Disclaimer: I want to find the guy that owns CSI, and them maybe marry his son. Then I could semi-own them. Yes, that sounds like a plan…and when whoever does own them dies, he can leave them to me in his will! Then I will be free to do whatever I want with the CSI! 

Spoilers: Nope

A Note: this is purely because I needed to write something. I don't know where this is going, so be prepared for anything.

*a.l.

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It was raining in Vegas and it seemed to reflect the mood Gil Grissom wore. Dreary, tired, inert, dismal … all qualities that he had inherited from his job. He could hear the rain though the roof of the crime lab and it seemed to play a sweet melody for his mind. The soft pitter-patter soothed his senses and he almost wished it wouldn't stop. Not only for the fact that he was enjoying it, but because it is likely that less people will be murdered in the rain, which meant that he could spend the entire night here instead of gallivanting all over Vegas.

Or at least that is what Grissom could hope.

He heard footsteps and he swiveled in his chair to look out the door. Catherine Willows and Warrick Brown were walking by and they wore smiles on their faces. Grissom could only speculate about what they were so happy about. Maybe they had just solved the case he had put them on two days ago, or maybe someone had told a funny joke? Before Grissom could think of anything else to explain their mood, Nick Stokes came running over to the two of them to join in, and now they were all laughing. Grissom watched in awe as the three CSIs stood there laughing in the middle of the hallway. It brought a smile to his face seeing them happy, but something wasn't right with the picture…something was missing.

The three of them turned away from Grissom's office and continued down the hall in the opposite direction. They then turned the corner and were out of his sight. Grissom wondered where they were going as he turned back around in his chair to look at his back wall. His whole life seemed to be collected here. Pictures of him shaking people's hands, documents and degrees; even a rare Australian butterfly that one of his friends had sent him. On this wall, everything seemed to make sense. But out there…

Grissom swiveled again to look out the door. Something was bothering him; he just couldn't place his finger on it. It was raining outside, no new cases had come in, and his CSIs were happy. What was tugging at his heart then? He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to figure out exactly what piece to the puzzle was missing, and when he opened them, Sara Sidle stood in the hallway in front of his office.

That's what had been bothering him. He hadn't seen Sara yet. She hadn't been in the break room at the beginning of shift, and she wasn't in the hall laughing with the rest of this crew. She stood there wearing a pair of dark jeans and a dark purple top. Her hair was down as usual and she wore a somber look on her face. "Slow night huh?" she said as she walked over and leaned on Grissom's door frame. She had tried to sound cheerful, but it had come out depressed.

"Killings in the rain don't leave much evidence. Isn't this good then?" Grissom said as he looked at Sara. She slowly nodded her head.

 "What's wrong?" Grissom asked after a moment of silence had passed between the two of them. "I saw the others in the hall wall laughing and you weren't with them."

"Oh." Sara said as she cast a look towards the ground. "Nick and Warrick were joking about some game…I don't know really. I wasn't paying attention." She shrugged her shoulders and looked back up at Grissom.

"Now how about you tell me what's wrong with you?" Grissom asked knowing that he was sailing into dangerous waters with this question.

"Does something always have to be wrong with me? Maybe I'm just an abnormal person." Sara replied halfheartedly.

"Sara, you're not an abnormal person." Grissom said smiling hoping that Sara would smile back. She didn't. "But there is something wrong. Why don't you tell me?"

"Because telling you won't do anything." She sharply responded. "I can tell you all I want and it still won't move me from the rock, or the hard place."

"What do you mean?" Grissom said leaning forward in his chair and talking his glasses off his face.

"It means that I'm in this mood and there is nothing that can be done to change it. I've begun to really think about my life, Grissom, and I think I need to move on with it and get over this whole thing. I can't believe my stubbornness sometimes." Sara shook her head in disgrace and made a move to turn away from the door.

"Wait, Sara, just don't go. Please, explain to me what you mean."

