Disclaimer: Timely reminder that our entire kingdoms of fan-mythologies are built as sandcastles at the edge of the ocean of CBS' brilliance.

Not mine, but I do like to look at it.

Rating: T+. There's mature themes in this one, but no skin in the game, so-to-speak.

Trigger/Content Warning: This one is a 'tread carefully', loves. There's a few references to domestic violence that may well be triggering so please go gently with yourself. I hope that you'll understand why I feel these are a necessary bedrock for the narratives to come - but they were hard to write. I dug deep into my own internal archive for these. I bring them to you tenderly.

Author's Note: I'm back! (Sort of) - and please don't worry, not done just yet with reading and reviewing your amazing writing, too. The shark-instinct is back and needs to swim. Here we go, diving deep into the season that changed it all. (But turned out to be just one big drop on the rollercoaster that is GSR)

There's a lot happening here and I hope you'll bear with me as I diverge a little from the norm. First, I don't like to create OCs. Not that original characters aren't beautiful and I try not to be wary of how others do them - but the spectre of the Mary Sue looms large in my caution. As you can probably tell, I do quite a bit of filling in the gaps (toothy gaps!) with my own prior experience but with characters that already exist and have layers I didn't create. I hope that has worked for us all so far - my own personal voice is not intended to be 'present' enough to distract from their unique ones (although it did once, and I gratefully received warnings from you - beloved readers - and made a quick adjustment). I've never pretended or deluded myself into thinking I write on par with the CSI writer's team, so creating an OC does make me nervous, but I created her for a very specific purpose that I hope will make sense later on.

I just keep coming back to the Sara Sidle who returns to Vegas when Warrick dies, and trying to map out how she gets there. We have next to nothing to go on, so I'm trying to plan ahead and create the foundation for that growth - a much longer arc than Grissom's sabbatical - before I get there and suddenly have to magic something out of thin air.

I've also done something else that I swore I'd never do: create an outright non-canon factoid. Yes, yes, I know, I've created small stories here and there but I feel like this one is a simple, but significant, biggie. If anyone has ANY information to the contrary, please put those flashing lights on and tell ya girl. I've re-watched 5x02, 5x10, 5x13, 5x21, 8x07, 11x05, and 15x12 to double check I hadn't missed anything - and I just didn't get a clue.

On this note, it's just... I just CAN'T with how well both the writers and Jorja portrayed that horrid gray area in domestic/intimate partner violence. The place you get caught up in loving someone who hurts you, trying to trust someone who has betrayed you, trying to navigate the ease with which others create binaries of right and wrong and the cognitive dissonance in that. My heart absolutely shatters for Sara every time I watch that last scene in 15x12 with Greg. It's so awful, and at the time to be navigating it outside of the safety of her and Gil's relationship? I die. Yeah, they got their happy ending, but did Sara have to suffer SO MUCH on the way?

(look, I know, I know, it's all for a reason, yadda yadda... but SERIOUSLY!?)

Anyway, I am now certifiably on a rant so going to take off my ranty pants and slip into something more comfortable. TRACKPANTS OK, JEEZ.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. This one is a slower burn than the Baby Teeth you may be used to, but I hope it plays out like I hope it does.

Here we go, Baby Teethers. I love you. We ride at dawn. xoxo BB

Baby Teeth

Chapter 50

Tomales Bay, California - 1979

Sara Sidle curled into herself in the darkness, shrinking away from the violence outside. You can be anywhere you want to be, she thought, anywhere but here. Loudness. Shouting. And then the silence…

The silence was always the worst. She could take her mother's screaming, her father's yelling, the insults they hurled at each other, the crashing and clattering of plates… cutlery… ornaments…

Once, when she was seven years old, it was a pasta frame she had made in class. Sara couldn't remember the reason why they had argued that night, only that her mother kept goading her father, seeing the simmering fury in him and coaxing it into rage. She could hear it from where she crouched in the corner of her closet, pressing her small face into her hanging coats and clothing, trying to shut it out. It was the silence, after, that always had her stomach turning with dread. The silence had drawn her out, terrified by the pealing wail of her mothers' crying, her father's refusal to comfort.

The frame - packing cardboard, decorated with macaroni elbows and PVA glue and paint, around a picture of the three of them - at the beach - lay face-down on the linoleum floor. Laura Sidle sat cradling her eye, the edge of the socket cut, bleeding down her face.

She needed two stitches. Sara had watched, both horrified and fascinated, as the ED doctors performed the sutures and cleaned her mother up. Her parents, on their best behaviour in public - all polite smiles and quiet voices.

"This one," her mother waved a callous gesture at her, "Threw a tantrum. Threw her art project at me! Can you believe?"

