Disclaimer: Still not mine.
A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed, and thanks again to wobbear for another excellent beta job.
Also: If you have seen "Committed," you know what's coming... reader discretion is advised. (There's nothing graphic here, but better to be safe than sorry!)
"Into this night I'll wander
It's morning that I dread
Another day of knowing of
The path I fear to tread
Into the sea of waking dreams
I follow without pride
Because nothing stands between us here
And I won't be denied"
"Possession" - Sarah McLachlan
Chapter 10
The clouds and rain had managed to turn the warm weather surprisingly cool, but even so Grissom had to smile when Sara pulled out a hat to go with her long black coat.
"You know," he said, "It is still Vegas. It's not that cold."
"You may not be cold, but I am." Sara retorted, pulling the black hat over her hair. "Besides, humidity always makes my hair curl."
"I like it when it does that," he said, and Sara turned to him.
"You do?"
"Sure."
Sara settled back into her seat and looked out the window, but he noticed her trying to hide a hint of a smile.
They arrived at Desert State and met briefly with Dr. Dino, who advised Sara that Nurse McKay had been the one supervising the group therapy session that had landed Robbie in the seclusion room – according to Leon, he "freaked out," but since Leon hadn't actually been there, he didn't have much to add. Sara went off to find the nurse while Grissom went back up to the patient rooms to review what they had already documented. He was in the hallway when his cell phone rang.
"We got a hit on the DNA from the semen on the sheets," Greg explained. "Patient named Adam Trent."
"Thank you, Greg – why are you giving me the DNA results instead of Mia?"
"Oh, she's swamped, I'm helping her out. Of course, if you need me out there…"
"No," Grissom cut him off, "You're on standby in case a call comes in. In the meantime, keep processing. "
"Gotcha," Greg said before he hung up.
Grissom hung up and dialed Sara's phone.
"Sidle."
"We got the DNA results back on the semen on Robbie's sheets. Patient Adam Trent – the nail biter."
"Okay," Sara said.
"I'll meet you up in his room – it's right across from Robbie's."
"All right. See you in a minute."
Adam Trent's room was the same as Robbie's, small and cramped, with faded blue walls and a window covered in security wire. Adam, however, had drawings hanging on one wall, intricate pencil sketches of seemingly random, innocent things which morphed into something far more dangerous. Grissom had just started taking pictures of the artwork when Sara arrived, and she stopped to look them over.
Grissom lowered his camera after snapping a few photos. "This stuff is dark," he commented.
"Yeah," Sara replied thoughtfully, "'Course, I wouldn't expect Winnie the Pooh."
"Adam's subconscious was working overtime," Grissom added.
"I bet you aced your Rorschachs," Sara teased, smiling widely at Grissom. He gave her a mock glare in response, but he was happy she was relaxed enough to tease him.
"When I was in fifth grade," Sara continued, "I drew a picture of a harpooned whale. Everybody thought I was gonzo'd, but I had just read Moby Dick. Sometimes a dying whale is just a dying whale."
Grissom lowered the camera to look at Sara, surprised at first at the idea of a ten or eleven year old reading Moby Dick. He pictured a small Sara busily drawing pictures of harpooned whales, and the people around her concerned for her mental health because of it. She gave him another big, joking smile, which he returned with a raised eyebrow, but this glimpse into Sara's childhood was both interesting and a little sad – he felt her smile tugging at his heart. He raised his camera to take another photo of the drawings, trying once again to shift his focus from Sara to work.
Meanwhile, Sara reached for one of the drawings on the wall, but instead of taking it, she knocked it behind the dresser. Grissom gave the heavy piece of furniture a tug to help her retrieve it. She noticed a vent in the wall behind the dresser, and through the slats of the vent's metal cover, she could see something hidden inside. The cover came off easily, and she pulled out a stack of letters, setting them on the dresser above her.
