I fully intend to have this story wrapped up by the end of the week :) I have one more little twist for before then, hope you're still enjoying it!

x x x x

"You can't keep me here." Kirsty drawled, propping her head up on the table. Her eyes were still glazed and unfocused, her face heavy with exhaustion. However, the undersheriff had deemed her sober enough to be questioned, and that was good enough for Jim.

"Actually, we can." Sofia countered, producing a warrant and sliding it across the table. "We could always get the sheriff in here to explain it to you if you like."

Kirsty glowered up at her with undisguised hatred. As a cop, being questioned by her own colleagues was about as humiliating as it got. The last thing she would want was the big boss getting in on it as well.

"You can't charge me with anything. You don't know who started that fire." She spat.

"We're not charging you with anything." Sofia slid into a seat opposite her. "Yet."

Beside her, she sensed Jim sit down too and a piece of paper was flung across the table at their surly suspect.

"You recognise that?" He asked.

Kirsty rolled her eyes, scraping the image up and looking at it.

"It looks like a CCTV still." She said, tossing it back down. "What of it?"

"That's you." Brass tapped it forcefully. "Outside CSI, the night someone set off a smoke bomb."

She picked it up again, pretending to study it more closely.

"So it is. I do work for the police you know, Captain."

"I checked your duties for that night against the staff roster." Sofia chimed in. "You had no reason to be anywhere near CSI that night."

"I went to see Sara." Kirsty said, straightening up a little. "She'd been upset earlier that day."

"I wonder why." Sofia cocked her head to the side sarcastically.

"I didn't hurt her." Kirsty snapped, wincing as a shot of pain ripped through her head. "And I didn't kill her." She paused, dropping her gaze onto the table. "I loved Sara. But she had a lot of problems. It wouldn't surprise me if she started that fire herself."

Sofia and Jim exchanged a sceptical look.

"I doubt it." Brass said calmly. "But hey, you know what? Why don't we call her and ask her, hmm?"

Kirsty's eyes widened as he pulled out his cell phone and pretended to dial.

"What's wrong?" Sofia asked callously, narrowing her eyes at the dark-skinned woman. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Oh yeah." Jim joined in. "Did we forget to mention that? Sara's still alive."

"What?" She squeaked, her green eyes bulging out impossibly, a look resembling that of a startled frog.

"Oh yeah. Catherine too." The captain continued, pushing himself away from the table and standing up. "So I tell you what, why don't you rethink your story. Because we're going to get to the truth one way or another."

As he strode to the door, Sofia matched his actions and rose from her seat, her eyes remaining locked onto Kirsty's stunned face.

"Hey! You can't just keep me here indefinitely." The suspect barked urgently when she realised that they were planning on leaving her alone in the small room.

"Oh yeah? Why don't you re-read that arrest warrant?" Brass pointed at the piece of paper still sitting in front of her. "Because according to that, your ass is mine for the next twelve hours."

She watched them go with the same shell-shocked expression, her hands balling into fists on the table.

Whether it was anger at being left to stew in here or because of the news she had just received, they didn't know; but in a fit of rage she grabbed the arrest warrant and ripped it down the middle, scrunching each half up in her hands before hurling them at the closed door.

X x x

Catherine surveyed the room, dragging her hand across the table top and rubbing her fingertips together out of habit. She was so used to processing hotel rooms; it had become second nature to note the cleanliness of them.

This one, at least, was to a high standard. It should be; it was one of Sam's. She had called in a family favour and, under the circumstances, he hadn't had the heart to say no.

"You don't have to stay here you know." She said again, turning towards Sara. The brunette was already unpacking some of her essentials.

"Well, I can't go back to my flat yet." She pointed out. "And as appealing as Greg's couch is…"

"You could stay with me." Cath got straight to the point, walking over and dropping onto the bed so that Sara couldn't avoid looking at her any longer.

The girl paused, flicking her eyes up.

"We already talked about that." She stated calmly, quickly resuming her task.