Laura laughed it off. Sara could have cried then, mortified, confused, as the medical staff rolled their eyes knowingly at her. Why was she being blamed? She looked over at her father, who refused to meet her gaze.

At home, she helped them clean up, the detritus of toxicity littered around the kitchen. Her pasta picture frame, unevenly painted in gold acrylic, had her mother's blood streaked across it. She stood in the kitchen, looking down at it in horror, before her father plucked it from her hands and threw it in the trash.

"You'll make another one, Rahrah," he said, gruffly.

She never brought her art projects home, after that, simply throwing them in the city trash cans on the walk home from the bus stop. Whenever she made something new, she couldn't help but wonder what it would look like with her mother's blood on it.

Desert Palms Hospital - 2007

A mechanical whirring, pressure on her arm woke her. She wanted to swat the blood pressure cuff off, rip it from its velcro. Leave me be, she thought, impatient. She didn't want to wake up. The darkness of sleep was so peaceful, so comforting… she was sure the world around her would be anything but.

Her eyes opened anyway, almost against her will. Sara blinked, squinting at the ceiling until it finally came into focus, trying to make sense of them. Hospital. You're in-

"You're in the hospital, Sara," a voice - his voice, Grissom's voice - came out of nowhere. She jumped, and searched for him, her eyes finding him at the edge of her bed. Not close, but close enough. He was sat back from her bed, legs crossed, watching her.

You look like shit. She almost said it out loud, but she didn't have the heart to say it. He really did look like shit. But he smiled, and she smiled back.

"Hey," she tried, but her voice barely did anything to cooperate. She looked away and swallowed, frowning at the pain in her throat.

Grissom stood, reaching for a jug of water at the cabinet by her bedside. He offered her a cup and she shuffled up in the bed to take it, but he held it as she sipped, eventually taking it away when she shook her head and made to lie back down. She had been stripped, clearly in the emergency department, and dressed in a hospital gown. Her arm felt almost numb, just a dull ache. It was immobilised by her side in a plaster cast. Her cuts and wounds had been cleaned and dressed, and she reached up to touch the butterfly stitches at her forehead.

Pasta frame. Mom.

She felt something sickening, cold in her chest and had to breathe through it. She could feel him watching her, standing back a few steps from the bed - waiting for her to greet him, be with him.

"What… why am I still here?" She asked, slowly turning to face her lover, knowing she would be met with emotion she wasn't ready for. God, yes, she was relieved. But part of her was still out there in the desert - still making sense of the ghosts that had visited with her.

"You'll be discharged soon, as soon as you're ready," he told her, simply. "They had to reset your arm, it was fractured in two places."

I've had worse.

She just nodded, looking away. The ceiling was suddenly fascinating to her, the way the lamp by her bed cast an uneven glow across the ceiling tiles and metal borders. She heard him shuffle closer, hands in his pockets. Eventually, she built up the courage to look at him, believe he was real, that she was really here. With him.

Safe.

"Sara, I-"

She looked at him then, and nodded. Me too, Gil, she thought, me too.

He took one tentative step closer, and then another, and then she reached up her good hand - awkwardly, as it was on the wrong side of her body, and she was still adjusting to the space created by the cast - in a clear gesture of come here, it's alright. Gil nearly collapsed onto the side of her bed, reaching for her and she reached up to him. They were both crying.

"You're real," she cried, and Grissom didn't answer, only burying his face in her neck. Eventually, needing air, feeling claustrophobic - Sara pulled back and looked at him. He placed both hands either side of her face and thumbed her hair back, eyes carefully scrutinising every detail of her. He might as well have said the same thing - both in disbelief, shocked to be there in the company of each other again.

"Natalie?" Sara asked. Gil's face darkened, and he nodded.

"She's in custody," he replied. He looked away, up to the saline bag hanging from the hook above her bed.

Sara watched him, slowly becoming accustomed to the idea that she was alive. She had survived, she was safe. She was home - wherever he was. He really did look like shit - but the sparkle in his eyes was there, when he looked at her, though darkly with a myriad of dark emotions. He turned a little so he could look out the window at the Vegas skyline beyond, gaudy neon lights playing across his tired expression. "Gil," she started, swallowing, reaching to touch him. "What she did- it's not your fault."

Grissom turned to face her, opening his mouth to say something, but he was cut off by another voice cheering from the doorway to the ward. "You're awake!"

Greg strode into the room and Grissom stood up from Sara's bedside, retreating to where he had stood before, hands in his pockets. Greg looked between the both of them and seemed to consider making some kind of joke or comment, a humoured expression passing over his face before he eventually thought better of it. "How're you doing, Sar?"