"These are all postdated over a year ago," Grissom said, looking over the letters while Sara continued to investigate the vent. Sara pulled out a hairbrush and began to examine it with her flashlight. "It's not just his subconscious; this guy's got stuff buried everywhere," Grissom finished. Sara raised her eyes at him, and he shrugged.
"These letters," he said, after looking at them for a few moments, "It looks like they're from his mother."
"Well, that's not surprising," Sara replied, standing up from her position behind the dresser, "Even psychopaths have mothers."
"We should see what Doctor Dino knows about these letters," he said, shaking his head.
"Dearest Angel, I think of you wherever I go, You are my prince. I miss you, write to me, Your only love, Mother." Another one. Uh… "It rained today. I thought of that time when you and I got caught in the storm at the lake. The fire… I came home and made your favorite dinner. I even set a place for you…" and so on and so forth." Dr. Dino shook her head after she finished reading from the letters.
"That does not sound maternal to me," Sara commented.
"It's not," the doctor agreed.
"Incest?" Grissom asked.
"Fully consummated. Mother-son incest is rare and deeply pathological," Dr. Dino explained.
"Oedipal complex taken too far?" Sara asked.
"Oedipus implies son-to-mother. In this case, the mother was seeking the love and creating the co-dependence. We call this a Jocasta complex," Dr. Dino said.
"Oedipus's mother," Grissom added.
"When Adam was nine, his father died. His mother replaced her dead husband with her son," Dr. Dino continued.
Nine, Grissom thought, the same age I was. His own mother had grieved deeply for his father – even setting an extra place for him at the dinner table, just as Adam's mother had mentioned in her letters. In some ways she had used him as a replacement for his father – he'd had to pretend to be "Mr. Grissom" on the phone many times as he was growing up, to translate for his mother's furious signing for the plumber or the electrician.
But that was as far as it had gone. Nothing so… inappropriate, so warped as they'd uncovered here. Even in the eerie silence that descended upon their home when his father died, Katherine Grissom had never let her composure waver in front of her son. She was a proper woman, almost too proper, but also capable of moments of loving kindness.
In any case, Grissom thought, his mother's own reaction to a similar tragedy proved exactly how dangerous this patient's mother must have been to do something like that to her own child.
"That's got to mess you up," Sara said, as if reading his thoughts.
"Yeah," Dr. Dino agreed, "Adam is schizo-affective, suicidal, and a pathological narcissist. When he was a teenager, he was unable to retaliate against his mother and incapable of actual intimacy, so he started raping women."
The doctor punctuated her statement by raising her hands, as if to say 'What do you expect?'
"Always women?" Grissom asked.
"Yes, which is why I don't think he killed Robbie," Dr. Dino answered.
"We found Adam's semen in Robbie's bed." Sara explained.
"You see, that surprises me. Like any good psychopath, he rarely veers from his pattern. Adam is a single celled organism who exists solely for himself. He must have been getting something tangible in return."
"What, drugs? Cigarettes?" Sara shook her head.
"Drugs aren't his issue," Dr. Dino said, "And as far as I know, he doesn't smoke."
"So, uh, what can we learn from his artwork?" Grissom gestured to the drawings from Robbie's room, which were laid out in front of them on Dr. Dino's desk.
"Uh… he starts with an innocuous object – a tree, cat, oboe," She pointed to each of the pictures in turn, "all of which he morphs into something deadly. You can see… all of them."
"So what should be safe turns into something unsafe." Grissom said, and Dr. Dino nodded.
"Mother becomes lover."
"What about the mother? Do you have any idea where she is?" Sara asked.
"She lives near Reno."
"Based on the postmarks, it seems like she stopped writing him," Sara said.
Dr. Dino looked a little embarrassed as she explained, "Every time a letter came, a manic episode followed, then a severe depression, including one suicide attempt. So… I started sending the letters back. Eventually she stopped writing."
"We're going to have to talk to Adam." Grissom said, and Dr. Dino nodded.
"I'll arrange it."
