Disclaimer: see chapter one.

Thanks to everyone for reviewing, you have no idea how much I appreciate every one I get - it really does make writing so worthwhile... ;o) And the fact that you take the time makes every review special.

Special thanks to my betas Bellabrew and Mrose. I know you have a life outside of literature that's why I appreciate that you take so much time and effort to read and edit my story.

It is important that you know that this story is actually complete. I have finished the full draft of it. It is typed and formatted for posting as well, we are just in the editorial process now, so I will not leave you hanging for eons.

Final note: This is set prior to GSR becoming canon I probably should have told you that before, but that would have spoiled all my fun.

Also all of the CSI characters are represented here, and a few new ones. Hope you enjoy this chapter. Please note that I did up the rating to M.

Chapter 8

There's a darkness living deep in my soul

It's still got a purpose to serve.

(Everlast – Whitey Ford sings the blues)

Sara's apartment

Aug 22, 9pm

The irritatingly shrill whine of Sara's intercom shocked Grissom awake, less than an hour after his head had hit the pillow. Sucking in a deep breath, he hobbled his way over to the offending item and punched the button on it.

"Yeah…" He stifled a yawn.

"Gil it's me, Monty."

"Oh hi, come up…4th floor." He punched the entry button and pulled the apartment door open.

A few moments later a short squat man stepped out of the elevator. His pale eyes searched the hallway, as he slid his spectacles up his nose with a thick ham-like fist. Then catching sight of a rumpled Gil Grissom, he waved to his old friend. A few seconds later the bag and the prescription changed hands.

"Thanks…" Grissom dangled the bag in front of the pharmacist. "You could have sent it with a delivery man."

A broad smile spilt the man's face. "Well, I was on my way home, but I really needed to take a look at the actual prescription just to make sure you got the right stuff." He eyed the note first, before tucking it into a pocket and then passed his friend a sheet of paper. "Just the drug information that we give out to all our customers."

"Thanks again, Monty."

"Night Gil."

Grissom closed the door softly behind him and banished the sleep from his eyes with one thick fist. Staring at the sack in his hand he moved into the kitchen and dropped it on the counter. A little rummaging in the cupboard yielded a glass and once the childproof cap had been removed the prescription bottle gave up two of the pills.

The neon lights of the city's casinos glowed fiercely against the inky backdrop of the evening sky, telling him that it was fairly late. The clock on the wall indicated the actual time was only nine o'clock. Gil Grissom had slept for maybe an hour. The trembling of his stomach and limbs indicated that this was far too little sleep and he needed to at least grab a few more hours. Which is what he intended to do, but first he had to wake Sara. I he remembered correctly, she'd had her last pills at around four and it was past the time for the next set.

Entering her bedroom for the second time in as many hours Grissom tapped the bedside lamp on and looked down at the sleeping form on the bed. Amidst the darkness and the dim light that chased it away, Sara's skin looked luminous. The bandage on the back of her neck was clearly visible from under her hair, and a garish purple contusion had grown under and around it, marring the delicate skin of her neck. The sheets had ridden down her body while she slept, exposing the pale skin of her hips and abdomen. He noted with fascination that she had several beauty marks decorating her midsection. He filed this knowledge away in his mind, savoring it for his own private contemplation at a later date and time.

The contrasting shadows on her face betrayed none of her earlier emotions. She seemed to be at peace. He was tempted to leave her, but thought the better of it. The doctor had been specific in his instructions. She needed to be awakened. A stifled moan broke relative the quiet of the room, and suddenly a peaceful sleep had turned into something akin to a nightmare. Sara's face contorted in pain and she let out a softly panicked "No…" before clutching at the covers that lay knotted around her, and yanking them up to her neck.

Grissom's hand instantly reached for her arm. It was meant to provide comfort, possibly ease her awake. Instead much to his shock and horror it drew the opposite effect. Jolted awake, Sara threw herself into a sitting position and swung her fist at him; the words "Son of a bitch…" fiercely tumbling from her mouth.

