He hates this part of the job. Budget shortfalls. Administrative paperwork. Staff schedules.
It's worse now than it's ever been with Catherine supervising swing and half his team gone with her. He's short on bodies, short on money, and short on patience. Sometimes he misses the days when this was all Jim's responsibility, and he was just out in the field.
As soon as he hears the tentative tap on his door frame, he knows it's her. His nervous system reacts automatically to her presence, silently reaching out for her.
"Hi. You got a minute?" she asks brightly. She doesn't wait for his response, striding casually into his office.
He hesitates for just a moment. He always has time for her, but he's trying to puzzle out why she's here. Despite her smile, she's radiating nervous energy. "Sure," he says.
"We really haven't had a chance to talk since the staff changes," she says, sitting. Her smile falters. "I wanted to let you know I said some things to Ecklie that might have done the team a disservice."
Oh. This is why she's nervous. She thinks this is her fault. It's not.
"Ecklie wanted to break up the team. And he did."
"He asked me if you and I had had our post-PEAP counseling session-"
"And we didn't," he says, cutting her off before she can say more. He does not want her to apologize to him again for that night. He doesn't want to see the guilt and shame in her eyes. This is why he hasn't followed up with her. He knows that makes him a bad supervisor. A bad administrator. But he has a hard time being both a boss and a friend to Sara. He always has. "Regardless, you should never have to cover for your boss. I'm sorry."
"You've always been a little more than a boss to me," she says softly.
His stomach drops. He raises his eyes to hers, opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Are they really going to do this now? Here? Like this?
Last spring, he thought they were on the cusp of something new. Back when they spent every free moment at the lab together. When she laughed with him and hovered over his shoulder solving crossword clues before he could get to them. When she left him secret notes in piles of letter tiles. When she held his hand on the rollercoaster.
But things between them always have to be so complicated. Nothing has been the same since he witnessed her shame that night he drove her home. She withdrew from him, throwing herself into work and avoiding any hint of socializing. She took four weeks of vacation over the summer, in two week chunks, eating away at years of banked time off. He has no idea where she went during that time.
He knows that when she came back that second time, she seemed a little better. A little more balanced. But by then the tiles were tucked away in a drawer, gone but not forgotten.
"Why do you think I moved to Vegas?" she asks rhetorically. He knows why. He knows the choice they both made.
He has yet to say a word. His mind is reeling. Maybe she's right. Maybe it's time – past time – to stop talking around this. Five and half years they've been working together, making each other alternately euphoric and miserable.
"Look," she says, carrying on in the face of his mute shock. "I know our relationship has been complicated. It's probably my fault. It's probably, definitely, my fault."
It is not her fault. That's ridiculous.
"You completed your counseling, right?" he asks abruptly, suddenly afraid this conversation is part of some sort of twelve step program, worried that she is looking for closure he is not ready to confer.
"Yeah. Yes."
"And?" he asks.
She gives him a sad, embarrassed grin that looks more like a grimace. "Let's just say…sometimes I look for validation in inappropriate places."
He can't breathe. He has been dreading this moment for seven years. From the moment she smiled up at him under that pier, he has suspected that her feelings for him are misplaced, confused.
She does not love him. She has never loved him. He is a teacher, a mentor, a father figure even. He is someone whose approval she has been seeking desperately for years, and both of them have misinterpreted it at times as something more. But she knows now, and she is telling him, that's all it is.
He can't meet her eyes. He can't find words. He tries to tell himself that he has always known this. That this is not a revelation. He reminds himself that this is why he chose job and not relationship. He knew this day would come, and he was protecting both of them from the fallout.
But he still feels like he can't breathe. It wasn't supposed to hurt this bad if he chose job. That was the deal.
"Look," he says, desperately trying to right himself "Let's um…"
"It's okay," she says softly, taking pity on him. "Okay. You know what? We did our session. Don't forget to document this for Ecklie."
She smiles at him, to let him know that the Ecklie comment is just a joke. That she's on his side, not Ecklie's. But he has forgotten how to smile. Forgotten how to pretend that everything is okay.
"Right," he says, focusing on breathing in and out.
