Disclaimer: Not mine, okay? Not the characters, not the whatever, not any of it. Ooh, but this disclaimer's mine! Yay!

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Author's note(s): We're skipping some time here in the story. Creative decision, or so-called. Also, I re-read the early chapters of this story tonight. And there is no continuity! I can not wait to revise this as one giant package so that it can actually make sense.

And we get a nice corny fortune cookie scene today!

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Grissom looked in the small mirror above the sink in his room. It was three weeks to the night that Sara arrived back into town and disappeared back out of his life. Catherine had brought him clothes, dark gray slacks and a green shirt, and after putting them on and shaving, he felt almost like himself. Except that he had a child arriving in six months whose mother would not return his phone calls.

He checked his watch again, the most beautiful item in the world to him after four weeks without it. It was already seven in the evening. He was becoming impatient, anxious to be home again. He could not leave until each doctor who had been consulted on his case signed off, and there was one left.

He had been pleasantly surprised and very relieved when he was told that he was only going to need minimal care. He knew he did not really have anyone who he wanted taking care of him. The sooner he could sleep with his townhouse otherwise unoccupied the better. He was upset that he was even expected to have someone staying with him. Except for a tightness in his chest sometimes he felt fine, and there was no one he wanted to see. Pretty much no one.

"Ready to go home?" Catherine asked, suddenly appearing in the doorway. "Or would you rather stand there and try to look smart?"

"I don't have to try," he replied automatically, not really registering what she was saying. He grabbed his overnight bag from the bed and she rushed over to take it from him. "It's empty, Catherine, take it easy," he said, his bloodshot eyes flashing with anger.

"I'm just worried," she said defensively, taking a few steps back.

"I'm fine. Are those my discharge papers?" he asked. She held them out to him silently, and he read over them. "There's no reason for you to stay at my place tonight. There's nothing here that I need help with."

"You're supposed to have someone with you in case. And it's not going to be me anyway, I have to work tonight. It's going to be Sara." She paused for a moment. "That should cheer you up, since she's the only person you have any interest in seeing anymore."

"What?"

"Nothing, Grissom. But you should know that Nick and Warrick noticed it too. That you could care less who comes through that door to be with you once you realize that it's not her."

"Maybe I don't really want to see anyone, Catherine. Including Sara. I never really saw anyone before this happened. Why would I want to spend hours a day with everyone now?" He knew he was being awful, but he did not care. Anything to make her quit talking about Sara.

She stared at him, hurt apparent in her eyes. "Ready?"

He avoided looking her in the eyes. He did hated how he was treating her. "Yes," he said simply, leaving the room for the last time.

Sara nervously rang Grissom's doorbell and shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"Hey," Catherine said, opening the door. "I have to go. He's asleep in his room now, but he ordered supper and it's on its way. I have no idea what it is. There's money on the counter."

"I can pay for it," Sara told her, sitting down her black bag.

"Okay. I really have to run. Try to have a good night."

"You too."

Sara watched Catherine pull out of the driveway then carefully closed the door. She wanted to go to Grissom's room, make sure he was breathing. Wanted to see him. She had not gone this long without seeing him since she left San Francisco for Las Vegas.

She now noticed a box of Grissom's belongings that had been returned by the lab sitting next to the door. In other words, things that had lost Ecklie's interest in the last four weeks. She began putting everything back where it belonged in the obviously empty spots on shelves. At the bottom of the box was a brown leather-bound blank book. Not exactly blank. Grissom's journal.

She dropped it on the couch and stared at it. She respected him too much to read it. She wanted to know what it said about her. If she only looked at the part about that night, she would not be finding out anything she did not already know.

"No, I can't do this," she said out loud, picking the journal up and putting it on the small table in the corner.

"Why not?" a voice asked.

She turned toward the voice. "Grissom! I'm glad to see you looking so good."

"I'm glad to be seeing you at all," he replied. He nodded toward the book. "Read it. You won't get anything out of it anyway."

"I don't want to."

"I want you to."

"I don't have to do something just because you ask me to."

"Okay," he said, seeming strangely amused. The doorbell rang, and he moved to get it, leaving Sara staring at the cover of the book in front of her. "Thank you," he said to the deliveryman, before closing the door and taking the food into the kitchen.

She picked it up and opened to the first page. It seemed that the journal actually started out as a list of quotes, each dated, the first from 1989. She identified with it too much, and it did not surprise her that Grissom did too.

"That's life: trust and you're betrayed; don't trust and you betray yourself."

Three years of unmarked quotes filled the beginning of the journal. Eventually he started to write comments after each one, explaining why they caught his attention. It all seemed normal to her until she found one dated for the spring of 1993.