Sara stared at Grissom for a moment. "I mean that I've been blinded by too many things in my life. I've let my self get carried away by feelings that I have. Certain cases affect me and I let them play with my head. Certain people affect me and they not only play with my head, but my heart also." 

"I'm sorry that you feel that way."

"You should be. You're half of the reason for it." Sara snapped back.

"Sara, please, what is wrong? You appear in my door and suddenly all of this just comes pouring out. What is this all about?" Grissom said trying to process what Sara was telling him.

"This is about so many things that I have kept bottled up inside of me for too long."

Grissom expected Sara to go on, and when she didn't, he felt perplexed. "What do you mean?" he finally asked.

"Fine. You really want to know Grissom? I am so frustrated with all of this." Sara waved her hand in the air motioning to everything around her.

"With all of what, Sara?"

"THIS!" she practically screamed. "My co-workers, I feel like I am the outsider of the group. You saw Nick, Cath and Warrick laughing, right? Well maybe I wasn't with them because they didn't include me in on their joke. No, not 'serious Sara', never." She paused and took in a deep breath, trying to collect some strength to go on. "And then there is you. One day you are treating me like a normal human being and the next I am scum on the top of the pound. This has got to change Grissom. A rock and a hard place. I feel like I am wedged so tight between the two that one of them is going to crush me."

Grissom stared at her with confusion for a second, "Scum? Sara, I don't treat you like scum." He finally said. Immediately after he wished he had chosen his words more wisely.

 "Yes you do, and you know it. You second guess what I say, you give me crap jobs to do when you know I can do a whole lot better, and you never seem to acknowledge my presence. Ever." Sara could feel the fury building up inside of her. "Do you know how long I was standing outside your door before you realized I was there?" she didn't give him time to answer. "Ten minutes Grissom. Ten minutes wasted from my life that I spent waiting for you. And that's just tonight. Let's not count all of the hours and days that I have spent waiting for you to open you eyes and notice me."

"I didn't see you there." Grissom stammered. He couldn't believe that a friendly question such as 'what's wrong?' could turn into this. He should have known to expect something like that from Sara.

"See? You never see me. I could stand in front of your house on fire wearing nothing but a smile and you still wouldn't look my way. You're always concerned with Warrick, or Catherine, or even Nick. Never Sara. And the three of them aren't any better. They just walked right by me without out even saying 'hi.' I might as well be invisible." Sara paused and looked straight at Grissom's face. "I guess I might have brought this on myself trying to be self-sufficient, but at the end of the day I am still lonely." Sara looked away from Grissom for the first time during the conversation. She could feel a silent tear falling down her face and she didn't want Grissom to see it.

 "So if you want to know what this is about, it's about the fact that I have kept everything inside of me for too long. Now it is all just going to pour out. This is my breaking point Grissom. You could even blame it on the rain, or the fact that I have been sitting in the lab for the past hour. You can even blame it on the shirt Nick is wearing for all I care, but I knew this was going to happen. I just didn't know when. I've now stepped over the line of no return." Sara bit her lip trying to hold back the rest of the tears that she knew were coming.

"Is there anything I can do?" Grissom asked in a whisper.

"You should have done something a long time ago, Grissom." Sara snapped back, still not looking at him.

"I'm sorry." He replied. He stood up and made his way over to her, but she back away. "What do you want me to do?" he asked realizing that Sara wasn't going to forgive him that easy.

"I want you to realize that one day I'm not going to be here, and you're probably going to wonder why. It's because of this, Grissom. This 'thing' that you can't deal with. And this thing is me. So, you know what? I'm going to do something about it...." she replied and turned back to look at him. Her eyes were now glossy from the tears that she was trying to hide. Sara looked at him, her gaze lingering for a moment, and then she turned away and walked out of the room. 

Grissom stood there wondering if he was ever going to see Sara back in his office again.

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So…what do you think? I'm open for any and all suggestions on what to do now. I've got a pretty good idea about where the story is going to end up, but I still have yet to write it. So please send some of those reviews my way. :-D

*a.l.

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