A few days later, Sara returned to the lab. She slipped in, without the junior high gossip fanfare that the lab usually generated, and took her seat in the break room beside Greg quietly, still getting used to the empty seat to her left. The night shift watched as she laid her hand on the chair that Nick had sat in for more than ten years, acknowledging his absence. Greg reached out to her, touching her shoulder softly.
"Sara? You alright?" Greg's fingers on her arm seemed to bring her out of her thoughts, and she turned to him and smiled only just.
"Yeah. Sorry. I just didn't think about the empty seat. I'm okay." The gentle look she gave him told him to keep wraps on her pregnancy news for now, and he fell silent. She turned her attention to Grissom, anticipating his handing out of assignments.
"Good to have you back, Sara." Grissom stated quietly, and fanned out the assignment slips pairing up his staff. "Warrick DB in Henderson, Catherine, you and I will take the murder suicide in North Vegas, Greg, fire at the Gentlemen's Club on Fremont, take Sara with you." Grissom handed Warrick his slip, and Greg another. "Let Greg lead this one, Sara, ease back in." Sara nodded, and the team went their separate ways. Greg made his way down the hall, keenly aware of Sara beside him.
"We get Brass." Greg glanced at the assignment slip as they made their way into the locker room. She hesitated, glancing at Nick's locker before opening her own and grabbing her field vest, but he left her to it, choosing not to comment. "Want to drive?"
"You're lead, you drive." He grabbed his keys off the hook in his locker, and they made their way to the parking lot. They silently climbed into Greg's Denali, and the drive to the wreckage of the strip club on Fremont was quiet, save for the soft mumblings of Ray Charles in the CD player. Sara attempting to focus on the case at hand, Greg concentrating what energy he could on helping Sara adjust to coming back to work. His plan, if he could call it that, was to not give her that I'm-concerned-for-your-well-being-come-here-and-give-me-a-hug look that he had been abusing these past few weeks. She didn't need to be reminded of her personal trauma, she needed her crime scene partner back.
He pulled up to the crisped over, soggy, half-charred remains of one of the least reputable strip clubs on Fremont beside Brass' car, killing the engine, and extracting the keys from the ignition.
"Thanks, Greg." He paused, at her soft words, and turned to her, sitting beside him.
"For what?"
"Normalcy. Today. I appreciate it." She smiled, and swung open the passenger side door, climbing out of the front seat, and closing it behind her. Greg nodded to himself, resolving to let Sara set the tone, and climbed out himself, reaching into the backseat to retrieve his kit. He smiled to himself as she followed her to where Brass was standing, waiting for them. She had already pushed her wild curls into an elastic, and was scanning the remains of the fire with an analytical eye. Sara was beginning to heal, and suddenly he was thankful Grissom didn't give them a body.
"What do we got, Jim?"
………
"So Sidle's back on the beat." Warrick glanced up, annoyed at Metcalf's small talk interrupting his processing. The last thing he wanted to think about was Nick, if he thought about his dear friend longer than thirty seconds he would tear up and lose his focus.
"She's returned to work, if that's what you're referring to." He snapped a few pictures of fifty-one year old Gerald Foreman, and the blood trickle that had dried down the front of his shirt.
"Word around the precinct is she-"
"There shouldn't be words about her, especially around that water cooler of a PD." Warrick crouched beside the blood pool at Mr. Foreman's hip.
"Hey, we're all in this together, Stokes was one of us."
"One of you, huh? I don't see you spreading ugly rumors about Lockwood's wife. He was one of you. Or Jake Bell's wife, what do you say about her behind her back?" Warrick set down the camera and snapped on gloves.
"They were hardly married, Brown."
"They were as good as."
"I mean, who's to say the kid is even his? They weren't in a committed relationship."
"Shut your mouth, Metcalf, or I'll shut it for you. You have a habit of talking yourself into a hole, and an even bigger habit of talking about things that you don't know about."
"Threatening an officer?"