While Dr. Dino was collecting Adam, Grissom and Sara debated briefly over who should be the one to question him.
"I didn't have much luck with him earlier," Grissom noted. "When I asked him if he did it, he told me to check his file, that he was a rapist, not a murderer."
"Great," Sara said, without much enthusiasm. "Well, I could take a shot."
"He has issues with women… that could provoke a reaction, perhaps?"
"Yeah, or he could shut down entirely."
"Why don't we see how he reacts to you, and then take it from there?"
Sara nodded her agreement just as Dr. Dino brought Adam, who was already biting his nails, into the room. Dr. Dino directed him to sit at the table opposite the two of them while she took a seat in the corner of the room, in sight but out of the way.
"Adam," Sara began, "We know you and Robbie were having sex."
"So?" He challenged, raising his hand back to his mouth and biting his nails again.
"Well, he's dead."
"I know that."
"Did you kill him?"
"Did I kill him?" He seemed to consider his answer for a few moments. "Yes."
"Why?"
"He was queer."
"But you had sex with him."
Adam leveled his eyes at Sara. "No. He had sex with me. He was the punk."
"Was it consensual?" she asked.
"I don't know."
"So why did you do it?"
"I don't know."
Wow, he's just full of answers, Sara thought. "Okay. So then what happened?"
"I took his head and I smashed it into the floor."
"And that's how you killed him?" Sara prompted, looking over at Grissom. This was an obvious lie – although someone had in fact bashed Robbie's head in, he'd been suffocated first. It was a red flag.
"What, you don't believe me?" Adam challenged, thrusting his chin at Sara, obviously bothered by the look she'd shared with Grissom.
"I'm just wondering if that's how you killed him."
"Yes. I'm saying this and this is true. And if you don't believe me, just look in the bucket in the latrine."
Sara glanced over at Grissom, which again prompted Adam to speak, as if he wanted all of her attention. "Okay… do you really want to know why I killed him?"
"Yes." Sara replied.
Adam started biting his nails again, his eyes fixed on her in a way that made Grissom want to shield Sara from his gaze. "It's because I'm crazy."
After Dr. Dino led Adam out of the room, Grissom stood, taking his kit.
"We need to check out that latrine," he said, and Sara nodded. They made their way down the hall, accompanied by a guard to point them in the right direction.
"He's lying," Sara said as the guard opened the door. "Not a word about suffocation."
She entered the room, with Grissom a few steps behind.
"Well, his nails weren't long enough to leave those tears in the pillow. And there would have been traces of blood from his cuticles," he added.
"Something is off."
Sara spotted the washing bucket, tucked in the back corner of the room against the showers. Grissom stayed behind her as she approached it. She shined her flashlight into the bucket and then pulled on her gloves to remove several pieces of clothing from the bucket. She spread the first item on the floor for a better look. The shirt – one like those all the patients wore – was covered in dried blood.
"Well, there's our blood spatter," Grissom commented as Sara continued to dig. She pulled out a white piece that had been wrapped in the rest of the clothing, a pair of plain cotton boxers.
"What is that on the crotch?" he asked, referring to the pink or red stain that appeared when Sara unfolded them.
Sara glanced at it for a second, then looked back up at him. "Lipstick."
There weren't many women at Desert State, and Sara immediately ran through the few she remembered. The African American nurse, Nanette – she had no lipstick on at all. Dr. Dino was wearing only a pale shade, if anything – but there was Nurse McKay, who had described the incident in group therapy to Sara while sucking on a cigarette, staining it with her bright pink lipstick.
Sara grabbed her coat and hat and asked the guard to accompany her back down to the outside break area to reclaim the nurse's discarded cigarette butt from the ashtray.
"Where is Nurse McKay?" Sara asked the officer as she sealed the cigarette into an envelope. "I need to talk to her."
"She's on lunch duty."
Okay, Sara thought, it's most likely her lipstick, she's the only one that wears it – we need to get into the nurse's station to see if we can find something more.