"You never gave me a proper reason." The older woman insisted, reaching out to trail a hand up Sara's arm. There were obvious signs of the injuries she had sustained, but simply being dressed and moving around again made her look a lot healthier than she had done in the hospital.

As for Cath's vision, she still suffered the occasional bout of blurriness; although she continued to plead the fifth whenever she asked about it.

"I just don't think it's a good idea right now." Sara cleared her throat. "With Kirsty and the boys, and everything…"

"I don't care what the boys think." Catherine shrugged. "What difference does it make anyway, they already know about us."

"I know." Sara agreed awkwardly, disappearing briefly into the bathroom with a toiletry bag.

When she returned a moment later, Catherine was staring at her carefully.

"We still haven't talked about it." She commented quietly. "You and me."

Sara barely even seemed to hear her; she wandered back to her suitcase and dropped heavily onto the bed beside her girlfriend.

"I just feel like …" she began, dragging a hand through her hair and wincing as she caught the burns on her hands.

"What?" Cath nudged her gently.

"I feel like I'm under scrutiny." She admitted.

Catherine pursed her lips, nodding slowly in understanding.

"You think that our relationship could be detrimental to your case against Kirsty?" She paraphrased.

Sara released a shaky breath, nodding slowly.

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

"Hey, don't apologise." Cath shook her head, interlocking their hands on the mattress. "None of this is your fault."

Sara stared at their conjoined hands in silence for a long moment before pulling away and pushing herself off the bed. Cath watched with sad confusion as the dark-haired woman wandered towards the large window and stared blankly across the sprawling town.

"Well, at this rate it might not make a difference anyway." She breathed at last.

Catherine frowned in bemusement, slowly rising herself and following her across the room.

"What do you mean?" She asked, coming to a stop a few feet away so as not to crowd her already-miserable colleague.

"I mean, it might be in my best interest to just accept the charges."

For a moment the words hung between them, a heavy, disorientating fog; much like Sara's breath misting on the window pane, distorting the view of downtown Las Vegas.

"You're not serious." Cath narrowed her eyes at last, her voice taking on a quiver despite her attempts to remain calm. "You can't be serious."

"I am." Sara stated simply, turning around. Her lips were pressed together tightly, as if she was trying desperately to keep something from spilling out.

"Sara … if you do that it will ruin your career."

"My career?" She repeated, finally meeting Catherine's gaze. "At the lab? Where my whole life is out on display?" She scoffed, casting her sad eyes to the side. "Right now, I couldn't care less about my career. I'm not sure I can stay here any longer like this."

Catherine felt her whole body going numb at the disillusionment in her friend's voice. She wanted to say something, to tell her that she couldn't go. She wanted to tell her what she'd told Grissom … that she loved her.

The words simply wouldn't come, but she hoped that she wouldn't need them.

Taking a step closer, she gripped Sara by the arms – forcing the other woman to look at her, and pressed a firm, pleading kiss to her trembling lips.

The taste of salt gave away Sara's silent tears, but it only heightened Catherine's need to hold her. She closed the gap between them, pressing her whole body against Sara's as she slid her tongue between the younger CSI's lips.

It was desperate and beseeching and everything that Catherine hated to be, but somehow it still didn't feel like it was enough.

X x x

"Damn!" Warrick sighed, surveying the mess formally known as Sara's flat. As with the rest of the building, everything in sight was coated in a fine grey dust. Unburned carbon.

"I hope Sara has some powerful cleaning products." Greg added, dragging his fingertips across the worktop.

"Yeah, well right now I'm more concerned with what Kirsty might have left behind." Warrick hummed, pacing in a small circle in the middle of the room. His shoulder was still bothering him, but if he kept moving then he found that it was less noticable.

The fire hadn't quite reached this end of the corridor, meaning many of Sara's belongings would be salvageable. However, any fingerprints or DNA was buried beneath the layer of smoke that had settled on everything.

"Hey Warrick." Greg called idly, as he began picking up and examining random objects in turn. "Do you think Cath and Sara suit each other?"

