Author's Notes: Again, a friendly reminder. I did take anthropology, but I'm just a writer. Bones are a hobby, not a profession. Apologies in advance if I make any glaring mistakes. Thank you to absolutely everyone;)
Letting Go
by Kristen Elizabeth
Every heart that was broken
There always was a man to blame
- Kitty Wells
Dear Sara,
Three and a half months ago, you asked me to let you go. And I've spent the past one hundred and five days regretting everything I did to bring you to that point. Six years of regrets, Sara. How could I have let things go so wrong? You were light in my darkness and my neglect nearly put you out.
When I carried you from the desert, you used every last bit of your strength to tell me that you loved me, something that, until that moment, I hadn't been able to do with any part of mine. Should I have bit my tongue, held the words back yet again? No. Of all my regrets, telling you what's been in my heart for so long isn't among them. Even if it was too late.
As a scientist, I understand the concept of cause and effect. I caused your unhappiness, your loneliness, your goodbye. And I live with the effect, a world without color, without song, without Sara.
I know I can't ask you to come home. Likely, I have no right to assume that you ever will. All I can say is, no matter how long it takes, I will be here waiting for you. It's my turn. And you are worth it.
I have always loved you. It is a constant in the experiment that is my life.
Yours, Gil
"Simon?" Snow crunched beneath Sara's boots; the sound was almost masked by the rush of the icy stream.
He sat on the gnarled trunk of a downed tree, staring at the water. His back was to her and he didn't respond to his name.
Sara stopped alongside the makeshift bench, her hands tucked into her armpits for warmth. Every day seemed colder than the next; it wouldn't be long before they'd be forced to leave. The remaining bodies would continue to rest in their unmarked grave for another winter.
She blew out a breath and watched it swirl in front of her. "One of my first solo cases, when I worked in San Francisco, involved a five year-old little boy." She paused. "He'd been raped, stabbed and dumped into the bay. By the time he washed up on shore, every fish in the Pacific had taken a bite out of him." Simon said nothing, only waited for her to go on. "God, I wanted to quit right there. To hell with it all…I'd go back to school and finish my physics degree instead. Anything but coming back to that body the next day."
"But you didn't quit," he finally said.
"I didn't."
"Why?"
Sara felt herself tremble, and it wasn't entirely from the cold. "I couldn't let it beat me."
Simon turned his head to stare at her. "That's it? That's your great story? That's supposed to help ease my troubled psyche?"
"Hey, I'm not the writer here!" He looked away and Sara sighed. "Simon, it's been over a week. You hardly eat, you're having nightmares that wake the whole team, and you go entire days without speaking."
"I would have thought you'd enjoy that."
Sara shook her head. "You're bottling it all up. We learn pretty early on that you can't do that. It'll eat you up and leave you with nothing."
"I just keep thinking…" He hung his head for a long moment. "I hope she was already dead when they did…that to her." Simon stood up quickly and reached for her arm. "Is there any way to know? Can you tell what killed her?"
She was torn. The preliminary exams of the little girl's remains showed no signs of any other trauma that could have accounted for her death. No bullet holes, no fractures. To all outward appearances, she'd been in general good health. All they'd found was a gash on the inside of her upper left femur and three on her os pubis. It was all indicative of one probable COD. Perforation of any number of organs including the uterus, lower intestine, or bladder. She'd most likely exsanguinated after being repeatedly raped with a bowie knife.
But she couldn't tell Simon that. The team could handle it; he could not. Sara covered his hand with hers. "She was probably already dead."
If he didn't believe her, he said nothing. But his shoulders relaxed some. "I didn't expect this," he whispered. "I wanted this assignment. Get out of L.A. for awhile, see some of the world. Write about something that matters more than which celebrities are screwing each other this week." Simon squeezed his eyes shut. "But I never thought…it'd be like this."
"I don't think any of us did." Sara looked up at the grey sky. "But at least we're not strangers to it. Like you are. Still, now that you're in our world, you have to decide if you're going to quit or come back tomorrow."
He opened his eyes. They were wet and blue. She only knew that blue in one other person. How had she not noticed his eyes before?
"I can't let it beat me," he said. His fingers were cold against her cheek as he moved closer to her. She let him; she was lost in that blue. "Sara…"
Their mouths met in mid-air, hungry and searching for each other's warmth. It was less of a kiss and more of a testament to life. Simon's hands tangled in her long hair as his tongue melded with hers. She curved hers around his upper shoulders, gripping his collar, lost in the moment. Until…
Grissom.
She hadn't realized that along with the image of him that came to mind, she'd murmured his name out loud between Simon's lips.
"What's that?" he asked, planting hot kisses along her jaw. She'd been lucky. He hadn't even caught it.
Sara fought her way out of his arms. "I can't do this." She shook herself violently, backing away from him. "Not again."
Simon's expression was nothing short of shocked. "Sara? What's wrong?"