"I'm okay," she said, and Greg looked over at Gil, who looked back at her.

Greg moved closer and opened his arms. "You all good for a hug?"

Sara nodded, then Greg looked over at Grissom, as though in mock deferral, before pulling Sara in for a gentle hug. Grissom rolled his eyes. Greg rubbed the back of her shoulder.

"You were a real Robinson Crusoe out there, huh," he said, approving, standing back.

"Hmm," Sara replied, uninterested in talking further. Her trip through the desert had been unforgettable - and one she hoped she would forget, soon enough.

Ice Box Canyon - 2007

The rising sun woke her, and Sara shivered. Her shirt was plastered to her skin, restricting her movement and tugging painfully at the abrasions on her arms - she was sure her left one was broken. Had I done that? She remembered the moment she felt it break, as she tugged to get her limb free from the steel carcass enclosed over her.

The pre-dawn light was foreboding - it was going to be a hot day, and no matter what, she was probably in for a long trek through the desert. She peeled her shirt off, glad she'd worn a black tee underneath. Holding one end of the shirt in her teeth, and the other in her right hand, she tore it in half so she could use one half as a sling for her arm, and one half as a bandana to protect her from sunstroke.

The memory of how Gil had looked after her when she'd had sunstroke after the Marlon West case was quickly followed by the piercing ache of grief. Will you see him again? He had been so good to her, then; so gentle. He had always been so gentle.

The sun was coming up, fiery beams peeking at the door to the horizon, bleeding molten light onto the desert hearth before her. It would have been beautiful if it didn't terrify her. You could die out here, the voice in the back of her brain warned her. Alone. So desperately alone.

Tomales Bay, California - 1981

Sara remembered the first time she had broken her arm - the same arm, in fact. Her father had been the one to splint her forearm and gently hook a dish towel around her elbow. It was after another one of their fights, one she hadn't been able to escape from, her mother keeping her hostage in the kitchen as they raged at each other. Sara had tried to slip out, to retreat to her favourite hiding place, when her mother had whipped her hand out and - in her drunken state, unable to control her wild and unhinged rage - grabbed her daughter by the elbow, shoving her back to where she had been cowering by the stove.

They all heard the crack, but the pain was so blinding that Sara could only whimper weakly before sinking to the floor. Her father was the one who had knelt beside her, her mother standing back, watching on in horror.

"Rahrah, let me have a look at it," he'd said. He was mostly stoic, utilitarian, but he had moments of care and it was one he was offering her now.

She hated that she craved it, even at such a young age.

It was always in the kitchen. Sara hadn't thought about that. She had probably spent more time in the kitchen cooking since she had moved in with Gil. Otherwise, she steered clear of it… it was always in the kitchen, when her parents fought.

Desert Palms Hospital - 2007

"Alright, Miss Sidle, I'm just going to do your obs and then I can write up your discharge notes. Has trauma psych been to see you yet?" The ward doctor breezed in, all business, the following day. She had been taken off the saline and electrolytes, and the team had finally stopped trickling in to get rest to return to work in the evening.

Sara was sitting up eating a jelly cup, and Gil turned to greet him wearily. They had been waiting for a while, and he knew Sara was agitated, ready to leave. So was he, if he was being honest.

He watched as she visibly paled, glancing over at him. "Uh, no-" she responded. Gil looked back at her as though to say, are you serious? You just survived a run-in with a serial killer.

Oblivious to the exchange happening before him, the doctor checked her chart and then his pager. "No problem, I'll follow that up. They're one short today. You'll have a case manager assigned before you leave - standard procedure with…" he finally looked up at her, a moment of bashfulness revealing his youth. He had salt and pepper hair, like Grissom, but was at least 20 years younger. "Um, trauma victims."

Gil winced. That wasn't going to go over well. Sara reddened beneath her sunburn, and looked down at her hands in her lap. She reached up to touch the cannula on the inside of her elbow, fidgeting a little in her discomfort.

"Thanks, doc," Grissom spoke up, eventually, and the younger man nodded and left.

Sara watched him go from lowered lids, then looked back down to her hands. "I'm not a victim," she muttered. He could hear the venom in her tone - she was angry, frustrated, and hated being condescended to. It wasn't that they were condescending… he just knew the situation of forced vulnerability was one Sara detested.

He stood and moved closer to the bed, sitting on the edge of it. He hunched so he could catch her gaze, downcast, guiding her to look up at him so he could straighten his back. "Honey, I know this is uncomfortable," he sighed, and she looked away again, a grimace on her face. "But you know that none of us think less of you. This is standard procedure. And…" he sighed, looking away for a moment. "I, I think it's a good idea, for you… for us. I'll go with you, if you like."

