Disclaimer: Sadly, none of CSI is mine...
Author's Notes: Well, here is a brand new chapter...Chock full of Sara and Greg for your reading pleasure.
I had the best day at work today! Sorry, I just had to share. My boss shut the pain-in-my-butt Sam and I in his office and let us yell at each other and get everything out in the open. It worked like a miracle, we got along so nicely for the rest of the day. AND, I got to ride in the coroner's van today and get in on some hands on action, not just behind the curtain stuff.
Please let me know what you think, I love to get feedback.
Happy Monday! (Yeah, right)
Jenny
Eight:
Sara laid on her bed, staring at the ceiling and counting slowly and calmly, deciding she wasn't going to stop until she had gotten her heart rate under control and had lost the desire to pummel Catherine and Warrick for interfering with her emotional outburst. She was on 19,876.
Warrick deserved to interfere, she let her emotions interfere with their case. She saw that precious little boy shoved into that black suitcase, his precious blue eyes looking terrified, his skin beaten and bloody. It made her stomach turn even now to think about it. She couldn't help the hysteria that had washed over her, and the quick meltdown that followed. Sure, Warrick had a right to be involved. She owed him answers, not to mention a huge favor. The only thing she couldn't forgive was him calling Catherine.
Catherine, of all people. Was he insane? Why not Greg? Nick? Hell, even Grissom would have been an improvement. She may have actually preferred to talk to her mailman over opening up to Catherine. After all, the mailman wasn't going to run off and tell everyone what you told him.
Sara knew what she needed-a fifth of gin and another Zoloft. Of course, Catherine wouldn't go for that, she suggested rest and a counseling appointment. 20,114.
She had gone straight to her room once Catherine had brought her home, ignoring her pleas for Sara to talk to her. Sara didn't want to talk with anyone, especially Catherine, and wasn't in the mood to even try to be polite. The last thing she wanted to do was fight with the older CSI, and she knew that if she opened her mouth, they'd end up fighting.
She had heard Catherine on the phone, and she assumed she was calling Grissom to let him know Sara had freaked out a crime scene and had been taken home. Grissom would probably insist on her seeing a therapist. Greg would probably start to hover again. Catherine would probably continue to mother her until she thought of a way to make the older CSI disappear.
She hadn't spoken a word since she told Warrick she couldn't handle the infant. She didn't plan on starting any time soon, either. It was much nicer when it was quiet, she couldn't say the wrong thing, and there was less of a chance of incriminating herself when she didn't say much. 20,997.
Her eyelids started to feel heavy, and she tried to remember what had caused her to feel so tired. The events at the crime scene were hazy, at best, after finding the little boy. She vaguely remembered her legs giving out, and being glad she wasn't near the location of the mother's body, that way she wouldn't contaminate any evidence. She remembered Warrick coming into the room and holding her, rocking her gently and doing his best to calm her. At the time, she had been inconsolable, but she did appreciate his effort, she'd have to thank him.
Catherine had shown up, and after that her mind got blurry, although she did remember being angry that they were talking about her like she wasn't even there. She remembered that Catherine had seemed very frightened when Sara wouldn't talk to her, although she had hid it quickly, and rather well. Somehow they had ended up in Catherine's SUV, then at Sara's apartment.
Her eyes finally drooped closed, the lack of sleep and overabundance of emotions draining her energy. The last thing she remembered before falling asleep was thinking she should write down what number she was on, 21,116, so if she was still aggravated when she woke up she could continue.
Sara sat on the floor of the living room, the toddler that haunted her dreams every night standing in front of her, her light brown hair pulled into pigtails, fastened with yellow bows. She wore a yellow t-shirt, which had 4 insects across the front of it, the writing underneath reading 'The Beetles'. The shirt was tucked into a pleated jean skirt, white jelly sandals completing the outfit.
"You're beautiful." Sara exclaimed, "Did you know that, Katie? You're just beautiful."
