Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: :) Sorry for the delay-I meant to have this up yesterday night or at least this afternoon, but life got in the way. Still, hope this pleases. I feel like I just want to get past all this stuff, but it's so important that I can't just skip over it. Hopefully, after this chapter, we can move forward again.

Also, the fiance and I spent most of the night arguing about wedding songs, again, and I finally said I would ask for help from the masses. Sooo, if anyone has suggestions for first dance songs as well as songs to be sung during the actual ceremony, I would be so very grateful to hear them. We kind of like the idea of older songs because they've withstood the test of time, but we also don't want really cliched ones that have been overdone. Thank you so much... we're really hoping that one of you has a song that just blows us away and we don't have to spend the next how long agonizing over it. :)

If you don't want to help, I promise it won't hurt my feelings. Feel free to disregard all of that. :)

Enjoy!

Chapter Ninety Four:

Sara held a deep aversion to even approaching the place where Jace was to be buried. The only thing she even said about it was that she couldn't imagine being buried in the ground forever… couldn't imagine how hard it would be to breathe. I made a mental note to ask about her end-of-life preferences at a more opportune time… and then I approached Jace's coffin myself. Everyone had gone to Jace's eldest sister's home for the reception afterwards… but Sara had sat unmoving, and a glance at Tom had told me that he wasn't ready to leave either. Sara just stared at the hole, clutching Ayla tightly to her while she sat in the little chair. There was a small overhang to keep out the rain that had stopped just before the funeral, but the ground was wet and we were surrounded by the smells of wet earth and wet greenery and wet flowers.

But I… I needed a moment with Jace too. Because despite the inherent conflict of our situations, he was a man I had come to respect…and to feel sorry for… A man who had made his dying request of me. Not of his wife or his parents or his tiny daughter, but of me… something like that bonds you to a person in a soul-deep kind of way. When I turned around, Tom and Sara looked like they were ready to leave… and with Ayla in tow, the three of us walked away from the grave site, the last mourners to drag ourselves away.

It started raining on the way back, and by the time we got back inside Jace's eldest sister's home it was pouring, lightning streaking across the sky and thunder booming threateningly around us. I tucked Sara and Ayla under the umbrella as we moved inside, and spend what felt like hours on end talking to people we didn't know. Or, I didn't know. Sara knew some of them. It might have been easier for her if I wasn't seated beside her, holding Ayla, while people hugged her and said they were so sorry about the death of her husband, their eyes skating past her to me in a question. Sara would introduce me as a friend of the family, and I would explain that I was a CSI and had been called to Boston to help find Ayla and had stayed to help Sara after Jace's death… and it seemed to appease most of them.

It was when the house was cleared and we were all moving around, cleaning up, that problems were started again. Susan had been drinking quite a bit during the entire reception, so I had been expecting something, though I was grateful when the last non-family member left before anything did happen… but it surprised me by not coming from my former lover, but from her children.

Sara was in the kitchen, helping to wash dishes with Jace's younger sister, and though I had asked several people several times if I could help, they politely refused, leaving me to sit with Ayla while she slept. But I could hear the women in the kitchen talking. "…said Dad's eulogy was beautiful. I have to remember to tell him."

"It really was…" their voices lowered, and I glanced over at Tom, who had fallen asleep in his armchair, newspaper still held in his hands. "Have you ever seen him upset like that?"

"No… that was almost as bad as losing Jace… seeing Dad so hurt by it."

"Well, and considering…" the voice faltered, as if it just realized that someone was nearby who shouldn't hear her words. I lifted my head, wondering if the end of that sentence had been geared at Sara and I… the long silence that followed had my heart pounding in my ears, and then I heard Sara's voice, low and defensive.

"Considering… what, exactly?"

If I had to guess, it had been the middle sister who spoke the offensive words, admittedly without realizing Sara was right there. But it was definitely the eldest sister, the one who reminded me the most strongly of their mother, who spoke up, meeting Sara head on.

"Considering that his son's wife attended his funeral with her lover in tow. You would think his youngest child dying would be enough for one man to have to deal with."

Susan, in the dining room, let out a drunken chuckle. I stood, not sure what I was going to do but knowing that I wasn't going to let Sara face them all alone. I laid Ayla on the couch.

"Tom wasn't offended that Gil was here. He knows who Jace was and he understands the position I—"

"Oh, the position you were in, huh? You mean the position where you stayed married to the man with the money, fucked the man who clearly has no qualms about sleeping with married women, and then stopped working after you had a beautiful little girl you didn't deserve, because your life was just so damn depressing, wasn't it? Had to be hard, taking everything he had to give and knowing he loved you anyway…"

There was another long moment, and I moved into the dining room, alarmed, just in time to hear the sound of someone—the eldest sister by the sound of the shriek—being slapped across the face. "Fuck you. You know nothing about me, or my life, or apparently, your own brother." Sara snarled.

Susan turned her gaze on me and smiled lasciviously. "Oh, hello Gilbert… enjoying the entertainment?" She chuckled again and drank deeply from her glass. "I know you're anxious to run in there and play the hero… but I think Sara can handle herself." She stood up, a little unsteady, and moved between the door and me, stepping closer.

"I know that it seems awfully coincidental… you don't want Jace anymore, and he dies… your mother didn't want your father, so she killed him."

Sara's gasp was bleak—full of shock and pain—and I tried to move around Susan, but she blocked me, stepping closer still.

"How… how did you… did Jace…"

The eldest sister's voice was simultaneously dismissive and vicious. "No, Jace never said anything against his precious little Sara… But it wasn't exactly hard. You don't have parents, you grew up in foster care in San Francisco, and your last name is Sidle… like it was hard to find you in a newspaper. 'Local woman stabs husband sixteen times'."

