempt to get her to calm down. She didn't know exactly why she was whispering; she couldn't even hear herself over the sound of her cries.

"I'm so sorry, Cath!" Sara cried as Catherine dragged her along.

"I know you are Sara, it's not your fault," Catherine tried to soothe her, glancing around the desolate darkness for some sort of sign. She had absolutely no idea what they were going to do. "Sara honey, I need to put you down for a second so I can get a flashlight, okay?"

"P-Please forgive me," Sara was sobbing now, hysterical. It didn't take a CSI to realize that she was going into shock, probably from blood loss.

"Sara, listen to me," Catherine told her, helping her safely lay down on the dirt. "This wasn't your fault, okay? But you need to calm down, otherwise you might pass out."

She watched Sara's face and saw that her pupils weren't dilating, that there was a thin layer of sweat starting to form on her forehead and above her lip, that her face was paler than usual. She needed to act fast if she was going to keep her conscious.

"Sara, look at me," Catherine ordered her, her tone gentle but firm. When Sara wasn't making eye contact, she gently placed both hands on either sides of her face and forced her to look at her. "Look at me, Sara... it's going to be okay. I promise. I know that probably doesn't sound like much coming from me, but you have to trust me, okay?"

"C-Cath, I'm s-so s-sorry." Sara's voice trembled, and just the sound of it broke Catherine's heart.

"Shh, I know you're sorry," Catherine soothingly whispered. "But right now that doesn't matter. I need to get you somewhere safe so I can take care of you, okay?"

She wasn't sure if she had gotten through to her or not, but Catherine didn't bother wasting anymore time and grabbed the backpack Sara had packed for them. She rummaged through it until she found a flashlight and flicked it on.

Leaning over Sara, she flashed the light on where she thought her wound was. Pushing up her CSI vest and her shirt as best she could, she shined the light on it and felt her stomach jerk. Blood was obscuring her view of the actual wound, but she could tell from just looking at it that it was a bullet hole.

"...S-Sara..." Catherine stuttered, glancing up at her face. "...How... how did you..." How could she have possibly managed to hide it all this time? The pain had to have been unbearable.

Sara's face was stained with tears and sweat, but her sobs were quickly dying down. It wasn't because she was calming down. She was slipping into unconsciousness.

"Shit," Catherine cursed. Carefully lifting Sara into a sitting position, she slid the straps of the backpack around her shoulders before hoisting her onto her back. She didn't care if her ankle was screaming at her to be amputated. Sara had done this, and she would too.

She moved the flashlight back and forth in front of them as she tried to walk down the dirt road. There had to be something around here... there had to be somewhere they could go. A shed, an abandoned building, a house of some sort. Anything would do.

"Sara, stay with me!" Catherine shouted, trying to nudge her awake. She could feel that her body was completely limp now. "Did you hear me? I said stay with me, Sara!"

She didn't get a response, and Catherine felt panic begin to swell in her chest. She couldn't do this, she was only one person. She feared Sara wouldn't be able to hold on long enough for her to find somewhere for them to take shelter in. Sara would die, and it would be all her fault.

Suddenly she felt Sara's faint heartbeat against her back. It was slow, and it was weak, but it was there. She was still alive.

No, she could do this. She had to. She promised Sara it would all be okay, and Catherine Willows was a woman of her word.

"Hang on Sara, I'm going to get us out of here!" Catherine informed the unconscious woman, starting to sprint. She didn't know how she could possibly be running, but adrenaline was her ally now and she wasn't going to take that for granted. She had one last chance to make this right.

Catherine flashed the light on an old sign some twenty yards away and squinted to read the writing. The wooden sign was rotted and the paint was chipping away from years of neglect, but she was able to make out some of the letters. It was a sign for an old barn.

Flipping around, Catherine made a full 360 degree scope of the area. If there was a sign, then the actual barn had to be close by. She just had to hope and pray now that it hadn't been torn down yet.

She looked at the sign again, and saw the faded word "NORTH" inscribed on it. She scrambled for her brain to remember what direction they were heading in. Vegas city limits, from their crime scene, was west. They hadn't made any turns, so they had to still be traveling west.

Catherine turned off the dirt road and started running north. This was it, her last chance. If this didn't work, then there was no more hope.