Katie nodded seriously, before squatting down to the floor and picking up her worn teddy bear, "Jonah?"
Sara picked up the teddy bear and nodded, her expression mimicking the seriousness of the child, "Jonah is beautiful too, love bug."
Katie took the bear back from Sara, and climbed onto the couch, standing against the back so she could see out the window, "Mama?"
"I'm right here, Katie-did." Sara replied, sitting down and allowing Katie to climb onto her lap, to get a little extra height to look out the window, "What do you see?"
Katie stared out the window for a moment, before looking back towards Sara and saying, "Car. Puppy. Kitty."
"You're so smart, Katie."
Katie babbled something in return, leaving Sara wondering what her daughter was trying to tell her. The young child sat down on Sara's lap, laying her head against Sara's chest and looking up at her mother. She offered Sara a smile as Sara gently rubbed her back.
The phone rang, and Sara gave Katie a kiss, setting her on the floor as she walked towards the kitchen counter to answer the phone. Katie watched curiously as Sara answered, "Hello?"
Katie let out a squeal of laughter, running in the direction of her bedroom and returning with a plastic telephone, holding it against her ear with her shoulder and mimicking, "Hi."
"Oh, Catherine. You should see Katie with her toy phone. She's holding it against her ear and talking into it." Sara gushed, her pinks turning pink as she realized she was, in fact, gushing. "Sorry, I always swore I wouldn't be one of those types of parents."
"Hi, hi, hi, hi." Katie babbled, walking around the living room with the toy against her ear. She squatted down in front of the sofa, where she had dropped her bear a few moments earlier, and held out the phone to the bear's ear, "You."
Sara watched with a smile on her face as she halfway listened to what Catherine was telling her. She told Catherine to hold on for a moment as she called out to Katie that she needed to put her phone away, because it was lunch time. Katie, still babbling on her phone, grabbed her bear and walked towards her bedroom, leaving Sara alone in the room. She finished her conversation with Catherine rather quickly, it had just been about Sara borrowing some old clothes from when Lindsey was a baby, and called out for her daughter to come eat lunch.
She didn't get a response from the usually clingy child, and she started walking down the hall, apprehension building in her chest. "Katie, honey? It's time to eat lunch. Do you want some fish sticks and some cheese crackers?"
She pushed open Katie's door, and instead of seeing the usual empty room, she was met with the room identical to the one that usually begins her dreams, this time, however, the young little girl had her throat slit open, blood covering the Dora the Explorer blanket and Jonah the teddy bear. Her lifeless, tiny body had been jammed into a dresser drawer, her terrified eyes starting back at Sara's horrified expression.
Sara awoke with a loud, terrified scream, propelling her body from her bed and into her bathroom, her knees hitting the tile just as she began to throw up. As the spasms in her body paused, she leaned her head against the wall, closing her eyes and trying to calm herself down. The result, however, was an instant reply of the scene that had just haunted her dreams, the image still fresh enough to remain burned in her memory. She threw up again, her forehead resting against the palms of her hands, her whole body shaking.
The dream had never been like that before. She could only assume it had been intensified by the case she had worked earlier, images she would never forget of that crime scene merging with the nightmare that regularly haunted her.
A knock on the already opened door jolted Sara back to reality, and she didn't even bother to look up, "Catherine?"
"Unless Catherine has a penis, no." replied a familiar voice. "Although if I was Catherine, I would be so hot, and I'd get to look at my boobs whenever I wanted to."
"Greg." Sara moaned, shivering slightly from the cold sweat that had broken out across her entire body, extending to places she didn't even know she could sweat. "What are you doing here?"
Greg squatted down beside her, pressing a moist washcloth against her forehead, then moving it across the rest of her face and neck, until leaving it to rest on the back of her neck, right below her hairline. "Catherine called me. She figured you wouldn't want her or Grissom here, so I was her next choice."
