A/N: The song is called "A Puro Dolor" ("The Purest of Pain") and is actually a 'Spanglish' ballad, so out of respect for the group that sings it, Son by Four, I'm using the Spanish text. Under the Spanish, in square brackets, are the lyrics from an English version of the song.

Part III: A Year Later

I feel stupid; I'm sitting here staring at the phone as though it's about to bite me. Then again, given whom I'm considering calling, it just might. I need to prove that the tension between Grissom and me is gone. I've been down here in Miami for a year and I'm doing well, but I can still feel the stress of our un-relationship even from five thousand miles away.

I have a case now that could use his help. It's not that it's a real puzzler - I could solve it myself – but it's an excuse to get him down here. So I can face him down and feel nothing. Once I've done that, I'll be able to get on with my life, which has been in a sort of limbo ever since I left Las Vegas.

Or maybe I just want to hear his voice one more time.

Perdona si te estoy llamando en este momento

Pero me hacia falta escuchar de nuevo

Aunque sea un instante tu respiracion

[I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call you
But I couldn't fight it
I guess I was weak and couldn't even hide it
And so I surrendered just to hear your voice]

"Hello?" His groggy voice answers the phone and I realize that although it's the beginning of the workday here, Grissom is probably just getting out of bed. No, Sara, you will not allow image of him in bed to enter your mind. Bad Sara!

"Hi."

There's silence on his end. I don't know if he recognizes my voice, and I don't want to sound stupid and say, "This is Sara." So I wait a few more seconds.

"Sara," he says in a flat voice. "I hadn't expected to hear from you."

I take a deep breath – the time has come to put up or shut up, and I have to say something. "It's me," I say. Only later do I realize that I was echoing the first words I said to him in Vegas. "Uh, how are you?"

"I'm doing well, Sara." Still that flat voice. Is he happy to hear from me? Angry? I can't tell. "Can I help you with something?"

I swallow hard. "Um, yes," I say slowly. "I have . . . a case. That I need help with. It's a bug." Am I making any sense? I don't think I would be to the average person, but Grissom knows me well enough to read what I mean.

Don't think about that.

"A case." It sounds like I've piqued his interest, but he still sounds more wary than anything else. Why on earth HE should feel wary, when I am the one who got hurt because of him, I don't know.

"Yes, Grissom," I say more harshly than I had intended, "a case. One of those times when someone gets hurt or robbed, and reports it to the police?"

He sighs. "I know what a case is, Sara. Now either tell me what you want or get off the phone, because it's 5 in the evening here and you woke me up."

He sounds annoyed about being woken up. The old Grissom never cared about being woken up if there was something more interesting than sleep for him to do. "I have a case involving insects," I say briskly. "You're the foremost expert on those things, so I'd like you to come down here and consult for the city."

More silence on his end. I think I can hear him starting a coffee maker and banging around the kitchen. Finally, the noises stop and he speaks. "Tell me about it."

Victory! I fight the urge to smile. This should not be a happy moment, why am I smiling? "Do you remember that body farm victim we had a few years ago?" Of course he does, it's dumb of me to ask. Without waiting for an answer, I go on. "Well, we have a similar case here, but the bugs are more obscure. We can't find them in books." I don't tell him that we looked in a grand total of two books before I cut off the search.

"Hmm." I can almost hear his mind ticking away from here as he ponders my request and its pros and cons. Pro: bugs. Con: Sara.

"I need an answer, Grissom." Why am I making myself sound so bitchy? The whole point of this is to get him down here so I can demonstrate my lack of any emotion, including anger.


Disculpa se que estoy violando

Nuestro juramento

Se que estas con alguien, que no es el momento

Pero hay algo urgente que decirte este hoy

[I know how many times I said I'm gonna to live without you
and maybe someone else is standing there beside you
But there is something that you need to know]

Something occurs to me. "Are you busy?" Maybe he doesn't have time to come to Florida. For all I know, he's married and his wife won't let him go visit an ex-lover. "I'm sorry to bother you so early, really. Do you want me to call back later?" I'm glad I've managed to curb my temper and I now sound more human.

He clears his throat. "No! No, I'm up. I've been sleeping too much lately." I hear a chair scrape and assume he's sitting at his kitchen table with a mug of coffee. "And the lab isn't too backed up, so no, I'm not too busy."

"Will you come, then?"

A pause. "I don't know, Sara. You left and asked me never to contact you again, and yet you're calling me and begging me to come to Florida and see you. I find the contradiction confusing."