She stopped when she thought she saw something in the line of the flashlight. She cautiously moved it across the area in front of her. If there was a wild animal out there with them, the last thing she wanted to do was provoke it.

She took a few small steps forward, keeping the light in front of her as a guide. Then she saw it-- the dark outline of a building not even 100 feet from where she stood.

"We're here, Sara!" Catherine exclaimed, running toward the building in earnest. "We made it!"

She knew Sara couldn't hear her, but she wasn't sure who the reassurance was more intended for-- Sara or herself.

--

The old barn left much to be desired, but Catherine wasn't complaining. Under these circumstances, the old beat up piece of shit seemed like a suite in one of Sam Braun's hotels.

She cracked the door open and flashed the light inside, making sure it was empty. Keeping the creaky door open with her foot, she walked inside and cleared a spot on the ground to place Sara. Kneeling down on her knees, she removed the backpack from her shoulders and dumped out its contents before placing it on the ground to serve as a pillow.

Carefully removing Sara from her back, mindful not to cause anymore damage to her injuries, she gently set her down on the dirt patch she cleared out, setting her head down on the bag. Sitting with her legs crossed in front of her, Catherine grabbed the second flashlight from off the ground and flicked it on, placing it in her lap for a clear view of Sara's wound.

"I know it's not exactly the Ritz," Catherine tried to smile a little as she used the other flashlight to look for first-aid supplies. "But it's better than nothing, right?"

The building was filled with cold, eerie silence, and Catherine had never felt more alone. If Sara was awake... if she could just open her eyes, Catherine knew she would know exactly what to do.

Finding a small first-aid kit Sara had packed, Catherine opened it up and removed a roll of gauze and a small bottle of rubbing alcohol. It wasn't much, but it would have to do.

Unfastening Sara's vest, Catherine removed it and slid it under Sara's body to serve as a makeshift bed.

"I'm sorry, Sara," Catherine apologized as she tore off a large portion of her blood-stained shirt. "I'll buy you a new shirt after this, I promise."

For the first time Catherine got a real view of the wound, and her heart jerked with a thousand different emotions at once. Anger, fear, sorrow. Anger for the people who had hurt her, anger for Sara at not showing it to her before, anger at herself for not noticing it in the first place. Fear for what was going to happen, fear of what could happen if she didn't do this right. Sorrow for how much pain she was in.

Opening up the small bottle of alcohol, Catherine squeezed a few drops onto a portion of gauze. She gently took one of Sara's hands in hers as she began to carefully clean the areas around the wound.

"This stuff must sting, huh?" Catherine asked her, knowing she wouldn't get an answer. Talking to the unconscious Sara was more of a way to keep her own sanity, and at the same time she hoped that just somehow, there was a little part of Sara that could hear her. "I've always hated it. I used to fall off my bike a lot when I was a kid, and I was convinced my mother only used this to torture me."

Dabbing up the excess dried blood, Catherine set the gauze aside and pulled out a small roll of bandages. Since there wasn't much to them, she tore off a piece of her own shirt with her teeth and gently placed it over Sara's wound before starting to roll the bandages around it.

"I'm going to need to lift you up," Catherine told her. Slipping one of Sara's arms around her shoulders, she hoisted her into a sitting position so that she could bandage her abdomen more easily.

Once the roll was empty, Catherine secured the bandages with a healthy portion of tape before helping Sara back onto the ground. With a sigh she grabbed their last water bottle and unscrewed the lid, starting to take a sip...

But she stopped, looking down at Sara. Sara needed the water a lot more than she did.

Grabbing some extra gauze, Catherine poured some water on it, careful not to pour too much. Once it was wet, she used it to rub the sweat off of Sara's forehead and her upper lip.

She glance down at her face, looking at her split lip from fighting with the suspects at the crime scene, at the swollen appearance of her eyelids from sleep deprivation. And then she saw the bloody scratch from their argument in the hallway that had happened just earlier that day in the lab. Her eyes filled with tears.

"...I'm so sorry, Sara," Catherine whispered to her. "I'm so sorry for everything. This is all my fault. I should never have been so horrible to you. Of course you can do your job, you're a hell of a lot better at it than I could ever hope to be. You're a strong, determined, intelligent CSI, and I'm so sorry that I ever made you think otherwise."

