Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or any dialogue that I quoted.

AN: Next chapter :) thanks to Myra, Becca and Lisa :) And thousand thanks to Rhee for beta reading!

chapter 12

She wanted to cry. How, how could she let it happen that he had managed to break her heart again? He had obviously not known that she had been standing behind the one way mirror, he wouldn't have said all this if he would have known that she had been there, that she had been able to hear him, every word, every damned single word.

"But then, all of a sudden ... we get a second chance. Somebody young and beautiful shows up. Somebody ... we could care about. She offers us a new life with her... but we have a big decision to make, right? Because we have to risk everything we've worked for in order to have her."

Yes damn it, yes she had offered him a new life, she had offered him a life with her, a life in which he would be alive! She had wanted to spend her life with him, she had moved to Vegas to spend her life with him! She had given up everything in order to be with him, near him.

"I couldn't do it..."

He hadn't been able to do it; why? Because she wasn't worth risking it? For her, he had been worth giving up her life. She had given up everything for him! And she would do it again. Damn it she would do it again because she loved him. Even after hearing him say what he had been telling the suspect, she still loved him. And she despised herself for being so stupid.

It was stupid, for him she wasn't worth risking it; she would probably never be worth risking it. The painful memory of their last conversation in San Francisco ran through her mind. 'Sara it would never work, you would never be happy. My job is the most important thing in my life, seamless followed by science, you would never be happy to be only the number three. And you deserve better, you deserve to be somebody's number one.'

She swallowed the tears that were rising up in her eyes. Back then she had been able to control herself enough to not break down in front of him; she had been able to not start crying in front of him, but back then she hadn't known that she could ever love him as much as she did now.

But obviously what he had been telling her back then had not been the whole truth. There was more that he feared. He feared that being with her would mean risking his job. But there were no written rules against supervisor/subordinate relationships. It was frown upon but it was not strictly forbidden.

And he… he feared that after giving up his prior life - a life which had not been a real life – for a new life with her, she would take this new life away from him again and then would give it to someone else. He feared that once when she had shown him a wonderful life, a life full of happiness and full of love, she would take it away and that then he would have lost it all, that he wouldn't be able to live without all this anymore.

She was sitting on the ground, leaning against the kitchen counter. Her thighs were pressed against her chest, her arms were twined around her legs and her forehead was leaning against her knees. She closed her eyes, only for a moment but now she wasn't able to control herself any longer. At first, she was only sobbing but then her tears broke through the barriers and she started to cry harder and harder with every minute.

Why wasn't she worth it? Why? She felt so helpless, so heartbroken, so desperate. There was nothing she could do, nothing she could say to him. He wouldn't risk anything for her; he wouldn't do it because he couldn't. He wasn't strong enough or was he too strong? Too strong to let this wall around him break down?

After a long time, when her head hurt so much that it felt as if it would explode and after there were no more tears to cry, she looked up for a moment. Her vision was blurred and the bright light burned in her eyes. Her gaze fell on her fridge and somehow she found the strength to stand up and walk over to it. After a moment, she found what she had been looking for.

Sitting on the ground again she emptied the first two bottles of beer as if it was water. Not worth it. Not worth risking it. She opened the next bottle. The worst thing was that she knew that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. She had seen it in his eyes when they had re-enacted that girl's rape weeks ago. He wanted to be with her, he had feelings for her but he did not want to have these feelings.

"Damn you Gil Grissom." She said half whispering. She downed the third beer and squeezed her eyes shut during the last swallows. She felt sick but she didn't really care. "Damn him!" She threw the empty bottle against the counter in front of her. The bottle cracked into hundreds of shards. She grinned, now that was a nice mess. She took the second bottle into her hand. "Damn you Gil Grissom!" She shouted when the bottle hit the counter. Now she chuckled, oh yeah, how symbolic, shards, shards everywhere broken, broken like her heart, broken like her hopes, broken like her dreams. Broken just like her.

Drinking wasn't a resolution to her problems and it wouldn't help her to get over this but it let her forget the pain, only for short while but it was better than nothing. She opened another bottle; she stared at it for a moment. So deep, so deep he had made her fall.

God why couldn't she just stop loving him so much? Why? Why did he mean so much to her? What was it about him that made her love him so much? Need him so much? "Why? Why!" She shouted. "Why?" She started to cry again, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to fight back the tears. No she shouldn't cry for him any longer. If she wasn't worth it for him then he shouldn't be worth it for her. She downed the beer and opened her eyes again. Okay, that had been too much, now she really felt sick. But she didn't care.

She let her upper body sink down and she stretched out on the ground. Wow I really need to clean up more thoroughly down here. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, resting her head on the right arm. Why couldn't she just wake up tomorrow morning and realize that all this had just been a bad dream?

TBC

Some feedback would be nice ;)