A/N. This thing is monstrously long. But in my humble opinion, it's pretty good,so... yeah. Anyway, I've been working on this for awhile, and I had it in a notebook, then typed it, but it was stuck on the wrong computer and I couldn't transfer it, but that computer didn't have a zip drive so I had to go out and buy disks but they weren't formatted so I had to format them, and then I had to copy and paste the text into numerous different programs... Long story short, it's been a long time in coming, but it's finally here. I'd like to thank my reviewers, becauseI lovethem very, very, very much. Also, if any of you are CSI betas and are willing to look over a few of my other fics that I'm working on, drop me a line, either here or via e-mail. Anywho, on with the fic!

Disclaimer: I don't own CSI. Dur.

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Rusted Memories
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It was so easy, in the lab, to watch, and to be watched.

Like a network of glass cages, a labyrinth of windows, the labs were visible to no one from the outside, but to everyone once within. Building it into the earth below the main offices had been a safety precaution, but also just as effectively isolated them from the world.

It was his prison, and it was his sanctuary. His damnation and his saving grace. His love and his hate.

And these days, it wasn't only his own. He shared this place, yes, with his coworkers every night, but to them it was just work. One person had developed the close, almost religious connection with this place, could find shelter in the cool, dark quiet of the laboratory.

Unfortunately, it was the one person he'd do anything to avoid these days.

This was Sara Sidle's sanctuary, too.

And somehow that fact had made this place less safe than it had been previously. To know that, late at night when he was all alone, Sara was lurking somewhere too, and he could possibly run into her, made him… uncomfortable. On edge. Apprehensive.

So he chose work spaces that allowed him to watch her, to keep an eye on her. Tonight she was in the Trace Lab, so he sat in DNA, deserted now because his crew had gone home and Ecklie's didn't start for a few more hours. The cold chill of the lab, coupled with the still silence and the gleam of light off of sleek metal and glinting glass created the illusion of a hospital. Everything was bare and sterile. And through the DNA Lab's windows he could see into the Trace Lab, and see Ms. Sidle

He allowed his eyes to rest, for a moment, on the long, straight lines of her form. He had seen a picture of her once, as a teenager. It had been hanging in her apartment that time that he had brought her files because she was sick but wanted to stay busy. She was like him in that sense.

She had been a long, lanky stick of a girl with a wide gap-toothed grin. She didn't look entirely comfortable in her own skin, and even then an ocean of shadows had lurked below the surface of those chocolate eyes.

"You ran track?"

She smiled a little, her voice raspy from the illness. "Yeah. That was the day I won the hundred yard dash."

He glanced over at her. "You still running?"

A quiet sadness shadowed her features. "All the time. All the time."

Grissom glanced back down at his reports. He spent a few moments approving certain conclusions and rejecting others. His CSI 2s just didn't have the imagination for this job. Closing one folder, he felt his gaze drawn to her face.

She wore an expression of extreme concentration. Trace wasn't an easy gig to work. Back when he had first met her, he was surprised that she processed her own trace evidence instead of handing it off to the lab techs. He had soon learned: that was just the way that Sara was. Her focus on the task at hand was impressively unwavering, and her eyes never left her task. He had always admired her ability to lose herself in her work, the way that she could put distraction behind her. She was devoted, he mused. Devoted.

He remembered a day in the park.

The sun filtered yellow-green through the lattices of the leaves. Birds fluttered through the shade, peppering the air with flashes of color and fragments of song. A checkered picnic blanket played host to a multitude of creatures, most incectile, lured there by some old hamburger from his fridge.

The others had blown him off, on the premise that it was Saturday, they'd each put in about sixty hours of work that week, and had better things to do than observe forensic entomology in the company of one Dr. Gil Grissom. But there was Sara, kneeling on the blanket's edge, studying the specimens intently. He quietly pointed out each critter to her, explaining its role in forensics. Her eyes, bright with interest, followed a carpenter beetle's path. He knelt beside her, so close that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body. He could smell her hair, fragrant like almonds and cream. She smiled at the display below her, turned to him, and realized how close their faces were. She met his eyes and gave him that lopsided grin, but flopped back to take a deep drag from a bottle of water.

The balmy summer air pressed against them, tinted with the smell of warm grass and a faint tone of sweat, sweet and golden, and they just sat there in the green grass and listened, and looked, and breathed in whatever it was that brought a smile to his lips and a glow to her heart.

It felt like the first time he'd smiled in years, and she'd never felt warmer.

He saw her shiver slightly in her lab coat, a paradox action from his previous thoughts. She rubbed her arms lightly, trying to generate heat. It seemed recently that the chill was more thank skin-deep, as though her heart had started to freeze itself. Grissom wasn't surprised; it was a cold, cold world. His soul was beginning to ice over, too.

These days her face was usually drawn. Sara protected her secrets, and she kept the rest of the world at arm's length. Her smiles were harder to invoke, her laughter more guarded. Her years in Las Vegas had changed her; she was no longer the bubbly, outgoing girl that he had met in San Francisco. And, he knew, that was partly his fault.

