Disclaimer: They're not mine
Rating: T or PG-13 for language and violence
Summary: It's 2am. The doorbell rings. A baby is crying. What are you going to do? W/S with GCR moments and a major case
How much do I love the quotation in this one? A lot, kids. Very much – but I love most of the quotations rooted up and put in the chapters so I won't alert you everytime. Thank you very much for the reviews, they were souper. Suspense is wonderful – I apologise to all those who don't share this feeling. But thank you for the many kind reviews, icklebitodd (always getting in there first with reviews!), Megara1, Ladybug07, katie, Review1234 (times two, heehee), WSShippeR, JennCorinthos (love how you sign off your reviews!), Daisyangel, MissyJane, Shelbers, Katiyana, sidle girl and cherishedcrush.
Reviews are wonderful; I love them greatly so keep em coming in! (please) And here we go plugging the Live Journal community again: write impulsive (with an underscore between the words). More info in my profile along with other such entertainments...For now, I will shut up (mercifully). Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
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Wake The Hope. Chapter Seven. To Die For
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"Live life so completely that when death comes to you like a thief in the night, there will be nothing left for him to steal."
ANON.
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The fair-haired man smiles, firmly holding her head to the floor. Sara is very much awake now.
"Not a word, lady," he murmurs. "Not one word."
Her chest shudders with a dry sob as she realises. This is it. She's going to die.
Doc Robbins' words echo nastily through her head: C.O.D. exsanguination...a smooth blade...cut through the...chords...trachea...oesophagus...slashing the left subclavial artery...anterior and exterior jugular veins. Exsanguination. Slashing. Internal lacerations. And quite a violent rape.
The man tears down her shorts. He points the tip of the kitchen knife – the one the team would be dying to get their hands on – at her neck. Dying? Ha! The irony.
"You," he orders her calmly, "will not move." And he begins to unbuckle his belt.
Oh god, Sara thinks. Oh god, oh god. She stares desperately at the ceiling, trying to imagine this isn't happening. She imagines Warrick finishing his shift and coming round to see if she sticks to her promise of making him some dinner or breakfast. She tries to imagine the pair of them at the table, on the bar stools, in the kitchen. Warrick leans against the counter with his arms folded, waiting for that meal she promised him. A smirk plays on his lips and his bright green eyes seem to dance teasingly as he exaggerates a sigh, acting the part of an exasperated restaurant customer. They smile and they chat; everything is happy and everything is beautiful.
But, bit by bit, different images force themselves into her fantasy. Warrick running up the stairs to see her. Maybe he's smartened himself up a little. Maybe he holds a bottle of wine in his hand. But he stops by her open front door. And the bottle smashes on the floor when he sees her. Sara: sprawled on the floor, blood spilling from the single wound to her neck and pooling around her stripped and beaten body.
Where are you? Where are you, Warrick Brown?
She squeezes her eyes tightly shut but can't stop the tears leaking out of the corners as she feels her attacker start to rape her. Quite a violent rape. She laughs bitterly to herself. What a throwaway comment. None of them knew what it was like when they mentioned it flippantly. Now she does. And it isn't just the pain, it is the sheer humiliation and knowing that afterwards, after this, that'll be it. She's going to die.
And then a thought hits her. Well if she's going to die, she won't die for nothing. This is her case, it's their case, and whoever runs it, whoever processes her apartment and her body once he's through with her, won't get nothing out of it. She tenses her jaw. If she's going to die anyway, a little bit of pain before it happens will be nothing if she can stop the guy from doing it again.
Sara struggles to free her arm from where he's pinning it down with a hand and she blindly takes a swipe at his face, hoping to perhaps scratch his skin and get some epithelials under her nails. Her hand just brushes the side of his head. She'd cut her nails short to stop herself from accidentally hurting Nate when bathing him and she gets nothing but a heavy punch to her own face.
"I don't think you heard me," the man growls into her ear. "You will not move."
He presses the blade harder against the skin of her throat and slides it slightly. Sara gasps as she feels a sharp sting on her neck. He's cut her, not deep yet, but he's cut her throat already; a thin slice, drawing blood, just to remind her of what's coming. This is it then, she gives in, and lets her arms fall uselessly to her sides. She's not going to be helping the case and she's going to die.
Sara turns her head to the side with eyes tightly shut, trying in vain to imagine herself anywhere else but here. With a rush of pain when the man forces himself deeper into her, she unwillingly opens her eyes. Her gaze falls on Nate. He gurgles questioningly on the sofa and looks at her with his round brown eyes. It almost brings a smile to her face. Nate whines. He wants to know when she'll stop doing whatever is keeping her so occupied right now and when she'll pick up him and hold him again and rock him back to sleep.
It occurs to her then – who will look after Nate if she dies here? More importantly, what will this guy do to Nate once he's finished with her? Nate is her responsibility. She loves him. She can't die. She cannot die and leave baby Nate behind. Where will he go? Shipped off into the foster care system again? She can't let him live like that. Even if the guy slits her throat, what's she going to do? Just lie there and wait to bleed out? She can't die now. She pictures Nate's first words, first steps, first day of kindergarten. She's going to be there for them and, what's more, she's going to survive and ID this guy.
Forcing back every instinct in her that makes her want to close her eyes and pretend none of this is happening, she makes herself look straight at her attacker in the face. For a while, he doesn't seem to realise she's watching him. She swallows in her dry mouth, feeling her throat press closer against the cold metal of the blade as she does so.
The man stops briefly. He sees her watching him with a curious serenity, as though she doesn't mind what he's doing, as though she forgives him. He freezes.
Sara holds her breath. Is he going to do it now? Her heart thunders behind fragile ribs and neat adrenaline, like ice on fire, pulses fiercely through her, slipping down through thin-walled blood vessels.
Does he know she's trying to memorise his face?
Oh god.
Oh god. Is he going to end it now?
Something indistinct flashes across her attacker's blue-grey eyes. A kind of pain, a kind of humanity. He withdraws with a strangled cry, grabs the recorder, opens the front door and runs, runs away.
Sara lies for a moment on the floor of her living room. What's just happened? Has he gone? She gets shakily to her feet and shuts the door before removing and carefully bagging her clothes for the evidence. Then she changes, numbly and, picking Nate up into her arms, she sits on the edge of the sofa, shaking. Nate settles contentedly into her arms and falls asleep, a comforting weight of warmth in her shivering arms. She stares straight ahead of her, wondering if and then why she's still alive, and only then does she, with sleeping baby Nate in her arms, break down and cry.
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Warrick reaches into his pocket for his house keys when his cell phone begins to ring.
"Brown."
A smile spreads across his face upon hearing her voice come down the line.
"Warrick? Aren't you coming over?" she asks him tentatively.
"I thought maybe you'd still be asleep and I didn't want to wake you," he replies. He notices how distant and meek she sounds. Something is up. "Why?"
"Nate was crying when the doorbell rang..." she says in a voice almost too quiet to hear. "I thought it would be you and it wasn't..."
The words chill Warrick right to the core as he sprints back to his car. "Oh Jesus. Sara, oh God, no."
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