"Thanks," she says, smiling again. And then she stands and goes.
He sits in the dark for a long time, not doing anything. Not even thinking. His mind is empty and quiet, as if it's scared to process what has happened.
The loss is like a physical wound, open and weeping. He realizes with a sudden clarity that he always believed they would somehow find a way to be together. That with enough time he would find the courage, find the words, to make that future possible. Visions of a different future, one without her, flood his mind's eye, and he drops his head into his hands, massaging his temples as if he can scrub them away.
He watches her carefully over the next few days, expecting to find her lighter, relieved of the burden of the dysfunctional push and pull of their relationship.
Instead, what he sees worries him. On the surface, she is as she has ever been. Competent. Professional. Dedicated. Thorough. But her eyes never sparkle anymore. And her smile is sad.
He thought she was doing so much better, after the vacations he pushed her to take, but he wonders now if he was just seeing what he wanted to see. He remembers her, sitting on a bench outside an interrogation room a few months ago, telling him she had a problem with the wife-swapping lifestyle of their current suspects. He remembers giving her a cup of tea and a mouthful of platitudes about consenting adults and their claims of a happy marriage. He remembers how confused he felt when she looked at him sadly and said, "You think they're happy?"
Maybe he cannot even recognize happiness anymore. Maybe she has been unhappy for so long that he doesn't even know what it looks like and is willing to accept a poor imitation.
She appears at the end of shift one day in the gray suit he loves her in so much, and reminds him that she's meeting that morning with the district attorney to go over evidence in the Malton case before it goes in front of the judge.
He nods sympathetically. That case was hard on everyone involved – they had been looking for evidence in one case only to stumble across the emaciated body of a little boy, starved to death and thrown away like garbage. It was Sara who talked to his foster siblings, Sara who discovered he had two brothers, Sara who found them and rescued them. He wasn't there, but he heard that the oldest brother clung to her as they waited for the paramedics.
Cases with children are hard for everyone. Even him. Especially him. He expects her to be heartbroken, but it's not sadness he sees in her eyes. It's a quiet, seething fury.
"It should be an easy conviction," he says gently, trying to offer her a silver lining.
"They aren't going to charge the mother," she replies instead.
It was the mother's cousin who starved and neglected the boys. The mother was states away, sending money back for their care. There is no evidence she knew they were in danger.
He doesn't say any of this to her. She knows.
"She'll have to live with the consequences of her actions for the rest of her life," he says instead. "There's no greater punishment than to lose her child."
Her eyes are hard, her voice flinty. "What about justice for the boys who survived? Who were tortured and watched their brother die? She left her children with a monster. It was her job to protect them, and she just…."
She trails off, and he can see that there are no words that will comfort her right now. He longs to go to her, to hold her. Instead, he just nods.
After a few seconds, she sighs and hands him a stack of paperwork. Her current case is all wrapped up. He wishes he could offer her the night off since she's in between cases and going to be spending who knows how many hours with the DA today, but he's too short staffed.
He knows Sara: she wouldn't take it anyway.
He thanks her, and wishes her luck with the DA, and watches her walk away, wishing there was more he could do. And then he turns off his lights and heads out too.
He's back at the lab hours before his next shift starts, giddy with excitement because he's heard Catherine's got two bodies she dug up in a slab of tar. He books it to the layout room where Catherine and Doc Robbins are going over the x-rays, and then convinces Catherione to take him to see the bodies, and then to let him try to separate them using liquid Nitrogen.
It works. Sort of. He gets the bodies separated, and they unearth the first without a hitch. But when he pulls the chunk of frozen tar from the second skeleton's face, her forehead comes with it, and the skull collapses on itself.
He grimaces, then looks at his watch and makes noises about starting his shift.
"No, no, no," Catherine says. "You're not just going to destroy the skull and then split."
He offers her Sara, since she's just wrapped a case. Catherine is not pleased with him, but Sara does fantastic reconstruction work. Catherine will forgive him.
He's immersed in his own case that night, and has only the barest idea of what's going on with Catherine's. He does see the reconstruction of the victim's face sitting in the layout room at one point, and he smiles. It's excellent work.
