Chapter 1

She stood on top of the roof and looked down at the ground beneath her. The breeze was cold but she barely felt it. It wasn't a normal feeling for her. She was always all passion, all fire and force under a stern face and angry eyes. But since the explosion, she felt not fire or ice. . .just numb. She felt the urge to pinch herself or cut herself or anything to make sure she was really there and that she wasn't about to wake up from some sort of abstracted nightmare that had become her life. She closed her eyes and opened them again. She could still see the ground several feet below her. She was still standing on the roof, looking down, and wondering if she had always, in some sense, been standing apart from others. Maybe she had always been on this roof.
She didn't mind not really understanding people. It didn't bother her that she stood apart from the crowd, but to stand alone entirely was a different matter. And it seemed to her now as she watched the people below her that she had been alone and a hand had reached towards her and she had grasped it for a moment. In that moment, she had known what touch and warmth felt like, and when the contact had faded away, she couldn't go back to standing alone again. There had been something there, in that connection in an otherwise lonely world. She had touched that hand. She wanted to hold it again. She wanted it to come with a body and a mind and an enigmatic personality and a voice that said, "All right. Let's go get dinner."
There had been something between her and Grissom, she knew it, but it had just faded away. No, he had just faded away. She couldn't remember when it happened exactly. It wasn't an instant chemistry thing. Initially, she was the student and he was the teacher, and that was all fine, all gravy, Greg might say. But then they had become closer and she knew she hadn't imagined it or been the only one to feel it. He had felt it too. But he faded away, and she couldn't get him back. It was hard to be in love with a ghost.
Maybe love was too strong. She didn't know she could say that she loved Grissom. But there was something, and maybe he was too blind to see it. He was always the numb one, the dispassionate. Maybe a mix like that would never have worked. She was too passionate and he was too chilled. Maybe it would never have worked.
But she would have liked to try.
In any case, she thought to herself, she felt numb now. Not exactly dispassionate, just unreal. She had been in shock, she knew that. She even knew that she was in shock when she was in shock, which was an exceptionally strange feeling. But the initial shock had passed and left her empty somehow. Empty and with a need for more.
She had wanted Grissom to be the one to complete her. She used to think work could. But now work just left her feeling more empty, and Grissom, whether he wanted to or not, wouldn't or couldn't make her feel complete. She had to find something on her own. She warned Grissom that someday he might decide what he wanted and it would be too late. She was pretty sure that it was too late now.
She stared down at the people below her. They all seemed happy but she knew they couldn't be. Everyone had their own problems. She'd just have go down there with the rest of them and try to find a way to solve her own.
Maybe she wasn't so alone after all.