"What?" The older of the two cocked his head to the side. "You mean, as a couple?"

"Yeah." Greg shrugged, finally lifting his gaze. Warrick pursed his lips, pondering the question. They had been so wrapped up in the events of the last couple of days; he hadn't really given it that much thought.

"I guess." He decided at last. "Hell, they've always had a spark between them. I never would have envisioned it leading to this, but …"

A noise by the door cut him off before he could continue the thought and they turned to see Nick picking his way carefully across the room.

"Wow, it's like the inside of a chimney in here."

"Hey." Warrick nodded at him. "I thought you were staying with Sara."

"They released her." He explained, picking up a smoke-damaged cushion before tossing it back onto the couch again and dusting his hands off. "Cath's taken her to a hotel. I was ... surplus to requirements." He sent the men a half-smile, knowing that they would catch his drift.

"Was she alright?" Greg asked, moving around the kitchen bench to join them in the living area.

"Yeah, she was … she was good." He nodded after a moment's consideration. "Quiet, but she seemed pretty calm."

"I bet she's freaking out inside." Warrick shook his head sadly, gesturing to the tiny flat. "This is too much for anyone to bear."

Nick nodded in agreement, his brown eyes scanning the area. He had been here a hundred times before, yet it was oddly unfamiliar now.

"You know," he cleared his throat, wandering over to the bookcase and picking up a CD case from the top shelf. "Sara told me that Kirsty trashed her flat recently. Broke plates, ornaments, picture frames." He sniffed. "She smashed up her guitar."

"Oh, man." Warrick groaned, recoiling. He, more than anyone, knew how much that instrument meant to Sara. She had told him once how it had belonged to her grandfather – to the best of his knowledge it was the only time she'd ever come close to discussing her family with any of the team.

"So, she talked to you about it?" Greg asked, surprised. He didn't want to admit that he felt jealous, after all he had known about this long before the other guys. However, it still felt somewhat painful that his best friend had chosen to confide in Nick over him. He had been trying for weeks, with little success, to get Sara to tell him more about Kirsty's behaviour.

"I asked." Nick clarified, dusting off a journal that he'd found on the desk. "I wanted to know why she didn't tell us what was going on with Kirsty."

"You asked her?"

"Relax will you, I didn't upset her." The Texan held up his hands defensively, reassuring the youngest team member. "We just talked. She explained it all to me. She told me what Kirsty's done to her and why she couldn't tell us."

"And?" Warrick pressed curiously. "What did she say?"

Nick lifted his head and locked eyes with Greg. The ex-lab rat seemed to be silently warning him not to say too much.

"She had a good reason." He nodded at last, extracting his torch from his pocket and beginning to search the flat in more detail.

"There's no reason she couldn't have told us." Warrick countered, sinking onto the bed with a disgruntled frown. "We could have stopped this."

"She had her reasons Rick, let's just leave it at that."

Warrick tipped his head to the side, observing Nick carefully.

"You've changed your tune. A few hours ago you were swearing blood murder about all this; about how she should have told us everything."

"Yeah, well thing's changed." Nick noted calmly.

Warrick opened his mouth to contest the weak argument, but Greg jumped in quickly before he could.

"Hey guys." He called, dusting off the item he had just extracted from the bedside table and holding it up with a raised eyebrow. "Catherine's cell phone.

Reluctantly - and still peeved at being kept in the dark - Warrick turned away from Nick and held out his hands for the phone.

Across the room, Nick and Greg exchanged a small nod of understanding. Things were still somewhat unsettled between the men, but at least they were on the same page about Sara's right to privacy.

"Oh man." Rick groaned, his chest heaving angrily. Nick moved closer and hovered over his friend's shoulder.

"Catherine did say she'd taken pictures of Sara's bruises." He noted grimly.

"I hope Brass tears her a new one for this." Warrick snarled, his cheeks flaming with rage at the sight of the deep mottled marks all over his friend's skin.

Greg chose to stay away. He didn't need to see the photos.

He'd already seen the real thing.