He's out at a scene, well past quitting time, when the dustup happens. But he hears all about it when he gets back.
Catherine's in his office within minutes of his return, looking both exhausted and furious.
"Ecklie wants her head," she warns him, and it doesn't appear she has any interest in helping him save Sara's job.
She has sparred with Sara plenty of times, but this time seems different. Eventually she tells him exactly what Sara said to her – yelled at her in a crowded hallway, no less – and he understands why.
"I'm sorry, Cath," he says gently. "That was uncalled for."
"Stop apologizing for her and do something about it," she says. She pauses and then shrugs. "Though I don't know what you can do at this point. Ecklie wants her gone. She's suspended for a week, but it's just a formality."
She's right. Before he can formulate a plan, Ecklie is in his office demanding he fire Sara, and lighting into him for allowing her to make it this far, for covering for her for so long. He doesn't dignify those accusations, but he does defend her. She's his best CSI, and no one has ever complained about the caliber of her work.
Ecklie rolls his eyes. "Handle it," he demands as he turns and storms out of the office.
He sits at his desk for a long time, frustrated with Sara's anger and her inability to control it. She's so angry all the time. At suspects. At coworkers. At the world. At him.
He thinks back to happier times, when she was sweet and flirty with him, but he knows those memories are only half true. She was angry even then.
He thinks about Scott Shelton, the first time he ever saw her rage, and the feel of her writhing in his arms, flailing with fury. He thinks about her up all night trying to identify the victim in the ICU, beaten nearly to death but clinging to life. He thinks about how he encourages her to take a break, only to be cut to the quick when she lashes out and tells him she wishes she was like him and didn't feel anything.
They have all done everything they know to do to mitigate her tempers. He has defended her. Catherine has challenged her. Nick has comforted her. Warrick has reasoned with her. Ecklie has threatened her. And still, here they are. She nearly tanked her career last year with that DUI, and he was so relieved for her that she caught a break. But here they are again, and he doesn't know if he can fix this for her.
He thinks back even farther, to the first time he saw her yell at the other members of the team. The airplane murder. They'd had such fun solving it. But later, after they put it together, after Warrick and Catherine both confessed that they could see themselves as part of a mob like that under the right circumstances, she had been incensed.
For once, he had not incurred her wrath. A flush goes through him, as he remembers how he felt when she looked at him after that conversation. How flattered he had been by her admiration because it wasn't hero worship, because he had felt truly seen by her.
He had told her then – told all of them – they were looking at it wrong. They were looking at it from the mob's point of view. It took five people to kill that man on the plane. If just one person had stopped and taken the time to look at him, to listen to him, to figure out what was wrong with him, it might have taken only one person to save his life.
He knows suddenly what he needs to do. He needs to know why.
He has never been to Sara's new apartment. He had been to her old one, the tiny high rise studio she rented in a rush when he asked her to join him in Vegas. He had toured apartments with her, had given her advice about neighborhoods and commute times, telling himself it was the least he could do since she didn't know anyone else in town. After she went back to San Francisco for her things, she invited him over for breakfast after their shift, so he could see it furnished.
She lived there for two years. He never set foot in it again.
When she moved out of that apartment, he knew she moved a little farther out, trading a longer commute for a bigger place. She hired a moving company for her furniture, but Nick and Greg had helped her move boxes and unpack. He listened to them laugh and joke in the breakroom about whether Sara actually needed all those boxes of books and what had been in the boxes labeled, "Private. Stay out, Greg."
She had caught him listening, and smiled at him. She said he'd have to come check out her new place sometimes, see how much bigger it was than the last place. But it has been three years, and he's never seen it.
It's a standard apartment complex, with a gated entry and exterior exits for each of the units and signs that indicate at least two different pools and a set of tennis courts. He wonders if she ever uses any of the amenities she pays for.
He waves his badge at the security guard at the gate, and weaves his way through the complex until he finds her unit. He still has no idea what he's going to say to her. He is hoping the words will come to him in the moment.
She doesn't seem surprised to see him.