Quickly wiping at her eyes before the tears could fall, Catherine took a deep breath and let it out shakily. "I don't know why I was always so hostile toward you. If I hadn't been, maybe... maybe we could've been friends," she told her. "I guess I was just... jealous. I mean look at you," she made a motion to her unconscious form. "You're beautiful... you're smart, you're funny... you've got everything going for you. Everyone at the lab loves you. And... I guess I was just hostile toward you because... that's everything that I've always wanted."

Dusting away old debris with her hand, Catherine cleared a place on the dirt to lay on, setting herself down right next to Sara. She quietly watched her sleep. Even as she slept, she was positively the most beautiful thing Catherine had ever seen.

Her brown eyes had always been one of her best features. Her cheeks were the same shade as her lips, a gorgeous rosy pink color. Catherine often wondered what it would be like to kiss those lips, just once. What it would be like, just once, to taste her, to revel in the feeling of her perfect body pressed ever so slightly to her own. She wondered what it would be like to look into those almond brown eyes, just once, and see that Sara felt the same way about her as she did about Sara.

"I've got a better chance of Ecklie doing something responsible," Catherine muttered to herself. Rolling over onto her side so that she was facing Sara, she reached out and gently brushed a strand of brown hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. Her scent hit her, and Catherine inhaled greedily, wanting to remember how she smelled. Despite all that had happened, she still smelled like heaven.

Letting out a sigh, Catherine slid her hand into Sara's and slipped her eyes closed.

--

Catherine awoke with a start, sitting up so fast the room spun. Feeling her heart pounding violently in her chest, she tried to regain her bearings.

Suddenly it all came flooding back to her. With a sigh, she sat up and looked down at Sara who appeared to still be sleeping. Grabbing one of the flashlights, she turned it on and checked Sara's wound to see if the bleeding had slowed. Blood had seeped through the bandages, but it appeared to have stopped for the time being, which Catherine was grateful for.

Shining the light on the contents of the backpack Sara had brought, Catherine noticed a small assortment of granola bars, and she couldn't help the smile that crossed her face.

Sara. She was always prepared.

Catherine grabbed one and tore into it, taking a big bite. Hey, it wasn't a free continental breakfast at a five star hotel somewhere on the Strip, but she wasn't complaining.

She chewed slowly, trying to make the meal last. She glanced up at the sky through the holes in the old ceiling and saw that it was still dark out. She figured it had to be early in the morning now, maybe 3:00 or 4:00 AM.

After three big bites, her breakfast was eaten. Catherine got to her feet and dusted off her jeans to stretch her stiff muscles. She winced as she put pressure on her ankle; she may not have noticed it before, but running around on it was finally starting to catch up to her. The pain had returned with a vengeance.

She heard a voice and quickly looked down at Sara. She was slowly starting to stir, and she let out a strangled moan.

Catherine was back by her side almost immediately, grabbing the rest of the water bottle she had opened up earlier. Placing a hand on her forehead, she gently rubbed back and forth. "Hey... hey girl, are you with me again?"

It took a minute or two, but Sara finally cracked her eyes open, just a little. Catherine's face instantly broke out into a smile.

"There you go," Catherine smiled, unscrewing the lid of the bottle and holding it up to Sara's lips. "Welcome back."

"...Cath?" Sara asked, her voice hoarse and raspy. It sounded foreign even to her own ears.

"That's me," Catherine nodded. "Here, drink this."

Catherine tilted the bottle so that Sara didn't have to strain to reach it, and slowly poured the water into her mouth. Most of it dripped down her chin and Catherine wiped it off.

When Catherine moved the bottle away, Sara took a few moments to survey the area. She couldn't remember exactly what had happened, but this place didn't look familiar. "...Where are we?" she hoarsely asked.

"In a barn," Catherine informed her. "You passed out, so you probably don't remember much. But Hell has seemed to grant us a reprieve with this place."

"You carried me here?" Sara asked, observing Catherine's handiwork on her abdomen. "How...?"

"I'm tougher than you think, Sidle," Catherine grinned.

Sara tried to laugh, but with the dryness of her throat it simply resulted in a violent coughing fit. Catherine grabbed the water bottle and held it back to her lips.

"Here," Catherie encouraged her. "Small, slow sips."

