Magenta Skies

Chapter 9

AN: If you notice any loop holes in this chapter or "mistakes" in the storyline it's for a reason that will be explained soon! I have to thank Unspoken once more for her beta job! You're the best.

"Maybe we should take it slow at first, I don't want to make him worse than he already is." Catherine exclaimed, not realizing that Grissom was beginning to regain consciousness.

Catherine continued to quietly speak, to what Grissom believed to be a doctor. He assumed they were in the next room, where that was, he did not know. He couldn't fully open his eyes yet and when he did, his headache returned. For now, all he could do was squint at his new surroundings.

Grissom rested on a fold out bed in a rustic looking living room. A moose head was displayed above the fireplace across from him, while soothing trickles from a water fountain outside, lingered in through an open window. The room smelled like wood and fresh paint, and the smells were beginning to make Grissom realize that he was no longer in San Francisco.

He couldn't remember how he got here. Was it more missing memories or was he unconscious the whole time? The questions rang through his head, as he began to recall the events he last remembered.

And then the pain returned.

Sara didn't love him. Even worse, she didn't know who he was. To her he was a madman that she met a couple of times at her University.

Maybe he did need help.

Could everything he had known been a lie?

"We must start on hypnotherapy right away Ms. Willows. His condition will only get worse." The doctor announced. He was an elderly gentleman, no more than sixty. His black jacket and blue shirt underneath brought out his aqua eyes. Judging from the crow's feet around his eyes, he had seen many sunny days during his life thus far. Catherine tried to avoid staring at the old ketchup stain on his kakis and kept her focus on the matter at hand.

Doctor Regan Mauve was an expert in missing memory syndrome. After Catherine saw Grissom's state of mind at Sara's home, she and Doctor Mauve carried Grissom to their car and got away as soon as possible. Grissom was unconscious since the incident, and she hoped he would be co-operative during his recovery.

She didn't want to have to resort to the alternative.

If she couldn't help Grissom, he would have to be institutionalized until he healed emotionally and mentally. Her heart plunged at the thought.

"Alright, lets just do anything that will help him. But we can't let him out of here no matter what. He would be a threat to himself and the public. He can't account for his actions right now." Catherine sighed, as she walked into the living room and watched Grissom sleep. She didn't know how he would react to being locked inside a cabin in the middle of nowhere. All she could do was wait and hope.

"Where am I?" Grissom asked aloud, knowing very well that Catherine was now in the room. He recognized her perfume; he had told her to stop wearing it on several occasions.

It could mess with her sense of smell at a crime scene.

He began to doubt that memory as well, as he slowly opened his eyes. Grissom immediately fought the pain his headache was offering him.

"You're in a cabin, I can't tell you where, but you're safe here. We have over two hundred acres of land surrounding us and that will help with your recovery." Catherine didn't want to hide any details from Grissom. She was afraid it would cloud his judgment even further.

"May I ask why I would need to be in such a state of isolation? Haven't I been through enough? I just want to be left alone." Grissom's voice lacked his usual signature of politeness, and which now held a sliver of sarcasm.

"Grissom I'm not going to hide anything from you. You've been acting strange…Wait, that's an under statement. You've been acting disturbed, and I would never call you crazy because I respect you too much. But to be honest, you're coming pretty close to the definition of insane." Catherine decided to bite her tongue as Dr. Mauve entered the room. Grissom immediately felt cold as the man loomed over him.

"Do you remember what you did to Sara?" The doctor bluntly asked. Grissom noticed a slight British accent underlining his speech.

Perhaps resided in Oxford once-upon-a-time?

"I went to see her, to clear matters up. I wanted to know the truth." Grissom stated, ignoring the worried look on Catherine's face.

"What did you do to her before that?" The doctor asked. Grissom was drawn to his voice and felt he had no choice to answer.

A flash of himself grabbing Sara by the arm in a park entered his mind.

Grissom shook that thought away, as he tried to calm himself with a more pleasant memory.

Grissom grabbed Sara's hand gently and looked down at the deep scratch in her palm.

"Honey, this doesn't look good."