Reflexively, he blocked her blow mere inches from his face, his fingers wrapping themselves around her slender wrist in the process. Their hands hung suspended for a moment before comprehension spread across her features. Sara's horrified, "sorry", came out as a quivering retch. Yanking her arm from his grasp, the young brunette hurled herself off the bed fear, anger, and embarrassment mingling with the bile forcing its way up her esophagus as she made a mad dash for the bathroom. .

The door was closed when he arrived there, but his apprehension and concern overruled his desire to be considerate. He didn't hesitate to push it open. Sara was perched over the toilet again, one arm unsteadily supporting the balance of her weight. Her eyes were closed and she swayed slightly. There was nothing in the toilet other than a few strands of saliva, and a couple droplets of fresh blood most likely brought on by force of her stomach spasms.

Watching her suffer brought him to his knees emotionally. To him, Sara had always been a bit of an enigma. She was stronger than her delicate frame belied, so to see her so undone, so terribly vulnerable, rendered him bereft.

His arms slid around her gaunt frame, the dampness of her skin easily soaking through her own thin t-shirt and imprinting itself on Grissom's. She was trembling; her skin was cold and clammy to the touch, and her breath shallow against his chest. He shifted her weight against one shoulder and brushed away the unruly ringlets that clung to her face. Her head fell back as he drew her chin upwards, his heart skipping a beat as he took in the gray pallor of her flesh.

"Sara… You need to go back to the hospital." His voice, laced with concern, brought a negative nod from her.

"Just help me back to bed, please." Her words were little more than a whisper, but her plea tore at his heart.

"This isn't normal, Sara. I don't think this is a concussion. You might have an infection, or something." He thought back to the ER doctor's list of possible etiologies.

"I'm fine…" She assured him and pulled shakily away. "My headache is almost gone. I'm just dizzy, and nauseated…" She was hungry too, but she had no desire to put anything in her stomach that she might see again later.

Her slender legs quaked as she clutched the bathroom counter for support and turned to leave. Grissom came from behind her again, his arm once again snaking its way around her waist. The warmth of his body was something her own desperately craved. Instinctively, she bent into him as he led her out of the bathroom and back to bed. His eyes strayed back to the bruises on her thighs, as she dropped onto the mattress.

He had questions, a lot of them, and at the moment they were eating away at any and all of the self-control he possessed, but the haunted look in her eyes, begged him not to press the issue. Sliding back onto the mattress, Sara self-consciously pulled the blankets up over her exposed legs and then rested her head back against the head board, dark lashes splayed against her sallow cheeks.

"Here…" Grissom retrieved the abandoned pills from the side of her bed and passed them to her. Her dark eyes opened groggily, but she popped the drugs into her mouth, chasing them down with the water he provided.

"Sara, I'm going to call Doc Robbins to come over and take a look at you." He told her, the tone of his voice making it clear that there was no room for argument on the matter. Grasping her free hand, his fingers moved up her wrist. She eyed him speculatively for a moment before realizing that his touch, though soothing, actually had a purpose. He was taking her pulse.

"Ummm… Doc Robbins is a coroner… Are you trying to tell me I look like the dead?" She licked her lips trying to moisten them.

"No you look beautiful." His answer was shockingly honest and it had slipped out without thought. "But your color is not good." He followed up quickly.

Confusion shifted through Sara's already addled brain. There was a time in her not to distant past that a comment like that would have caused her immeasurable misery. She would have moved between the desire to believe that what he had said actually meant something, and the horrifying truth that even if it did, he would never act on it. Now she knew better than to place any stock in his words, aside from which, she reasoned, she felt far too crappy to contemplate it.

"I'm cold…" It was a statement of fact. As if to punctuate it a chill ran through her causing Sara to outwardly shudder. "I have a few track tops in my armoire. Can you please get me one?"

