Part 2
When her legs finally lifted her from the bench, Catherine was surprised to find the locker room crowded, and she was unsure how long she had been sitting there, lost in thought. Looking up into Warrick's concerned eyes, she muttered a lame excuse about being tired and hurried out of the room, glad of the solitude of her SUV.
Clicking off the radio, Catherine tried to bring some order to her chaotic thoughts; in the beginning of the whirlwind conversation with the brunette, she had been astonished to learn that Sara had slept with a woman, but looking back, that was the least of the shocking revelations that had left her reeling. Sara, sleeping around, with as many as three women in the last month, was as distressing as it was unprecedented. The tall CSI's distaste for sexual promiscuity was legendary in the lab hallways; when Sara caught a case with any hint of an affair, the guys made bets behind her back as to how long before she would sneer her trademarked insult, "Freaks." This, Catherine knew, was always accompanied by a disapproving shake of the dark head and an almost disappointed look in her eyes.
So Sara, women, and promiscuity, three things Catherine would have never put together, now looked like an all-too-grim reality, and Catherine racked her brain for some kind of an explanation. Admittedly, Sara had changed in the last few years; she had gone from an energetic, good-natured coworker with the occasional bad case to a dark, withdrawn shadow flitting through the hallways of the lab like the ghost of her former self.
Everyone had noticed, and most everyone had commented on it, but nobody had been able to find out, beyond a string of bad cases and professional disappointments, what had caused the change. And Catherine winced internally as she realized that a few of those disappointments could be laid directly at her feet. How she had taken a few high-profile cases away from the other CSI, how she had encouraged Grissom to be tougher on Sara… Lab scuttlebutt had filled Catherine in on the near-DUI, and she remembered how, during that case, Sara's voice had almost broken as she asked if Catherine would mind taking the victim's statement. That whispered conversation had stayed with Catherine ever since.
The timelines fit, Catherine realized, as a year and a half ago had been that home-invasion case. As she mused over the changes in Sara, Catherine wondered why, with her reputation as being the nightshift motherhen, she hadn't tried to help Sara, but a nagging voice in the back of her head told her she knew exactly why. She had encouraged Grissom to be hard on Sara because it meant that there was one more obstacle to their inevitable romance, she had ignored the obvious pain in the younger woman's eyes because to care would have meant caring too much; Catherine knew that, had she fallen into the murky depths of those dark, soulful eyes, she never would have been able to find her way out again intact and unscathed.
From the moment she had met the spirited brunette, Catherine had known she had no defenses against her, so she had created one: hostility. It was like armor, a barrier that walled off her feelings from ever finding any expression because she had known, had known with every fiber of her being, that nothing could ever happen between them. At first it had been her marriage to Eddie, concerns about Lindsey, her fear for her reputation, and then it had been Sara's obvious infatuation with Grissom, her ill-fated affair with Hank, and, the most painful part of all, the way Sara teased and relaxed with the guys but had never loosened up or relaxed around Catherine. Even during that early-morning drink after the disastrous end of Hank, Sara had never let down her guard, not even a little. She had confirmed what Catherine had already suspected, expressed her anger at herself, and then took a cab home, leaving Catherine a few dollars for the tab.
All of these well-reasoned and rehearsed rationalizations tossed out in the span of one angry conversation. Sighing, Catherine turned off the engine and headed for her liquor cabinet, knowing that she needed to quiet the voices in her head before she could sleep.
xxx
Five nights later, Catherine was leaned up against the bar, sipping a club soda and scanning the women milling about the room. It was Sara's night off and, since work had been slow, Catherine had feigned a headache and took off, promising to keep her beeper with her. And so she had as she had made her way through three bars before ending up here, half an hour before last call. Tall, leggy brunettes with a boyish build were not the norm, but she had seen three, a small thrill running through her each time, and each time feeling hope die as the woman in question turned and it wasn't Sara, not once. The last had seen Catherine's eyes upon her and had turned, a raised eyebrow and a lazy smile indicating she liked what she saw, and Catherine tried to hide her disappointment as the woman slid into the barstool beside her.
"Can I buy you a drink?" Her voice was higher than Sara's, her build heavier and fuller around the hips, but her eyes were warm and brown and Catherine was tired, so she smiled and flirted until the lights came on and the illusion was broken.
xxx
Another night, another bar; Sara had taken a personal day on Catherine's night off, and Catherine had seen the coincidence as a sign, but her hopes dwindled with every second that ticked off the clock, and she leaned over her glass, swirling the last swallow of Scotch around the bottom on her glass. When a low voice whispered "Hey," she had turned so suddenly she had almost fallen into the arms of the not-Sara from the week before.
"Hey, easy," the woman laughed, catching Catherine as she stumbled, "how many of those have you had?"
Catherine stared into those eyes as she whispered, "Enough," her arms circling up under the waves of brown hair to pull her in for a kiss.