"Well, if you're here it can't be good," she says, lingering in the doorway. She's changed from her work clothes into jeans and a zippered hoodie and she has a beer in her hand.
"Can I come in?" he asks.
She steps aside and waves him in, her smile hard and mirthless. "Want to ask me if I'm drunk?"
"We both know that's not your problem," he says immediately. "I spoke to Catherine."
She sighs. "Ecklie?"
"He wants me to fire you." They are beyond kid gloves at this point.
She takes a deep breath and exhales sadly. "I figured."
She pastes on an unperturbed look and brightens her voice. "Can I get you anything?"
"Sure," he says. "An explanation."
"I lost my temper," she says, making her way into the living room. It's painted a warm purple with matted photos on the walls. The furniture is all new, and looks somehow both fashionable and comfortable. She has made a nice home for herself here. He hopes she will be willing to fight to keep it.
"That seems to be happening quite a bit. Do you know why?"
"What difference does it make?" she asks, frustrated and resigned all at once. "I'm still fired."
"It makes a difference to me," he says softly. And it does. Whether he can save her job or not, whether she wants to save her job or not, he cares. He wants to understand her.
She rolls her eyes, and begins the litany. "I have a problem with authority. I choose men who are emotionally unavailable," she says, gesturing to him and holding his gaze. "I'm self destructive. All of the above."
He wants desperately to perseverate on that second point, not just the fact that she is boldly discussing what usually goes unspoken between them, but the fact that she is talking about it in the present tense, after she told him last week that their relationship was just her looking for validation in inappropriate places.
But he pushes that thought aside. Today is not about him. It's not even about them. It's about her.
"Have you ever gone a week without a rationalization?" He can see immediately that she doesn't recognize the quote. She's used to him quoting Shakespeare and Henry James. "It's from The Big Chill. One of the characters explaining a basic fact of life: that rationalizations are more important to us than sex even."
"I am not rationalizing anything," she says dismissively, sitting in the living room chair facing him. "I crossed the line with Catherine and I was…insubordinate to Ecklie."
"Why?" he asks gently, and he can see that this response catches her off guard. She's expecting him to lecture her, to argue with her.
"Leave it alone," she warns.
"No, Sara." He keeps his voice gentle, but he's not going to leave until he understands.
"What do you want from me?" she asks, and the anger in her voice sounds suspiciously like fear.
"I want to know why you're so angry."
She holds his gaze silently, and he can see her war with herself. Tears pool in her eyes, and she shakes her head, averting her gaze. "I can't," she says softly.
He walks toward her slowly, giving her time to anticipate his movements. He can see her approaching the point of fight or flight, and he doesn't want to startle her.
He sits on the couch facing her, but she looks straight ahead, avoiding eye contact.
"Talk to me," he says. "Forget about Catherine and Ecklie and the case and your job. Just talk to me. Tell me why you're so angry."
She shakes her head slowly. "I can't," she says again. "I don't know how."
"You know how to talk to me," he counters. "You've never been afraid to tell me hard truths."
She looks at him for a moment, and he can see that she wants to tell him but is scared. He has long suspected that there is A Thing – that the source of her anger and single-minded pursuit of justice is not a quirk of her personality or a general sense of duty to the world, but that something has happened to her that makes her the way she is.
On her angriest days, he has silently speculated. He knows domestic violence cases are the hardest for her. He wonders about her past boyfriends. She was so young when she started at Harvard, just sixteen, and he can imagine her falling victim to a boyfriend who seemed so charming at first. He hopes it is not that. He hopes, heartless as it may be, that it is a friend, a roommate, someone she loved whose body bore the bruises, because it pains him to imagine her hurt and scared.
But it is much worse than he imagined.
"I've never told anyone this," she whispers. "The people who knew…I didn't tell them."
He waits, silently, scared that if he interrupts, even just to offer support, she will stop talking and not start again.
She begins slowly, haltingly, but finally begins to settle into her story. She talks for a long time about a childhood full of yelling and fighting and abuse; about a mother who was schizophrenic and a father who responded to his wife's illness by screaming at her and calling her crazy. She talks about abusers who are too smart to hit their wives and children where the bruises will show, and authorities who don't believe women, especially women with a history of mental health issues. These are issues he has heard her talk about many times, but this time she isn't talking in theoreticals.
