A/N: For the purpose of this chapter, there is now a very large storage room that has boxes full of evidence from old, closed cases. I don't know if there is such a room or not, but that's what makes it fiction. ;)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Getting hurt is inevitable," Penelope said, sipping her tea delicately.
"Fear of pain is a common reason to push away the people you love the most. But pain is no reason to alienate yourself, Sara. I think you know that, and I believe you're doing much better. I'm very proud of you, you know."
Sara fidgeted slightly in her seat and felt awkward as usual. "Yeah. Thank you."
The cup of tea settled back into its saucer with a light clank. Penelope leaned forward with clasped hands and looked into Sara's eyes unwaveringly.
"Don't lose the people you love," Penelope said blankly. Sara had never seen such an exposed look in her eyes before. It was a haunted look. It was unsettling.
"Love is painful," she continued, her voice suddenly more like a friend than a therapist. "The death of the ones you love is painful. But repressing that love…letting it slip away…it's a whole other kind of pain, Sara."
Sara nodded and wanted to look away, but found she couldn't. Penelope's eyes, she noticed for the first time, were brown. They looked a lot like her own.
After leaving Penelope's office, Sara bought a Mountain Dew. Then she went looking for Grissom. He wasn't in his office. He wasn't in the break room, where she found Greg throwing a red rubber ball up and down.
"Hey," she said, taking a seat beside him.
His eyes widened. "Sara!"
She smiled a little, feeling guilty. Her left hand was wet and cold from the soda can.
"How's, uh, your case going?"
One corner of his mouth turned down. "Done. That kid's in deep shit now."
Sara nodded and tried not to notice the tiny pang of regret that was tugging insistently at her heart. It could have been her case too.
"Randall White, huh?"
But Greg was shaking his head. "Nope. Tom White. Well, both of them, actually. The other kid got arrested for possession."
Her mouth was suddenly dry. She took a sip of Mountain Dew and swallowed slowly. Thought of a cold and shining pocketknife.
"Tom White? He looked so…innocuous. What was the motive?"
"Apparently he'd been harassing Porter, and Porter threatened to press charges. The kid was afraid he'd lose his scholarship, so he killed the guy." Greg shook his head but kept his eyes on his ball, bouncing it a bit.
Up, down. Up, down.
"Things never happen the way you thought they would," he said. "Just have to flow with the current, you know? Otherwise you only start drowning."
He turned to look at her and gave her a small smile.
She put one hand on his shoulder. It was warm under the cotton of his shirt.
"I'm sorry about what happened, Greg."
She met his eyes and he nodded. There was relief and wariness and friendship in his eyes. He nodded, and they were okay.
Sara liked the storage room. It was cool and dim and always quiet. And so because Grissom was at a crime scene, she offered to store the evidence from the Porter case for Greg. Because she had nothing else to do, she took her time putting it away and ran her hands over all the dusty boxes, remembering cases. Because she was morbidly curious, she took down the boxes that read Natalie Davis/Miniatures. One of them had her own name on it, and she knew the shiver she felt deep in her spine had little to do with the temperature of the room. The box read Sara Sidle miniature/kidnapping in sloppy handwritingShe kneeled down on the floor and stared at the box for a moment. Then she took off the lid.
The doll was no larger than her finger. The desert sand was precisely placed, the tiny Mustang expertly created. From under the car, she squinted at her own hand, unmoving and bleak. It was a faultless model of her very own death scene.
Intricate. Perfect. Artful. Haunting.
Wrong.
Sara looked down at her own hands and moved both of them, just because she could. Then she thought of the conditional tense.
Could've died, would've died. Should have died.
And didn't.
Sara learned that day that the storage room had bad cell phone reception. She walked outside to dial Grissom's cell number and thought about what she would say when he picked up the phone. Want to go to dinner tonight? Want to ride a roller coaster? We should do something.
"Sara?"
"Hey. Am I interrupting your crime scene or anything?"
When he spoke, he sounded slightly worried.
"Just dusting for prints. What's up? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. I just called to see when you're off work. Because I kind of wanted…"
Then she heard a big bang, and Grissom's quickened breathing, and urgent voices in the distant background, and then three more bangs. And even before her fingers went numb and her heart crawled up into her throat, Sara knew she was hearing gunshots.
"Grissom? Grissom? Are you there?"
But there was nothing, and when she pulled the phone away from her ear with a thousand desperate questions the screen only said Call Ended.