"All right," Sara said to the officer, "I can either take this and the underwear back to our lab and confirm the match, which will only extend our presence here, or… you can give me access to the nurse's station right now."
He shrugged, but he led her back upstairs.
He unlocked the nurse's station for them.
"I've got to head back to the main post – will you two be all right in here?" he asked. Grissom gave him an absent nod, and he left the two of them to their work.
"This must be the photo that Nurse McKay confiscated from Robbie during group. The missing half?" She held up the photo of a curly haired boy to show Grissom. "I found blue tape in Robbie's room. Kind of looks like Adam."
"Where would Robbie get a picture of Adam?" Grissom wondered out loud, and Sara shrugged.
"Well, they were having sex." Sara picked up a heart shaped paperweight with "J + A" etched haphazardly into the grey clay.
J & A, she thought, Nurse Joanna McKay – Joanna and Adam? Maybe she reminded Adam of his mother? Something was definitely going on between the two of them, but how did Robbie – and his death – figure into this? Sara pondered the paperweight for a few more moments before turning her attention back to the other items on the desks.
Meanwhile, Grissom was checking the drawers of the nurse's station, which all seemed to be locked. He was focused on the evidence, as usual, and the locked drawers irritated him. "I'm going to find someone who can open these drawers," he said to Sara.
It was such a small thing.
He set off down the hallway, barely hearing Sara's unconcerned response to his departure, and found a guard standing at the end of the hallway – not the same guard who had escorted them earlier.
"Excuse me," he said, "Would you know where I could find someone with a key to the drawers in the nurse's station?"
"Sure," The guard pointed down an adjoining corridor, "The main guard post is down that hallway, they should have a set of master keys. The nurses have their own keys, but I'm not sure where they are…"
"Thanks," Grissom interrupted, "I'll check with them."
He walked in the direction the guard had indicated. The main guard post – which turned out to be a fancy name for an oversized office wrapped in security-wired windows – held only the one guard, who seemed to be reading a magazine.
"Excuse me, we need a key for the drawers in the nurse's station."
"Oh, sure." The guard picked up an oversized keychain and the two of them headed back down the hallway towards the nurse's station.
Grissom noticed the closed door first – that was strange, he was certain…
He'd left the door open.
Sara had hardly noticed Grissom's departure – she'd acknowledged it with a distracted "Okay," since she was busy going through the items on the counter. The photo of a young boy was especially interesting – it really did look like Adam. So why did Joanna McKay have it? And why had it been on Robbie's wall?
The footsteps she heard approaching did not faze her either – Grissom had probably found his keys and was on his way back.
"Hey."
That was not Grissom. It sounded like –
She turned around just as Adam Trent shut the door behind him.
"Are you a spiritual person?" he asked, his hand still on the door.
"Sometimes."
Okay, Sara, stay calm, she thought, just breathe and maybe this won't be so bad. Why in the hell do they let him just wander around?!
"Do you believe that everything happens for a reason? That bad things are there to teach us a karmic lesson?" Adam asked. Sara nodded, but she wasn't really listening. He was approaching her, walking slowly, intently.
Focus, she told herself, but it was impossible.
I'm trapped in a little room, alone, with a rapist.
Goddammit, Grissom, where the hell are you?
She had seen a syringe on the counter, lying amidst the other items she'd been searching, and now she fumbled behind her back, trying to grasp it. She had no idea what was in it, but it was the closest thing to a weapon she had. She had done some self defense training, weaponless defense, but the instructions were now just scraps of thought she couldn't hold on to. If she could maybe just –
"You know, maybe all our problems can be cured by tuning in to a higher frequency." Adam continued, "There's this one guy I read, he believes that illness, anxiety and fear all occur when people are vibrating at 10,000 cycles a second."
He was almost on top of her by now, she could sense he was about to grab her. If she had any chance at getting away, now was the moment to take it.