Sara looked up, a maelstrom of emotions passing quickly over her face before it returned to the pained grimace and she closed the door to her heart again. "I think I'll be okay," she said. "But, um, thanks."

"Okay. Offer's there," he shrugged.

They were both silent, both caught up in their own thoughts. Grissom watched as Sara seemed to withdraw, as he felt her consciousness drift away to somewhere else entirely. He'd seen that look before.

Ice Box Canyon - 2007

Sara couldn't remember at which point she started reciting her times tables, but it was around about the time she'd started hallucinating her father. She'd stopped to sit below the shade of an outcrop of rocks, squeezing her body into the cracks, searching for coolness in the unrelenting heat of the day.

She felt him, rather than saw him. "You ever wonder why you never trust women?"

The voice made her jump - she hadn't heard it in over 20 years. He was sitting in the shade beside her, about a yard away.

"You're not real," she mumbled.

"What do you think happened that night, Rahrah?"

It was physically painful to hear his voice, his term of endearment for her. He had never called her Sara unless she was in trouble, but trouble meant different things in her household. Trouble meant women became dehumanised, and she lost her name entirely in those moments. Still, this apparition used it in a mocking, mirthless way - it didn't sound comforting, or endearing, as it had when he had referred to her with it.

She wondered when he would have stopped calling her by that name. When she was 14? 16? Would he stop when she was a teenager and then every so often, call her when she was an adult, bringing up the old ghosts of a time before the fights, the yelling?

Was there ever that time?

Sara laid her head on her knees, trying to breathe. She was sure she had a broken rib. Perhaps not from being under the car, but from the tussle with Natalie before she was knocked out.

"Ernie loved me more than Grissom could ever love you."

Men could be violent, her father… her entire life taught her that. But the violence women could wield had left more of a mark on her. Her mother… now Natalie. How is Grissom connected…?

Nothing was making sense; her thoughts were moving in a jumbled, tumbling way through her brain. She couldn't grasp them long enough to understand what they were telling her. Visions of her father, sitting next to her in the desert, faded in and out of her vision like one of those lenticular bookmarks. She could only look at him out of the corner of her eyes, in a certain direction, to see him.

"You always were perceptive," he said. There was a tinge of pride in his voice… her brain must have found it from another time, another moment of pride. Sara ached, hating herself for needing that.

"Dad," she muttered. "I'm kind of in the middle of something."

The ghost - apparition? Hallucination? - of her father looked out onto the desert before them, as she did, squinting her eyes to see further across the horizon. She couldn't tell which direction she needed to go in. She felt so desperately lost. She couldn't bear to look in his direction - knowing he would disappear as soon as she did.

She knew, deep down, it was her brain trying to survive. It was the desperation of her situation painted up in colours and shapes to make sense of the ghosts living deep in her brain, skeletons in the closet of her story. She must be close to death for something this… tangible, to appear. Either that, or she really did have her mother's genes.

There isn't a murder gene, but schizophrenia is genetic, her mind taunted her. "Stop it," she said out loud.

This isn't you. You're dehydrated, you're probably in shock, and you're talking to-

"Y'know, Rahrah, the thing I always loved about you was how alive you were," Jack said, as they both looked out to the bitter landscape beyond the outcrop, the blazing sunshine carving lengthening shadows behind invisible landmarks as it tore its unbridled ferocity across the sky. She would have to start walking soon, but she felt trapped by her body, frozen in place.

Catatonic schizophrenia.

No. Stop it.

"Your mother and I… we were the end of something," he spoke, and she could hear regret. Regret she knew she was creating in that moment. Did her real father, the father who died in 1984, have regrets? How could she even know?

"But you… you were always beginning. You were always this bright, brilliant thing, and neither of us could believe we created you," he said. "We stayed together because we wanted to bask in your light for just a little longer, even if it meant destroying each other along the way. Even if it meant…"

"STOP IT," Sara shouted, hoarse. She was sure she was going to disintegrate; that the wind would wash her away like the sand tumbling over the landscape below. "Stop it, please." She would have been crying if she didn't already feel so desiccated, so dried up for the heat and the sun and the shock.

Jack Sidle continued, his voice hollow, as though he was some animatronic museum exhibition describing some ancient historical event.

"…You were so alive. Why did you choose to live a life surrounded by death?"

Desert Palms Hospital - 2007

Gil was watching her intently, trying to make sense of her silence. She couldn't tell whether she wanted to be alone or be close to him. She felt ashamed, and frightened, about what she had seen… what had appeared to her, on her long journey back to him.