She tells him about lying to the emergency room doctors about falling down the stairs, falling off her swing, falling through the sliding glass door. She tells him about the day she decided she was too old to hide under her bed and had an obligation to protect her mother. She tells him about throwing herself between her parents, only to have her mother attack her, screaming obscenities and accusing her of being sent to spy on her.
Just when he thinks he can take no more, when his heart is so broken for her that he feels physically ill, she pauses. When she starts talking again, her tone has changed, and he can see that she has retreated further into herself.
"It's funny the things that you remember and the things that you don't," she says. "There was a smell of iron in the air. Castoff on the bedroom wall. There was this young cop puking his guts. I don't remember the woman who took me to foster care. I can't remember her name. Which is strange, you know, because I couldn't let go of her hand."
"Well, the mind has its filters," he says eventually, keeping his voice calm while his mind is screaming. Not this. Anything but this. Not Sara at nine years old discovering her first crime scene.
"I do remember the looks. I became the girl whose father was stabbed to death."
He tries not to react, not to show his surprise that it is her father whose body she discovered, not her mother's.
"Do you think there's a murder gene?" she asks, and her voice is so pitiful; her eyes are so vulnerable.
"I don't believe that genes are a predictor of violent behavior," he says firmly.
"You wouldn't know that in my house. The fights. The yelling. The trips to the hospital. I thought it was the way that everyone lived. When my mother killed my father, I found out that it wasn't."
She begins to cry, finally, and he is overwhelmed by his love for her. There's nothing he can say to make this less painful for her, but he needs her to know that he's there. That she hasn't scared him away. That he isn't repulsed by her story. He leans forward and slides his hand into hers, and his heart contracts when she curls her fingers around his.
She cries for a long time, but he doesn't move. He will stay with her for as long as she needs. Finally she gets up and walks away, and he is unsure what is happening, and whether he is being dismissed, until he realizes she has gone to the bathroom.
When she comes back, her face is washed and her tears are gone, but her eyes are red and full of apprehension.
He reaches out a hand to her, and he sees a tiny ghost of a smile as she passes the chair where she had been sitting and comes to sit beside him on the couch. He takes her hand again, and she hesitates just a second before resting her head on his shoulder. It's easier for her not to make eye contact right now, he realizes, and that's fine with him.
He strokes her hand gently with his thumb. "I'm so glad you told me that," he said. "So glad you trusted me enough to tell me."
"I don't want to be that girl again," she says sadly. "When I left California and moved to Cambridge, I just…never talked about it again. And I've always trusted you, but…I don't want you to think about that when you look at me. I don't want you to see that girl when you look at me."
"No, honey," he says, the endearment slipping out just like it did once before. "This doesn't change anything about how I see you. It just helps me understand."
As they sit there in silence, his mind wanders back to her litany of rationalizations earlier, and he hears her say again, "I choose men who are emotionally unavailable." He does not know if there is a possibility of a future between them, or if he is too late, or if she just forgot momentarily that his attention is just inappropriate validation. Today is not the day to explore that. But he wants to show her that he is not emotionally unavailable. She needs him to be her friend, and he can be that.
"Sara," he says softly.
She lifts her head and looks at him, her expression guarded.
"I'm going to go back to the lab," he says. "I'm going to talk to Ecklie. I'm going to do everything I can to fix this."
She nods, and he sees a glimmer of hope in her eyes, and warms at her unshakable faith in him.
"When it's done, I'll come back here and tell you about it," he says.
Her eyebrows shoot up, but she nods. He stands and walks to the door, and she walks with him. In the doorway, he hesitates, and they assess each other silently.
His gaze falls to her lips, and the moment swells between them. But today is not for romance.
He remembers them years ago, outside a crime scene, covered in drywall dust, and the comfort she offered him. He reaches out and cradles her cheek, rubbing his thumb against her soft skin.
"I'll bring dinner," he adds.
She smiles a real smile for the first time in so long, and he is relieved to discover that he has not forgotten what happiness looks like.