"Don't think about the past. You know it never happened. I'm not a fool Dr. Grissom; I know you're too smart not to have figured it out. You know that all your memories of Sara aren't real, they were contrived by your brain from the accident."

"No- there are too many." Grissom closed his eyes and fought with the memories of the present and his past. "She loves me…"

"She loves him!" The doctor yelled.

Grissom couldn't take it; he couldn't face the facts, when in his heart he knew there was once something there.

"How can memories that are not real, give me emotions such as love? It isn't possible!" Grissom yelled back to the doctor. He was too weak to stand, but if he could, he would run out of the cabin and back to her. There had to be a way to show her how much she meant to him. It couldn't still be late.

"Remember the party Dr. Grissom?" The doctor questioned.

He didn't want to think of that night, it was his fault he lost her. He shouldn't have left her alone.

"You shouldn't have left her alone. You always knew you would lose her to someone else. He's younger too. You think she would have stayed with you forever? Once your novelty wore off, she would have eventually moved on…and then where would you be? You'd be in the same position you are now, hurt and alone." The doctor's words echoed through out the empty cabin and left Grissom petrified.

He knew his greatest fear…

"I think this is going too fast Doctor…." Catherine was immediately cut off.

"No it isn't! The truth has to be told to him now, and we have to start therapy as soon as possible." He argued.

Grissom sat on the couch trembling, trying to hold in his pain. He was too strong to show them how much he hurt. They didn't deserve to know how much their words affected him.

"You are going to listen to me very closely Dr. Grissom. If you do not listen you will have to deal with the consequences. We need to get you better or else you will forever live in a life of pain and regret. You must realize that the Sara you knew did not exist." The doctor sat down on a chair in front of the couch.

"How? The memories won't go away…She won't leave. Every time I try to rationalize the situation, I hear her voice in my head." Grissom admitted aloud. The doctor just shook his head in recognition.

"Dr. Grissom, it's common for those who experience FMS to deny and hold on to their memories because it makes them happy. Your life will go on, and you will make new memories that will bring you joy. What I wish to do is hypnotize you and allow you to explain to me your life with Sara. After that, I want you to explain to me your last known memories with her. This will allow you to get all of your memories out of your system." The doctor allowed a faint smile to cross his lips to assure Grissom that he was going to be alright. Grissom thought his smile seemed more false than the memories that were "tainting" his mind.

"And you think that once I expel all my thoughts I will be normal instantly?" Grissom sarcastically replied. He couldn't help but feel bitter at the Doctor's arrogant solution.

Grissom loathed individuals that thought they had a solution for everything.

"No not instantly. But overtime your mind will heal and your logic will realize what memories are real and what ones are false." The doctor smiled once more at his explanation.

What could Grissom lose? If it meant being able to get over the pain he felt inside and get back to work, then he would do anything.

However, something in his gut told him that he would never be the same.

"You ready?" The doctor asked.

Grissom merely nodded and remained skeptical of the doctor's abilities. Catherine leaned against the fireplace which was turned off and hoped that the treatment would succeed.

The doctor started to talk softly and Grissom once more became compelled to listen to his voice.

"Relax…Think of nothing but silence and let the silence take over your mind….That's it. Just relax. When I count to five you will only respond to my voice. You will tell me everything I need to know, and will not leave anything out unless I tell you to." The man softly demanded.

Grissom nodded his head as his eyes remained closed. He felt a feeling of peace and silence overtake him, as he only heard the doctor count to five. Once he was done counting, it felt as if Grissom were floating out of his body.

He was unable to think of anything, only silence.

Until…

"Dr. Grissom, tell me about Sara."

"She was my fiancée; we met at her University when I used to give lectures there." Grissom admitted.

"Did she work with you?"

"She came to work with me after Holly Gribbs was murdered; she was going to investigate Warrick's gambling habit." Grissom robotically spoke aloud.

Catherine was amazed at the detail that was in his false memories. Holly Gribbs was murdered, and Warrick did have a gambling habit. But, Sara did not come and aid in any of those occasions.

"Tell me more about Sara, why weren't you together right away?" The doctor questioned.

"I was too afraid. I thought I had nothing to give her. We subtly flirted back and forth at work and no one took notice. Everyday I wanted to be closer to her. She eventually asked me to have dinner with her and I turned her down."