She grasped the syringe even tighter in her hand and thrust it at him, but he was too quick. He grabbed her and the syringe went flying from her hand. She watched out of the corner of her eye as it rolled under the counter.
He was strong, too strong for such a skinny man, and he wrestled her down to the floor, holding her against his chest with one arm. She reached back to jab him with her elbow, but he only held her tighter.
She felt something sharp jabbing against her neck.
Oh, God.
Oh my God, how in the world does a mental patient get a knife?
Oh my God, He's going to rape me and then he is going to kill me.
Oh, God.
"If they could just get up to 100,000 cycles per second," Adam continued, breathless, "they'd be in the realm of sound, light and spirit, and everything would be just fine, right?"
She could feel him pressing against her back, his fingers digging into her arm, his arm tight around her chest. She wrapped her hands around his arm to try to pull him loose, but the sharp edge of the knife pressing against her neck kept her still.
"Yeah," she tried to agree, because he expected an answer, but it was hard to breathe and hard to think, hard to focus on anything.
"You know what I think?" Adam asked, "I think I'm just vibrating at the wrong frequency."
She tried to elbow him again, but he only held her tighter, pressing the knife against her neck. "Don't," he warned, and she could feel something else pressing against her back.
Oh, God, don't. Don't think about it.
"It's okay," she whispered, not sure exactly who she was talking to.
"Do you think I'm smart?" Adam wheedled. "Do you think I'm right?"
The knife was against her neck and something hard was pressing against her back and she couldn't even think.
Just keep him calm. Agree with him!
"Yeah," she panted, increasingly uncomfortable as he pulled her tighter.
"Yeah?"
Sure, whatever you say, just please, let me get out of this.
"Uh-huh."
"Do you?"
"I do," she said.
The doorknob was rattling, and Sara looked up to see Grissom's face on the other side of the glass, fear etched on his face. She couldn't hear him, but he was saying something.
Adam noticed the men on the other side of the door, but it only seemed to excite him and anger him all the more. "Don't you move a muscle, I will grind you, you bitch, do you hear me?"
He pulled her closer to him and she could feel his arm digging into her chest, the growing hardness tighter against her back.
She looked up and met Grissom's eyes, which seemed to make Adam even angrier. She flashed back to his actions in the interrogation room, how he interrupted every time she looked at Grissom, how he wanted all of her attention.
"You do not look at them, you keep your eyes on the floor," Adam growled, and Sara broke eye contact and followed his orders.
She felt as if she had just cut her lifeline.
It was over. He couldn't help her. If he smashed the glass – and he looked like he wanted to – Adam would slash her throat in a second.
Oh, God, is he going to have to –
She remembered Susanna Kirkwood, how her parents had been forced to listen while two robbers raped their daughter, and she wondered if Grissom would be forced to watch and do nothing while Adam Trent –
"Wait! Adam!"
Nurse McKay slammed her palms against the glass, screaming loud enough to be heard on both sides, and the minute Adam heard her voice his head jerked up.
"You!" he shouted, "You go away!" He took the knife away from Sara's neck, and as he pointed it at Nurse McKay Sara could see that it wasn't really a knife at all, rather a shard of something like broken pottery - but it didn't matter at the moment, because he had loosened his grip on her. She jabbed him with her elbow again and he fell back slightly, enough for her to get away. She threw herself at the door, flung it open, and burst out of the room, taking a deep breath of air as she ran down the hallway. She could hear some commotion behind her, but she didn't turn around to find out what was going on. She slowed to a walk as she reached the end of the hallway, a window covered in security wire, the harsh security lights glaring against the rain spattered glass.
Oh, get me the hell out of here, Sara thought as she leaned against the window, lowering her head to catch her breath.
It was something so small. Locked drawers and an open door.
When Grissom noticed the closed door of the nurse's station, he glanced around the guard's shoulder and caught a glimpse of Sara, struggling on the floor against the grip of Adam Trent, who was holding something sharp against her neck.
"Oh, dear God," he said, focusing on Sara.
