Disclaimer: They're not mine
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG or K+
Summary: "Up to it or not," she says. "This is something I've got to do. That's why we came down to California in the first place." WarrickSara.
This one's slightly longer than most of my stand-alones, so extra points go to anyone who finishes it! Sorry about that. Thanks very much to the reviewers of Hourglass: csi-sam-sanders, Kelly, Lissa88 (I hope this one turns you for good...), Megara1, nick55 (update soon yourself!) and Joyce3 (yay! Muffins!). As always, feedback would be fantastic – especially since I started and finished this today so it's probably riddled with mistakes and problems – but above all, have fun with the WarrickSara fluffiness! Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
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Visiting And Revisiting
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Warrick rubs her arm gently as though she were cold and he were trying to warm her – far from it under the bright Californian sunshine in the four days of summer holiday time the pair of them took off work.
"Only if you feel up to it," he reminds her. Sara rolls her eyes; he's been saying that ever since before they left to drive down to California, two days ago.
"Up to it or not," she says. "This is something I've got to do. That's why we came down to California in the first place."
He fixes her with a reproachful stare. "So why have you been putting it off all this time?"
Sara doesn't answer but only looks at him. He knows why anyway and she knows he knows why.
"Never mind," he assures her lightly. She doesn't need to admit she's scared to him if she doesn't want to. "I'll wait up for you tonight. We can grab some late-night dinner."
"Thanks. I'll probably need it." she comments dryly and sweeps three-year old Ella up into her arms, planting kisses on the little girl's forehead and brushing back her dark brown fringe. "I might not make it back in time to say goodnight to you, honey, so give me a kiss – and have fun with Daddy. I love you."
"I love you, Mommy." Ella presses a big kiss to Sara's cheek and hugs her mother tightly before she's passed back to Warrick.
"I was thinking we could head down to the beach before the sun goes down," Warrick suggests, tugging Ella's sun hat playfully over his daughter's eyes. Ella shrieks with laughter and pulls it off before putting the little pink and yellow hat onto her father's head instead with a giggle.
"Sounds like fun. Don't forget the sun block." Sara grins. "I'll see you later."
Warrick kisses her and smiles supportively. "Good luck. Don't worry – it'll be fine."
Sara nods and returns the smile but waits until she's shut the car door and started up the engine before muttering: "You don't know that."
-
Identical cold steel handcuffs; matching lurid orange jumpsuits. Trudging, shuffling, wandering through the sweeps of grey of the California Institution for Women: grey walls, grey floors, grey bars, grey skies. The only thing that sets Inmate #39045 apart from her fellow prisoners is that she, unlike so many who strive for unbounded sunrises and a free stretch of coast, is not counting down the days. She is the only one not waiting for something wonderful. Laura Sidle really could not care less about her release anymore.
"Sidle." The uniformed prison guard outside her cell raps on the bars. "Sidle!"
Laura opens her eyes. "What?" she snaps irritably.
She'd been having a great time pretending to be asleep again. That was how she got through the days here, bluntly and rudely ignoring everyone. Psych evaluation a few years ago had found her with nothing wrong – mild depression but otherwise she was fine with being nothing more than bleak and soulless shell. After all, what else did she have left?
"Get up," the guard orders her. "You got a visitor."
Laura Sidle's eyes narrow. But it's the evening now...
"Visiting time's over," she says. You couldn't have visitors after visiting time unless it was a doctor or a cop, and she definitely wasn't expecting any more doctors – they'd given up on her after that inconclusive psych consultation.
"Cop visit," he tells her and opens up the cell door when Laura gets up. Laura only stands there and looks at him in suspicion. "Move it."
"Who is it?" she asks, heading tentatively out of the door.
The guard fastens the waist chain around her, securing Laura Sidle's wrists in the linked handcuffs that prevented her from moving her arms more than a foot from her body. He glances at his clipboard as he leads her through the winding, faceless corridors.
"CSI Sidle-Brown." he reads off the list.
"Who?" she repeats in disbelief, but doesn't hang around for an answer as she jogs down the hall towards the visiting room.
