Epiphanies

Disclaimer: I don't own CSI.

Rating: M – some sexual content in later chapters.

Chapter Two: "I want to come with you."

Nick caught up with Sara as she was heading for her SUV.

"Sara, wait!"

She froze, closing her eyes. "Nick, I already made up my mind."

"I know. I want to come with you."

"What?" Now it was her turn to be shocked. "Why?"

"Because you're right," he told her. "It isn't just the blood and the death and the violence. It's not even just the way everything changed when Ecklie busted up the team." He ran a hand through his hair. "It's everything. It's being stalked by a psychopath, and held at gunpoint, and falling for a woman and then seeing her get killed. Not to mention being abducted and buried alive. It's realizing that this is what I consider normal now."

He paused, then continued more softly. "It's realizing I want to see Normal again, before I forget what it really looks like."

Sara nodded. "Okay."

"Okay?" he repeated, and she nodded again.

"Okay. I'll pick you up some time this afternoon." She gave him a wry smile. "If you change your mind you can make your own way back to Vegas."

It was only when he arrived home that Nick realized what he intended to do, and that he didn't have a clue what he was meant to be doing. How did you go about preparing to run away from a life you were suddenly sick of?

He rang Sara, who answered with "If you're calling to tell me you've changed your mind…"

"I'm not," he reassured her. "I just,uh, I have no idea what I'm meant to be doing right now."

He could actually picture her rolling her eyes.

"Packing," she told him. Hearing the uncomprehending silence from his end, she elaborated. "Pack some clothes and stuff. Maybe a sleeping bag, and a couple of boxes of whatever you really don't want to put into storage. Whatever."

"Okay. Thanks." He hung up and looked around, hardly knowing where to start.

Four hours later, he nodded, satisfied. He had taken her advice and started with clothes and a sleeping bag. The 'whatever' had proven more difficult. In the end he had grabbed some cartons left over from his last move and started in the living-room. Photographs, CDs, coffee mugs, a football, his college jacket and yearbook, a baseball bat, a chess set, books…

By the time he had decided that everything else could be left for Warrick to put into storage it was lunchtime.

His cell-phone rang, and he was unsurprised to see it was Sara.

"Checking up on me?" he asked.

"Just reminding you that you need to cancel your utilities," she told him. "And clean out your fridge as well."

He shook his head. "You have thought about this way too much," he told her.

"I'll meet you at the lab in about an hour."

"The lab?"

"We need to drop off our resignations and the keys to our SUVs, and hand in our side-arms," she reminded him.

Sara had packed up her life in a fraction of the time it had taken Nick. For one thing, she had thought about it before, and, for another, her life had left her with more she wanted to forget than to remember. Apart from her handbag and a backpack forher clothes, two small cartons held everything that she considered worth keeping.

When she had finished she walked out of her apartment and down the street to the used car lot, where she bought a battered-looking Ford station-wagon for about $2000 less than the dealer wanted after pointing out to him in her best Hurricane Sara manner that this was roughly what she would need to spend on repairs in the near future if she wanted it to continue to function as a car rather than, say, an interesting piece of modern art.

She drove it back to her place and loaded it up, then rang Nick to let him know he should meet her at the lab.

Nick looked puzzled when he saw her pulling up in a station-wagon rather than her SUV.

"I thought we were leaving our vehicles here?"

"I'm dropping off my keys," she told him. "They can collect it from outside my apartment. Do you have your resignation?"

He made a face. "I knew I'd forgotten something."

"Here." She handed him a piece of paper. "I made a spare copy. You just have to sign it."

They transferred Nick's stuff from his vehicle to the station-wagon. Nick raised an eyebrow at the sight of Sara's few possessions looking almost forlorn beside his much larger haul.He wonderedhow she could have so little that she considered worth keeping. Then they headed into the lab.

A few members of the day shift stared at them curiously as they made their way to Grissom's office, but no-one thought to ask them what they were doing at the lab in the middle of the afternoon. The nightshift had a reputation for eccentricity.

They left their letters and their keys on the desk and handed their side-arms in to ballistics, knowing that they would be safe there until they could be passed on to PD. Then they walked back out into the parking lot andgot into the car.

"Are we really doing this?" Nick asked suddenly, and Sara slumped slightly at the wheel.

"I'm really doing this, Nick," she replied, trying to swallow her disappointment at the thought that he might not be coming after all, "but you don't have to."

He drew a deep breath andgrinned. "Let's go."

She grinned back, started the engine, and turned on the radio. Eighties rock blasted as they left their old lives behind them and set off to see what would come next.