Pomegranate Red
"No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees/No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds - November!"
–Thomas Hood
If Sara had known that the Genie lived in a blue bug jar, she probably would have released its magic sooner…
Thirteen days, twelve dinners, mostly at his or her place, countless conversations and an infinite number of lip locks and embraces had gone by since 'the jar', as they had affectionately come to dub the occasion. They had slowly begun to regain some of the lost trust and comfort years of emotional avoidance and hurt had caused, discovering how liberating physical closeness could be when not forbidden – nor expected.
In a somewhat awkward moment that first night, while trying to decide on what to eat for their first official dinner 'date', they had both decided it would not be each other.
–Not yet.
The tension had dissipated as nervous laughter and had solidified the mutual agreement in signaling some common ground; ground they had stood comfortably on for the couple of weeks that had passed since.
Tension had mounted, however, from especially stressful cases over the last couple of days with the CSI's emotions and tempers flaring within the team. Yet in the end you suck it up and move on, like any family would – or at least should…
With his chin resting lightly on the top of Sara's head, arms folded over her shoulders, they settled into the corner of the couch for 'The Maltese Falcon'. Another tradition to come out of the jar – dinner and a movie. They made it past the credits this time before Grissom's mind wandered from the San Francisco on the small screen to the San Francisco in the bigger picture.
"What…became of Tim after I, uh – did you see him again?"
Grissom's face revealed a certain level of sheepishness, but the question had posed itself in his mind on numerous occasions. Tim had after all been some sort of a trigger for his actions back then.
"Tim who?"
Sara was too comfortable right now to start digging into the past, even if this matter wasn't a really big deal. She snuggled closer hoping he would pick up on that very fact.
"Sara…"
He knew her, and like always she was trying to avoid touching on past issues. However the past had made her who she was, good and bad, and could not be suppressed forever.
She had after all gone down that treacherous road before – and they may as well start a new and safer road together.
"Oh, you mean the romantic whose red roses were shamelessly stolen by some visiting entomologist who considered this romantic a 'bug'; one the visiting entomologist actually did not approve of?"
With a half grin in Grissom's direction she was hoping he'd leave it at that.
He had ignored her desire to leave the past well enough alone at the moment, thus she would call him on his past actions – not like he didn't deserve it.
"I guess I deserved that, but yes, that would be the one I was thinking of. That many, huh?"
Using her right elbow against his stomach, more forcefully than necessary, she half turned around to speak directly to his face.
"Yeah, he sailed off into oblivion with all the others, must have sensed stormy conditions ahead…"
"—or love in the air perhaps?"
He smirked at her eye roll as she sank back down into position to reconnect her eyes with the familiar images moving across the screen.
"Gee, where has that confidence been hiding all this time? On second thought don't answer that, I really don't want to know."
"I will answer anyway, as I may actually surprise you!"
He brushed her hair back behind her ear and continued.
"—I was so sure you were going to ask me to stay in San Francisco for a few days more and work your big rape case with you; at the time you seemed so eager. But, when you didn't, and Moby gave no indication he needed my help either, I started to think I had overstepped my boundaries and time and distance again allowed me to convince myself I had been right…"
He felt Sara's body tense, jaw setting and clenching.
"…but I wasn't."
He bent down and kissed her neck gently.
"And for that I am sorry."
"So am I."
The defeat in her tone was not lost on him, but he had no way of knowing the extent of just how wrong he had been.
She sat up, wanting to get away but craving his closeness.
Drop it, please – just drop it…
"—Seth Schneider. Prayed on middle-aged women; raped them and killed one for no apparent reason."
He half expected her to chime in.
Sara said nothing.
"I should have called you when I heard the case was going to court, I was…proud of you, you know."
"You had nothing to be proud of" Her voice was monotonous and tense – shaky.
"Let's just watch the movie, okay – please?"
If he could have seen her distant, worried expression and white-knuckled fists he would have known to just hold her, but in his own way he was just trying to comfort her by reassuring her.
