Title: Reconciling

By: TriplePirouette

Category: GSR

Spoilers:Post-Bloodlines

Disclaimer: They're not mine- I'm a poor college student having fun... take pity...

Distribution: please ask first :)

Summary: I thought maybe if I figured that out, our situation wouldn't be half as hard anymore.

Author's Notes-Ok, never thought I'd find a way to do something unique with that ending. Then my wonderful brother (who is starting college in the fall- he's majoring in physics with plans to become a Ph.D.... oh so proud!) Gave me this idea. I dropped out of physics- so if I make any mistakes don't sue me.

Feedback PLEASE at: TriplePirouettePhilehotmail.com I love anything constructive! Blatant flames, however, will be disregarded and used to roast s'mores....

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They were silent until they reached the solitude of the car: Sara's face an unbroken mask of indifference, Grissom's full of concern but stoic as always. Once inside the comparable safety of the car he began to speak as he mindlessly started the engine and pulled onto the road.

"So?" He asked in a non-committal yet gentle tone.

"So what?" She shot back, equally as level in voice but squirming in her seat.

"You only blew a .09. It was barely over the limit- that's one of the reasons why they let you go without the DUI. Your impeccable record and reputation are others." He paused, as he turned down a street then continued, "I know you wouldn't have driven if you thought you were drunk. So, the question is, what happened?"

As they stopped at the light he looked over at her. Her eyes were wide. She hadn't expected him to be so straightforward... not that she knew what she really expected from him. She sighed and looked into traffic before she started talking. "Warrick, Nick and I went out... just two drinks at a bar on the Strip. I was..." she took a deep breath, "I just didn't feel like stopping to eat. I just wanted to go home." Grissom could tell that she wanted to say more, but she didn't. She continued, sounding utterly defeated. "That's all it was."

"You were lucky, Sara." He said quietly.

A pause, and a resigned, ironic laugh burst from her lips. "You know, I was always the goodie two shoes: the type that if God forbid there was one night I picked not to do my homework all year that was the night it was collected and graded. When I was eight years old in elementary school, and our entire gym class disturbed a wasps nest in a basketball hoop, I was the only kid that got stung at all, not to mention ten times. I'm the type that only ever had one beer before she turned twenty-one, but that was the first night my friend's parents ever came home early." She turned and stared at his profile. "You know that out of two hundred and forty-five Harvard freshmen that had coffeepots in their rooms I was the only one to get written up for it when I was at school? Do you know that I have never won anything in my life? Not a race, not a raffle, not a radio contest. Do you realize that my reputation and record as a CSI is so perfect that the only thing a defense attorney could attack in court was a possible relationship? I wasn't even in a relationship, but that was the only thing they could come up with." Sara laughed bitterly as she stared out the window. "I'm the kind of person that the first time I have more than one drink in as long as I can remember we have an early rollout, and the second time I'm pulled over." She stared right at him as he watched her out of the corner of his eye. "I'm the kind of person that gets passed over for promotions, even though I have the best solve rate in the department, for someone who doesn't care if they get the promotion or not. You wanna call me lucky? You're talking to the wrong person."

He stared at her as they pulled up to her apartment building. Her confessions swam in his head, damning and revealing. "Sara..." he started quietly as he took the keys out of the ignition. Grissom turned and looked at her. It was the first time he got a really good look at her in a long time. "Can... can we talk?" He didn't like that he was stuttering all of a sudden. He didn't like the fear in his stomach, either. She looked at him. He raised an eyebrow, she bobbed her head.

"Yeah, c'mon." As they walked up to her door she couldn't help but think that this is where she got the lecture. Maybe it would be the "Are you sure you don't have a drinking problem?" lecture or the "We can only ever be friends," speech. She stopped and turned to him as soon as they were inside and closed the door. Though she didn't want to do this outside, she had no intention of letting him invade her home to berate her. "So?" She asked, crossing her arms.

"What's that?" He said, distracted by the odd pattern to her walls. He pointed over her shoulder then moved forward into her apartment and past her. As Sara dropped her head into her hands to follow him, Grissom stared at the walls. They were covered in huge sheets of paper that were covered with huge flows of equations, diagrams, and notes in marker, pencil, and all colors of pen. He pointed and watched as she shrugged her shoulders and sighed. "What is all of this?" He asked again as she moved closer.

A resigned smile overtook Sara's face. It would figure he'd walk in here now. "Call it... a new distraction: home therapy for the Physics major. Wasting time. A way to get myself to sleep at night." Now, she thought, he'll think I'm a drunk and crazy.

"Ok. But what is it?"

"I'm trying to reconcile Quantum Mechanics and Relativity." He raised an eyebrow. "You know, Einstein, Black Holes, all those wonderful Physics things that have nothing to do with Forensics."

Grissom looked back to the covered wall, "The elusive Holy Grail of Physics," He mumbled. He just stared at her and bit his lip, his brows knit in confusion. "You haven't been yourself lately." He said, another one liner. Sara stared at him like he'd grown another head.

"Haven't been myself?" She parroted back. "Haven't been myself?" Her tone rose as she repeated it. "No, Grissom," Sara threw her purse down and stared at him, "I haven't been myself lately. Maybe if you could tell me what 'myself' is then I can pretend to be that and make you all happy. How would you like that?"

