A/N: Sorry again about the delay in updating….real life is really hectic lately. Enjoy!
Grissom pulled his rental car into the driveway as Sara was getting out of her own, and moving towards the rear driver's side door to help Amy out. Sara began digging through her purse as Grissom got out of his car, searching for the keys to her brother's house. She finally found them, and handed them to him. Looking down at the sleeping child, he understood, and made his way up the walkway to the front door.
Moments later, Sara entered the house carrying a half sleeping Amy. "I'm going to go put her down. I'll be right back." Grissom watched as she walked down the hallway to the little girl's room. The sight of Sara caring for Amy struck him as overtly maternal, and the questions that had been forming in his mind during the drive were making themselves known again.
Sara had never mentioned her brother having a daughter, which wasn't terribly surprising given the amount of information he did know about Sara. And now, her niece had no parents. Grissom considered the possibilities, the most obvious being that Sara would become Amy's legal guardian, no matter how much it would change her life. He thought about any other scenarios, but quickly discounted them. Amy would not be put into the system, not if Sara had any say in the matter, especially not after her own childhood. Angie obviously loved her granddaughter, but Grissom could see the fatigue behind the woman's bright eyes, and knew that she would never be able to handle caring for a three year old.
Grissom was startled out of his thoughts by Sara returning to the living room and collapsing on the couch. He walked further into the room, and sat at the other end of the couch, twisting his body slightly to look at her.
She took a moment to study him. She expected him to be nervous, sitting so close to her in a non-work environment, but he outwardly looked calm. She also noted that he looked a bit curious, and realized that there were a lot of unanswered questions she needed to answer.
However, they could wait just a few more minutes. She scooted closer to him on the couch, her eyes cast down, and reached out to touch his hand lightly. "I just want to thank you for being here. It's nice to have someone else here, to…uh…distract me from the memories."
He turned the hand that she was touching, and grasped her own with his. "I told you I would be here anytime you needed me." He pulled her hand gently toward him, tenderly easing her closer toward him until she was wrapped up in his arms.
They stayed like that for a few silent minutes, until she pulled back with a small smile on her face. She reached up and placed her hand on his cheek, stroking his beard ever so lightly. He could barely hear her as she whispered, "Thank you."
Once she recognized the intense intimacy of the moment, she stood slowly, and made her way into the kitchen. "Do you want something to drink?"
Grissom was still trying to switch gears, and looked at her confused. "What?"
"I said, do you want anything to drink?"
"Uh, yeah, some water?"
Sara busied herself with getting the glasses and pulling the pitcher out of the fridge, as Grissom got up from the couch and sat down at the small breakfast nook. His curiosity was getting the better of him, so he just asked the question that had been bothering him all night, "What's going to happen with Amy?"
She had just finished pouring the second glass, put the pitcher back in the fridge and sat across from him before she told him. "In the next couple of days, I have to sign the paperwork that will make me her legal guardian."
Despite knowing that was the most likely course of action, Grissom eyebrows rose slightly. But then he realized how detached she had sounded, and he wondered if it had actually sunk in yet. "How do you feel about that?"
She looked up from the countertop, straight into his eyes. "Honestly? I haven't even thought about it since Erich told me. But I really have no choice in the matter now; I already gave him my word that I would take care of her."
"Well, it's for the best right?"
"Of course, the only other conceivable option that I would allow would be for her to live with Angie, but there is no way that she could care for her the way that I could. And my only niece is not going to a foster home, no way, no how."
"I didn't think you would allow that to happen." He sighed, and reached across to touch her hand that was wrapped around her glass. "I wasn't only talking about it being the best for her, but for you too."
She pulled her hand backwards quickly. "How is the fact that I have to care for my niece because her parents were killed by a drunk driver the best for me?" She stood up and began pacing as she listed off reasons. "My life has been turned upside down in a matter of days, Grissom. First, my brother and sister-in-law are gone, leaving me to take of a child. A child! Me! I am the last person that should be responsible for another life, and it's not like I can really turn to anyone for help because everyone I know either had a shitty childhood, or are having trouble raising their own kids."
He just let her go, knowing that she needed to blow off some steam before he could get a word in edgewise. But when she finally stopped talking, he stood and stepped right in front of her, grabbing her shoulders lightly, and stopping her frantic pacing.
She couldn't look up at him, ashamed that she has just spent the past moments thinking only about how this affected her and nothing about how this was going to affect the child sleeping on the other side of the house. It wasn't until he softly spoke her name that she managed a glance to his face.
"I know that this is going to be hard on you, and that you don't know how you're going to handle this, but think of it this way: What would you do if your brother died and he didn't have a daughter?"
Puzzled, she stumbled her way through an answer, "I guess I would go home. And work, lots of overtime to forget about him, but that can't happen now."