"—Your work helped put him behind bars for good, even if you couldn't provide a solid case for each and every victim. You're too hard on yourself, Sara, he can't hurt anybody now, you know that, right?"
Wrong…
Her relief of learning he didn't know the intimate details of the case quickly turned to despair as she realized that at this point in their relationship he deserved to know.
She needed him to know, she just hadn't thought today would be the day.
The nausea came over her in an instant, along with the pressure behind her eyes, and she pushed off of him and ran for her bathroom – the past coming up in spurts of burning acid and bitter taste, unpleasant as ever across her tongue as she sank down in front of the toilet.
Grissom immediately went after her, the horrid sounds of retching echoing through the open hallway, muffled only slightly by the bathroom door.
"—Sara?"
The flush of the toilet could only mask her quiet sobs momentarily.
"Honey, what's wrong? Can I come in?"
He knew the door was unlocked, but the threshold still meant more to him than a mere practical obstacle – it was a boundary he did not want to overstep.
Just as the silence was about to open the door for him Sara's unsteady voice sounded from the other side.
"Just…give me a minute, okay, to…clean up."
She sounded out of breath.
"Are you alright?"
…why do people always feel the need to ask that, when reality has just been demonstrative to the contrary?
At the sound of water pounding the tub Grissom headed back to the couch, blankly staring at the TV screen and wondering what had just transpired. They hadn't even eaten yet so she shouldn't be sick. Was it something he had said? Was it him?
After ten minutes of watching the muted television set he could take no more; he couldn't even hear any water running.
She had left the door pulled to, but not shut – a narrow red glow from within forming a neon-like outline, a perpendicular beacon.
-
---
Red.
Red
light.
Red
shadows.
Red
shadowy eyes.
Red
teary eyes staring.
Staring
at a red candle.
Candle
light flickering.
Flickering
shadows.
Shadows
of Sara.
Sara
in red.
Red
flame.
A
flicker.
------
"Sara, honey?"
His voice was uncharacteristically laden.
After pushing the door open slightly when she didn't answer him, what he saw before him was hauntingly beautiful – an emotionally loaded vision his mind would never forget.
The normally neutral bathroom was awash in glowing red light radiating down from the elliptical heat lamp above. It would almost have been gloomy if not for the dancing shadows cast by a lone, lit red scented jar-candle adorning the bathtub rim.
Sara was stretched out in the tub, corner to corner in the relative darkness, gazing idly at the flickering flame and appearing a million miles away.
Her long slender legs were crossed casually at the ankles and were out of the water from the knees down, from the knees up in this case, her feet were propped up-and-over the left corner ledge.
In the background a faint hum was heard from the jet-tub pump as the water sloshed with great speed through the four silver jets, shooting the liquid around Sara's body and displacing a milky layer of miniscule polar bubbles randomly along the surface. Her chest was rising and falling rhythmically, leaving nearly undetectable ripples an inch or two away while her right breast's proximity to a jet made it seem to jiggle slightly in the surrounding whirls and eddies.
His eyes landed on her face.
Pained.
Strained.
Her cheeks bore the stained remnants of the sobs he had heard and her eyes the strain of tears.
Her mouth was set in a frown – not quite quivering, not quite still.
Her hair clung to her chin, brown tips fanning out in the wet medium like brushes on a clear canvas.
–Grissom had never felt more committed to Sara than he did at that exact moment in time.
Yet…her expression reflected a glimmer of inner peace, buried somewhere within the depths of a worried soul.
Slowly he knelt down in front of the candle, intent on not spooking her.
A lone tear falling from the corner of her eye acknowledged his presence, slowly making its way down the saline path toward the end just as the timed minutes on the jet-tub counted their way down to zero.
Calm.
The jets were off.
The silence was perceptible.
The doppler 'tap' of her teardrop merging with the water – soothing.
–As the ripples from her anguish vanished in front of her, Sara knew it had been her last tear shed over Seth Schneider.
