6-"You Promised Me"

After the hospital outburst, Gil loaded Sara into his car and started driving.

"So, what do you want to do?" Grissom asked, back to his calm and collected self. Sara took a deep sigh and said, "What do you people do in the year 2007?"

Gil gave her a slight smile, "We go to lunch."

She smiled, and he pulled up outside a small restaurant called "Morning Sun". The day before her accident, she had gone there. It was weird, like Sara had just been there last month.

He unloaded her and sat her outside at a table with two menus. He sat across from her and smiled at her as she closed her eyes and let her face absorb the April sun. The waiter came over, a teenager, as he kneeled down to be eye level with the two as he said, "What can I get you guys?"

Sara smiled her odd smile, "I'll have the house soup." She turned her gaze to Gil. "I'm pretty sure I can keep it down."

Gil smiled his intelligent smile back at her, and then said to the waiter, "I'll have the hamburger."

"Okay, I'll get that right out to you guys. What about drinks?"

"I'll have the lemonade."

"You can bring me some chamomile tea." That was Grissom, and Sara shot him a look. "So what? You're a tea guy now?"

"I had to cut out the coffee on the count of... health issues..." His voice drifted off awkwardly, and Sara lifted an eyebrow. Grissom paused for a moment. It would be so easy to shrug off this issue, like in the past... but he had promised her, while in her sleep, that he would never do that again...

"Gil, you promised me." The words were out of her mouth before she could process what she had just said. Grissom's eyes widened.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I... I don't know what just happened... it's just... knowledge that I have... it's just... wait. You promised me?" Sara was incredulous. Gil looked very, very uncomfortable.

He paused. He's not going to tell me. He's going to just brush it off, always like-

"I was having nightmares. My doctor cut out caffeine and other stuff..." Gil fell silent, tense at the sudden pouring out of emotions. He looked so out of character that Sara didn't press the issue at all. He did look thinner, now that Sara was looking. A little ragged.

Curiosity carried the conversation to life around her old friends and work. Archie had married the new lab tech, a nice lady named Janine. Gil said going into the lab was like stepping into a sick romantic comedy. They were always kissing and stuff. Greg had been loving life as a CSI, he even volunteered at the Big Brothers, Big Sisters down in Las Vegas. Warrick and Catherine were an obvious thing now. Lindsey was a "severe teenager," and Nick had been dating the same woman for six months, which around the lab, was a very big thing.

Their lunches came and smelling the hamburger sent the baby into a fit of sorts.

"Sara? Are you feeling okay?"

Sara was gripping onto her stomach. "I feel... fine... can I have a bite of that hamburger?"

Gil stared. "Sara, you're a vegetarian."

A mood swing swung into action, "Well, the kid's not. Give me the hamburger."

With a look of true fear on his face, Gil handed her the hamburger and she took it and bit into it with renewed vigor. Gil's eyes were like round Petri dishes as she chewed and swallowed. She handed it back to him and smiled. They were left in a silence, but then Gil smiled at her and lifted his brow, so she admitted, with a look of disgust on her face: "I... I think I'm gonna be sick."

"Let's leave." Gil said quickly, throwing money down and wheeling her away.

They came to a stop in a local park. Gil pushed her onto the grass and he sat her next to a bench near a playground full of kids.

"Do you want to lie in the grass?" He asked, and she smiled and said, "Sure."

After a moment's struggle, Sara and Grissom were in a heap on the grass, Grissom had fallen backwards due to Sara's girth. After the dust cleared, Sara was on top of a struggling Grissom.

"Do me a favor." Grissom wheezed.

"What?"

"Remind me to never do that again."

She smiled again, and Grissom's world dissolved. After she had awakened, there had been few moments when she smiled, so whenever she did, he felt just as wonderful. She rolled off of him and leaned back in the grass.

"This feels great, so much better than sterile sheets..." She drifted off and watched all the kids. Gil did the same.

A child ran up the stairs to the playground, into a tube, and he popped out with a shriek. He ran across a bridge and jumped into a slide, disappearing for a moment only to reemerge at the bottom. A little girl had spent fifteen grueling minutes building a sand castle in the sandbox only to have her brother knock it down. Two other girls were involved in a faraway, fantasy world. Three boys were playing an intense game of tag.

"I have to ask you Sara..."

"Of course not, Gil. I can't keep this kid."

Frank: Wilma, I promise you; whatever scum did this, not one man on this force will rest one minute before until he's behind bars. Now, let's grab a bite to eat.

-"Naked Gun: From Files of Police Squad!"