"Hey – hold it, Sidle." The guard yells down the corridor, shaking his head in exasperation as Laura halts outside the door.
She grins at him when he catches up to her at the door and the guard stares, surprised. He had never seen this pale and withdrawn woman smile at all – ever; she usually sat huddled on her bed in the corner of her cell with a natural frown shadowing her face and permanently down-turned lips. Arching an eyebrow, the guard unlocks the heavy iron door to the visiting room and ushers Laura in.
Laura's breath catches in her throat when she steps into the near-empty, clean white room. Her heart leaps and for a moment there, tears cloud her eyes. That reddish-brown hair - the ever-cynical expression on her face. It's really her.
Sara leans her elbows on the table and stares blankly at her mother. Laura hasn't seen her in twenty years and both of them have changed a lot since then but as Laura takes a seat opposite her, a smile breaking onto her face, she knows she'd recognise her daughter anywhere. She can hardly dare to believe it.
"Hi angel," Laura greets meekly when Sara says nothing. "Long time no see." She attempts a weak laugh. "Did social services not let you come and visit?"
"I don't know," Sara shrugs coolly. "I never asked."
Ouch. Laura blinks. That one stung.
"I suppose I deserve that," she murmurs softly, looking down at the table top.
And Sara can't bite her tongue fast enough to stop her replying sharply with, "I suppose you do."
She sighs when she sees the hurt look on her mother's face and rifles through her purse, checking something's there. Then she looks at her mother, at a face she hasn't seen for two decades, in a situation she'd imagined in several different ways over those years.
When she was younger she'd imagined meeting her mother again for everything to be made okay, for everything to have a fairytale ending. When she grew up a little and left that behind, all of her ideas of how a visit to her mother's prison again seemed to involve shouting and swearing. She'd never imagined it like this: calm and collected – totally in control of the situation.
"So," Laura searches desperately for some kind of civil conversation. "You're a cop now?"
"Criminalist." comes Sara's clipped answer. Then she sighs again.
"You're probably wondering what brought me back here," she begins and pulls out the photograph from her purse, sliding it across the table to her mother who reaches for it awkwardly with her cuffed hands. "I keep trying to move on and forget about everything but I can't."
Laura looks at the photograph. A scene from a child's birthday party: Sara grins, holding the hand of a little dark-haired girl, being held up by a smiling green-eyed man. All three of them wear coloured party hats as the beaming toddler blows out her three birthday cake candles. A blonde-haired woman reaches up to catch the ribbon trailing from an escaping helium balloon above them and in the background, a spiky-haired guy with a rainbow-coloured blow-out in his mouth dives for cover from blonde-haired girl who chases him with a can of silly string.
"That's us," Sara leans across the table, a smile lighting her face for the first time since she left Warrick and Ella back at the hotel. "That's Warrick – we got married in May two years ago. This was on Ella's third birthday last month. That's Ella there," Sara taps at the happy child in the centre of the photo. "She's our little girl. And that's Catherine – a friend from work. We're all pretty close there," she points out the woman grabbing at the balloon string and then moves her finger to the girl in the background. "That's Lindsey – she's Cath's daughter and she's there chasing Greg – also from work." Sara beams at the memory. "I can't remember who was taking the photo – Grissom, I think – Nick was getting some more food."
Laura tears her eyes away from the photograph, from her daughter, her son-in-law and her granddaughter. She looks at Sara now and smiles.
"The thing is, Mom," Sara starts again. "Is that I want this to be it but I can't let it go – I can't let go of what happened in San Fran when I was growing up. And I don't want to carry that around with me for the rest of my life. I have a great job, wonderful friends, a beautiful daughter and another baby on the way – a boy, due some time next January; and all I want to do is to bury this once and for all. And also, after I had Ella, I realised that if you ever cared about me even a fraction of how much I care about Ella, then you'd be wondering how I was."
"Oh Sara..." Laura reaches for her hand but the chains pull tight and prevent her hands from moving any further.