"Sure…" Grissom moved to the large maple storage unit, and swung the doors open. His eyes immediately falling on a loose grey crew neck with the standard burgundy Harvard silk-screened across its front. He brought it back to her.

Anxiousness flitted across her face momentarily, before she took it from him and shrugged her way into it. Her days at Harvard held the comfort of good and the pain of not so good memories. Some of them still having a direct impact on her present life, but Grissom had no way of knowing that and she didn't want to enlighten him.

"Better?" His hand drifted to hers and she trembled again.

"Yeah…" She lied. Sliding under the blankets completely, Sara turned away so he couldn't see the truth in her face.

His eyes never left her as he pulled his cell from his pocket. It was an alphabetical reality that the first person listed on his speed dial was grave shift ME. The phone rang a few times before the Coroner answered with harried, "Robbins".

"Hey, Albert..." Grissom's free hand went out to soothe Sara whose shivers still had not subsided. He rubbed her back trying to ease some warmth into her.

"Gil, I heard about Sara. How is she?"

He turned away and lowered his voice." Not too good, actually," he replied wincing against the crashing return of his migraine.

"I thought she was out of the woods and at home, according to Ecklie."

"She is, but she doesn't look good. Her skin is gray, cold and clammy. Her pulse rapid and she is severely nauseated."

The Coroner's voice dropped dramatically. "They sent her home like this?"

Grissom shoved his phone into the crook of his neck and massaged his forehead. "No, she was insistent and left AMA. They said she had a concussion and that I should wake her, and they gave her pain medication."

"She could have a bleed." He offered.

His heart seized at the idea, but he thought back to his conversation withthe Doctor prior to her discharge. "No, she had a CAT scan. They said everything was okay."

There was silence on the line for a second or two, before Robbins replied. "Well the nausea is common with a head injury. The rest can be attributed to shock. It's understandable really, a lot has happened to her in the last 36 hours. There's the emotional trauma of being involved in a shooting, losing her lover, and then the physical strain of being injured. The body has its own way of dealing with this kind of distress. Does she show any sign of diminished mental function, confusion, or disorientation?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Well, then maybe she just needs the comfort of friends and some time to heal. It's going to be hard to face this all alone. There is always survivor guilt and the feeling of intense loss."

Grissom nodded though he knew the man on the other end could not see him. "Thanks, Doc."

"No problem, but listen, if she gets worse, I would call 911 and get her back into the hospital despite what she says." Grissom could hear the man raking his fingers across his beard on the other end of the line. "Also, if you'd like I can drop by to see her after shift. I would come now but I'm already at work. Benemen from days is sick and a four car pile up on the I-90 has me stacking them in the hallway. I'm closed in here for at least the next 12 hours."

"Okay… I'll be in tonight so I'll touch base in person. Sara won't be alone; I have Catherine and Nick coming by here for a while."

"Alright… Give Sara a hug from me and I'll see you then." The line went dead with an air of finality.

Grissom glanced at his watch. It was 9:30. Depressing the alarm button on it, he set it for two hours. Catherine would be arriving around that timeIt didn't give him much time to rest, but he had a busy night ahead of him. His eyes drifted back towards the living room couch, as another tremor wracked Sara's body. The track top and blankets weren't working, the only time she'd stopped trembling was when he'd held her and she'd absorbed his body heat.Pursing his lips, he drew the blankets back and for the second time in less than 24 hours, he climbed into bed with a woman he knew he had no right to be with. Moving up behind her he placed his arms around her slim waist and pressed himself into her back. In her sleep, she stiffened slightly and then relaxed into his embrace. Slowly he drifted off into a contented slumber enveloped by her intensely individual smell.

Sara's apartment

August 22, 11:30 pm

Gil Grissom woke up with his heart pounding in his chest; his forehead beaded with sweat, and embarrassingly turned on. His first instinct, the one put forth by the thinking part of body, was to run. Simply extricate himself from their tangle of limbs, and make a beeline for anywhere other than the seductive confines of Sara Sidle's bed. His heart held him in place though, winning the momentary battle with his head. He looked down at the woman resting in his arms and allowed himself to savor it for the briefest span of time.