She can't breathe, he thought.
"Open the door," he said to the guard, who was rattling the doorknob. He wanted to grab the keys from the man, but he couldn't move. He could not take his eyes off of Sara. If he glanced away for even a minute –
"I can't, it's not the right key!" the guard cried, exasperated.
"Just open it." Sara's eyes met his, and he could see her fear, as strong as his own.
I need something to break this glass.
"Please, open the door," he repeated.
If I break this glass, he'll slash her throat before I can get to her.
There's nothing I can do.
His helplessness hit him hard enough to take his own breath away.
God, please, give me another chance. Don't let him hurt her.
Almost as if she were an answer to his prayer, Joanna McKay ran up from the other direction and slammed her palms against the glass, distracting Adam from Sara.
"You!" He screamed, loud enough to be heard through the glass, "You go away!"
He pointed the shard at her, taking it away from Sara's neck and she took her chance. . She elbowed Adam hard and ran, bursting out of the room and running past him and the guard, who still hadn't been able to open the door.
Just as Sara escaped, Adam used the shard to slice his own neck open. Nurse McKay screamed, "Adam, stop!" as blood poured from the wound and he fell to the floor.
Grissom turned to find Sara, who was already halfway down the hall. Nurse McKay was screaming for a medic, and she ran into the room with the guard. Adam rolled on the floor, groaning as they tried to stop the bleeding.
Grissom felt as if he were frozen. That shard had sliced through Adam's throat as smoothly as sharp scissors through tissue paper. He was consumed by the thought of how easily it could have gone through Sara's delicate skin, how the blood pouring across the floor could have been hers.
He turned back to see Sara, just in time to watch her slam her palms against the grated window at the end of the hallway.
Adam Trent was a murder suspect. He was evidence.
But the evidence wasn't as important as the woman at the other end of the hallway.
He turned and went after Sara.
Sara moved away from the window and leaned against the nearby wall, wrapping her arms around her waist in an attempt to keep from shaking. She didn't hear Grissom approaching, but for some reason she wasn't entirely surprised when he appeared at her side.
He wanted to take her into his arms, but he quickly shook that idea from his head, at least for now – her body language was screaming "Don't touch me." He leaned against the wall next to her and waited.
After a few minutes of silence, Sara said, "I'm okay." She let her arms fall to her sides.
"Okay," he repeated.
Well, it's a good thing one of us is, he thought, because I'm not.
"I hate this place," Sara said. He nodded. There was another long moment of silence.
"When my father died, my mother came to a place like this for a while for evaluation," Sara looked at him for a second, before making a face at the memory, "It looked the same, it smelled the same… it smelled like lies."
He knew there had been a reason for her initial reluctance to work this case. "You sure you're okay?"
"Crazy people do make me feel crazy," Sara answered, with a half-smile that told him she was attempting a joke. He knew she was trying to break the tension, but he didn't feel like returning the smile.
"If you want, I can have somebody take your place," Grissom said.
And I wish you'd let me.
"I appreciate that. I do, I really do, but… I kind of made a decision to move beyond that, and… I really want to finish this case."
He was preparing an answer when they were interrupted by Nurse McKay, who had covered the length of the hallway in about three strides. "We have rules for a reason. You people come in here, disrupting things, you're unsafe. This is your fault," she spat.
"Really?" Grissom asked, incredulous – how in the world was this their fault? He had turned to face her, deliberately placing himself in between Sara and the nurse, but Sara stepped to his side to confront her.
"You seem to take your job rather personally." Sara matched the anger in the nurse's voice.
"What are you suggesting?"
"That you had an intimate relationship with Adam Trent," Sara responded.
"That's ridiculous," Nurse McKay scoffed.
"Your lipstick is on his underwear."
"I gave Robbie my lipstick sometimes, maybe he was wearing it when the whole thing went…"
Grissom interrupted, shaking his head, "We didn't find any on his lips."