Estoy muriendo, muriendo por verte

Agonizando muy lento y muy fuerte

[That deep inside me I feel like I'm dying
I have to see you it's all that I'm asking]

Oh. Confusing. Wait a second. Is he telling me that HE'S confused? God, how many times did I say the same thing to him and get no answer?

"Listen, Grissom," I say defensively. "I was confused for three years straight in Vegas, and you never explained anything to me. You're just going to have to trust me." This statement is my secret weapon, because I know he trusts me, no matter what we do to each other.

"Sara . . ."

"Grissom, please. There's nothing I can tell you because there's nothing to say about . . . that. I just need your help on my case."

He sighs again and I wonder whether he's making all that noise on purpose, to show me how annoying he finds me.

"Grissom," I try again. "Please. I need you." This time I know that I'm echoing our past, using the words he used to call me to him in Vegas, and I'm shamelessly taking advantage of the chord I know it will strike with him.

I can almost feel him nod over the phone. "Okay, Sara. When do you need me?"

Vida, devuelveme mis fantasias

Mis ganas de vivir la vida

Devuelveme el aire...

Carino mio, sin ti yo me siento vacio

Las tardes son un laberinto

Y las noches me saben

A puro dolor...

[Baby, give me back my fantasies,
The courage that I need to live
The air that I breathe
Living without you, my worlds become so empty
My day's are so cold and lonely,
and each night I taste
The purest of pain]

He's coming. I can't believe he agreed. Hell, I can't believe I had the balls to call him and ask him to come in the first place. Now I can start getting my life back together.

I'm not yours anymore, Grissom. And soon, my subconscious won't be either.

So now I'm sitting on my couch in my cramped Miami apartment, counting down the twenty-nine hours that are left until I have to pick him up at the airport. Then the plan begins.

I made a date with one of my friends from the police department for the night Grissom arrives. Dan's just a friend and we both know that, but he owes me one. I didn't tell him why I needed him to take me out to dinner, and he didn't ask, just smiled and asked me what time I wanted to be picked up.

So what I have planned is this: Grissom will, unfortunately, be in my apartment when Dan comes to pick me up. "Oops," I'll say. "Well, we won't be out too late, so why don't you just hang out here?" Then my apartment will be . . .

The rational voice in my head takes over: Sara! Look at yourself! You're doing this so you can be free of him, and yet you're making an elaborate plot. Why not just be yourself, if you're so sure you're over him?

Because I'm not sure I'm over him, of course. But maybe if I tell myself often enough that I am, it'll become reality. But the voice in my head is right – it's childish to plan how to best show him that I don't care, and now my thoughts turn to what's really going on in my head: my anger.

Damn you, Gil Grissom. You've fucked up my life royally, and I let you do it. God, why didn't I take interpretive dance that summer instead of entomology?

Get out of my head, get out of my heart. Get out of my dreams and leave me alone! I don't want to wake up and remember dreaming about you. I don't want to be looking at a case and wonder what Grissom would make of the evidence.

I just want my life back . . . is that too much to ask?



Quisiera decirte que hoy estoy de maravilla

Que no me ha afectado lo de tu partida

Pero con un dedo no se tapa el sol

[I wish I could tell you I'm feeling better every day
That it didn't hurt me when you walked away
But to tell you the truth I can't find my way]

The anger isn't helping me cope. That's been the whole problem with my move. I left Vegas so that I would be nowhere near Grissom and his influence. I left him an angry note telling him why I moved, and it does occasionally give me pleasure to imagine him reading it, but it wasn't the catharsis I had hoped it would be. None of it has been as effective as I'd hoped.

Maybe it's the whole first love thing. Maybe he's burned into my brain. God, I hope not. I'm lost enough as it is, and the more I think of him, the more confused my life becomes.

Have I mentioned lately that men are more trouble than they're worth?


Estoy muriendo, muriendo por verte

Agonizando muy lento y muy fuerte

[And deep inside me I feel like I'm dying
I have to see you it's all that I'm asking]

I'm just hoping that I won't go bonkers for him again when he steps off that plane. I'm prepared, I know how good-looking he is, and I will not be swayed by the sight of him. But when he opens his mouth? That's a different story.

Tell me again why I asked him to come down here?

Oh, right. Because I'm pathetically obsessed with him and have the nutty idea that transporting him closer to me will cure the obsession.

I think I ought to start doing drugs. If I'm this insane sober, maybe if I get high I'd be normal.