"Gil." There was a hand on his shoulder shaking him. Catherine stood uncertainly at the bedside taking in the sight before her and arrived at the same conclusion that Grissom had earlier. This situation was not a good idea. "Get up sleepy head…" She shook him again.

He squinted against the harsh light streaming in from the main living area and held up a hand. Pointing the sleeping figure in the bed beside him, he then drew his finger to his mouth. He didn't want to wake her yet. Sara had fallen asleep almost immediately, but it had taken her almost 30 minutes to stop shaking and finally warm up.

The petite strawberry-blonde and turned on her heel, stalked out of the room, and waited for Grissom to join her outside. He was out within seconds, his hand immediately going to his forehead and massaging vigorously.

"I knocked." Catherine indicated the front door and pacing. "You know that…" she threw her chin towards the room he'd just exited. "…is not a good idea, Gil." Sheenunciated each word carefully. "Not for you and certainly not for Sara."

Grissom waved her off. "She was freezing. Couldn't warm up, I… I wasn't willing to leave her like that." Truth be told, he tried, but just couldn't make himself do it.

Catherine scrutinized him, her arms folded tightly across her chest. "Gil, that's bullshit and you know it." She shook her head.

"Well, Cath why don't you just say how you really feel."

"Don't mind if I do." She poked him in the chest. "She's been sleeping with Luke Denton for about two months. He's dead. She saw the whole thing. Now I'm no Psychologist, but the ramifications of that have to be traumatic and the more she felt for him the worse it is going to be for her."

His migraine had receded with the few hours of sleep he'd managed, but with each consecutive word Catherine was drawing it back to the forefront. For months, Grissom had denied that Sara had felt anything for the man. It was only sex. He kept telling himself that, even though he knew it was a fantasy. However, it was his fantasy and one which had managed to keep him sane and civil, but the logical and intelligent part of him knew that this wasn't rational. He knew this, with as much certainty, as he knew that Sara wasn't the type to share her body with someone without there being some kind of emotional commitment. He had believed that since Luke was only in Las Vegas for a short time, when he left the relationship would end. He had pointedly ignored the fact that when the man left there was the horrifying possibility that the woman he loved would go with him.

Catherine Willows took his silence to mean that she was free to continue. "Based on your past non-relationship and your penchant for jerking her around… This… that…" She nodded towards that bedroom again. "Notoriously bad idea, in fact the absolute worst you have ever had." Her voice softened as observed the pain in his eyes. "Look, I'm just saying, be careful. Give her time to heal, emotionally. This…" she threw a thumb back towards the sleeping CSI, "would be easyto jump intobut it would do neither of you any good to get involved, right now. It's like jumping into a marriage with someone after a really bad break up. Doomed to certain failure..."

His fingers made a slow trek across his mouth bringing with it a false mask of indifference. "I was just trying to keep her warm."

"Right, live in denial much, Gil?" She was more than a little exasperated.

He held up a hand, frustration lacing his words. "Believe what you want. Regardless of what you think, she has been really sick since we arrived home. She hasn't eaten, she is severely nauseated, and the last time she got up she was really cold. She had some Tylenol #4s two hours ago; she can have another two at 1:30. I'm going to wake her and then I have to get to the lab."

Catherine's eyes bored holes into his back as he snatched up his bag and entered the washroom. A flush and the tap running sounded out in the main room and a short while later he emerged sporting a fresh green golf shirt, and black pants. Pointing towards the open door, he went back in to say good bye. He returned a second later.

"I woke her. She moaned and went back to sleep. Leave her until she's is due for her next pills. There's food in the fridge, Nicky will be by at 3 or 4." With that Grissom disappeared out into the hall, Sara's front door closing silently behind him.

TBC