"Why? You loved her."

Catherine was really starting to become curious. Grissom had a lot of false memories, would he ever be able to strain out the real ones?

"I was losing my hearing; I didn't want her to be with me if I was going to be disabled. I thought it would be just another reason for her to leave me for someone else." A small oval shaped tear rolled down his cheek even with his eyes closed tight.

"So what changed your mind?"

"There was a case where there was a woman, Debbie Marlin who could have officially been Sara's doppelganger. They looked almost identical." Grissom explained.

"Go on…"

"As I looked at Debbie on the floor dead, I realized that life was too short. I kept on asking myself 'what if she died and you never told her you loved her?'" Grissom stopped talking and looked greatly upset even in a state of hypnosis.

"And then you told her right?"

"No…Like a fool I waited for two more years. Even after she confided in me about her mother and we held hands. Even after she was almost killed by an inmate at an institution…It wasn't until Nick was captured that I realized how fragile life was. I asked her out to dinner a couple of months after Nick's disappearance. We had a candle lit dinner under the stars, and I clumsily confessed my feelings to her." A smile graced his lips as he reminisced.

Catherine wished that these memories were in fact real; they brought Grissom so much happiness.

"What did you say?"

"I told her that I had been in love with her since I taught her nearly ten years ago. I admitted that too many times I had wanted to get lost in her embrace and spend the rest of my life with her. Surprisingly she felt the same way."

"You sound like you had many wonderful memories with her. Grissom, please remember that none of these were real. These were only memories your mind had constructed. Now please tell me of the last time you saw her. What is your last memory before you woke up in the hospital?" The doctor pressed on.

"We went to the party and I saw her kissing a guy. I was furious and she told me it was an accident. We got into the car and it started to rain harder. As we drove, hail started to fall. She was beautiful though, she wore a magenta gown I bought her for Christmas. Even though the weather outside was dreary, I kept on being thankful for the beauty that graced me in the car. As I tried to apologize, a van hit our bumper. I took off my seatbelt and was going to get out of the car to exchange information when…"

It was clear that Grissom didn't want to go further. The memory still hurt.

"Please go on. Know that she was never with you in the car, you were alone. Please keep that in mind."

"I just remember flying through the air. I think a truck hit our car, I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. I think she was, I don't remember… Then I must have blacked out for a while. When I woke up, I saw paramedics going over to me and not her. I tried to call out to them but nothing came out. The car was crushed and she must have been inside, she had to have been in there."

"Tell me more of what you saw." The man's voice made Grissom drift deeper into his subconscious, a place that held many secrets and desires he kept hidden from others and now even himself.

"The sky." Grissom's voice seemed to stutter as he tried to stop himself from remembering the past.

"What about the sky?" The man's voice held Grissom under a strange spell, a spell that was too strong to break.

"It was purple. Everything was dark, but the sky was always purple. Nothing seemed right after that night- she was gone. I know she was taken. But the sky; how is it that no one else notices?" Tears welled up in his eyes as his mind battled with his subconscious. Grissom continued to recall the events.

"I remember lying on the ground, alone, but I still felt her hand in mine. It was as if she was there with me even though I couldn't see her. After I woke up on the ground that is when I could no longer find her. She might have been taken away, but I knew she was in the car. She had to have been, I felt her!"

"Gil, stay focused. Where are you?" The man calmly asked.

" I'm no longer on the ground, I'm somewhere else above, far above the accident. Everything around me is white ... I'm there, with her. She's holding my hand. She is telling me that I'm going to be fine. She says that she is going to see me through this." Grissom's eyes rapidly moved as he relived the night that had haunted him for nearly a year.

"But then she disappears and I wake up again, and she's gone. I'm back at the accident once more and she's not there! It's my fault, I did this! But I can't stop it; they are telling me I'm going to be fine, I'm going to get through this!" Grissom cried.

"Who is telling you this Gil?"

"The people that only I can hear. They live in the purple skies- the skies above. And I'm there looking at her, bleeding. Bleeding, bleeding. And it won't stop! And I'm there all alone, I'm going to die and so will she."