Disclaimer: This takes place slightly previous to chapter one, which takes place just after 'Goodbye and Good Luck'. CSI invented the character of Laura Sidle and her past, I'm just giving her a current.
This story hopefully fills out the conversation Grissom and Brass have in 'You Kill Me' where Grissom says that Sara is in San Francisco with her Mother. I also have the power of foresight and have seen House of Hoarders, which filled in a little more info about Sara's Mother. (Although as always with CSI, it only gave a little.) There are also brief references to 'Dead Doll'.
Author Notes: I didn't plan for this to ever have more than one chapter, but inspiration hit me yesterday when I read over the reviews for the first chapter, and these days I find that if I don't write it when inspiration strikes I take forever to get it done... So thank you to all those who wanted to read more. I hope this begins to satisfy curiosity.
Welcome to the Room.
By Rianne
Chapter Two.
It had been in the news and she had paid it little heed.
Vegas C.S.I - Kidnapped.
Sounded too much like a bad TV movie and she had always shunned that kind of movie anyway.
Too much violence.
She avoided violence, and never liked to talk about why.
But considering that Vegas was hundreds of miles from San Francisco, the staff in her small office still mentioned the case, chattering eagerly about whether the young woman would be found, it served as good entertaining fodder for them, made the day pass quicker.
It was one of those news stories that made the community want to speak, a good v's bad attention grabber, the kind of event which captured your heart and your head, but always seemed to cause untold long lasting damage to those involved and their loved ones and was very quickly forgotten by the world at large.
The kind of story which clearly laid out people in black and white, good deeds and evil actions, whereas she knew the world in shades of grey.
But didn't like to share her somewhat skewed perspective.
So she kept her head down, increased her typing speed.
Didn't partake in idle chitchat about someone else's misery.
Until they began surmising what a kidnapper might do to subdue a trained professional and she found herself calmly and quietly getting to her feet and moving away from the conversation.
Distance yourself.
That was what her doctor said.
Relocate yourself in the present.
She had come a thousand miles, but there were moments when the thoughts returned.
Bringing emotions to the surface that medication and time could not remove or even dull.
The flickers in her brain were of memories too long repressed.
Medical restraints.
Screaming voices.
Needle sticks.
Nothingness.
The madness.
Being out of control.
Pain.
The shocking flare of a fist to the jaw.
To the stomach.
The never forgiven hurt of someone you loved beating you.
The small Ladies bathroom was cold and sound echoed.
So she tried to make none.
Adept at keeping herself quietly hidden.
All except her long frame, legs that couldn't be folded up.
Knees that these days couldn't take the compression.
The counting trick helped.
Backwards from twenty, ten had never been enough.
Passed time, so that when she returned they would hopefully have found other topics of conversation.
Yet, when she did go back to her office Alison and Jim were in the corner, wiring up the old battered TV they usually used for training courses.
Screen already humming with static as they scanned for a signal.
Looking for the all day news station.
And got it, a proud murmur rustling through the air.
As a slightly fuzzy news reader appeared, coiffed to the nines.
Announcing with a genuine smile that the CSI had in fact been found alive.
Everyone waited on tenterhooks.
They were going live to a reporter on the scene.
The cloud of dust on the screen clearing to reveal a helicopter landing.
A thin balding man, was talking to the cameras.
A Lab Director Ecklie.
Some emotionless official, shouting into the microphone to be heard over the whir of the rotor blades.
But everyone's attention was on the helicopter.
The gurney emerging from the aircraft held a slim brunette woman, entangled with a mask and equipment.
But she found her eyes instead followed the man who trailed it.
An older man, greying hair under a dusty baseball cap.
His legs working overtime to keep close to the gurney and the woman it carried.
His expression a strange mix of elation and fear.
There was something about the way his eyes never left the wounded woman.
He loved her.
Then the scene was gone, the announcer returning to confirm once again that CSI Sara Sidle had been found.
And a cheer rumbled from those around her, a sound which echoed off her silent body as once again her life changed on a knife edge.
The name, she had to have heard wrong over the happiness of her colleagues.
But then the picture came, taking up half of the screen over the shoulder of the newsreader.
Her heart fell into her toes.
Her old knees gave.
She sank to rest her weight on the table behind her.
Gaze fixed on the woman's picture.
It was Sara.
"Laura if I didn't know better I'd say that was a younger you up there!"
Jim's gleeful voice dragged her attention sharply from the screen.
He took an actual step backwards at the look she gave him.
Realisation crossing over his familiar face.
She felt like she was going to be sick.
It couldn't be Sara, she still lived in San Francisco.
She wasn't in Las Vegas.
Although she didn't have any proof of that.
She hadn't known officially of her daughter's whereabouts since she had graduated from Berkeley and her degree notice had been listed in the San Francisco Chronicle.
That piece of tattered paper was still framed in her bedroom.
Proud of a daughter she did not know.
Newspapers!
The stand outside the office.
She didn't even think, grabbing her purse from the back of her chair and striding as fast as her unsteady legs could carry her.
Jim's voice trailing her out of the room, shouting her name, but there was no time for lengthy explanations.
The stand was there as it always was, passed daily on her trips to and from work.
Newspapers lining the wooden frame, front pages fluttering gently in the Bay breeze.
She snatched the nearest.
Flicking rapidly through the pages.
Words, but no picture.
She needed a picture.
Onto the next and the next.
Mind frantic, eyes scouring the tiny print, fingers smudging the inky residue.
"Ma'am,"
She dismissed the voice.
Until it came again.
"Ma'am, you can't do that. I'm going to need you to buy a paper, or put them down."
But she didn't hear him.
She had found what she wanted.
A picture.
The picture.
The one from the TV screen.
Clutching the paper to her breast she scrambled notes from her purse, throwing them towards the man, not waiting to see them tumble to the ground or caring that she had given him far too much.
She headed blindly to her car. Paper still close to her heart.
Her keys rattling in her trembling hand as she worked the aged lock, before tumbling into the dimness of the inside.
She closed her eyes behind the wheel.
Heart still thumping against the newspaper against her chest.
But for a few moments she couldn't lower the page.
For then it would be true.
She had found her.