Suddenly, yelling at Grissom felt wonderful. It was better than her "over talking" and it made her feel twice as powerful, while still getting her point across. Her arms waved as the words flew out of her mouth without thought. "You know, maybe it was finding out that a guy that had been trying to get me to date him for months while I held out for someone else actually had a steady girlfriend! Maybe it's the guilt I have for never finding out how Eddie died for Catherine and Lindsey! Maybe it was getting thrown across the lab in an explosion! Maybe it was embarrassing myself over and over and over in front of you then getting turned down when I should have known better! Maybe it was watching one girl die because she was too afraid to identify her rapist while another made up some shit story so she wouldn't go to jail! Maybe it was having Brass accuse me of being an alcoholic! Maybe it was seeing that dead woman with my face! Or maybe it was hearing your little confession..." She let that one stew a second, let the surprise register on his face, then cut him off before he could respond. "You know... maybe it's how you treat me hot and cold all the time. Or maybe it was getting a gun shoved in my face."

Grissom's eyes grew wide. If her rant before was a confession, this was a mind-blowing play by play of all he'd known, yet ignored the last few years.

"I'm jittery," she continued, "Can't sleep most of the time. Don't want to eat, either, and not that I was Miss Social before, but now I don't talk to anyone unless it's work related. It's... it's scary what I'm becoming..."

Sara sighed as she walked past him, the fight draining from her shoulders as fast as it had come. She walked up to the wall and gently let her fingertips fall over the equations.

"I was at the bookstore a month or so ago, and on a whim I bought Stephen Hawking's 'Universe in a Nutshell.' It was the first time since I've been out here that I've read something that wasn't related to Forensics." Sara knew it was a lie; she'd pick up Cosmo from the grocery store if the cover caught her eye, and the occasional Connie Mason romance made its way to her bedside table, but those were mindless. Hawking was heavy, real, and reminded her why she had loved Physics in the first place. "He talks about reconciling Quantum Mechanics and Einstein's relativity." Sara continued to talk as she looked over the equations, knowing full well that Grissom was familiar with what she was talking about, but doing it nonetheless. "At first it was just a scribbling on a notebook page to see if I could remember some of the proofs and equations he was talking about. But it wouldn't leave me alone. I started writing them all out and, well, trying to do what the smartest people in the world have been trying to do for a hundred years... it turned into something I could do when I needed to think about nothing. Science, numbers... they're always concrete. They're always the same. It's black and white- not grey. You can't be emotional with them. You don't have to think. You just do."

Sara felt him move behind her. As sure as if she could measure it she knew his body was only molecules away from hers as he read the equations over her shoulder. He followed one to its scribbled and frustrated end then froze as she turned and looked him in the eyes. Neither moved for a while.

"Did you do it?" Grissom asked softly, suppressing the urge to touch her.

A gentle laugh escaped Sara as she shook her head, a smile forming and a twinkle returning to her eyes. Grissom smiled, too.

"No," Sara said in a jovial tone as she rolled her eyes. It felt natural, like they had been. "Of course not."

Grissom looked at the walls, then back at her, seriousness breaking through his smile. "I'm sure you could, though."

Sara dropped her head. Inside she was overjoyed by that tiny bit of praise, yet emotionally she was torn: was he reeling her in again? She knew she couldn't take it. Not again.

"You want to know why I really started doing this? What made me really try?" Sara asked in a sad whisper, looking at her feet.

Grissom bent to try to get her to look at him, but she wouldn't. He settled for allowing his hand to do as it pleased, which was to gently brush the hair from her down turned face and tuck it behind her ear, coming to rest on her shoulder. "Why?" he asked, equally as softly.

"Because," her strangled voice chocked out as she looked up at him, "I figured if I could figure this out," she waved a hand at the wall, "then this," she waved her hand between the two of them, mirroring his old gesture, "this most of all... wouldn't seem nearly as hard or complicated."

Grissom watched as Sara covered his hand with hers, then let herself relax and revel in the feel of his hand on her face. When she leaned in his other hand came up, framing her features. Just as he began to move closer to her, she lifted his hands from her face and stepped back.

"I... I can't do it anymore, Grissom." Fear and sadness overtook her body as she tried to hide in the equations.

"What can't you do?" He asked, moving closer. When her breath caught he stopped where he was, less than a foot away.

"I can't... I can't let you..." She took a deep breath, "I can't let myself fall apart like this." Slowly her voice began to pick up force. "I can't let you pull me to you then push me away because you don't know what to do, because I know in my heart that with you it won't be too late until the day I die. I can't let my work go unnoticed. I can't live like a hermit." Tears welled up in her eyes as they glazed over. "I can't die alone the crazy CSI lady down the hall who stocks up on lemons and talks to her plant like it's a child. I can't become that Grissom... I don't want to..."

Before the first tear could fall, before she could even relax her muscles to slide down the wall, Grissom had her in his arms. He held her up as tears flowed freely with sniffling and convulsive coughs. His hands rubbed her back while holding her to him. She clutched at his shoulders as she buried her head in his neck, muffling her words. "You're right... I'm not myself... I don't know who I am anymore... I don't like it... I don't like it..."

"Shhh," Grissom tried to quiet her as his heart pounded in his chest. He started dropping tiny kisses in her hair as he chanted, "I'm sorry," over and over as he held her, "I'm so sorry."

They stayed like that for long, quiet minutes as her tears subsided. Slowly she pulled away, tangling her hands in Grissom's hair to bring his forehead to hers. Her voice was thick with tears as she spoke, "I can't leave, and I can't stay where I am. I can't go back, but I want to be three years ago desperately. I can't do this alone, and I can't do it without you."

Grissom's hands surrounded Sara's face again, gently rubbing his thumbs over the tracks of her tears. "I won't make you," he whispered fiercely, "I promise I won't let you do this alone."

"Tell me we can fix this, Grissom... that we can fix me... Tell me it's not too late to fix us..." Sara pleaded with him.

Grissom pulled her to him, hugging her body fiercely with a new determination. "I won't let it be too late, Sara."