Sara gasped again, and this time I tried to push past Susan, going so far as to put my hands on her shoulders to move her. She stumbled drunkenly, falling forward against me instead of to the side, and then I felt her hand… on me. I froze and then tried to step backwards but she moved with me. "Let go." I hissed, extremely uncomfortable with this whole twisted situation and my manhood's apparent role in it.

Sara's voice came from the kitchen, and the tears in it were clear. "…I didn't want Jace to die. And my mother… my father… you don't know…"

"You know, I don't really think you want me to, Gilbert… they're busy fighting, and I'm sure I can find a ruler somewhere in this house…"

I shuddered away from her, backing up until I hit the wall, having nowhere else to go…and when her hands started stroking, my eyes widened in horror. I was getting hard… and it was absolutely not because I wanted her. The scientist in me had studied this particular thing more than once since we'd gone our separate ways so many years ago, so I logically knew that it was actually fairly common for male sexual assault victims to get erections, simply because the body responds to stimulus more than willpower. Emotionally, however, I was once again reduced to a young boy who didn't understand what she was doing to me or why my body would react this way if I didn't want it.

I heard a sob from the kitchen, and a snort from the older girl, and I straightened up, still trembling but unwilling to shirk away from her like she still had power that felt limitless over me. I met her eyes, reached down and took her wrist and pressed my thumb against it until her fingers released me. I twisted them away and grit my teeth. "Don't. Fucking. Touch. Me." I said, in what felt like a heated whisper… but the surprise in her eyes as well as the lingering silence from the kitchen told me that maybe I'd spoken louder than I meant to.

Sara was first, scrambling to open the pocket doors that separated them from us and catapulting herself into the room. A glance between us told her all she needed to know. "You fucking whore! Get your disgusting, manipulative, controlling claws off of him!"

Susan took a step back, but the eldest sister—her cheek very red—stepped forward. "Whore? Really? Who on earth are you to talk, bringing your fuck buddy to your husband's funeral?"

Sara turned and pushed the woman, bringing a gasps from her sisters as she flew backwards into the wall. "I'm the woman who asked my husband for a divorce and was threatened and refused, but who never lied to him from that point on about where my affection lay. Your mother is a drunken cougar who gets off on abusing anyone she can, even if it means groping a former victim while her husband is in the other room."

Sara turned on her heel, facing Susan, who stumbled back, clearly intimidated and drunk. Sara stepped right up to her, narrowing her gaze. "And you… You are absolutely a pathetic excuse for a person and you are not worthy of the love Tom feels for you or Jace felt for you. In Jace's weakest, most regretted moments, he was very like you… but the majority of the time he was his father's son. Every person today who said he was a good person, said that because he was nothing like you most of the time. You disgust me. …If there is a single person in this room who could know who you really are and not be repulsed by you, they are as sick and twisted as you are. Even Tom can't stand to acknowledge what you are."

She looked up and stopped, her eyes locked on the door to the living room. Tom was standing in the open area, holding a sleeping Ayla, his eyes sad… but offering no judgment. Tears sprung to her eyes and she hurried over, taking Ayla and then hugging him tightly. "I'm sorry." She whispered, kissing his cheek, and then came back to me and took my hand. Everyone watched us in silence and she lifted her chin. "For the record, my father beat my mother within an inch of her life more than sixteen times… without even considering how many times he hurt me or my brother, I'd say she still owes him a few. …We're leaving."

She tugged me gently and together we walked out of the house, stopping only to pick up her purse and Ayla's diaper bag and slip into our shoes. We left the umbrella by mistake and got drenched before we got to the car, but there was an odd sense of relief as we slammed the doors behind us and pulled away from the awful house. Sara suggested trying to get a flight out of town tonight, but in the end we decided Ayla needed a good night's sleep. We drove back to the hotel, changed Ayla and tucked her in, and then together moved into the bathroom, leaving the lights off. We stripped out of our cold, wet clothing and into a hot shower, holding each other under the spray for the second time today. She cried and I held her, my hands gentle on her back, and continued to rock her gently long after she'd calmed.

We turned the heat up, thankful for the hotel's large water heaters, and then she put her hands on my face. "Gil, baby… tell me what she did to you." I blanched, sputtering and shaking my head. She knew enough to understand… did she really need to know more than that? The horrible, shameful details that made up the greatest regrets of my life? I shook my head more fervently, but she didn't argue with me or try to convince me… she just kept her eyes locked on mine.

They were barely visible in the darkness, but they communicated a depth of love and trust and compassion that left me feeling weak all over… I trembled, and her arms tightened around me, but her eyes didn't waver. …And then I was crying—sobbing like a fucking five year old—telling her everything that I had never, ever been able to tell another person, my whole life long. I was telling her the horrid details that made my face burn and my heart pound and my mind race. …How could she love a man who had allowed himself to be so degraded by such a tiny little woman?

She cried too, but her eyes never changed. She choked out words of hate and disgust for Susan, but her touches stayed gentle, his kisses loving, and she held me like a man she loved, not like an infant she had to protect. She made me feel like I was still a man in her eyes, even now that she knew…

We stayed in for as long as we could handle it, turning the heat up several more times… and when we stepped out, it was without the baggage we'd had when we stepped inside. As far as I was concerned, Tom could visit Ayla any time he wanted to, but I was done with the rest of Jace's family. We curled up in bed around Ayla, somehow managing to intertwine our bodies with her between us, and reassured ourselves that at the very least, we would be leaving all of this behind us soon.