The jewels glistened like sparkling stars as the bright light shone down on them. The delicate, sparkling gems grew in intensity as the two bodies flew through the air, crashing to the floor on top of the glass and jewelry strewn about the room. A couple of loud grunts and the sound of crunching glass filled the room, but no words were spoken.

Grissom stood slowly, drawing Sara up with him, his fingers gripping hers as he helped her. They stood together – close, looking into each other's stunned faces. Grissom's eyes traveled the length of her, assuring himself that she wasn't an illusion, a phantom haunting his belief that this was all a dream.

Sara looked about the room, as if seeing it for the first time. She turned back to him, about to say something, when she realized she was clutching the ring and handkerchief in her hand. She lifted it up between the two of them, their eyes drawn to it as if it were calling to them. They stared at it for a long moment, both feeling and thinking the same things.

Had it really happened?

Their eyes met, questioning, searching for confirmation. Before they put voice to their feelings, other voices were heard outside the door, approaching leisurely, but allowed enough time for Grissom and Sara to adjust to a newfound awkwardness between them. Sara took a step back from Grissom and his hand fell to his side, preserving a look of professionalism, just as Nick and Warrick entered carrying their field kits.

Sara turned to them as they approached, wrapping the ring back within the handkerchief and bending down to place it within her overturned field kit.

Grissom, on the other hand, couldn't take his eyes off of her – the memories still too vivid for him to think of them as just part of some dream. She was whole and healthy, still a bit worn down, but nothing like the pale, fragile creature he'd last beheld. His heart ached to hold her, to feel her skin beneath his fingertips, to kiss her hair – to know that she loved him. He couldn't shake the dreadful feeling that it was all just a dream.

"Hey, boss. Sorry it took so long. We had to drop a few things off back at the lab before we could get here."

Grissom torpidly turned to stare unseeing at Nick. Late? What was he rambling about? Grissom darted a glance about the room. He was mentally shaken back to the here and now. But when he looked back at Sara, met her unsteady gaze, he wasn't so sure that they were late, maybe more like they were just in time.

Later, they drove back to the lab, the silence uncomfortable, but Grissom thanked whatever higher power there was in the universe for the time. When reflecting back on the moment that Nick and Warrick had interrupted them, he realized how close he had come to making a fool of himself. If they'd entered a moment or two later, he would surely have appeared to them as a raving lunatic.

As Nick and Warrick pulled up to their parking space, they glanced over at Grissom and Sara, who were both standing awkwardly together at the back of their Denali staring at the sunrise. Something had seemed off during their evidence gathering at the jewelry store and now they understood what it was. Something had happened between Grissom and Sara, and they were both trying to hide it. Nick and Warrick each suspected their coworkers were trying to hide this insight from them, never realizing in truth that Sara and Grissom were hiding it from each other.

After all the evidence was dropped off at each perspective lab, Grissom closed himself off in his office and Sara went to the locker room to grab her duffle bag. She stopped in front of Grissom's door, lifting her hand to knock, but lowered it back to her side and shook her head before turning to leave.

Grissom, on the other hand, saw the shadow cross his window and knew that Sara stood just on the other side of his door. He waited for the knock, but it never came. He exhaled in relief, but soon it turned into grief. He still couldn't get over the loss. It had seemed so real. Their declaration of love, their make-believe vows, and the terror of not knowing what he was going to do as he felt the life slip away from her while he cradled her on the bed they'd shared. He clutched the short glass before him, his knuckles turning white from the pressure. A swift flick of his wrist, a tilt of his head and he felt the slow burn of the amber liquid coat his throat.

Weeks went by, their routine never missing a beat; their memories of the events in another time period washed clean – almost.

Sara closed her locker, the soft click of the latch barely audible to her own ears. There was something missing, something she hadn't done, but for the life of her, she couldn't remember what it was.

So intense were her musings that she didn't hear the soft swoosh of the locker room door or the tentative footsteps that approached her. The hand on her shoulder made her jump and she clutched her hand to her chest as she turned to see who had scared the living daylights out of her.

"Sara, you okay?" Nick asked.

His obvious concern touched her. "Yes. Yes, I'm fine. You just scared the crap out of me." She punched him in the arm, a friendly battering.

He held up his hands in surrender. "Hey, sorry, didn't mean to send you into a fit."

She ducked her head, and then bent down to pick up her duffle bag. "I'm not in any kind of fit. I was just… thinking."

"Ooh, careful, careful. We don't need to fry that brain of yours now. You know, thinking only gets you into trouble."

"Keep trying, Nick. I might still have something to laugh at."

Nick had gathered his items from the locker, stuffed them into a similar duffle bag and closed his locker when he realized that Sara was nearly out the door. "Sara. Wait up," he called.

She waited for him in the hallway.

"I'll walk out with you. You know, we're heading over to…"

"No, Nick. I'm really not in the mood. I keep feeling like I'm missing something, or that I had something to do today. I think I'll just head home," she said, but her voice drifted off as she turned back to look down the hallway, her brow creasing into a frown as she tried to remember what she'd forgotten.

"Well, you'll probably remember it when you get home." His eyes traveled the length of her, her stance, her preoccupied expression and realized he hadn't seen her this way in a while. An image of her in a jewelry store, looking lost, flashed in his memory. "If you don't mind me saying so, you look tired. You should get some more sleep, Sara. I haven't seen you this bad since that burglary a month ago."

Startled, Sara turned back to him; eyeing him questioningly she grasped his forearm, as if begging him to continue.

"You know, that one you and Grissom had? Warrick and I came late and helped you finish processing it and then Grissom holed himself up in his office..." his voice trailed off as he watched Sara dash back down the hallway and into the locker room. He shrugged it off and turned to leave.

The locker room door crashed open as Sara ran over to her locker. She opened it hastily and skimmed over her calendar, tapping each day as she mumbled incoherently. Gradually, her hand stilled and her lips pressed together firmly. She gave it one last tap of her finger then shut the locker and left the building determinedly. She had things to do and people to see.

Grissom wiped his hands on the towel and then slung it over his shoulder. He stirred the vegetables in the pan one last time and turned the temperature down as he put the lid back over them.

By the time he returned to it, he'd fed Jules and Verne and even sent off an e-mail to his mother. But he was only able to give it one full stirring when the doorbell rang. Caught unawares, he bumped the skillet with his hand, singeing his index finger in the process. Out of instinct he put the finger to his lips and sucked on it as he turned off the stove and put the offending skillet on a cool burner.

He was still sucking on his finger when he opened his door to find Sara standing on the other side, nervously chewing on her bottom lip and staring off in the distance. Looking first toward where she was looking and then back at her, he wondered what had brought her to his doorstep. At first glance, he thought she looked tired, shadows deepening her eyes, her manner relaxed as she stood at the railing of his porch. But as his trained eye began to observe her more deeply, she did indeed look relaxed, content even, as though a heavy weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

He was about to invite her inside, when she turned to face him, a bemused smile lighting her face, her eyes dancing with merriment. She brazenly reached up to take his finger away from his mouth and tenderly lowered his hand to her abdomen.

"What do you think of the names, Edwin for a boy or Danielle for a girl?"