She carefully scraped a miniscule sample of a strange red powder and smeared it onto a microscope slide. Adjusting the strength of the light source and magnification, she looked down the scope. He saw her brow furrow slightly. She flipped through the reference book, barely stopping to look at entries before moving on. After a few minutes of flurried activity, her pace slowed. She propped her chin on her hand. He could almost see the gears in that brilliant mind of hers clicking away, trying to find another solution.

She added a speck of the material to a cardboard slip and ran it through the GCMS. Hovering over it, her face took on an air of hopeful anticipation.

God, she was beautiful. She had pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail, and some of the strands had fallen out, shading those brown eyes that looked like golden honey under the soft lights of the Trace Lab. She bit her pouty bottom lip, the hint of a smile hiding in the corner of her mouth. She blinked, her lashes fluttering down to rest on her cheeks like smoky, dark butterflies against her cream skin, marked with a smattering of freckles and tinted a blush pink on her cheekbones. The report came out of the printer, and Sara grabbed it, still hot. Careful not to smudge the still-drying ink, she read the results. Dimples blossomed in her cheeks, and Grissom's stomach did a little flip-flop at the innocence that he saw written across her feature when she thought that no one was looking. Her eyes were filled with the unadulterated purity that spoke of an underlying vulnerability. Sara's eyes were usually twin gems of confidence, bright with the spark of strength.

But they weren't always so.

There was a night in the Desert Relay when he had seen that cool collectedness shatter, seen the self-assurance vanish until only traces of their existence were left. It was a night he'd always remember… and a night he wished he could forget.

They stood off in the dark, the chill night air from the barren plains pouring over their bodies, outside of the circles of light and joyously celebratory moods of their colleagues. She shivered, wrapped her arms around herself, whether to protect from the cold or from the hurt she was feeling he couldn't tell.

"Why are you doing this to me?" Her eyes were dark and confused, pained and imploring.

"Doing what?" he asked, taking a similar posture.

She threw up her hands in consternation. "This! You keep pulling me in and then pushing me away. I don't like feeling like this, Grissom. I feel like you find it amusing to toy with me."

He began to protest. "Sara, I would never- "

She cut him off, her voice quiet and soft. "I know. But that's how I feel, sometimes." She reached out to touch his hand, then hesitated. She faced her palm towards the starry, cloudless night sky.

"The next step is yours to take. I can only go so far, Gil."

She had never called him by his first name before. Her hand floated between them, silently daring him to take it, take the risk, let her in, connect. But he couldn't make that leap of faith. The hand dropped, and she turned away. He could hear the hurt in her voice as she spoke quietly over her shoulder. "S'pose I've gone too far." She paused. "Goodbye, Grissom."

She walked back into the light and the celebration, although she never quite convinced her friends that everything was as "fine" as she said.

And he stayed behind… in the dark.

Sara sat back at her work station, flipping at a maniacal speed through the reference books. She glanced from the scope to the pages. Triumph flashed in her eyes as she found a page near the last third of the second book. She ran a hand over her hair, setting it free from the confines of elastic. It settled softly around her face in a halo of chestnut. She grinned to herself and allowed herself to pull herself from her work. She looked up…

And captured his eyes with her own. Icy blue met dark brown as she realized that he had been watching her.

Grissom was frozen, trapped in the power of that gaze, so intense that neither glass barriers nor distance could mar it. For a moment the world stood still. He tried to read the question in her eyes, and failed. On any other occasion he would have glanced away quickly, denying contact. He found, however, that he was unable to do so in this instance. The way that she stared at him, it was like she was looking into his soul. For anyone else, and at any other time, he would have rather died than let his heart be explored, but somehow Sara had pushed her way in. Now there was no turning back.

Only surrender.

And he wasn't the type to surrender, but he couldn't seem to keep his walls up any longer.

He didn't know how long they had been locked in that gaze. It could've been seconds, it could've been hours.

It could've been lifetimes.

But her mouth began to move, and he carefully deciphered the meanings on her lips.

You can play the game, you can act out the part, but you know it wasn't written for you, she silently advised. In a rush of understanding, he recognized the words. An old James Taylor song. She was singing to him, or maybe lip singing. Even though he wouldn't have heard if she sand, he didn't think that she was actually making any sound. Her lips continued to move.

Tell me, how can you stand there with your broken heart, ashamed of playing the fool?

Her eyes silently implored of him something that he didn't quite understand.

You can run, but you cannot hide, this is widely known. Tell me what you plan to do with your foolish pride when you're all by yourself, alone?

He lowered his gaze, finally ale to break her gaze. He realized that she was right; battling his emotions helped no one. Pride and fear had been his only companions for far too long. When he glanced up again, he turned his sights to the Trace Lab, ready to let her in…

And she was gone.

He lowered his head into his hands, feeling emotion wash over him in a tidal wave of sadness.

He had lost her.

Again.

A/N. Read on. It gets better. I promise! ♥ Ink.