"No wait, I'm not done," Sara cuts her off brusquely. "I'm not saying I forgive you for what you did, but you're paying for that. I know why you did what you did, Mom – but I don't understand why. And I don't forgive you for it. You'll just have to live with that."
"Sara, I'm so sorry..." her mother tries.
"So am I." Sara says calmly. Laura picks up the photo again, trying to raise that smile on her daughter's face again.
"Can I see her?" she asks shyly. "Can I see Ella?"
"I'm not taking my three-year old to a prison, Mom," Sara tells her reprovingly.
"No, no – of course. Fair enough." Laura nods. "How about Warrick – could I meet him?"
"He took Ella to the beach today," Sara comments with a faint smile. "We leave tomorrow – for Vegas. That's where we live."
"Okay. I understand." Laura Sidle nods again and adds after a pause, "Is he good to you, Sara?"
Sara arches an eyebrow. "He doesn't knock me about, if that's what you mean," Sara answers coldly. "We don't do that, you know. Not all families fill their daily quota of a fight-a-day. I could never do that to Ella anyway."
Laura fills up with guilt again. "I'm so sorry, angel..."
"I know." Sara cuts her off again and just looks at her with a kind of pity, a kind of resolve. "Listen, Mom – maybe one day, when we're all ready, you can come up and see us all. I'll keep you posted on how we're doing, but don't expect to see me back here again, you got that? I'm not going to do this again; I want to go back home and leave this all behind now so I can enjoy being actually happy with my family and friends. Okay?"
"Okay," Laura whispers and wipes her eyes. "Okay, Sara – that's all I want for you. For you to be happy."
"Sure." Sara mutters darkly and gets to her feet. She looks at the photograph clutched tightly in Laura's hands. "You can keep that. So you remember what your granddaughter looks like."
Laura's face splits in a beam and she holds onto it as though it were the most precious thing she'd ever been given; as far as she could remember, it was.
"Look after yourself, Mom." Sara half-smiles at her mother and then walks out of the room.
"Come on, Sidle." The guard pulls her to her feet and Laura Sidle goes willingly, a delirious smile plastered on her face.
-
"Daddy! Daddy!" Ella comes running into the adjoining hotel room in her pyjamas. Warrick jumps off the hotel couch and scoops Ella up. "Daddy – the monsters!"
She's crying now as he holds her and rocks her gently.
"Oh no, Ella bella – what monsters?" Warrick asks her in shock.
"The monsters in the closet, Daddy!" she sobs. "I don't like them."
"Did they scare you, baby?" he hugs her tightly and heads into the other room. Ella nods tearfully and hides her face in his shoulder.
"No..." she whines, not wanting to go back into the room.
"Shh – it's okay, baby, Daddy's got you." he hushes her. "But we'll have to be very quiet. Can you do that for me?"
Ella nods again and claps her hands over her mouth. Warrick grins.
"Excellent, just like that," he says and creeps melodramatically into the room, still holding tightly onto the girl who grips his shoulder with small hands.
"Which closet was it, Ella bella?" Warrick whispers, even though there's only one closet in the room. Ella points tentatively to the accused closet and backs away, still holding onto her Daddy's t-shirt.
"Okay, right," Warrick nods resolutely and frowns seriously as though this were a case or secret mission. He reaches into his suitcase and pulls out his flashlight. "Hold this; I'm going in." He tells Ella importantly. Ella nods, bravely taking the flashlight in her own little hands and drawing herself up. "What did the monsters look like?"
"Big and scary." Ella informs him. Warrick takes all this in gravely and then braces himself as he slides the closet door open, cautiously and climbs in, shutting it behind him.
"Hello?" he calls in the closet. "Monsters?"
"Hello." he puts on a gruff part for the second voice. Ella, standing outside and listening, gasps and switches on the flashlight.
"Hey – I hear you've been scaring my little girl," Warrick says casually.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to." he answers himself. Ella creeps forwards, curiously.
"Oh – okay then. Well maybe you could just leave her alone so she can go to sleep." Warrick suggests. "Because even if you didn't mean to scare her, you're big and scary so you did."
