Disclaimers: See chapter 1 as usual.

Chp. 3.

I was back outside Sara's' front door, about two hours after I had left her, and not so many minutes after my standoff with both Ecklie and Catherine. The former had not been too pleased, well that was a giant understatement, given that I refused to fire Sara, so Ecklie had left non-too please, and Catherine and I had argued about my choice to let Sara stay. I think back.

"So I gather that you went to talk to her, right?" Catherine had asked him.

"I did go to talk to her." He could inform her.

"So…?" She pressed for info.

"So what? We had our talk." He said. "End of story."

"You know something, don't you? You know why she's acting the way she does, whenever these cases of abused women comes up." She asked him.

"I do know why since she told me. But you will not hear it from me." Grissom said. "It was reason enough for me, not to even consider fire her. I said it's up to herself, when she's ready to tell the rest of you. Or if she ever wants to tell you." He gave her his most determined look as he put great weight behind his next words. "I mean it when I tell you to let this go. Please Catherine I beg you to let this go. If I as much gets words that you'd been after her, pressuring her into tell you her reasons, before she's ready, I'll never be able to forgive you. And I literally mean it, since I don't want to loose my best friend. You'll have to excuse me now. I'm going back to Sara's." With that he had turned on his heel and left a stunned speechless Catherine behind.

I knock at the door once again, and after a few seconds, the door swings open and reveals Sara. I take a look at her, and she seems so much more at peace with herself. She looks almost like the Sara who arrived in Vegas. Like the one who smiled shyly whenever I flirted with her back then. She now sports that smile, revealing the gap between her front teeth, the one I've missed seeing directed at me for a long time. I return it as she waves me inside. After once again taking seats on her couch, just in much closer proximity that earlier, I don't really know where to start my. The one I promised to tell her before leaving earlier. Well I have an idea of what to say, but it's the beginning that hard. So deciding just to start somewhere in the middle, I take her hand once again.

"I know how it is having a difficult childhood." I finally begin my story. "And I know how difficult your family situation, or more the parents situation, can be." I see a question in her eyes. The one who says 'How can that be?' I realize, by jumping into the middle of my story, I missed the valid backbone of it, so I decide to ask her a question. "You once wanted to know, where I had learned sign language?"

"Yes." She answers me.

"I learned it because my mother is deaf." I see her caught by surprise. "And my father left us because of it." I see the surprise in her eyes, being replaced by chock, then finally by concern and compassion for me. But before she had a chance to open her mouth to speak, I interrupt her by asking her yet another question. "What do you know about a decease called Otosclerosis?"

"Umm…" She looks puzzled, but I also see that the bright gears in her very clever head have started turning around up there. I see her gather all the info, I'm sure that she has, before opening her mouth to answer my question. "As far as I know, it's a hereditary ear decease, causing the person having it, to loose his or hers hearing slowly." She looks at me, as she connects the dots between my question and my mother's deafness. "That's what your mother has. Isn't it?"

"Yes." I answer her and pick up on my story. "She began loosing her hearing when I was five and it had completely vanished by the time I was six years old. My father couldn't handle having a nearly deaf wife so he left us. They divorced quickly thereafter. " I see her gears turning again.

"If it's hereditary," She begins. "That means…" She trails off, meaning that she have caught onto something.

"Yes Sara." I tell her. "It means that I inherited it too at birth. I started loosing a bit of hearing a year before the explosion in the lab. My hearing went up and down in periods of time. That was the reason I began to pull away, being closed up, why I stayed away from you and stopped the flirting. And most of all… That was why I said no to your invitation. I had so much going on at that given moment: The lab was blown almost pieces, I had Greg in hospital in poor condition and I had everyone high and mighty after me. On top of that, I had a pre op, for an ear operation, and the image of you so hurt on the curb to deal with." I see a mix of all the worlds' emotions flash over her face, as well as in her eyes. Suddenly she throws her arms around me and, holds me as tight as I held her earlier this day, as she cried her story out to me. The compassion of her arms and emotions engulfs me, and somehow I can't keep my own emotions in check anymore. I find myself break down, I bury my head in the nape of her neck and starts to sob. I also shake, like her, when I cry all my pent up buried pain out in her shoulder and let her body absorb all of it. I feel her hand in my hair, running it through it, and rock me back and forth as she whispers soft words into my ear, and words that I can thankfully hear, because of that operation a few years ago. After I have calmed down, I lift my head from her shoulder and dry my eyes. I bet my eyes are just as red and puffy as Sara's were, after she was done crying. After releasing me from her embrace, Sara helps me dry the tears that have been stuck to my damp beard.

"So I gather you had an operation back then?" She asks me. I just nod my yes to that question. "So are you all cured then?"

"Not wholly." I say. "There's still a chance for it to go down again, but I can hear nearly perfectly now."

"I'm so glad for that." Sara said to me.

We used the rest of the time, to just sit there, enjoying each others company, while talking about all and everything. But mostly about us, and the week Sara was facing on suspension. And how the next week was playing out for us. We agreed on taking it step by step, getting to reconnect again, and getting to know each other again. It was very late when Sara fell asleep, and I gently carried her to her bedroom. After tucking her in, I went to get a notepad from her desk in the living room. I sat down on her bedside, as I watched her sleep peacefully. I wrote a not to her, asking her to just call me whenever she woke up. I left it in plain sight, on her bedside table, for her to notice. After kissing her on her cheek, I left her to her slumber.

More to come I promise.

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