After all the years of internal battles, fear and…shame, Sara breathed in all the pomegranate scented strength her lungs could muster and let the past escape across her tongue.
It was almost strange how uncomplicated it seemed – unstoppable suddenly.
"—In 1968, when Army Private Lloyd Schneider returned from Viet Nam in a casket, my mother was left on her own with nine-year-old Seth and his father's shiny dog tags."
She exhaled quietly.
"Seth's father now jangled around his son's neck, and that was about it."
Grissom watched her intently as the words were flowing from her mouth, equally surprised and awed by her raw depiction.
"My…father, entering the picture shortly thereafter, brought a lot of changes – including me, and I don't think Seth ever dealt too well with any of it. He left when I was six, after I found a stash under his bed, which initiated an all out war between everybody… Over the years I've come to think he was looking for an out at that point anyway, you know?"
The orange glow of the candle flame reflected in her eyes.
"–Looking to get away from the craziness of it all."
There was a wistful quality to her otherwise strong voice.
"I don't think my brother has ever really forgiven his father for dying, nor our mother for allowing my father to take his place. He seemed…Seth was old enough to understand what was going on around the house, where I didn't really…you know, and I think he was just very angry with her for letting it happen…and I—"
Her eyes traveled down her legs until gliding into the water's edge where they appeared to drown.
"—I believe he has taken that out on many women like her ever since…"
She looked Grissom straight in the eye now.
"…and I know he figured…he figured that if his own mother had what it took to kill somebody, then…why wouldn't he?"
Sara released a pent up lungful of air.
"I know that…because I used to think the same way – all the time."
Grissom's eyes widened as Sara's gradually softened.
He finally spoke up, not wanting the magnitude of the moment to slip away.
"—But now you don't…anymore – think that way."
'Do you think there is a murder gene?'
His mind never could filter out her words from that night, or the haunted look on her face…
She let her eyelids close to take her back to her thoughts one last time.
"Now…"
Grissom thought he saw something akin to surprise across her features as she blinked.
"…now I think of you."
'We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale and self-preservation in the other.'
Thomas Jefferson's words swam in his head, floating to the surface as he realized Sara had finally loosened the grip on her own personal 'wolf'.
The 'beast' from her past may have been confined to a life in prison after his conviction back in San Francisco, but only now, through her own openness, had she succeeded in safely letting Seth go.
"Sara…"
This time the lone tear fell from Grissom's eye.
"…I'm proud of you."
It sounded so…meek.
As plain as the statement was it was also honest; he didn't know how else to express the myriad of emotions that were overwhelming him and calming him at once.
His left arm moved behind him and grabbed her towel off the rack, never taking his eyes off her.
"—You are a remarkable woman, inside and out."
Even though, for the first time, he had now seen Sara naked, it was her soul that she had laid bare for him to see.
And she was so amazingly beautiful.
Wrapped in her towel and in Grissom's arms, she watched as the water slowly started draining. At first its movement was almost imperceptible and soundless. Then, as the volume dropped, the remaining water appeared to be pulled toward the inevitable black hole.
With one last strangled gurgle Sara's diluted tear was finally gone – swirling down the drain to never be seen again.
She turned in his arms, seeing for the first time the array of emotions barely contained behind the glaze of his dark eyes.
Powerful emotions; heart-breaking, soul-mending, so…bare, so vulnerable – just like her.
Suspended somewhere between emotional exhaustion and unnerving restlessness, she felt an acute need to be completely absorbed by him. The need to express what her mind could not conjure up, what his eyes could not verbalize – appreciation, respect, awe...love.
Only four more words escaped Sara's lips before her ability to voice her feelings ebbed completely.
"—Make love to me."
'At its heels was a wolf, who had almost seized it, when the cat changed itself into a worm, and,
piercing the skin of a pomegranate which had tumbled from a tree, hid itself in the fruit.'
–Andrew Lang, The Arabian Nights