Chapter Two

In the whiteness of his hospital room, he watched the sun claw its way across the floor, ever towards him and he wondered what would come when the sun did.

Sunlight was only sunlight, the scientist in Grissom knew, lecturing him about wavelengths and spectrum and the processes of the sun. And yet dawn seemed to him a strange bringer of hope in its slow reveal of starlight, still warm after its passage through the cold space. Perhaps it was the sense of ever beginning to it, that whatever sunset and night ended, the morning could bring anew.

He was waiting for Sara.

It was foolish, stupid, against all reason, and yet he did. Her words had been the end, but dawn still beckoned its hope. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the words could come undone in time and she would stand there, looking at him with that look he'd come to understand was only meant for him.

Instead, it was Warrick, Catherine and Greg that had come, each speaking bright words about how he would improve and live and how the lab needed him before leaving again.

He began to understand very well why Sara had resented those words. They seemed to define him by what he did, not who he was. The scientist didn't much care, but the scientist saw death as a fact and not up close and personal as a metal monster of a car, breaking bones and tearing flesh as it went. Death was a fact, but suddenly, it had also become something almost like fear.

He hadn't wanted to die. He didn't want to die. But he wasn't sure what life was any more, what life had been. Merely time passed, or something more?

Time passed was simple to find, ever preserved in his memories. Childhood, teenage years, education, adulthood, work, work, and then, a faint smile and dark hair in the wind and a fateful desire spoken...

"I want to kiss you."

Her eyes darkened and she paused, the wind whipping her hair into her face and shielding her eyes from him. "Why now?"

"I've been waiting."

"For what?"

"For you to be whole. For me to be whole."

"There is no whole, Grissom. There's just the pieces you do your best to fit together every morning you wake." She shook her head slightly, as if the thought was painful. "Close your eyes."

"Sara…"

"Close your eyes."

The darkness was not complete, a hint of light creeping past his lashes as he obeyed and waited. He could feel her move and see the dark blue of her shirt as she came in front of him.

"Now kiss me," she said and he could feel her lips tantalizing close, her breath kissing his.

"Why with my eyes closed?"

"Then it'll just me and you, not Sara and Grissom and long years of back and forth. The first kiss should be a start."

"No," he said, opening his eyes to her gaze. "I could close my eyes forever and it would always still be you I'd see. We'll make the start with eyes wide open."

Eyes never leaving her, he dared a caress, feeling the skin of her cheek under his fingers and then under his lips. Soft and weathered and with lines life had chiselled into her, beautiful because it was hers.

"This is a start," he whispered, willing it to be a promise, willing it to be a prophecy. "This is a start for us."

Life in a memory. All life was in memories, a shuffling jigsaw as the present ever made future into past. His start had become an end. And his life nearly had become death. Another change. It was almost as if he wasn't quite Grissom any more, or at least the Grissom he had thought he was. Perhaps he had died, or a part of him had.

It remained to see what had survived.

His bones ached and he closed his eyes to the pain, feeling soft hands on his forehead a moment later. Another nurse with another string of well-meaning words designed to make him improve. He was already tired of them, tired of healing, tired of lingering away from death but not quite in life yet.

"A Miss Sidle called, I told her you were resting," the voice went on, the words suddenly becoming something of sense in his mind. Sidle. Sara.

"Sara?" he muttered, trying to focus and finding the pain a wall in the way.

"Yes, Sara Sidle. She said she'd call later."

For a moment, he almost wished she hadn't. Hope strengthened would almost be impossible to kill and would live in him, as him until bones were ashes and hope returned to the dawn. Maybe she still thought of him. Maybe she could forgive him at last. Maybe he could forgive himself. Maybe he could forgive her. Maybe...

"If she calls again, I'm not resting. Even if I'm sleeping," he ordered the nurse, who merely smiled faintly, as if merely indulging another whim of a patient.

"Yes, Dr. Grissom. You should rest now."

He heard her leave a moment later, painkiller delivered to dull his senses and strengthen the wall. No pain for a while, at least not in body. Nothing to kill his memories with. Nothing to kill words already spoken.

"No."

"Sara..."

"No. You can't expect me to still loveyou after this. You can't."

"I don't."

No expectations. Only hope, faint and yet strong at the same time, filling him as sleep did, edging away pain and memories and awareness.

Whatever had survived, it had that.