She wondered if he'd understand. If it would be the final straw. If this was their watershed.

She didn't have time to consider it.

An older woman, at least in her 60s, looking as though she had just walked out of an issue of Quirky Knitting Weekly, bustled into the room. "So, I heard you had a run-in with a serial killer, hmm?"

Grissom and Sara looked at each other, both too shocked to respond properly. "Uh… yes?" Sara slowly turned to look at the woman. She had bright red hair, even brighter red lipstick, and a 'don't fuck with me' look on her face, despite the wide and genuine smile there.

"Horrible. My name's Caroline," she waved, then picked up Sara's chart from the end of the bed. "Ah, yes, they're waiting on me. Good. I like to keep 'em waiting. Everything good in its own time."

Silenced, the two CSIs waited for the older woman to scan her chart, hmphing and grunting as she did. "I imagine you've given your statement to PD?"

Sara nodded. "Brass took it."

"Jim?" Caroline asked. "Good. Alright. You the boyfriend?" She pointed one gnarly, arthritic index finger - nails coloured in the same crimson shade as her lips and her hair - at Grissom, who immediately went slack-jawed. Sara could have laughed. Dr Grissom was probably more used to the kind of deferential treatment used for someone of his esteem. To be reduced to… her boyfriend, and so bluntly, was amusing.

"Uh, yes," he cleared his throat, narrowing his eyes at Caroline and then looking sideways at Sara. Sara smirked at him, as if to say, I like her. Gil rolled his eyes in response, and sighed.

"I'll find use for you later," Caroline said, and while the tone she used was friendly enough, Sara imagined that he would have heard a slight threat there, too. "Right now, Sara and I have to talk."

Grissom looked at Sara, who had a slightly puzzled - if not intrigued - look on her face. She looked back at him, as though considering her options, and at last nodded as though to suggest it was okay. Somehow, she trusted this woman.

"I'll, um, come pick you up later," he said. "You'll call me?" He asked Caroline.

"Sure thing, bucko," she nodded, gruffly. He leaned in to kiss Sara, who recovered from her surprise at the public display of affection in just enough time to kiss him back. Gathering his jacket, he gave them both one last perplexed glance, before walking out of the room.

Caroline watched him go, and then turned back to Sara, beaming.

"Right, kiddo," she said, "How do you feel about getting out of here?"

Pendale's Market, 2007

Catherine found him in the tea and coffee aisle, standing frozen in the middle of it, a thousand-yard stare in the direction of a shelf of herbal teas.

"Grissom," she said, announcing her approach. He didn't move. "Grissom."

Gil flinched, turning towards her. Oh no. His eyes were bloodshot, like was about to cry. He looked simultaneously panicked and despairing.

"I don't know which tea she needs," he said, his voice soft and lost. She thought of the little boy who had lost his father at nine-years-old. Her heart seared for him, both her friend and the man who had clearly lost more than enough to pay his dues.

"Okay," she said, quietly. "What does she normally drink?"

He shook his head and looked back to the boxes of teabags, neatly piled on top of each other, stacked across the shelf. "W-we drink peppermint if she's feeling ill, and, uh," he started, and Catherine could hear he was faraway in a memory. "Chamomile if we, if one of us is anxious. Green tea if, if-"

His face contorted, twisting in pain, and his hands shook by his sides. She should have known that groceries were a bad idea. She could have asked him to write her a list, she could have driven him home first. No, he needed a distraction. He was coming down from the adrenaline of believing the woman he loved was dead in the desert, because of him. Now he had to prepare himself for the fact that she survived, and what their recovery would look like.

You should have known.

"Grissom," she said, gently, stepping closer to him. She raised her hand slowly, hesitantly, before settling it on the back of his shoulder. "Gil."

Grissom made a couple of heaving, gasping breaths. A few tears escaped, and he brought his hand up to cover his eyes.

"What is this about?" Catherine asked. Why the significance of tea? She had so many questions, so many things she suddenly wanted to know about her friends, her colleagues. They had created this entire secret world together for two years, one that - until today - seemed to bring both of them so much peace and joy. She wanted to know that world, be part of that world. She wanted them to find that world again, together.

Gil didn't answer. He shook his head, as though it was too personal, too private to speak about - whether it was with her, or in public, she wasn't sure.

"Okay," she said, gently. She reached forward and plucked one of every kind of herbal tea off the shelf and dropped them unceremoniously in the cart. "Then we get all of them. So whatever she needs, you have."

Then she reached up and pulled him into a hug. "She's got you, Gil," she told him, as she stood on her tip-toes so she could properly hold him by the shoulders and rub his back. "I think you'll find that's enough."

TBC