"Thank God it's you and not them." Sara moaned in agreement, gripping her sides in order to stop her body from shaking, "I'm sorry I couldn't just say 'hi' like a normal person."
Greg brushed a stray strand of hair from her face, smiling softly, "That must have been one bad dream, I think they could hear you in Arizona."
Sara blushed, looking down, "I'm sorry."
"Don't you dare apologize. I'm just relieved you haven't kicked me out yet. Cath and Warrick told me what happened. Do you want to talk about it?" Greg pried softly, handing her a glass of water to rinse out her mouth. "You don't have to, if you don't want to, but it may help to get it off your chest."
"I know it does. It's just...hard." Sara said sadly, pulling herself up using the counter, "I'm glad you came...even after I was such a bitch to you earlier."
Greg smiled softly, walking her back to her bedroom, "You could be the world's biggest bitch, and I would still look out for you. We're friends, Sara. That's what friends do."
"I keep having these awful nightmares." Sara said as she started to straighten out her bedspread, her hands shaking, "There's a little girl, my little girl, and normally it's the same. I put her to bed, I go to check on her, and she's gone-like she never existed, except there's this pool of blood. I guess the case was messing with me, because this time when I went to check on her, she had been murdered and shoved into a dresser drawer."
Greg watched as she visibly shuddered, tears spilling down her cheeks, unnoticed. He wasn't sure what to tell her, he couldn't imagine going through what she had been put through her whole life, he wasn't sure he would have been able to handle everything she had been dealt. His heart broke for her as she sank onto her bed, doubling over and resting her head against the bedspread, her whole body shaking with sobs.
He had never felt comfortable around people this upset, he supposed that was why he enjoyed working in the lab, away from the outside world, and with dead people once he entered the field. He knew it wasn't the right time for his inappropriate jokes or nervous laughter, he had to be strong and come up with something, anything, productive to say.
He sat down beside her, pulling her head onto his lap, "Cry it out Sara, tell me everything."
She was quiet for a moment, the only sounds in the room being her shallow breathing and the occasional sob. After a few minutes, she asked shakily, "Where should I begin?"
"Wherever you want to." Greg replied simply, "When did things start getting bad?"
Sara looked up at him through glassy eyes, "Which time?"
"Whichever time you want to talk to me about." Greg replied with, what he hoped to be, an encouraging smile. "The beginning is always a good place to start."
Sara rolled over to lay on her back, her head still in his lap, "Well, it was raining the night I was born..."
She paused, waiting for Greg to make a sarcastic comment, but he said nothing. Her expression softened and she wiped the tears from her cheeks, "No witty comments?"
"If that's where you need to start, I'm in no hurry." Greg replied seriously, shifting so they were both laying on the bed, causing Sara to change positions. He laid his head on her pillow, and she used her elbow to prop her head against Greg's stomach, looking up at him with a sad smile. He stroked her hair gently, "I was serious when I told you I was a good listener."
Sara sighed, tracing the bedspread pattern with her index finger, "When I was growing up, I had one older brother. His name was Timothy, we called him Timmy. He was a real troublemaker, always getting into trouble over something. My parents had owned a bed and breakfast for awhile, but while I was still young, they went bankrupt and had to sell. My Mom got a job in a nearby grocery store, and my Dad got a job as a mechanic. I was 6 or 7, I don't really remember, when they lost the B&B. We moved into this little three bedroom house, and everything changed. Everyone was tense all of the time, my Dad started drinking, Timmy started really acting out in school. I was a good kid, smart and well-behaved, except I was also sassy and talkative."
She sighed, looking briefly at Greg before back down at the bedspread, "Timmy was doing things to intentionally make Mom and Dad angry, I think he liked the attention, whether it was good or bad. When we were good, they ignored us, at least when we were in trouble someone was taking the time to notice us. After a few months, Dad quit his job and started doing drugs. The more he would smoke and drink, the more of a jerk he became. He would hit my Mom, throw stuff around the house, yell and scream for no reason. We could just look at him the wrong way and he would flip out and rant for hours."
