Title: Bittersweet
Rating: T
Summary: He gets what he's always wanted, but it wasn't meant to be like this.
Disclaimer: CSI isn't mine; I just have a deluded fantasy when I do own them.
Notes: Back to my Sandle roots once more!
Dedication: I've written this for everyone to look upon and learn from, it is from experience- to some it'll mean more than others. But this is for everyone out there, and to some of my friends they will know exactly what I mean.
----x-----
Sometimes the hearts deepest desire isn't what we want, what we expected. Instead it is bittersweet.
----x-----
I had always wanted her; she was my hearts deepest desire. She was what I wanted, what I needed in life. But I always thought that I'd never have that desire fulfilled, that I'd have to settle for second best.
I was wrong though, I didn't know how wrong I was when she first came to the lab. For me the world stopped turning the moment I laid eyes on her as she breezed through to my domain to drop off some samples. I lost my ability to speak, because my whole focus was on her.
From that moment on, she was all I wanted in my life. To others, she wouldn't seem so special, or so important. But to me she was, because she was an enigma. It would take anyone years to be able to fathom what she was really like beneath the façade she played out every day.
There was mindless banter between the pair of us, but I knew she never looked at me with any interest. After all, I was a meaningless DNA boy, just there to help her complete the job. I was just the one with a schoolboy crush on her, the one that would flirt and ask her out- just to get shot down every time. I still liked her though, even if she had been painfully flat and obvious that she didn't see my as an option for dating.
She was always after Grissom.
I was nothing like Grissom, no matter how much I change; I'd never be like him. I could be intelligent like he was, but I couldn't do much else. I couldn't withdraw myself from emotions, I couldn't stop wanting human contact, I couldn't dedicate my life to work, I just couldn't change my whole persona- just so my hearts desire could be fulfilled.
When I left the life of DNA technician behind, I became a CSI fledgling. I suppose that is the moment I left the carefree, humorous Greg behind. I started to recede into the role of CSI. I lost the banter I had with everyone, I became quiet, more reserved, serious. That wasn't the person I wanted to be.
But that new improved person, stood in my place, brought me the one thing I always wanted.
Sara.
So I had the choice, keep this new improved version of me, and get her in the process. Or go back to being me and loose out on my hearts greatest desire. Like many men, I wasn't strong enough to loose out on my chance with the one woman I loved wholly and unconditionally, and so I changed.
She was then there beside me, leaning on me for the support she had never had before. She was a different woman; warmer, sensitive and so much more- a reformed woman. I never imagined that the caring touch I had would change her so much. I started to unravel the enigma, getting close to the true woman I knew was laying in wait for someone to unlock it. I wanted to be that man, the one that could feel the real Sara.
I had always dreamt of that woman that lay beneath the exterior. But I wasn't dreaming of it anymore, she was there. I was feeling it, living out the fantasy that I always had. The compassionate side, the side that wasn't so work-a-holic- but more relaxed and carefree. The passion she had, it was better than anything I could imagine, and I wanted it all.
But it was all to change.
I had her, albeit through changing myself, and I didn't want to let go. But the new person I was pretending to be was erasing the old person I was once. I was loosing the quick wit and humour that had kept my soul alive; I was loosing the inner-child I had preserved. I was loosing every quality that had made me unique to the crime lab. I was becoming another run of the mill CSI. One that had seen the horrors and was loosing faith in the world- the part my humour had always kept hopeful, not just for me but for everyone else.
Detaching myself from the emotions I had, so that I wasn't too different from Grissom after all. That was the person I never wanted to be like, because I knew of the price you had to pay. The price that is too expensive, too difficult, to pay.
She loved me more for it; I was becoming more Grissom-esque, and she was now getting her heart's deepest desire. We had found our deepest desires, and we had both changed because of them.
It is not an exclusive club though, everyone does. When fulfilling what they crave, somewhere the person they are disappears. Instead someone new is left there, and the person they were before is a distant memory. I didn't want that to happen to me, honestly I wanted the old person I was to return.
There was only one way to do that. The way I never thought I would hear myself saying, because I got what I always wanted. She was beautiful, passionate, better than anything else I had tasted in my life… But sometimes that taste of sweetness is just like poison. That you taste and slowly it eats away at you, making you weaker, changing you, and turning you into a new person.
I had to let her go, it was for the best. She may not have known it- but I did and so did everyone else…
I let Sara go, even though she was the thing I wanted the most. She fulfilled a part of me that only she could touch and for that, I'm thankful. She brought a light into my world, but sometimes that light can be a blessing and a curse, and it was for both of us.
----x----
The hearts' deepest desire is a complex thing,
We don't know what fate it'll bring.
It could be an amazing feat,
Or something bittersweet…