"Excitement leaped in my breast like a puppy, enthusiastic and more than a little naive." Exactly what I'm thinking now. Somehow always knows what I'm thinking. Just a coincidence to find this quote tonight. Feels weird, this automatic attraction. Sara Sidle. Remember that name. Smart, attentive, only college student I met so far who seems qualified to have graduated high school. Would write more, but there are days to go yet at this awful conference. Maybe not awful, now.

"Do you want to eat?" he asked from the kitchen.

"Yeah," she said, her voice shaky. She walked over to the counter where a plate of vegetable stir fry waited for her.

"I hope it's okay. You weren't here to order."

"No. It's fine." She took the fork he handed her and started to eat.

"Like the journal?" he asked after a few minutes.

"Didn't get there yet. I'm still back when you first met me. Can't decide what I think."

"I have no idea what I wrote about that."

Sara shrugged. "You seem like you're doing really well already. Surprised you still want someone staying here," she observed as he stood at the table going through mail.

"You don't have to stay."

"That's not what I meant."

"Well, I know you said you didn't want to take care of me."

She sighed and sat her fork down. "Grissom, It's not that I...Never mind."

He stood looking at her for a minute. "I'm going to try to go back to sleep. I put out a towel and some things for you in the bathroom if you want to take a shower tonight."

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"Good night, Sara." She watched him walk away and listened for the sound of his bedroom door closing. It sounded comforting.

Sara wrapped the huge towel around her shoulders and settled herself on Grissom's brown leather couch. In some ways she felt incredible. She noticed in the shower that she was showing, just enough for her to notice. She also wished that she and Grissom were in a place in their relationship where they could share that.

She opened his journal, which disturbingly enough matched the couch. He wrote like he was taking notes, almost. He wrote the way she would expect.

Finally, her curiosity got the better of her, and she turned to almost three months before.

Don't have a quote for what I did last night. Or. Yes. "Occasionally, there arises a ... situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous, or brilliant – you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that idea in the first place. Trust your demon." Trusted mine last night. Can't think, decide, for myself. Let Sara make up our collective mind on this. Far as this is concerned, would follow her to the ends of the earth. Have no idea what to do, have to trust someone. Rather Sara than someone else. Who else? All Sara. Being scientific, trying to rationalize this. Well, here's the truth. I have no idea. Not the first woman I've wanted, I'm forty-seven. The ONLY one I want now. Absolutely. Don't know why I did what I did last night. Don't want to lose her. No where to go from here. Exactly what I wanted, wrong circumstances. Didn't want a one-night stand, not with Sara. Don't want this, can't do more. Don't know if I love her, have no idea what that means. "The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom, and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool. I have no use for either." Can memorize that but can't deal with the aftermath of a bad decision. I don't want to shrink this down to a bad decision. It was stupid and I hope she's not feeling hurt and it's done now. Know I don't need this. Feel like I need her.

Sara was moved by his words, awkward as they were, even though they were not at all what she wanted to read. She knew Grissom, though, as much as anyone did, and she knew that there was so much in the words she had just read.

She stood up and shook her head to try to clear it.

She realized she wanted something sweet. She did not trust anything coming from Grissom's kitchen, but she wandered around in it anyway. She noticed the fortune cookies sitting in their wrappers next to the empty Chinese food containers. She opened one and broke it apart carefully. Once she finished the cookie she idly read the paper that was inside.

"Others trust you to lead; follow their example."

Something startled Grissom awake. He looked panicked at his now open bedroom door, but was calmed he saw her looking at him. She closed the door, then he could feel rather than see her get under the sheet on the other side of the bed.

"Are you awake?" she asked quietly.

"Yes."

"Can I sleep in here?"

"Yes."

She moved closer to him, until they were touching. He loved feeling her pregnant stomach through the cotton pajamas she was wearing. He could tell. He knew every inch of her. And the choice of sleepwear was so like Sara. She rested her head against his chest, seeming to relax. Finally she asked, "Do you trust me?"

"Yes."

"If I promise to try will you try too?"

He was suddenly awake. "Even my best isn't going to --"

"Will you try?"

"Of course."

"That's all I need tonight." She carefully wrapped her arms around him.

Her breathing fell into a regular pattern and her breath warmed his chest where her mouth rested. He tried not to cry, but eventually he did. She woke slowly.

"Am I hurting you?" she asked when she noticed his tears.

"No." He gently stroked her hair.

She curled her fingers around his and lightly kissed his fingertips. "Good night."

"Good night."

Author's notes: Okay, credits: Every quote in Grissom's journal is by Roger Zelazny, the best author of all time. The fortune cookie was by my mom. ("Hey, how do you say 'trust people who trust you' in fortune cookie language?" "Your English assignments keep getting weirder, Amber.")

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And this is not the end of the story. For anyone who was worried. If anyone was. No one was? Okay then!

Love you guys,

Amber

April 3, 2002; 9:19 p.m.