Many thanks to CSIGeekFan for letting me bounce off ideas for this story :). So here's the next installment! I hope you enjoy and as always reviews are like air, I need them to breathe!! ;)

Love. In my opinion no other word, in any language, has ever held so much power. That one word has the power to make or a break a person. When I was child that word was never spoken in the Sidle household. It was almost as if that word was blasphemous. As if the mere utterance of the word would send its speaker straight to the deepest levels of hell. It was an unspoken understanding in my house that no one was ever loved. My father made it perfectly clear that he no longer loved my mother. I doubted if he ever had. As for me and my brother, being loved was never something we experienced. My father only told us how much he hated us. How much of a burden we were. We always complained too much, talked too much, sometimes breathed too much. Nothing we did was ever good enough let alone worthy enough for praise or love. And I think my mother never showed us she loved us because it wasn't worth the energy. If she was kind to us and our father found out it it was just more pain later down the road.

When I entered my first foster home my view of love was further cemented. It simply didn't exist. Well save for fairy tales. I wondered how people could believe such lies. People really believed that someone loved them? Unconditionally? That someone was willing to give their life to save the that of the one they loved. I laughed at these ideas. People could be so gullible. I remember my first spring semester at Harvard. My roommate dragged me to the mall to help her shop for an outfit for Valentine's day. They guy she'd being crushing on in our introductory bio class had asked her out and she was on cloud nine. She asked me if I had anything special planned for the holiday and I laughed and told her no. She asked me why not.

"Listen Sar' Bobby was telling me that his roommate doesn't have plans either. We could double," Lisa had told me.

"Really its ok. I'm not much into the holiday anyway."

"Why not?"

"Because, love doesn't exist. So why should I waste a perfectly good evening on a holiday that's a total farce?" I had said matter of factly. Lisa looked shocked but she dropped it.

When my first serious boyfriend told me he loved me I actually laughed right in his face. I told him if he wanted to sleep with me he didn't have to lie me. He had looked hurt. I didn't care. It wasn't like he had really meant it anyway. Love was a term used for control. If someone told you they loved you than I suppose they had some sort of claim on you. Well no one claimed Sara Sidle. After all if I didn't even believe in the term how could I be claimed?

In our last semester at Harvard Lisa got engaged. Would you believe she married Bobby? I remember her telling me that it may take sometime but I too would get bit by the love bug. Looking back now I think it's funny I was actually bit by a bug lover, but that's just a technicality. Anyway, when Lisa had told me that, I had proceeded to ignore her by turning up Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down." My opinion wasn't changing and Lisa just needed to face the facts.

People had tried to reason with me. Tried pointing out facts, telling me about the symptoms one experienced when they were in love. I always reasoned they were biological responses. It was all due to science and the scientific laws of attraction. Much in the way animals in the wild were attracted to one another, so too were humans. We were just the only sort smart enough to label that feeling and use that it to make money by selling cards, gifts and such throughout the year. So you see love wasn't some great mystery. It was just a great entrepreneurial scheme.

Then in my mid twenties I met a man who threw my notions of love for a big loop. I remember breezing into his lecture at the last minute. Of course the only seat left was right in the front row. But that's what you get for being late, and boy did I hate being late. It was completely unprofessional. But then again so was falling asleep during someone's speech and midway thorough the seminar I noticed nearly half the room's occupants had done just that. Though for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. The speaker was beyond captivating. He was brilliant. I spent the whole time furiously taking notes, afraid if I put down my pen I might miss something of great importance. In addition to his brilliance he was breathtakingly handsome. I remember running to the bathroom during our first break cursing my appearance in the mirror. I was wearing tight black jeans, a long sleeve t-shirt and my hair was in hurried pony tail. Well to be fair I had been running late and I never expected Dr. Grissom to look like that! I found out years later that he completely lost his train of thought when I entered the room. He had actually thought I was gorgeous. Me?! Gorgeous?! Yea I know it shocked me too. So as I was saying I was completely thrown for a loop. I had gone the first twenty five years of my life firmly believing that love did not exist. So of course I naturally contributed my feelings for Grissom to a natural biological response. We simply had chemistry. Of course two years later when he asked me to drop everything and come to Vegas I gave myself another stern talking to. It was simply an attraction. A deep one, but an attraction none the less. So when I had finally been completely honest with myself and admitted that I had fallen head over heels in love Grissom it had been a truly shocking revelation. I mean I didn't believe in love so how could I have fallen so hard for someone else? Even more troubling was the thought that my feelings were obviously not returned. No one had ever loved me before so why should now be an exception? When Grissom first told me he loved me hadn't been the first person to tell me that. But I truly believe that he was the first person who had really loved me. But it wasn't until I woke up strapped to a gurney thousands of feet in the air that I realized what it was like to be loved unconditionally. It was the look in Grissom's eyes as he held my hand. It was in his smile when he saw me open my eyes. He would have given anything to trade places with me. He wold have given his life for mine. Never before had my life been worth that much to someone else. Never. So while I still thought love was an entrepreneurial scheme of sorts, it was really was nice to have someone that loved you.