He gently reached down and lifted her face more towards him. "Exactly. You would go home and bottle up every emotion you were feeling, just like you have with everything else traumatic in your life, and it would eat away at you. With Amy around, you know that you can't work to forget the feelings. You'll have to deal with them every time that you look at her, every time that you think about her. And because you're facing it head on, eventually the pain you're feeling now will go away. It will, Sara, and you'll be a much stronger person because of it."
She lowered her eyes from his, and he could tell that she was thinking over everything that he had said. Finally, she whispered, "I never thought about it like that."
He pulled her into a hug when he saw that she had begun crying. "I know that you hadn't, it's just that this is the one time in your life that you can't deal with trauma the way that you always have, and you don't know what to do."
He felt her tremble lightly on his shoulder, and worried that she was sobbing again, he pulled back a little to see her face. He was surprised to see her giggling through her tears.
"When did you become a psychologist?"
He chuckled lightly at her comment, and they pulled apart reluctantly. As Sara went to put the glasses in the sink, she yawned, and Grissom happened to take notice.
"Why don't you go to bed?"
"You know I don't sleep well when I'm stressed."
"I know, but you should at least try." Noticing her reluctance, he nodded his head toward the bedroom, "Come on, you need some sleep before tomorrow."
She gave him a mock glare, but followed anyway. They stopped in front of the guest bedroom door, and Sara just realized that she had been sleeping there, leaving Grissom with no where but her brother's room or the couch. "Uh, Griss? You can have this room, I'll take…"
He interrupted her by placing a hand lightly over her mouth. "No, I'll take the couch. It's no problem. You need the bed more than I do."
She nodded, knowing she was never going to win an argument with him tonight. She went to turn the knob, but turned back to ask him a question. "Will you stay with me for a while. Just to talk?"
"Sure." They entered the room, and Sara gathered her pajamas to change into. Once she came back from the bathroom, he had made himself comfortable on the queen-sized bed. She pulled back the covers and crawled between the sheets, fluffing the pillows.
As he watched her, he realized that he wanted to do this every night for the rest of his life. To be able to watch her do such mundane things as getting ready for bed would make him a happy man, but he also knew that this was not the time to even begin to think about starting a relationship with her.
After a few moments of silence he asked, "So what did you want to talk about?"
She just shrugged.
He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Would you mind telling me about your brother? I don't know anything about him except that he got grounded for having weed under his bed."
Sara smiled at the two memories that filled her mind at the moment; one of her brother chasing her, so angry that he had just gotten grounded and the other of her sitting in the locker room after closing Melissa's case.
"He was five years older than me, and that was always his excuse for protecting me. All my life he acted as if it were his job to protect me, and when I was little, I hated it. But then, when things began to change for the worse, I realized that it was nice to have an older brother. When my dad was killed, and I was put in foster care, he was eighteen and just went off on his own instead of being put into the system. But even though there was no way he could take care of himself and his thirteen year old sister at the time, he still visited me all the time, to make sure that I was alright. I looked forward to his visits all the time, and once he got back together with Julie, both of them would visit, making me even more excited."
"How did he and Julie meet?"
"They've been friends since elementary school, and were a couple practically from the age of fourteen. Like I said earlier, Angie was like a second mother just because Erich and I spent so much time over there to get away from the chaos that was our house. At some point when they were in high school, though, Angie's husband died of a heart attack, and they moved away. Then everything happened in our family, and they lost touch. They ran into each other when Erich was twenty five, and have been together since. They got married twelve years ago."
"They were married for nine years before having Amy?"
"Yeah, Amy was a miracle for them. They had been trying to have a baby for years, and Julie had been through two very rough miscarriages in the second trimester. They had almost given up hope when Amy was conceived, and even through the pregnancy, she was extra careful and wary of losing her. But she made it, and Amy was probably the best thing to ever happen to them. It gave Erich the one thing he had always dreamed of."
"What's that?" He noticed that her eyes were beginning to droop, and she would be asleep soon.
"A happy family." She said drowsily as she closed her eyes, and snuggled closer into the pillow.
He reached over and brushed a strand of hair from her face, speaking softly, "Good night, Sara." As he stood to move into the living room he turned back when he heard her voice call out his name sleepily. "What is it?"
"Can you sleep in here…with me?"
He smiled lightly at her request, and without an answer, crawled between the sheets, fully clothed. He rolled over onto his side to face her and wrapped his arms around her, relishing the thought of actually being able to comfort her the way he had wanted to for years. She was asleep within minutes, and after watching her breaths even out, he whispered lightly in her ear, "All you ever have to do is ask, Sara, and I'll be right here." Settling into his pillow, he closed his eyes and he found sleep just as quickly as she had.