Chapter 26
Dying Truth
Sara tensed slightly at the unexpected touch as she felt his hand placed comfortingly on her shoulder, he knew better than to remove it however and watched as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the wind snatched at her hair.
He knew why she had come back, knew why she had had to, knew her too well to let her come alone.
"Thank you..." she whispered, quietly, without opening her eyes.
"For what?" he asked softly, placing his other hand on her free shoulder and pulling her close to him, savouring her warmth and the way her chest rhythmically rose and fell beneath the arms he draped, protectively across it.
"For coming back here, for coming with me...I knew you didn't want to, it was selfish of me to let you come but I needed you..." It was about the only vulnerability she had ever shown towards him, towards anyone, admitting that she needed another human being, that she needed him.
He placed a gentle kiss on her neck before answering, "There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you Sara, whatever it means for me, you know that, and I know you feel the same way about me..."
"I do, really I do, I just..." she faltered, unsure of how to say what she wanted to, what she had to.
"It's alright, I understand...It's OK to admit that you need someone, it's OK to say that you're the victim, that you need help, that you need to let someone else make the sacrifices for a change...I'm glad I came, and not just for you, we both needed this..."
She smiled softly, feeling a little better at the gentle reminder that he knew her, knew her well enough to know how she felt and what he could say to remind her that she was human and that she needed help sometimes, that it was OK to be afraid and to ask the impossible of the people who could not say no, but she stilled felt that she had to tell him, for her own sanity if nothing else,
"We live to learn. When Natalie...That night, out here, under that car, afterwards, I was terrified to do anything that would have made me remember, made me relive it...I tried to ignore it, to do what I always do, to run away, to hide from the desert, in Vegas." She laughed humourlessly at the bitter irony of this before continuing, "I couldn't...Obviously. I thought that I couldn't do any of it anymore, that I couldn't be me because me had had enough of everything. I felt haunted in my own skin and I couldn't explain it to you because I couldn't explain it to myself, I was falling to pieces, coming apart at the seams and I, I didn't know what to do...I tried to get away from everything that I was, everything that made me me, I almost lost everything that makes it worth being me...It was only when I was on the other side of the world with nothing left that I realised how stupid I had been. I realised that who I was wasn't the problem, it was the way I had dealt with it, or not dealt with it to be more accurate...I never had closure for anything, I never dealt with anything, I just pretended that it had never happened, until even that didn't work anymore...The ghosts I had buried for so long all came back to haunt me at once...They destroyed me..."
"Not quite, thank God..." he breathed softly,
"No, not quite...I realised that I could choose, that it was up to me, not Natalie Davis or Hannah West or my father or my past, I could choose..."
"I'm glad you chose this."
"I'm glad I chose this too...I'm glad I chose you, I'm glad I chose to become so damned dependent on a middle-aged, bug-obsessed ex-CSI that everything I had and am fell apart because of one little bullet..." she laughed weakly through her tears.
She turned around to face him and he wrapped his hands gently around her waist, brushing her forehead lightly with his lips before saying,
"And I would choose said little bullet for the crazy, stubborn workaholic woman that I call my wife and who I stupidly fell in love with and even more stupidly chose not to spend every second I have left with every single time...I would choose you, always."
"It's funny...You would have thought, after everything that we've seen, all these years of doing this job, that we would have learned that life is precious...Some more so than others...You know, they say that it's simple, either everyone matters, or no-one does, but whoever 'they' are, they're wrong, some people matter more than others...Before I had this, I couldn't understand that...I said that I would never be able to take a life, I didn't understand how Catherine, or my mother for that matter, could, comfortably, if it came down to protecting someone that they loved, to stop someone from...I understand now, life is precious, buy depending on what you choose to do with it..."
Tears were streaming down her cheeks without permission but she made no attempt to stop them as a confused tangle of memories from the last few days overwhelmed her. She could not quite bring herself to believe everything that she had done and everything that had been done to her in these last few days; how she was still standing she was not quite sure...
"Come on..." he said, quietly, leading her back to the car.
They both paused to look out at the great expanse of desert that stretched back to claim the horizon in front of them. The innocent entrance to the time whose black heart and twisted maze of tunnels extended for miles beneath them, something that from the surface, was impossible to tell, as was the secret that it now protected, just one more in the infinite viper's nest of hidden truths and lies that the all-consuming desert contained. Hiding how many bodies? How many lives ruined and destroyed out here, the ghosts buried in the hot earth where they would be held indefinitely...The baking yellow ground above calm and innocent, concealing the pit of secrets they would never find below...
...
Catherine wandered into the reception of the crime lab, the familiar pang of longing tugging at her heart strings as she re-entered the familiar world she had left again trying to wrestle with herself to see if she had any regrets, something she swore she would live her life without.