"Don't flatter yourself." Warrick grabbed his tweezers from his kit, and picked up a shell casing. "Hand me a damn bindle, will you?" Warrick looked up from where he was kneeling at the sound of footfalls in the hallway. "Hey Dave."
"Hey, sorry I'm late, traffic is insane." David Phillips knelt down beside Mr. Foreman, patting the man's pockets and not finding any wallet. "We got ID somewhere?"
"Yeah, Gerald Foreman, fifty-one. Manager at that 70s record store off strip." Metcalf recited, reading the notes from his pad.
"You going for Detective, Officer?" David sunk the thermometer into Mr. Foreman's liver and smiled.
"We're stretched a bit. Vartann took the notes, but Brass called him to that fire scene."
"Ahh. Greg and Sara are working that one, right?" He turned to Warrick, who only nodded. "Ooh, 81.7. "
"No bodies at the fire, probably a good scene for our weeping widow to get her bearings, eh?" Dave arched his eyebrow in confusion at Metcalf, and shot Warrick a questioning glance.
"What the hell are you on about, John?"
"Nothing." Warrick glared at Metcalf, amazed that the man would not shut his mouth. "Officer Metcalf wasn't talking about anything, if he knows what's good for him." David only nodded, sensing the tension between the other two men.
………
"Lay it out." Sara stood from where she had crouched to examine the base of the flame patterns along the wall. This was pretty cut and dry, illegal pyrotechnics mixed with faulty wiring, mixed with dumb luck no one was in the building when it combusted. They had wasted three hours shifting through what remained of the seediest strip club on Fremont, and despite the lack of criminal activity, except for maybe the illegal fire torches, which of course, had started the fire to begin with, Sara found herself almost happy to be back at work, settling back into the routine for working cases that she and Greg had developed. Greg held his Maglight out by his head, sifting through the remains of a charred collection of bar stools, leaning over the walkway bar.
"Bad wiring, illegal pyrotechnics, and too much kerosene in the pipes."
"Accident waiting to happen."
"Pretty much. Should probably snatch the business transactions, the work that's been done, and talk to the manager a bit more, but I'd say this is open and shut."
"Let's get back to the lab." She held out the box of samples they had collected, and he took them from her, following her out.
"After you, sunshine."
………
The rest of their night had gone fairly smoothly, she had handed in all the samples to Hodges, who gave her a smile and a brief hug, welcoming her back. She stepped into the break room, making her way to the cabinet with the coffee mugs to get herself much needed caffeine. She had been doing fine all shift, putting Nick to the back of her mind, and concentrating on doing her job, until she opened the cabinet, and his coffee mug with the outline of his home state with the words "Home Sweet Cattle Ranch" written across it. She sighed, taking the mug off the shelf, and turning it over in her hands.
"Something gonna bite you?" She looked up from Nick's mug to smile gently at Warrick, who had just walked in.
"No, I just went for a mug. Must have forgotten to grab this the other day." She set Nick's mug down carefully on the table, and Warrick nodded, recognizing it instantly.
"Sara-"
"How's your case coming?" She reached further back, and wrapped her fingers around her own mug, with the elegant Harvard insignia on it.
"Case is fine. Metcalf is getting on my nerves, though."
"Good to know some things don't change. What was he on about?"
"Gossip and scandal. I set him straight." The stiffness in Warrick's words, and the rigid set of his jaw told her Metcalf was running his mouth about either her or Nick, or her and Nick.
"No one believes the rumor mills, Rick."
"He doesn't know what he's talking about."
"What did he say?" It was morbid curiosity, really, and deep down inside she didn't want to think about the words that were circling around the PD water coolers like flies to a decomp.
"Just some pretty out of line generalizations."
"So he was talking about Nick." She took a sip from her mug, and sat down across from her friend, eyeing him carefully.
"Among other things. Just stay away from him today, he's in a mood."
"He was talking about me, wasn't he?"
