Title: In The Hall

Author: Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)

Rating: PG

Pairing: Sara/Warrick

Feedback: Makes my day

Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.

Archive: At my site Checkmate () , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.

Notes: Fifth in the Familiar Places series, following On the Floor, In the Car, In the Living Room and On The Town

***

If I didn't know better, I'd swear this is the same bench, same hallway, that I was sitting in as a senior in high school.

I know it's insane. I know it's not possible, but then again, considering today's events, I'm willing to believe in the impossible right about now.

After all, I haven't told anyone about what happened back then in years. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever told anyone what I told Sara over dinner. What are the odds that at the very moment I was telling her about Grams's first heart attack, Grams was at home with Mrs Beckett from down the block, having her second?

Hell, I bet for years, would bet, as the saying goes, on two raindrops sliding down a windowpane. Not even I would have taken those odds on.

Yet here I am. And while it might not actually be the same hall, it sure as hell looks like it, bluish tinged walls with those high ceilings, windows casting shafts of sunlight along the walls and floor, shadows that are ever shortening by now. Medical personnel walk along, mostly at their leisure, like they don't know that people are fighting for their lives around here, and every so often someone goes by who's obviously a patient, or who has someone in their lives who is a patient here. A woman walked by about an hour ago, her eyes red from crying, tears still rolling down her cheeks, tissue pressed to her lips, and I actually had to look down, look away from her.

There's still that same smell, that perfectly clean, perfectly sterile antiseptic smell that clings to your pores more than any decomp ever will, the smell that I know I won't be able to get out of my mind for weeks. The bench is as hard and uncomfortable as the one all those years ago, and while standing and walking would probably be a good idea, I can't find the energy somehow.

There is one important difference between this time, and the last time I sat here like this, waiting for news of Grams.

Last time, I didn't have Sara with me.

And I don't know how I got through it without her.

She's been incredible, ever since that phone call wrecked what was a perfectly good first date. It took a second for the words to sink in, but when they did, she went straight into her most professional, take charge mode, signalling the waiter for the cheque, letting go of my hand to reach for her purse. Ordinarily, I'd protest my date paying for anything, but this time I was so shocked that it didn't register with me, hasn't until just this minute in fact.

She pulled a handful of bills out of her wallet, pausing only to check that she'd left enough to cover it, before standing up, reaching for my hand again. "Come on," she said, taking my hand in hers as I obeyed her command automatically. She led me out into the parking lot, over to my car, where she held out her hand, looking up at me expectantly. When I didn't react fast enough for her liking, she prompted me with another command. "Give me your keys."

"Why?" I was starting to come back to myself a little, fishing in my jacket pocket for the keys, and when they appeared, she grabbed them before I could react.

"Because you're in no state to drive," she told me crisply, unlocking the car. "It's Desert Palm, right?"

I nodded. "You don't have to-" I began, but she cut me off with a look.

"Warrick, I'm not leaving you on your own with this." She sounded almost affronted that I'd think such a thing, giving my hand one last squeeze before dropping it and going around to the driver's side. "Now, get in the car."

Pretty sure that it was more than my life was worth to say no to her, not really up to a fight over it, I gave in, and we didn't talk as she drove to the hospital. I was thinking of Grams, remembering the past, and she left me to those thoughts, not saying anything until she dropped me at the main entrance, telling me to go on ahead, that she'd park the car and find me in a few minutes.

She did, and she's been sitting beside me ever since.

A glance at my watch tells me exactly how long it's been since we've been sitting here, almost four hours now, and I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, rubbing my hands over my face. "Why aren't they telling us anything?" I whisper, more to myself than to her, and she doesn't answer, not in words anyway. Instead, her right arm, the one closest to me, reaches out, her hand beginning to move across my back in wide, sweeping circles. Her left hand meanwhile, settles on my knee, squeezes once, then just rests there lightly.

After a couple of minutes of that, I'm myself enough to lift my head from my hands, giving her an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry," I breathe, just in case she missed it, and she grins, left hand squeezing my knee again.

"It's fine." I straighten up, expecting her right hand to fall away, but instead she stretches her arm out, so that her hand lands on my shoulder, her arm all the way across my back. It strikes me suddenly, from nowhere, that I never would have pegged Sara Sidle as one who would be so publicly demonstrative with someone… I would say someone she was dating, but we're hardly that, we've had a few kisses and half a dinner, that's hardly dating.

But staying here with me like this goes above and beyond the call of friendship.

I'm so preoccupied with trying to make sense of my thoughts that I don't hear what she says. "What?"

She frowns slightly, repeating herself. "I said, you want some coffee, a soda, anything? I'm sure there's a vending machine around here somewhere…"

She's offered that, at minimum, once an hour since we've been here, and my answer is no different. "Nah. Thank you."

She nods, looks down at her hand on my leg and sighs. When she looks up again, I know she has a question for me, because she's got that look on her face. "Is there anything I can do for you?" she asks, and I'm able to give her a genuine smile at that, because she's doing more than she thinks.