Sara did as Catherine instructed her until her coughing had subsided. Once it was over she was exhausted and she panted to try and catch her breath.

"You okay?" Catherine asked, concerned. "Are you in pain?"

"I'm... I'm in pain but... I'm fine..."

"Then you're not fine," Catherine informed her, searching through the remnants of the backpack on the dirt. "Where's that aspirin you took earlier?"

"It's... it's not aspirin," Sara told her, her breath still trying to escape her. "It's... pain meds..."

"...Prescription?" Catherine asked, raising an eyebrow. She saw the orange bottle and picked it up, shining the light on it so she could read. "Vicodin? How did you score this?"

"The... lab explosion..." Sara explained. "I didn't need them..."

"Sneaky," Catherine teased, shaking the bottle. "Two pills left," she shook the bottle. "The RX calls for six..." she trailed off, before looking down at Sara. "You've been taking them this entire time, haven't you?"

Sara didn't answer, her closed from the pain.

"You didn't want me to find out about the gunshot wound..." Catherine continued, the pieces starting to fall into place. "But you were still in pain... so you took the pills to help."

Sara finally cracked both eyes open, waiting for Catherine to yell at her, waiting for her lecture. But it never came.

Instead, she saw tears were running down Catherine's face and her eyes widened in surprise. "...Catherine? What..."

"You... you were in that much pain?" Catherine asked her, wiping at her eyes. "And you still carried me?" she asked. No answer. "Why? You should've told me! I probably just made it a lot worse!"

"I didn't want you to worry," Sara whispered, trying to move her hand to offer Catherine some sort of comfort, but her arms and legs felt like weights.

"That's the last thing you should've been worried about!" Catherine told her, more tears replacing the ones she wiped away. "I never would've agreed to let you carry me if I had known!"

"Cath..." Sara softly told her, "It's not your fault... I chose not to tell you... it's my fault..."

"No," Catherine shook her head. "It's not your fault Sara, so don't you dare think that. You saved my life, for Christ's sake!" she told her, the tears overflowing in her eyes and running down her cheeks. "If you hadn't been there... if you hadn't stopped them, they would've killed me."

She jumped when she felt a hand on her own, and looked up to see that Sara was holding her hand. Even in her battered state, she could still manage to offer comfort.

"The way I see it, Cath," Sara whispered to her, "You've just returned the favor..."

Catherine tried to laugh despite her heavy heart, nodding her head a little bit. "I guess that's true," she conceded. Popping the cap off of the medicine bottle, she shook out the last two pills. "Here," she held them out to her. "Take these. They'll make you feel better."

"What about you?" Sara asked her, her face contorting into a frown. "You carried me here... your ankle must hurt."

"Jesus Sara, you were shot and you're worried about my ankle?" Catherine asked, but her smile never disappeared. "I just don't get you, you know that?"

Sara laughed a little. "Like I've never heard that one before."

Catherine finally managed to get Sara to take the pills. Since she was having trouble swallowing, Catherine mashed them up and fed them to her with the rest of the water.

"There," Catherine sighed, tossing the empty bottle onto the ground. "Those should start to help soon. In the mean time, you should eat something," she told her, grabbing a granola bar from off the ground. Tearing the package off, she tore off a small piece and held it up to Sara's mouth.

Sara chewed the bite slowly so that she wouldn't end up choking again, before shooting Catherine a wry smile. "Breakfast of champions."

"Hey!" Catherine chuckled. "You're the one who packed it!"

"I know," Sara smiled, slowly slipping her eyes closed. "I'm just saying."

"You should eat a little more before you fall asleep, Sara," Catherine told her. "You need to regain your energy. You lost a lot of blood."

"...fuckin' thing..."

Catherine and Sara immediately both looked at each other.

"...Did you say that?" Catherine whispered, knowing she hadn't.

"No," Sara whispered back. "You?"

Catherine shook her head.

They both grew silent, listening.

"Did you get it done?" came one voice.

"Yeah, he's dead as a doornail," came the reply.

There were more faint voices, voices they didn't recognize. The sound of a car rolling to a stop filled the silence, and headlights were shining in through the old barn doors.

"...Oh fuck," Catherine whispered.

TBC

A/N: Okay, I lied. Oops.