The Las Vegas night shift was buzzing crazily. Distracted bodies bumped into each other, a chip of car paint was filed into evidence as "unidentified biological material," and more than once a CSI was seen pulling open a door only to realize that it lead to the broom closet - again.
Jacqui sat in her print lab, silently observing the chaos. She figured that by this time, she was about the only person in the building that had a clear head. Greg, Archie, and Bobby, usually her cohorts in tech-ism, were pretty close to useless tonight. There was also a rapidly spreading rumor that Grissom, their usually emotionless boss, hadn't said a word all night – to anyone.
It wasn't that she disliked Sara, or that she was glad the other woman wouldn't be coming back - Jacqui had decided long ago that it was impossible to not like such a fiercely loyal and earnest woman – but more that she had known Sara less than even the other lab techs.
So it had fallen to her to be the observer, staring through the glass and mentally cataloguing all the strange behaviors of those who had known Sara better. What she'd seen so far did not encourage her to think that things would be back to normal quickly:
Greg had his music cranked up to full volume (nothing unusual about that) but was sitting, silent and motionless, in front of one of his microscopes. Jacqui had been watching him for close to three hours now, and she hadn't yet seen him actually look into the device. Greg's only motion was to occasionally scribble something into a battered old notebook, then sigh.
Nick had been in the break room all night, nursing one cup of coffee after another. The TV in front of him was turned on, but it was playing infomercials and Jacqui doubted that he was actually watching the thing. A few times, he'd flipped open his cell phone purposefully, only to close it again with a grim look. Even his usually affable manner was muted; he'd only grunted when she'd stepped in to say hello to him.
Warrick was currently the most stable of the four CSIs in the building; he was actually doing work, though with a faraway look on his face. His brows occasionally knitted as though he were deep in thought, and then he'd mouth something that Jacqui couldn't identify to himself. She'd noticed him chasing Catherine through the halls a few times tonight, always at low speeds, but hadn't yet seen him catch the woman, and Jacqui was beginning to wonder what he was going to do if he did.
Catherine hadn't been too much in evidence tonight; the rumor was that she'd been in Grissom's office almost the entire time she'd been here. Jacqui's one glimpse of her hasn't been encouraging, either. Catherine, who had determinedly quit smoking two years ago, had been standing in the parking lot puffing on what looked like a Marlboro when Jacqui had gone to get a jacket from her car an hour ago.
Jacqui couldn't even begin to venture a guess on what Grissom was doing. She hadn't seen him all night; all she knew, she had heard from other sources around the lab. With a sigh, she decided that it was no use trying to theorize about him and went back to alternating between organizing her jars of print power and watching the CSIs who were out and about in the halls.
If one were to leave Jacqui to her thoughts and tiptoe down the hall and into the darkened office of the shift supervisor to see what he is currently doing, one would be even less encouraged than the show in the halls had indicated.
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Grissom has indeed spent the entire night in his office, most of it with the lights off as he fought off the headache that was trying to break through. His fingers are steepled under his chin as he sits back in his chair, surveying the room with disinterest. His eyes appear blank and flat, but perhaps that is only a trick of the light. His thoughts, however, provide more information. Grissom has been pondering phrases from Sara's latest e-mail. He's memorized the whole thing by this point, but those key phrases keep poking out from the rest of it to taunt him.
"I won't ever understand that, anyway, since you are who you are." This concept, her excusing him from blame because he "is who he is," has appeared in many of her recent communications, and it has begun to gnaw at his brain. What does Sara think he is, that he is forgiven for nearly all of his transgressions? And why does she allow it? He has been asking himself these questions for hours and has not yet found a satisfactory answer for either.
"Do you still not trust me?" Does he trust her? He doesn't really know. If asked, he would say "yes" without hesitation, but somewhere deep in his brain there is a doubt struggling to claw its way to the surface. He would trust her with his life, yes. He would trust her with a secret, sure. He'd even trust her with his tarantula; he knows she would take good care of the creature just to please him. The nagging question, though, is this: would he trust her with himself? So far, the answer is still "no," but he is conscious of the wrongness in this answer and is fighting it. He knows Sara wouldn't consciously hurt him; he suspects that even the chances of her unconsciously hurting him are slim. But, knowing this, why didn't he tell her the nature of his "medical problem"? This, too, remains an unanswered question flitting through his thoughts.
Then, the real kicker: "Which is it? You want me back there, or you want me to stay here?" This is what he is currently considering. What exactly is it that he wants from Sara? In the most selfish part of him, he wants her with him. No doubt about that. But another part of him wants her to stay far away, just in case she really can hurt him and so he may continue in his smooth (though boring) existence. A third part of him, screaming to be heard above the clamor made by the other two, selflessly wants her to be where she is happiest. He is ruthlessly trying to gag this voice because he knows exactly where she can be happiest right now, and it is not with him.
