DISCLAIMER:Very definitely not my characters. Pity, that.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Post-ep for Homebodies.
Susannah Kirkwood is dead, of course.
Sara saw her body, after all. Once on the driveway in front of her home, surrounded by groceries and the crumbled facade of normalcy, and once again stretched out, pale and cold, in the autopsy room.
It's just that sometimes she sees Susannah. She sees her in the grocery store or on the Strip or crossing the road. Once she glimpses her in a doctor's waiting room, and once she sees Susannah walking with a boy and wonders if it's Susannah's boyfriend, before she remembers that Susannah is buried beneath a neat white cross in a neat, artificially green cemetery. Sara knows about the cemetery because she went to Susannah's funeral, against all rules and guidelines. She wore a dark coat and dark glasses and when she got home she had a few beers and tried to cry.
She knows that Susannah Kirkwood is dead and buried, yet even as the weeks pass she retains her belief that Susannah needs her rapist and killer caught. She badgers Grissom to keep the case open and when he closes it returns to it frequently, reviewing evidence and hoping for a thunderbolt of inspiration.
Sara tells her counselor about Susannah, for reasons she doesn't understand. Her counselor suggests that maybe Sara needs Susannah's killer caught more than Susannah does, and wants to talk about why. Sara spends the rest of the session watching the minutes pass on the clock and reciting the periodic table to herself.
Dozens of cases and victims lie between Susannah and Sara before the man who raped Susannah is arrested for another rape of another girl. Sara can't make the Kirkwood charges stick, and the man is jailed for the other rape. She tells Susannah's parents personally. It's a victory, if a hollow one.
Nick takes her out for dinner after the trial because he thinks she should celebrate. They go to a nice little Italian restaurant down by Lake Mead, and as they wait for their meals Sara gazes out across the lake. She thinks she sees Susannah Kirkwood, floating against the setting sun in a small boat before she turns to answer a question from Nick. When she looks again, there is no sign of girl or boat.
THE END