As she did she saw a slim woman with large, brown eyes hovering by the desk, clearly looking out of place,
"Can I help you?" Catherine asked, pausing and reminding herself that she did not work here a second too late,
"I'm not sure...I'm looking for Sara, Sara Sidle?" she said, looking with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion,
"I don't think she's here." Catherine replied, a little wrong-footed by this. In the twelve years she had worked in Vegas she could not remember anyone ever coming calling for Sara, the brunette was far too private to allow anyone from her past to meet her at work and risk running into her colleagues, something Catherine bitterly resented,
"Oh, thank you." The woman replied, quietly, turning to leave.
"Can I pass on a message? Tell her that you came looking or anything?" Catherine asked, having one last stab at learning something about her enigmatic ex-colleague who, she realised now that she actually thought about, she knew depressingly little about.
"No, it wasn't important." She replied, a faint smile tugging at her lips that was eerily familiar to the blonde.
"Alright then..." Catherine muttered the now empty reception as her quarry left her.
Shaking her head, she moved through the lab to the break-room where she found most of the current graveyard shift, minus Sara and, curiously, Russell.
"Cath!" Greg and Nick both greeted her, jumping to their feet and helping to relieve her of the food and coffee she had brought them all,
"Hey." She said, smiling, "Weird thing happened to me a second ago-"
"See that proves you've been away too long," Nick told her, smirking, "Weird things in Vegas now warrant comment."
"Hush." She chided him, slapping him good-naturedly on the arm as Greg and Morgan broke into the pizza boxes, exclaiming in delight at their contents, "This was weird for Vegas, believe me." She told him,
"What was it?" Greg asked, indulging her as they all dived in to the pizzas,
"Someone I've never seen before in the reception area, asking for Sara." Catherine said conspiratorially.
"Really?" Greg said, mockingly, "I tell you Cath, the legendary grapevine in this lab has withered since your departure."
"Shut up." She told him with a grin, "You two know anything about that?" she asked,
"Possibly...Possibly not..." Nick replied, infuriatingly,
"Who was it? What did they look like?" Greg asked, taking pity on her as her eyes bulged and he sensed Nick to be in imminent danger of being throttled by a mad, pizza-wielding FBI agent.
"A woman, older than me, brown hair and eyes, slim, and the weird part was, I felt like I knew her, though I'm sure I've never met her before..." she said, pensively,
Nick and Greg exchanged a significant look before Greg put her out of her misery saying casually, "I think you may have run into the elusive Mama Sidle..."
"What?" Catherine gasped, eyes streaming as she choked on a piece of pineapple she had inhaled.
"Yeah, she showed up a couple of days ago with information on the investigation, we had no idea who she was until Sara said..."
"Like mother like daughter apparently..." Catherine muttered, quietly, "Sara never mentioned her; I just assumed that she was dead...What about her father?"
"He is dead..." Nick said, grimly,
"What?" Catherine said, eyes narrowed, "What do you all know that I don't?" she asked,
"Sara hasn't told you?"
"No, she's been a little too busy dealing with psychotic, homicidal maniacs to sit me down over tea, what Nicky?"
Nick took a deep breath before deciding that Catherine had a right to know and saying quietly, "You know Sara was in foster care?"
"Yes Nick, I'm asking for something I don't know." She said, pointedly,
"She never told you why she ended up there?"
"No...Nick-"
" She was put into foster care after her mother murdered her father when she was twelve, he had abused both of them for years, her mother plead insanity and ended up in a mental institute, she didn't have any contact with Sara again until she was nineteen..."
"Jesus..." Catherine breathed, "I knew that she was hit hard by cases involving domestic abuse but...God I thought, I don't know what I thought but not this...I'll never understand how a parent can do that to a child, least of all their own..." she murmured,
"I know..." Nick murmured, as Greg nodded in agreement,
"She's having a Hell of a week isn't she?" Catherine said, shaking her head...
"Tell me about it."
They were quiet for a moment, enjoying one another's company until Morgan said, "Anyone seen DB?"
"I met him outside as I was coming in; don't know what he was doing but he said he'd only be a second." Catherine told them,
"I'll go and find him..." Greg offered, making to stand up,
"No, it's OK Greg I'll go." Finn offered, "I'm nearly done anyway..."
...
Finn moved quietly outside to join Russell, he had been a difficult man to find, and now she knew why, standing in a deserted courtyard, watching as the last remnants of a little fire burnt themselves into ash.
"Everyone's missing you inside..." she said, quietly, coming up to join him,
"Yeah, yeah I'll be in in a second, just give me one minute..." he said, distractedly,
"OK..." she said, quietly, turning to leave before finding that she could not let this lie, "What are you doing DB?" she murmured, softly,
"I'm just tidying up some loose ends Jules, nothing you need to worry about."
She was so worried that she did not react to his use of her first name, abbreviated at that, "I do worry...I worry when I catch you outside burning what looks like evidence, what's going on? Are you OK?"
"No, no I'm not 'OK'." He snapped, "A woman I care about, a lot, has lost more than she ever believed to be possible a week ago, and everyone's just moving on and pretending that it hasn't happened, it's not right..."