She was quiet for a few minutes, the slight tremble in her voice growing with every word she spoke, "We were used to his outbursts, he had always had a short temper. But everything just intensified so much over the next few years, a few slaps turned into a brutal beating, my Mom had to be taken to the hospital more than once, he was just out of control. Timmy had been expelled from school for fighting, and since Mom was at work, Dad had to go pick him up. By the time I came home from school, they were yelling at each other in the living room. My Dad ripped the telephone from the wall and started hitting Timmy with it, over and over again. Timmy had fallen to the floor, he was begging him to stop, he was full of blood, it was coming from his nose, his mouth, his ear, but my Dad was out of control, he couldn't stop."
Sara stopped, her shoulders shaking with sobs as she buried her head in Greg's shirt, barely able to catch her breath through the heart-wrenching sobs.
Greg pulled himself back into a sitting position, Sara's head falling onto his lap as they had been sitting earlier. He wasn't sure what to say, or if he should even speak at all, so he quietly stroked her hair, knowing she probably needed a few minutes to regroup before continuing. He felt tears burn his own eyes, knowing that if this was the beginning of the story, things probably got a lot worse until she ended up where she was now. He couldn't imagine seeing his father hit anyone, much less his sibling. His family hadn't been perfect, but under no circumstances were they this bad.
As he predicted, she began to calm down after a few minutes and she continued shakily, "I didn't know what to do. I wanted to yell for him to stop, I don't think he even realized how bad he was hurting Timmy, but I didn't want him to start hitting me too. I was so scared, I was 13, for God's sake, I didn't know what to do. I thought about calling 911, but he had the phone, so I knew it wasn't an option. I think I started crying..I..I don't remember. But I guess he noticed I was there, because he turned towards me with this hatred and anger in his eyes, and he started yelling at me. Timmy wasn't moving, and I couldn't see if he was breathing, and I was just so scared that he was dead. I dropped everything on the floor and took off out of the house."
She turned her head to face the wall, suddenly embarrassed to be this open with Greg. She continued softly, "He followed me into the yard, yelling for me to get inside. I guess he noticed that the neighbors had started to stare, because he went back inside. I stopped at the corner and threw up, I was so scared, I couldn't think clearly. I couldn't get the blood out of my mind. I ran all the way to the store my Mom worked at, and she immediately freaked out. I was covered in blood spatter, and I couldn't form any coherent words. She took me home and when we got there, Dad was gone. She went to a neighbor's house to call 911, although we both knew Timmy was dead."
"Oh Sara, I'm so sorry." Greg whispered, squeezing her hand tightly. "What happened next? Did your father go to jail?"
Sara shook her head, her body now shaking violently, "My Mom was next door, she had told me to pack up some clothes, we were going to run away from Dad. I heard someone come into my bedroom, and I knew it wasn't my Mom. After living in fear for years, you know when it's Dad in the hall and when it's Mom. He had a gun, he was going to kill me, just like he killed Timmy. He was yelling and screaming at me, now I know he was on something, then I thought he had just gone crazy. Mom came home and stabbed him, over and over again, murdered him so he couldn't murder me. There was blood...everywhere...I don't think I've ever seen that much blood in such a small space. I was put into foster care, my Mom was arrested."
"Sara, I had no idea...I can't even imagine..." Greg said gently, brushing the tears gently from her cheeks, "That's horrible."
Sara sighed heavily, sitting up and shakily standing, pacing nervously around the room and biting her lip. She turned back towards her friend, although she didn't meet his eyes, and said softly, "I bounced around from home to home until I graduated from high school and moved to Boston to attend Harvard. I started seeing this guy, Mark. We moved in together at the end of my Freshman year, and we were okay for awhile. He was such a jealous guy, to the point of restricting my phone calls from friends and telling me which classes I could take, only ones he was taking as well. The jealousy turned into arguments, then an occasional slap or punch. By my Senior year, it got to the point where we had security called to our apartment at least once a month. And then I got pregnant, and you know how that ended."
