"You reported her!" The words had left her lips before the door even slammed shut behind her. "What the hell were you thinking?"

Nancy barely even reacted to the ungainly entrance, continuing to sip her drink.

"I was thinking that she needed to be stopped before she wrecked Sara's mental state all together." She stated calmly, standing up. "Coffee?"

"No." Catherine snapped, beginning to pace around her sister's small kitchen table. "I can't believe you did that without even telling me!"

"I didn't report her to the police; I just reported it to my line manager at the hospital."

"It doesn't matter who you reported it to because she still thinks it was me."

"Huh." Nancy hummed with a frown. "Well, I suppose that would make sense. You are the most likely to report her."

"Nancy!" Catherine growled, throwing her handbag down into a chair and clawing both hands through her hair.

Nancy leant against her counter and folded her arms, finally facing her irate sister.

"Look, you said yourself that something needed to be done and you clearly weren't going to do it yourself."

"No, because I was trying to protect Sara!" Cath hissed. "Once this is out in the open, she's going to have a lot of questions to face – questions that she isn't up to answering right now."

"Is that the only reason?" Nancy challenged.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," Nancy exhaled, taking her sibling's arm and attempting to drag her into a seat, "that once your colleagues find out, you're going to have to explain to them why you kept the information to yourself."

"To protect Sara." Catherine frowned, shrugging Nancy off and refusing to be seated.

"Or, maybe you enjoyed being the only person who knew?" Nancy offered with raised eyebrows. "Maybe you liked the fact that Sara was forced to confide in you, because you were the only person she could talk to about this."

Catherine scoffed, taking a moment to find a suitable rebuttal and coming up empty.

"Why do you think I reported her to the hospital, rather than the police?" Nancy continued rhetorically. "Because your behaviour towards Sara is skating that thin line of abuse of position, and I didn't want you to get dragged into all of this."

"Are you kidding me?" Catherine almost choked. "I've never done anything to hurt Sara, I love her!"

Nancy quirked an eyebrow, waiting for the older woman to realise what she had just said.

However, before she had the chance, a disapproving noise by the door caught their attention and they both turned to find Lily watching them with a mix of intrigue and disappointment.

The matriarch's arrival silenced the conversation, but didn't manage to kill the tension brimming between the sisters.

With a heavy sigh, Lily placed her handbag on the kitchen table and put her hands on her hips, cocking her hip to one side in a pose that was depressingly reminiscent of their childhood.

"Okay, who wants to start?"

Catherine killed the engine and sat back in the seat for a moment, staring at her house.

The conversation with her mother hadn't gone quite as bad as she expected, but it certainly could have gone better. To Catherine's relief, at least, Nancy had kept her opinions to herself regarding Catherine's alleged feelings for Sara.

Taking a deep breath, she exited the car and strode up to the house.

Sara was curled up on the sofa with a book when she entered and looked up with a smile.

"Hey," Cath greeted warmly. "You look a bit better today."

Sara nodded, shuffling into a seated position and putting her book to one side as Catherine sank down beside her.

Sensing her colleague's stress, Sara frowned.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Cath patted her knee gently. "It's just been a long day."

"Grissom?" Sara guessed, drawing a laugh from the blonde.

"Fair guess! He's certainly on the list." She slipped her jacket off and threw it over the arm of the sofa, before turning to face her friend. "I don't know; I know he means well. He's just so frustrating sometimes."

"You don't have to tell me." Sara rolled her eyes, causing another laugh to bubble out of Catherine.

"True. Yet you still stayed for him."

Sara frowned, not following.

"A couple of years ago, you were threatening to leave. Then Grissom sent you a plant, and you stayed."

Sara thought back to the incident, before starting to laugh.

"You think I stayed because Grissom sent me a plant?"

"Didn't you?" Cath shrugged.

"No." Sara shook her head, still chuckling to herself. "I mean, I did stay because of the plant; but not because he sent it to me. I stayed because you convinced him to send it."

"Really?" A smile crept onto Catherine's face. "I wasn't even aware that you knew that."

"Well, I did." She nodded. "And I appreciated the fact that you cared enough to keep me in Vegas."

"Of course I wanted to keep you here; you're a part of the team!"

"Yeah, well that was probably the first time I really felt like it. So, thank you for my plant."

Catherine laughed as Sara stood up and headed towards the kitchen.

"If I'd had it my way, you'd have got flowers." She called after her playfully.

Alone, Cath suddenly realised what she had said to Nancy, right before her mother walked in.

Sitting forward on the couch, she pressed her hands to her lips and released a long breath.

She had said that she loved Sara.

She did love Sara.