Nine times out of ten, I'd keep that thought to myself. However, this, being in this place, with my grandmother possibly hovering between life and death, with all the things that I never said to her rattling around in my head, this is the tenth time. So I'm completely honest with her.

"Sara, you being here is enough," I tell her, and at any other time, the way her jaw drops, her blink of surprise, would have me in stitches. Now however, I just close my hand over hers and hope she knows I'm telling her the truth. "I'm sorry for this by the way… it's not the date that I was planning for the two of us."

She emits a surprised little giggle at that, leans forward for a second, pressing her head against my shoulder. I tilt my own head, resting it against hers and closing my eyes, and for a moment, just for a moment, I can almost forget where we are.

It's only for a moment though, because then she straightens up, looks into my eyes. "Tell me about her," she says softly, tentatively, and I look off into the distance as I consider her request. Not that I'm considering refusing it mind, I'm just wondering what words, what stories, best sum up Grams.

"She raised me," I tell her simply. "Not just me either… I think she ended up raising half the kids in the neighbourhood… or at least feeding them. They all wanted to come over for some of Grams's cooking. Especially when I got older… me and the guys'd go out on Friday nights, usually after baseball games, and they'd all end up crashing at our place… and Grams'd spent all morning Saturday morning feeding us." The memory brings a smile to my face, of a kitchen table surrounded by teenagers, Grams at the stove, cooking away, assured by me that everyone was up, only for another teenager to stumble down the stairs minutes later. "She never said anything about it though, never complained. Just took care of us." A suspicious lump forms in my throat. "She always took care of me."

Sara's hand squeezes my shoulder gently. "And then you took care of her," she murmurs, and I shrug.

"Never crossed my mind to do anything else," I tell her honestly, and it's always baffled me why people treat the choice I made like it's some kind of big thing. "I could go to college anywhere, Grams was in Vegas." Another memory stirs in me, and I chuckle. "You should've seen the mileage she got out of that… first it was all about her boy being accepted to Yale, then it was all about how he was turning down Yale because he didn't want to leave her… not that she took it lying down mind you, she battled me tooth and nail over it. Said she didn't want me giving up my dreams for her. I told her I was doing what I wanted to do, and she couldn't talk me out of it. Course, it didn't hurt that I didn't tell her what I was doing until it was too late to change it."

She laughs at that. "Pure chance, right?" she asks dryly, and I would reply, except that I've been floored by a realisation, something that stuns me so sharply all I can do is look at her, look into her eyes. She must see that, because she frowns slightly, and before she can ask me what's wrong, I share my discovery.

"You're a lot like her you know."

A spark of surprise flares in her eyes, burns across her face. "I'm going to take that as a compliment," she says, with a small laugh, but I'm completely serious as I look at her.

"You should." The tone of my voice declares that I'm serious, that I'm not playing this for laughs, and it stuns her into momentary silence, makes her look hard at me.

"In what way?" she asks when she can speak again, and this time, there's no hesitating in my reply.

"You're both strong, smart… both of you can take care of yourselves…" I grin as another, rather more obvious similarity comes to me. "Neither one of you let me get away with anything…" She laughs too at that, presses herself closer to me on the bench, and I shift slightly so that I'm facing her more, lifting her hand that's been resting on my knee this whole time. I don't let it go though, instead moving so that our fingers intertwine, lacing together, and I stare down at our joined hands as I speak. "God Sara…" My voice is little more than a whisper. "I wish you'd met her…" The second the words leave my lips, I'm aware of how they sound, and I wish I could take them back.

If she notices my defeatist attitude, she doesn't comment on it, instead squeezing our joined hands, her free hand sliding across my back, coming to rest on my shoulder. "I will," she tells me, her voice strong. "And we're going to get along great. You'll be coming up with ways to keep us apart."

I want to believe her, but Grissom's maxim about believing the evidence echoes in my mind, and Sara's got none to back up her claim. However, this is Sara, and she doesn't speak lightly about matters like this, so I have to ask her, "What makes you so sure?"

In a day of surprises, in a week of surprises, I get another one when Sara replies, because there are tears standing in her eyes, and I hear more in her voice. "Because she raised you," she whispers, all her emphasis on the last word, her hand moving from my shoulder to my cheek as she says it.

The words, the feeling behind them, bring a smile to my face and tears to my eyes, and I shake my head to try to keep them back, because I don't want to fall apart, not at all and not in front of her. The fact of the matter is though, I want that, more than I've wanted anything in a long time. I want the two of them to meet, to get along. I want to hear the walls of Grams's living room ring with Sara's laughter as they look at old photographs of me while I hide in the kitchen, declaring embarrassment, but loving every minute.

I'm a grown man, but right now, all I want is my grandmother.

"She's eighty years old Sara," I say when I'm able to speak. "I know she's had a good innings, I know that. But she's my Grams… and I'm not ready to lose her yet."

Sara doesn't say anything to that; perhaps she knows there's nothing to say. But she does what's better, breaking our joined hands and moving so that both her arms are around my neck and she's holding me close. My arms slide around her waist and I bury my head in the crook of her shoulder, closing my eyes against the silky softness of her hair and holding on to her for dear life as the rest of the world goes on around us.