Warrick pauses in the closet for a moment and then opens the door again. Ella jumps back with a squeal.
"Hey, hey – it's only me," he assures her and picks her up. "It's Daddy – don't worry." He sits on her bed and she clambers into his lap.
"I had a little talk with the monsters in your closet," Warrick tells her. "And they seem like nice guys, you know. But I told them to leave you alone so don't worry – they won't be coming back."
"Really?" Ella looks up at him with her round brown eyes.
"Really." Warrick replies firmly. "No-one scares my best girl."
"Best?" Ella repeats, almost disbelieving.
"Of course!" says Warrick, wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug. "The very best. My favourite girl in the whole world." But, despite this extravagant title, Ella does not look entirely pleased as she weighs up this idea in her head. Warrick watches her with fond amusement as the three-year old tips her head to one side, wrinkling her nose and frowning in deep thought – looking adorably reminiscent of her mother when chasing a train of thought.
"But what about Mommy?" Ella questions him finally.
"Yeah," a voice comes from the door. "What about Mommy?" Sara grins with her arms folded and leans against the doorframe.
"Mommy!" Ella whoops and leaps from Warrick's lap to run into her arms.
"Hey, angel!" Sara beams. "You should be asleep, young lady."
Ella hugs her mother around her neck. "There were monsters in the closet," she explains into Sara's ear. "I got scared but Daddy asked them to leave me alone."
"Daddy asked them, huh?" Sara repeats with a wry smile and a glance at Warrick, who gets to his feet and shrugs as an impish grin spreads across his face. "So are you going to get some sleep now? We've gotta get up early to go home tomorrow – aren't you looking forwards to seeing Linds again?"
"I picked her a shell from the beach today," Ella mentions with a wide yawn.
"Wow – I'm sure she'll love it." Sara says and tucks Ella in, kissing her forehead. "Goodnight, angel." She watches her for a moment before getting up and leaving the room, closing the door slightly behind herself and Warrick.
"So what about Mommy?" Sara presses, drawing Warrick into a hug.
"Ella's my favourite girl in the whole world," Warrick maintains. "And I love you very, very much. How's that?"
Sara grins and kisses him briefly. "Perfect. Smooth talker," she murmurs.
"And how is Mommy after everything today?" Warrick asks, stroking back her hair.
"Fine," she says. "Better than that, actually. I feel really...good about it."
Warrick smiles. "I'm glad to hear it," he tells her, kissing her back. "Now what do you say about ordering up some room service before we head home tomorrow?"
"That sounds great," she nods. "All of it."
-
In the darkened cell after lights-out, Laura Sidle leans back on her bed and stares up at the solitary photograph on her wall. Over the days, months, years to follow, that photograph will be joined on the wall by more. Sara never writes a letter – the most she ever writes is the names of those featured in the photographs or a brief explanation as to what's going on in the photo. She never mentions anything else; she doesn't need to. Laura Sidle knows all the recurring names now; Warrick, Ella, Catherine, Grissom, Greg, Nick and Brass all feature regularly along with the occasional appearance Mia, Hodges or Archie. It's easy to see who features most prevalently in her daughter's life: most of the faces that stare back at her from the ever-filling walls are that of Warrick or Ella.
Laura waits excitedly for January when she catches the first glimpse of her grandson, Benjamin Sidle-Brown born on the 17th. She waits forever for the next bundle of pictures that are sent her way with a Las Vegas postmark so she can stick them up on her walls and watch her grandkids grow from photographs. More than ever, she waits for her release – she counts down the days and, on her best behaviour, aims to get out as soon as she can so maybe she can see her paper-bound family for real.
It was more than she ever dared to hope for. That Sara came out of everything so much stronger than she'd ever been – that she'd pulled through and made something beautiful from her life in a way Laura had never thought was possible. She was proud of her, of course she was, that not only had she managed to leave her past behind her where it belonged, but that she'd pulled her mother through it too.
It all, somehow, put the waiting into perspective. For Laura Sidle, who had never placed her hopes any higher than raw survival, it gave everything, every grey monotony and orange uniformity, a reason.
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