AN: Thanks to Unspoken for betaing again! Remember, I want GSR- so don't let this chapter make you confused...There is a reason for everything.
Chapter 7
Magenta Skies
The flight was brief, yet painstaking for Grissom, as his mind was overflowed with how to approach Sara.
"Do I go to her house and demand for an explanation? Why did she visit the maternity ward?" Grissom thought.
He never remembered there being a baby!
"Do I calmly approach her? There has to be a reasonable explanation for her disappearance. But why did everyone insist that she didn't exist?" Grissom pondered. The last question always seemed to perplex him even further. He knew without a doubt that he was sane; however, he would always get to the last piece of evidence and become confused. Why would all of his closest friends insist that Sara does not exist? That one factor in particular always stabbed him in the back. If he did in fact damage his brain more then he believed, he would indeed be experiencing fake memories.
"The feelings I experience every time I think of her, cannot be a lie." Grissom thought, as he walked out of the airport and hailed a cab. She had to remember him. She didn't move on and start a new life.
"Maybe she did move on…Perhaps she couldn't deal with the realistic fact, that I was a cripple." The thought pained his heart even more.
"Where to buddy?" The husky taxi cab driver inquired. His body odor was strong enough to force Grissom to breathe through his mouth.
"Umm, Three Hundred Viscount Drive, please." Grissom tried to hide the muffle in his voice from not using his nose.
"Oh fancy area!" The driver retorted, as he pulled out of the parking lot.
"Fancy area?" Grissom wondered further why Sara would move to such an expensive part of town, with the little bit of income she would be struggling on.
"Maybe, she is better off without a delusional jerk like you!" A voice yelled.
"Excuse me?" Grissom calmly retorted.
"I didn't say anything." The cab driver responded as he concentrated on driving through traffic.
"Grissom? It's alright I'm here." The familiar voice echoed through his head.
"Sara? What is happening to me?" Grissom felt his heart rate increase as the whole cab turned a shade of magenta. The cab driver began to laugh as he turned around. As soon as his face met with Grissom's, his mouth opened wide but no sound came from his lips; the sight made shivers run down Grissom's spine. Without the driver's lips moving at all, he began to speak. The car seemed to drive, by itself.
"Grissom? It's alright I'm here." Sara's voice continued to echo through the cab driver's open mouth.
"Please stop! Don't do this to me! Go away!" Grissom yelled, as he closed his eyes and tried to block out the image.
"Hey Buddy! Calm down we're here!" The driver yelled. When Grissom opened his eyes everything was back to normal. However, the episode still left him shaken up. Sweat rolled down his forehead, as the images still haunted him.
Maybe, there was something wrong with him.
"Hello? I said that will be thirty-four-fifty!" The cab driver gave Grissom another scornful gaze, as he snapped out of his thoughts once more.
"Uh, right." Grissom handed the money over as quickly as he could. He needed fresh air; the stuffiness of the cab must have made him tired.
"It was a dream, I didn't hallucinate." Grissom's confidence was washed out the window when he discovered that he was now standing on Sara's porch.
"I can't do this- what if they're right and I'm wrong? She's going to think I'm crazy." He stopped muttering aloud, once he discovered a teenager walking across the street was giving him odd glances. Despite his rational thoughts, Grissom's heart won him over.
Their relationship was a reality; feelings of love never can come from hallucinations, especially for Grissom.
He forced his shaking hand to knock on her door several times, each knock echoed through the quiet street. He was rewarded, with not a single presence in the household, it appeared that either no one was home, or he was being ignored.
"Come back later, she could be out shopping…Or at the dentist…Or the doctors." The last thought made his stomach plunge back into the butterflies of the abyss. That mysterious visit to the maternity ward, still puzzled him and scared him like hell at the same time. He tried to run various scenarios through his head, as he walked down Sara's street and into a local park.
The combination of water trickling and a child laughing got his attention. Grissom walked over to a small stream and smiled as the young child looked fascinated by a small bee buzzing over a flower
"You like bugs?" Grissom inquired. The young boy looked up at Grissom with his big brown eyes and grinned.
"Yeah! This is a big bee." The child leaned in closer to the dandelion and watched the plump bee gather the pollen, and then buzz away.
"Yeah it was. Umm, where're your parents?" Grissom started to worry as he looked around for the child's mother or father.
"I dunno. I followed the bee here when my mom was reading a big book. I thought she was gonna' be doin' that for a while." The boy took Grissom's hand, and led him into a small forest.
"Is your mom on the other side?" Grissom asked.
"I think so."
The young child's lack of confidence made Grissom slightly nervous as they passed through the small forest rather quickly. Grissom remembered the days he spent with his mother at the park. It was filled with similar activities the young child carried out. He would frequently disappear on his mother, due to following a new and exciting insect. The memory made Grissom grin as they walked out of the forest.
He saw the back of a woman; her long auburn hair flowed in the wind. She was looking down at a book and did not seem to notice that her child was gone. The realization made Grissom feel slightly upset. How could a mother not even realize her own child was missing?