She hated the tears that sprung up in the corners of her own eyes. "It's not you. It's…" Her words faltered. "Past experience has taught me…things never end up well when I rush this," she said very quickly. "I'm sorry, Simon."
Turning on her heel, she ran all the way back to camp.
As she ran past the campfire, Jan called out to her. "Sara, come have a…" She ignored her friend and ducked into her tent before she could finish, "…drink."
Throwing herself onto her cot, Sara buried her face in her pillow. Kevin, Lawton, Hank…even Greg on their one date. She'd kissed them all and several more since she'd met Grissom.
So why, only now, did she feel like she had betrayed him?
"Good evening." On an otherwise boring Tuesday night, Grissom breezed into the break room at the start of the graveyard shift. Much to the shock of everyone who had gathered for assignments, that was the only verb that applied to the way he moved. Breezed. Like he was happy.
He either ignored or didn't notice the looks being exchanged between his co-workers. "Nick and Warrick, 419 in suburbia. Sofia's already on her way. Greg, you've got the aftermath of a bank-hold up at the Credit Union on Tropicana. Catherine, you're with me. Floater out at Lake Mead." He smiled, actually smiled, at his team. "Good luck all around."
Mystified, the guys departed for their respective cases. As he shuffled out the door behind Warrick, Nick asked under his breath, "That was Grissom, right?"
"Yeah," Greg replied with a snort. "Pod Grissom."
Catherine had the same thought, only phrased slightly differently, and actually spoken to Grissom's face. "Just what kind of happy pills are you on tonight?"
He shook the assignment slip at her. "Can't I be in a good mood once in awhile without everyone assuming I'm not in my right mind?"
She snatched it and threw him a look. "Gil, your right mind is usually in a bad mood." Catherine followed him into the hallway, donning her coat as they walked. "And I don't have to point out that you've been ten times worse over the past couple of months."
"It's been hard," he admitted. "But it's different now."
"Why?" Catherine asked, suspiciously. "What have you done?"
Grissom stopped to open the lab's front entrance door for her. "I wrote her a letter."
He kept walking to his car like that was all he had to say to clear things up. It took her a second before she moved to catch up with him. "You wrote her a letter?" she repeated. "And that means…what?"
"It means that, according to the time frame given to me by the post office, sometime today or tomorrow Sara should know exactly how I feel about her," Grissom said with a little, satisfied smirk. "And that I'm ready to be with her whenever she's ready to come back."
Her smile was lop-sided. "I'm proud of you," she told him. "Maybe you won't blow it this time."
Grissom unlocked his car, shaking his head. "You're nothing if not brutally honest. But nothing's going to go wrong this time. Trust me."
Catherine slid into the passenger's seat and tossed her hair out of her eyes. "God, I wish you'd stop tempting fate."
The camp was quiet when Berislav returned from town. The back of the Explorer lent to the team by the American Embassy was full of groceries and supplies, both professional and personal. Berislav didn't mind the weekly trip; besides handling all translation duties and maintaining diplomatic relations, there wasn't a whole lot else for him to do. He stayed away from the bones as much as possible. He had a distant cousin who had never been found at the end of the war.
After unloading, he took the bags with the personal items requested by the team towards the one person he spotted sitting by the fire.
Simon glanced up from his book. "B," he greeted him. For some reason, the reporter could not be bothered with the rest of his name. Americans. "Did you get the stuff?"
He produced a bag of M&M's. "You talk as though it were a drug," Berislav said, his words heavily accented.
"Might as well be, man." Simon ripped the bag open and popped a few candies. "I owe you."
Glancing around the camp, Berislav asked, "Where is every body? I have mail."
"Jan's in the Valley with the Dick. Doc's working in the morgue." He swallowed. "Anything for me, Mr. Postman?"
"No. Just for Sarinka." No one was quite sure how or why he'd given Sara's name a Slavic twist. It was just one of those things that had started and never stopped.
"Vegas? She's napping, I think." Simon hesitated. "I have to wake her up in a few minutes." He held out his hand. "I'll give it to her."
Berislav shrugged. "All right." He handed Simon the letter. "I will be in the kitchen." He left to put the perishable food away.
With one eye on Sara's tent, Simon headed into his own. He had a momentary twinge of guilt for what he was about to do, but it passed. He'd never bothered to take Journalistic Ethics in college.
"Gil Grissom…Las Vegas, Nevada, USA," he read the return address out loud. "Another friend?"
Something tugged his memory. That name. He knew that name. Another moment of thought brought it back to him. Gil Grissom, the criminalist who'd solved dozens of high profile cases. World-renowned forensic entomologist. Sara's boss.
The man who had been credited in the press with her rescue from the desert.
He ripped the letter open and scanned it quickly. When he was done, he carefully folded it back up. Taking the pillow from his cot, he unzipped the slip cover and stuffed the letter into the down feathers. Zipping it back up, he replaced the pillow and released a pent-up breath.
"Sorry, Sara," Simon said out loud. "But you'll thank me later. Office romances never work."
To Be Continued