"Well, that's your problem," she replied before turning back to where the medical unit had Adam on a stretcher. She walked down the hall and turned her anger towards the medics, yelling, "What are you waiting for? Get him to the medical unit, stat!"
They watched from the end of the hall as Adam was wheeled away. Grissom sighed and glanced out the window. It was still raining. "Come on, let's go."
"Go?" Sara repeated, "What about…"
"No," he cut her off, "We're not going to get anything else done here, not after this."
Sara started to argue, but she stopped herself. He was right – she just didn't want to admit it.
"You're the supervisor," Sara said, giving him another half-smile.
They drove in silence. Grissom was grateful for the rain, and the dark, because it kept his focus on the road and not on Sara, who sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window.
He couldn't help but wonder if she blamed him. He certainly blamed himself.
Leaving her alone in that room – that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was that he hadn't even thought about it. And that was the way he'd been with Sara. He had never deliberately hurt her, not really, but he had done it just the same.
He had spent the past few months trying to make up for it, trying to say "I'm sorry," for everything he had done in the past and would probably do in the future. He just never thought that would include leaving her alone to be assaulted by a mental patient.
He was silent under the weight of his guilt, all the way back to the lab.
They went through the motions of logging the evidence they'd collected that day – the cigarette, the underwear, Adam's blood spattered shirt.
"We're missing the photo," Sara blurted. "I didn't… I didn't collect the photo of Adam that was in the nurse's station."
It took Grissom a minute to register Sara's words, partly because the fact that she'd spoken at all startled him.
"And the paperweight – I didn't get the paperweight. I didn't get anything from the nurse's station."
"Sara…"
"No, Grissom, this could be important, this could be…"
Her hands were shaking. She was shaking.
"Sara." He called her name again, and she looked up at him, tears gathering at the edges of her eyes.
"We might have missed evidence because of me," she said, "It is important, it's…"
"Sara, stop," he cut her off. "This was not your fault."
She shook her head, not daring to answer. She was sure if she opened her mouth again, she wouldn't be able to stop her tears from falling. Her knees were suddenly weak, and she braced herself against the layout table.
Grissom gathered up the last of the evidence and locked it away, signing his name to the seal. He took Sara's shaking hand from the table, "Come on," he said quietly, "Let's go home."
Sara was quiet all the way back to her apartment. She held her hands clasped in her lap, almost as if she were trying to hold them still. Grissom walked her up the stairs, and followed her into the dark apartment. After she turned on a few lights, Sara turned back to him.
"I'm okay, really."
She sounded more like she was trying to convince herself.
"Okay," he said, trying not to look at the red welt on her neck.
"I'm always… better during a crisis than afterwards," Sara admitted sheepishly. "I guess it just sort of hit me."
He nodded. He felt awkward, standing in the middle of Sara's living room. He'd grown comfortable in that room over the past few months, but for some reason now he felt as if he'd just walked in for the first time. He wanted to give Sara a hug, but for some reason he couldn't move towards her.
"I'll be fine," Sara said, sitting down on one of the chairs in the living room. "Really. You don't have to stay."
What if I want to stay? What if I don't ever want to leave you alone again?
"All right," he agreed, "I'll pick you up tomorrow."
Sara nodded, but she wasn't looking at him. Grissom reluctantly turned towards the door. He paused for a moment, his hand on the knob, wondering if he should – if he could – say something more, something to comfort her.
"Gil," Sara said, and he turned, startled. She had never called him by his first name before. She was looking up at him, now, her eyes pleading with him. He let go of the doorknob, walked back across the room and knelt in front of her. He never pictured himself doing something like this, but now – he felt as if he was asking for forgiveness, and it felt like the only thing he could do.
Forgive me, Sara. Forgive me for leaving you alone.
Forgive me for everything.
Sara reached down and took his hands, holding them in hers. "Do you have to go?" She asked. He shook his head.
"You don't need to stay," she repeated, sounding as if she didn't believe it, "But would you?"