Having exhausted Grissom's current thoughts, let us now return to our narrative, picking up only seconds after we left Jacqui's lab.
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Grissom shot up in his chair when he heard the door click open, then relaxed when he realized that the intruder was only Catherine. He cocked a brow a few seconds later, though, when he realized that this Catherine smelled suspiciously like cigarette smoke. "If I'm the one who's upset, Catherine, then why are you the one who's taken up smoking again?" he asked, rather flatly considering the sarcasm implied in the words.
"You want one?" Catherine replied, holding out the pack she had bought on the way to work. "You're welcome to it. Might as well go to lung cancer hell along with me, since I'm pretty sure you're going to be useless until you can see Sara again."
Grissom blinked at her frank tone. "I'm not going to be useless, Catherine. I'm just . . . understandably shaken. As are the rest of you."
"Yeah, Gil, but the rest of us haven't locked ourselves in dark rooms all night. Granted, we haven't been exactly chipper, but at least we're better off than you right now." She fingered the cigarettes, fighting the urge to light up another one while talking. "I guess she sent you something else in addition to the mass mail we all got?"
Grissom nodded silently. He had no desire to discuss the contents of said letter with his friend, and wasn't planning on opening his mouth right now unless he was forced.
"You're not helping, Gris," Catherine prodded. "Come on, tell me what's going on and maybe between the two of us we can make some sense of it."
He sighed. "What's going on is exactly what Sara's e-mail said is going on. She's accepted the position in New Jersey on a provisional basis."
"That's it? She made this decision with absolutely no consideration for anything you've written to her in the last few weeks?"
A humorless smile crossed Grissom's face. "Actually, yes. That was specifically detailed in the e-mail she sent me last night." Pushing back his chair, he stood up. "Listen, this is Sara's decision, not mine or yours. None of us have a right to influence important choices like this in her life."
"Oh, that's such a crock. You have every right, Gris! She left because of you, so why wouldn't she come back because of you?"
"As far as I've been able to tell," he explained slowly, "she won't come back because of me because she's finally broken the emotional hold I had on her. She considered my opinion as much as she considered all of yours, and in the end none of them were strong enough to change her own opinion of what would be best."
Catherine snorted. "So she writes to you and tells you that you missed your chance with her, and you just give up like a . . . like a . . ." She struggled for an apt description. "Like a dog that just got whacked on the nose with a newspaper?"
A ghost of a real smile appeared on Grissom. " 'A a dog that just got whacked on the nose with a newspaper,' Catherine? My, you're creative tonight. And to answer your question: no, that isn't the case at all. She hasn't said anything like that to me, including anything about me missing my chance or about leaving Las Vegas because of me."
Before Catherine could think of a retort, he spoke again. "Just listen for a minute, Cath. I'm talking to you and you're not listening. Sara no longer considers herself tied to Vegas or to anyone who lives here. That's not to say that she doesn't have good memories, or that she doesn't like us. Just that she's . . . grown up in some way. She's determined to do this her way, and she seems to think that the best way to do it is to stay away from here."
Catherine's face softened. "And you feel like she's trying to sever any ties she has to you, too?"
Grissom shrugged. "I don't know. She's keeping in contact with me, and we have a . . . dialogue going. So no, I wouldn't say she's trying to cut all ties to me. It seems to be" – he stopped to cough nervously – "just the emotional ones that she wants to cut."
"And you really aren't going to do anything about it?"
"I just told you," he said harshly, taking a step toward her, "that nothing I 'do about it' has any power over her anymore." With a groan, Grissom ran a hand through his hair. "You got more of those?" he asked, eyeing the pack of cigarettes that Catherine still held.
"Uh, yeah . . . I only smoked one. But Gil, you haven't smoked since, what, the early 80s? These'll knock you down," Catherine protested, showing him the red packaging that indicated that the cigarettes were low in neither tar nor nicotine.
Grissom walked to the door and opened it without looking back at her. "Do I look like I care at this point? Maybe the carbon monoxide will get my brain clearer than oxygen does." Not waiting for an answer, he turned and headed for the building's exit, already anticipating the temporary boost the drug would give him.
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Thirty minutes later, still slightly lightheaded from the cigarette, which had indeed nearly knocked him down, Grissom sat back down at his desk and turned on the computer that sat on the corner.
He needed to answer Sara. The discussion he'd had with Catherine had left him with no more answers than he'd started with; now that he knew the feeling, he felt obligated to write Sara and give her answers to at least some of her questions. The few he actually had answers for, that is.