"Maybe, maybe not, but it's what she wants..." she told him quietly,
"I don't think any of this has been about what she wants...As these things so often do, this stopped being about the victim a long time ago, and what justice can we offer her for what she's been through?"
"Hannah's dead, she's paid the ultimate price for what she's done..." Finn said,
"That's not good enough Jules, it's not good enough!" he snarled, "She didn't pay the ultimate price, Sara did, there are worse things in this world than dying, dying is easy, living in Hell is hard, and God knows Sara's been through Hell these last few days..."
"She has, but she's still here, she's still fighting, you can't give up on her now..."
"I've not, believe me I've not, she's incredible...She's seen her husband executed, she's had to talk down his psychotic killer, sit by his hospital bed and think she had seen him die despite everything that she's done...She was raped less than a week ago and she's just..."
"I know I know...But there's nothing more we can do, the bastard that did that to her is dead too, come to think of it, we never really said who killed him, they're probably dead too..." Finn said, softly, thinking about this properly for this first time,
"Maybe...But the truth died with him..." Russell replied, grimly, his tone frightened her more than his words,
"What are you saying?" she asked mouth very dry.
"What do you think Jules? Why do you think I'm out here hiding away and burning evidence?" he breathed, "She's been through enough, she doesn't deserve this on top of everything else..."
...
"Hey Doc..." Sara murmured, quietly pushing the door open into the autopsy room, smiling at the sight of the coroner, the constant in this crazy lab, never questioned, always there for them, always with answers...
"Sara." He said, he sounded slightly surprised but as a testament to their friendship did not proceed to interrogate her, "What can I do for you Ms Sidle?" he asked, making her smile and laugh softly at the ridiculous normality of it all.
"Do you still have Taylor Wynard's body?" she asked softly,
"I do." He said, gravely, "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure..." she said, after only a moment's hesitation.
He paused before saying, "Drawer three..." he then instinctively left her alone, something she was infinitely grateful for.
Her mother's words began running through her head. She had been in a state when she had remembered, when she no longer had to guess and try and force pieces of memory that didn't even exist together to form something that she could call truth. Now she knew, and that, more than anything else, had almost destroyed her in this past week.
It was not something her mother had been expecting to have to deal with when she had arrived at her apartment with a tin of soup. Still she had dealt with it, fairly well overall.
"I didn't have a choice..." she had wheezed, shaking on the bedroom floor, something she had done more in these past few days than she had in her entire life,
"I know..."
"How do you know?" she had spluttered, eyes streaming, feeling acidic bile at the back of her throat,
"I've been where you've been."
"It's completely different..." she had snapped,
"Yes...And no, in some ways it's the same, and in some ways it's not, but whatever, there's no use hanging yourself over it, that won't help anyone..."
"I should be punished for this..." she had rasped, hoarsely,
"You have been..." she had said, softly, "You need to closure, and you need to move on, for the sake of the people who love you if nothing else..."
And so here she was, 'getting closure' and 'moving on'. She wasn't sure what she expected to think, what she expected to feel as she moved towards the rows of drawers, their macabre contents only just being visible. Though she would never have admitted it, even after all the time on the job, in this crime lab, the sight still sent shivers up her spine.
She pulled out drawer 3, braced herself, and slid back the sheet covering his face.
Nothing.
She felt nothing, no hatred, no fear, no anger, no guilt or horror or shock, nothing...She stared down at him and thought of what he had done to her, what he had done to his sister, and the nameless women he had raped and terrified into silence, forcing them to live as she had done without the luxury of knowing that he could never hurt them again, could never come back, could never hurt them again, as he had tried to do with her...She knew exactly what he had done, the sleazy bastard had decided to try and help himself a second time...She shuddered, suppressing the memories and the urge to be sick as she stared at him.
Before slamming the drawer back into the belly of the shelf so she would never have to look at the monster again she breathed, shakily,
"I'm not sorry...You deserved it..."
End.
A/N: First of all I apologise for the gap between this and my last chapter, I had always intended this to be the ending but after everything that went before that I didn't expect I found this almost impossible to write, hopefully it was worth the wait but I'm not entirely sure. A lot of this was thoughts and emotions and even, dare I say it, a little bit of romance, none of the things I'm known for and definitely not in my comfort zone so hopefully it wasn't too much of a disappointment and hopefully the little twist at the end fit, I think it did and it was my intention from the outset but who knows!
Anyway, thank you to all of my readers for managing to get to the end of this and a huge thank you to all of my reviewers who convinced me to finish the damn thing! I'll be really interested to see how the show plays it out, probably nothing like mine, but possibly for good reason, in the meantime, here's my take on it. I may write another story off the back of this one and see where it goes because I need to keep writing so hopefully you'll keep an eye out for that one, although if this last chapter is anything to judge my writing on maybe not! One last thank you to you all, see you if we all manage to survive this next episode...