"I thought he was only judgmental towards suspects and convicts. Unfortunately, I was wrong." Warrick slouched in his chair, and ran a hand over his face tiredly.
"I never liked him anyway."
"Me neither." The gentle metallic beeping of Sara's pager went off, and she glanced at the message from Hodges, their trace results were ready.
"Hodges has my results. Hang in there, Warrick. Take a nap, you look like shit." He smiled at her retreating back as she made her way out of the break room and down the hall to the Trace lab. Unfortunately, from just outside the Trace lab, there was a perfect view of the waiting area and front desk. She was dialing Greg, and wasn't watching where she was stepping, and soon found herself face to face with a smirking Officer Metcalf.
"Excuse me." She stepped around him and started to continue, but his words stopped her dead in her tracks.
"I'd have thought you'd be wearing black, Sidle." She turned around, and winced at his tone.
"Word has it you've been running your mouth, Officer."
"I do the same as you, make observations." He stepped closer to her, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not occupationally restricted from voicing them, however."
"That's a shame. Just keep your mouth out of my personal life, will you?" He took another step, and Sara glanced at the corner she hoped Greg would be coming around any second. "It's none of your business, my life, Nick's life, none of that concerns you."
"There's always talk when you lose one of your own, Sidle, you know that. People are still talking about that girl you replaced."
"Oh, so Nick was one of you? I'm pretty sure his badge read 'Investigator,' not 'Detective.'"
"Once a cop, always a cop, Sara."
"So what's this gossip you are so effectively spreading, hrm? I'd like to know what the word is around PD." She shifted her weight, standing square with him.
"You tell me, you're living this disarray of debauchery."
"I didn't know you knew such big words, Metcalf."
"Word has it Lauren isn't Nick's." He smiled to himself, satisfied that he had struck a chord with her.
"Don't bring my child into this." Her voice dropped to a whisper, and she suppressed tears effectively.
"Word has it you took advantage of Stokes' southern chivalry, and lied to him."
"Don't you dare talk about Nick like that." She had raised her voice, and Hodges whipped his head up from Grissom's samples, making his way to the door of the Trace lab.
"Sara." He called to her softly, closely watching Officer Metcalf, should he get any closer. She didn't hear him though, and started to lay into Metcalf.
"If you had ever come to our house, or had a conversation with our daughter, or spent any time thinking about our circumstances, you'd know that none of those nasty rumors you're spreading are true. Here." She pulled out her wallet from her back pocket, and produced a picture of Lauren. "Look at our daughter and tell he she doesn't look like Nick." She ripped the photo out of his hand faster than he could look at it. "He was a good man, and he doesn't deserve to be cut down by people like you who can't be trusted to secure a scene so they put you on body watch."
"Sara-"
"Get out of my lab."
"I work here, Sidle."
"You work at PD, John. That's the next building over."
"Berating an officer, Ma'am?"
"Get out- Let me go!" Sara realized that familiar arms had pulled her from the hallway, and into the Trace lab. Greg had come down the corridor, and had not stopped, walking straight into Hodges' cave and dragging Sara with him.
"Calm down, Sara."
"Greg, let me go!" She squirmed, and Greg loosened his grip, but still standing between her and the door. Hodges stood in the hallway, peeling his gloves off, watching Metcalf's retreating form.
"He's gone."
"That bastard! Did you hear the things he said about Nick?"
"Sara."
"No, I will not calm down."
"Sara." Greg waited patiently for the flush tones to leave her cheeks, and for her blood pressure to return to normal. "Don't listen to him."
"How can I not, Greg, the man has the biggest mouth in PD."
"You need to calm down, before you stress out the-"
"I get it, Greg, thanks." A few moments passed, and Hodges remained at the doorway, carefully observing the interaction between Greg and Sara. Something was going on, but judging by the way Sara cut down Metcalf, he was not going to be the one to voice his observations.
………
A/N: this one kind of slid sideways… she's in the 'anger' phase of grief… more to come. Specifically, more Greg and Sara to come.