X x x

Sara paused, throwing a nervous glance at the phone, before continuing her repetitive pacing around the room.

Catherine's parting words had been playing in her head like an old record ever since the blonde had left. An impassioned plea, something rarely heard coming from the blonde's lips.

Her lips.

Sara could still taste that kiss, feel those butterflies dancing in her stomach. If she closed her eyes she could even feel the gentle hands creeping up her back.

It almost made her laugh to think that the last conversation they'd had before the fire was about her not being ready for sex and now it was about all she could think of whenever she was near the fiery supervisor.

Of course, it was neither the time nor the place to be thinking of such things. And hormones aside, she still wasn't ready to take that step yet; not with Catherine or anyone else.

She wouldn't be ready until Kirsty was out of the picture for good and she could begin to repair the cracks that had formed in her carefully constructed walls in recent months.

Catherine's warning about accepting the charges continued to haunt her, but right now her only priority was getting this over with. Nick was right, they'd let things get way too far and now she wanted out.

Ordinarily she would have run. That's what she used to do as a kid. Run away and seal the bad memory up in a box in the back of her consciousness.

But running away wasn't the answer this time – no matter how far she went, Kirsty would still find her. And there was only one other way she could think of to get this woman out of her life.

Catherine would not approve of this, but she didn't see any other way to get rid of these ghosts for good.

With a shaky hand, she snatched the phone up and dialled the well-known number. She drummed her fingers impatiently on the back of the handset while the endless dial tone hummed in her ear, before that familiar voice came on the line.

"Hey, it's Sara." She cleared her throat nervously. "I need to talk to you. Alone."

X x x

"How is she?"

"Stressed." Catherine answered bluntly, striding into the room behind him. "This whole thing with Kirsty is messing with her head."

"I've tried calling Brass but he's not answering. He must still be in interrogation with her." Grissom leant against his filing cabinet, tapping his foot in thought.

"I thought that should have ended by now." Catherine scowled. "They've been ages."

"They're playing with her. Stringing her out." He explained. "Brass wants to make her suffer before he lays any charges on her."

"Do we have anything to charge her with yet?" The woman asked, folding her arms across her chest.

"We have evidence to link her to the smoke bomb." He nodded, narrowing his eyes. "Which you also never told me about."

Catherine emitted a frustrated snort, turning her gaze up to the ceiling.

"Don't do this Gil." She breathed. "Not today."

"I'm trying to help her Catherine, and you. But you're not making it easy for me." The boss reiterated firmly, barely managing to rein his temper in. He knew from experience that losing it with the red-head would never end in his favour, and right now she appeared more on edge than ever.

When she finally turned her steely blue eyes towards him again, he caught the briefest flash of something dark and pained behind them.

"You really want to help, find a way to convince her to stay."

"What do you mean?" He asked, his face contorting into a frown.

She threw her hands out helplessly, sinking into a chair.

"She's talking about accepting the charges from Kirsty." She scoffed. "She wants to admit to being an abuser."

"Why?" That did not sound like Sara at all. Sara's integrity and pride were her most protected assets.

"Because she's worried about a trial. She thinks this is the easiest way to put it all behind her."

Grissom licked his lips, taking a deep breath.

"If she accepts those charges, she'll have a criminal record. She'll lose her job." He stated quietly at last.

"Yeah, well." Cat shrugged, throwing her hands out again. "She doesn't really care about that either anymore. She wants to leave."

He blinked at her in stunned silence, his mouth opening and closing in a vain attempt to form his panicked thoughts into a coherent response.

Before he managed to recover, they were both startled by a knock at the door.

"Hi guys, sorry to interrupt." Sofia wandered in, scanning their faces in turn. Grissom currently resembled a fish on land, while Catherine looked on the verge of tears right now. She considered asking what was going on, since she had clearly missed something, but Grissom spoke up before she had chance.

"Any news from the station?" He straightened up, a mask of indifference hurriedly covering his previous expression.

"Yeah," she breathed, flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder and placing her hands on her hips. "But you're not going to like it."