Sara was curled up on the sofa under a brightly coloured patchwork quilt Nick's grandmother had made him. Nick thought she was asleep at first as he stood in the doorway watching her, but then she seemed to sense his presence and lifted her head. Her face displayed the marks of tears.
"You okay?" Nick asked, moving to stand in front of her.
"Yeah."
Nick fixed her with his I'm-not-that-stupid look.
"Not really," she admitted. She'd pulled her hair back into a pony tail, but the sides were coming out and hanging loose around her face. She looked strangely attractice like that, and strangely vulnerable too as Nick sat down beside her.
"Want to talk about it?"
Sara lay back down, head in Nick's lap, and looked up at him. "We always talk about me, and never about you."
"That's not true, Sara."
"It seems like all we talk about is me. My problems. My issues. I just - I don't want this to be all about me, Nicky."
There was honesty in those big brown eyes. Nick stroked her hair to buy himself time to think, forcing himself to look back over their relationship. He remembered talks about the drinking problem Sara had had, about her old infatuation with Grissom, about her relationship with her family. Surely they'd had comparable conversations about him, but all he could remember was the time he'd told her about what had happened when he was nine. He'd had to force himself to do it; he'd long ago promised that he was going to be honest about it. Even over these last few days - he'd cried in her arms, certainly, but had he actually told her what he was feeling? Probably not in so many words. "Where did this come from?" he asked.
"I was just... thinking. It seems like I'm always taking, never giving."
"But you give me much more than you know."
"That's not the point, though." Sara took one of Nick's hands, and squeezed it. "I feel like I've been really selfish."
"Why?" Nick asked, amazed and a little startled, squeezing back. "You haven't been."
"Because it seems like the whole focus of this relationship has been on me, on you making me feel better about myself and my issues."
"But I'm just as screwed up as you are?" Nick asked, smiling despite the fact that he was thinking hard.
"Not necessarily. I just feel like you know more about me than I know about you, and that it's my fault because I let you make me talk, and I don't ask you questions. Much."
Continuing to stroke Sara's hair absentmindedly, Nick looked away from her, focusing his gaze on a point somewhere on the opposite wall to enable himself to think without being distracted by the slightly beseeching expression on her face. There was no way to deny that making Sara feel better made Nick feel better. Kim had once forced him to admit that he used solving other people's problems to make him feel better about himself. She'd been referring to the families of victims at the time, but it held true for Sara.
"Nicky, please tell me you get what I'm saying."
"I do," Nick assured her, returning his gaze to her face. "I - you're making sense, actually."
"Makes a nice change, then."
"Yeah." Nick smiled slightly, looking down at that face he knew so well. "I'm sorry, Sara."
"Huh?" she said, sounding as startled as Nick had felt earlier. "You haven't done anything!"
"I think I've made you talk so we can avoid discussing my issues."
"Oh," said Sara. Nick searched her face, looking for signs of disappointment or anger. He didn't see any, and Sara was an awful actress, so he relaxed slightly. "So I wasn't just imagining things?"
"No," said Nick softly, tracing the line of her cheekbone with one finger. "Was that what you'd been crying about?"
"I think I was crying about everything."
"Sara," Nick said, alarmed.
"You're doing it again. Look, I'm just tired and stressed and a mess and I just shared my darkest secrets with a complete stranger." Sara swallowed. "If you want to make me feel better, just talk to me."
Nick mentally added the words for a change, and suspected that Sara had too. "All right," he said, and gathered his courage. He'd been expecting to discuss anything but this - he was sure Sara knew, as he did, that the investigation against Grissom and the rest of the team had been dropped. The status of their relationship was still up in the air, as far as all things official went, but the fact that David Elliott was talking quite confidently about them both returning to the field seemed quite promising. He'd been expecting joy, or at least relief, rather than this. He started to talk, surprising himself, by telling her how scared he'd always been that she'd leave him, and how he scared himself sometimes because he thought he needed her too much. Sara squeezed his hand even tighter as he told her what he'd been thinking when he'd visited his house that evening, not saying anything till he came to the end. "You want to move in permanently?" she asked.
"Well - yeah. I guess so," he told her anxiously.
"I'm glad."
"Are you?"
"Of course. I love you, silly."
"I know. I just thought - maybe - " Nick was forced to stop trying to stutter out half formed thoughts when Sara sat up and kissed him. He managed to say nothing else coherent until three-quarters of an hour later when they came back to reality, lying once again amidst the tangled sheets of the bed. "So when can I move in?" he asked then, absorbing the very warmth and life that was Sara.
The Caroline Flynn case had been tacked to Grissom's fish board. There was almost something ceremonial or ritualistic about these occasions, and as Grissom pinned the case up Catherine, Warrick and Greg stood behind him in a half-circle of solemn silence. Caroline's body had been released to her family for burial, but not without some harsh words on the part of the grieving parents, who had desperately needed someone to blame for Caroline's nightmarish end, and had suggested that the CSIs had focused too much on the shooting of Raymond Ortega. Grissom had shaken his head sadly. He couldn't explain how the death of Raymond Ortega had heightened everyone's desire to catch Caroline's killer. He didn't possess the words.
"Good work, guys," said Grissom, meaning it. "Nick'll be back for Monday's shift, so let's hope we don't get anything big between now and then."
"What about Sara?" asked Warrick.
"She hasn't been cleared for field work yet." Grissom didn't say why, and the others had carefully avoided asking. They all knew Sara hid something dangerous behind her tough facade, and despite burning curiousity had always dodged the issue. "But she'll be in the lab from Monday as well. You might learn a thing or two, Greggo."
"But I'm the man," Greg protested, mildly. Warrick pretended to swat him round the head, and they all filed out of Grissom's office in search of breakfast.
Sara remembered being happier than she'd been in what seemed like forever as she'd drifted off to sleep, but now her peace had been shattered by the ugly memories of what had happened in that warehouse. That man with his gun; the look of sheer, desperate terror on Nick's face. The bullet from her gun, which had turned out to be a cruel and unnecessary bullet, ripping into the man's flesh as he collapsed in death to the floor at Nick's feet.
She felt sick. Terrible memories had long been intruding on even the happiest times, and she never once got used to it. All she wanted was a normal life and it seemed she was never to have it. Frustrated, she realised she was crying, yet again. She didn't protest like she sometimes did when Nick, sleepily, pulled her into his arms and rocked her like a child.
Oh, they'd get through all this. She knew that. They'd come through worse individually, together they'd certainly cope. It was just that she didn't want life to merely be about coping. Someday, somehow, they were going to find away to move on. But for now, tears slowly fading away, Sara Sidle knew she had to be content to lie in bed with the man she loved, who loved her, and wait for pain to diminish once again.
As long as she had Nick, and Nick had her, they could face down even the worst of nightmares.
THE END!
Huge thanks to all of those who've reviewed, and put up with this fic! I've got no idea where all the depressing angst stuff came from, so I hope it all made sense. Astralis