"Yeah." Greg murmured, standing and walking to where she stood, rubbing her arms gently as he pulled her into a hug, "I had no idea you had such a rough childhood."
Sara shrugged, pulling away and facing the wall once again, "I don't normally go around broadcasting it." She paused for a moment, trying to regain control of her emotions. After a few minutes, she continued, her voice a lot calmer, "I moved to San Francisco after I graduated and got a job with San Fran CSI. I was a Level One CSI, probably out in the field as long as you have been, and I was attacked at a crime scene, a suspect came back and nearly raped me. My partner shot and killed him, and he went through hell with IA. I started looking for work outside of San Francisco and a year or so later, I ended up here."
"And fell in love with Grissom?" Greg asked, moving back as she resumed her position on the bed, resting her elbow and head on his stomach once more.
Sara nodded sadly, "I had met him in San Francisco at a forensics conference, he was talking about insects, obviously, and I was just utterly captivated by his speeches and demonstrations. I told him I was thinking of moving, and I guess he remembered about that conversation a few months later once Holly Gribbs had been shot. It wasn't love, as much as it was hero-worship, I think. He was my idol, I had read up on him before, while I was still in Boston, and had really studied up on him once he spoke at that conference. I don't know...it made me feel special to think he hand picked me to work with him. It sounds stupid, I know, but it was the most honoring thing I had ever been told."
"Grissom's a great guy to work for. He really had a lot of confidence in you, to bring you in like that. I don't think it sounds stupid at all, we all work hard to impress him, we all hold a lot of respect for him."
Sara laughed bitterly, resting her head flat against his stomach to stare at the ceiling, "I guess I took it a little too far, I misread some signals I thought he was sending me while I was dating Hank, and I thought he was interested. I asked him out and he turned me down, and it really upset me. I sort of pulled away from him, from everyone, and tried to do my own thing, I was so embarrassed that I asked him out, and that he turned me down. Not long after that, Nick and I were trying out for that promotion, and he recommended Nick instead of me. I know Nicky is qualified, but I couldn't help but feel he let our personal relationship-or lack thereof-influence his decision. Then I got pulled over for a DUI. It was a really low point, but I managed to pull through."
"And then you got pregnant." Greg said softly, reaching out to her once again and squeezing her hand, "It's just been a constant struggle, hasn't it?"
Sara nodded sadly, moving to lay beside him, her face facing his, both on their sides, "Sometimes I feel so stupid, like I'm overreacting, but other times I just feel like I'm drowning and no one's reaching out to help. Am I never supposed to feel happy? I can't remember the last time I laughed just because I was happy. I can't remember the last time I've had a good time. I can't remember the last time I've felt relaxed. Is it supposed to be like that?"
"No." Greg replied, moving closer to Sara and wrapping an arm around her as she started to sob again. "It's not supposed to be like that, not at all. But you're not alone, okay? I'll help you get through this, and you'll be happy again. You just have to let me help."
Sara nodded, her body still shaking with sobs, his shirt growing wet with tears. Greg kept his arms around her, his mind processing everything she had just told him, wondering how he had never known any of this before, wondering how she had kept this bottled up for so long.
He had never seen her look so defeated, so exhausted. He knew she had reached the end of her rope, and now she needed someone to pull her back from the dark side, back to the side that contained hope, life. He gently stroked her back, listening as her sobs turned into sighs and hiccups, then to quiet, even breathing as she fell asleep. He wasn't surprised, reliving such an emotional experience was tiring to a body, his own eyelids were heavy with exhaustion. Eventually, he was lulled to sleep by her rhythmic breathing, Sara still cradled in his arms.
TBC