"Excuse me?" Grissom's voice made the young woman pop out of her thoughts and turned around. His head spun at the sight before him. All the color drained out of his face as he immediately recognized the young child's mother.
"Sara?" His voice caught in his throat, as he tried to catch his breath. It felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him, and he was struggling to keep a hold of his steady breathing.
Sara's eyes glanced over the man before her. He seemed so familiar, yet a complete stranger. His black sweater and black pants added further to his mystery. He looked as if he came from a funeral, and the bags under his eyes made Sara realize that he was running on very little sleep. Eventually the name came to her.
"Grissom?" Sara watched in surprise, as tears welled up in his eyes.
"Everyone said you wouldn't remember me. I knew it wasn't all a lie, I knew I wasn't going mad." Grissom stepped towards the woman he loved and was ready to embrace her with a hug. Instead, Sara offered her hand for a friendly handshake. The action left Grissom speechless.
"What has it been? Like ten years?" Sara took back her hand, and tried to shrug off the bad vibes she was getting from her former lecturer.
"What? No…Don't you remember?" Grissom looked Sara over once more and finally put the facts together. "We had a child?" Grissom asked as he looked at the young boy once more and then back up at Sara.
"Is this some sorta joke, Max put you up to?" Sara let out a laugh, which quickly faded as she glanced back into Grissom's eyes.
"There's so much pain in his eyes." Sara thought, as she tried to figure out what he wanted.
"Max?" The name sent Grissom into a memory relapse. He suddenly saw Sara and her child turn a shade of purple, as an image flew right into his brain.
"What are you doing?" Sara shouted. Brass took notice of the commotion, but was having a hard time of maneuvering around the crowd of people dancing.
"My name is Max by the way." He smiled one last time, before slamming his lips against hers in a long kiss. Sara struggled to get free, but due to the amount of alcohol she consumed, it was a lost battle.
"Sara?" Grissom's heart sank as he stood in front of his most terrifying nightmare come to life. The small, velvet, purple box fell to the ground and opened to reveal a beautiful diamond ring.
"That guy? You're with that asshole that tried to take you away from me? The ring…I dropped the ring when you ran out. What did he do, steal it and then give it to you?" Grissom felt all the veins in his head raise as his anger peaked further. The name Max, echoed through his mind, and he was now the center of all his anger.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Sara started to panic, as she held her child closer to her body.
"Is he ours, or his?" Grissom yelled, as he pointed to the child who was now shaking against his mother.
"Get the hell away from me and my child. I don't even know you! The last time I saw you was ten years ago." Sara's voice trembled, as Grissom's anger and confusion collided.
"This can't be possible! I have so many memories- You're lying! You're lying to cover up your relationship with him, aren't you? How long was I really in that coma, Sara? You made the whole team lie, so you could fuck another man." Grissom's last statement hurt the most, because he felt it held the most truth.
A image of himself, in a well full of water, gasping for air flashed behind his eyes.
He shook himself out of the hallucination.
"If you come near me or my child again, so help me god I will not be responsible for the consequences." Sara began to walk away, but failed when Grissom grabbed her arm.
"You think you can get away with something like this? After all we have been through?" Grissom said as his mind flashed back to a well once more.
His gaps grew harder as the water seemed to rise.
"Get your hands off of me." Sara spoke through her gritted teeth. She quickly glanced down at Spencer and tried to remain calm.
"Run home and get your dad." Sara whispered to her son.
"But…"
"Go!" Sara yelled, as she watched her son run as fast as he could. He was safe now; that was all that mattered.
"Just tell me the truth! I deserve that much." Grissom's voice appeared to be the only sound coming from the entire park. Not even a bird sang nor a bee buzzed. It was the loudness of silence that scared Sara the most. No one could hear her scream, even if she tried.
As Grissom tried to stay in a present state of mind he saw himself in a well once more, this time he was holding his breath.
Too much of the truth was drowning him.
"You know what; you tell me what you remember." Sara screamed back as she continued to try to get free.
"I remember never telling you how I felt, always escaping from any form of intimacy. I remember the plant I sent you, after I was a jerk, and how I held your hand too many times instead of going further. Our first kiss was in the Break Room, you made the move, because after six years of waiting, you couldn't take it any longer. The first time we made love was at my townhouse, we we're supposed to be working on a case, but we started talking… Too much was revealed about how we felt, to go back to the way things were. That night I fell in love, and I never went back to the way I was." Grissom's grip on her shoulder got more loose, as he recalled the past that Sara knew nothing about.
The water was too much.
"I remember flying through the air, and I even remember landing on the ground. The pain was too much and I blacked out. When I woke up that's when everything was purple…." Sara slowly started to slip out of Grissom's grasp as he continued to recall the strange memory.
"… Someone was telling me I was going to be alright…"
The water over powered him, he gave in to the darkness.
Sara stepped further away from Grissom without his knowledge. He appeared to be in another world.
"…Until you were gone." Grissom whispered to himself, as Sara ran away into the distance.
In his mind, his body floated deep within the well- lifeless without hope.