Disclaimer: Fills out the conversation Grissom and Brass have in ... 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.)
Author Notes: Lucky or not you actually get two new chapters of this story! (I know!) But as both are ready you can have both together!
Welcome to the Room.
By Rianne
Chapter Three.
She couldn't be here, sat at the side of this busy street with people walking past and stroking their shadows across her sunlight.
This was no place for something as momentous as this.
She needed to be somewhere free, somewhere undisturbed to think and share this moment with no one but herself.
She carefully placed her treasured paper face down on the passenger seat and starting the engine, she drove.
Navigating the familiar winding streets, heading out of the City, following the line of the bay.
Drawing the car to a careful halt in the deserted beach front parking lot, cutting the engine.
Listened for a moment to the hungry roar of the Pacific Ocean, its waves making shore just a few hundred yards from her windshield.
Watched the screaming gulls circle in the currents of air against the clouded sky.
Letting the sounds calm her before her twitching fingers captured the paper again.
Lifting it to lie against the steering wheel.
Spreading the page.
The picture.
Those eyes.
It had been twenty three years since she had seen those eyes.
They were the only clear image she had of that night.
Her daughter's eyes.
Her daughter recoiling from her touch.
Traumatised.
The terror in those eyes.
The way they had looked at her as if she were a stranger.
And that night she had become one to her child.
Her child who should never have had to see the things she did.
Even now her thoughts made her feel like she was spinning.
Lost in spirals of shame, guilt, helplessness and heartbreak.
She had finally been forced too far, faced with the very real possibility that she was in danger of being killed, and if not her, her daughter.
Her unrational mind had decided that now was the time, that she was finally ready to do something about the threat, that was what her doctors had said.
It hadn't been the right thing to do, but in her troubled mind it had been the only way she had seen, having barely survived their last fight.
She had waited until her husband had finally fallen into unconsciousness before, urged on by the demons in her head, she had ended it all.
Yet, all she could remember was being watched.
Those eyes of Sara's silently watching as the Policemen had come and taken her mother away.
Police pictures had shown her being restrained, officers lifting her arms and legs.
Pulling her away from the bleeding body of her husband.
She remembered none of it.
Except those eyes, silently watching from the corner, too large in the face of the skinny, already tall, motionless twelve year old.
Not even flinching as she had called her name over and over, Sara, Sara, Sara... frantically sobbing as she had been escorted away.
Leaving her baby alone in the world.
The hardest memory of all, as it was the only one she considered true.
The others were mere fragments, blurred by rage and alcohol and illness.
Details of her actions added later during testimonies from experts about the damage that she had caused, which had in time become the memories she envisioned rather than recalled.
The number of stab wounds.
The rage, the injuries she herself had sustained in the fights that had provoked her to finally break.
The clinical diagnosis of Schizophrenia.
The recounting of symptoms by hospital staff who had never seen her before in their lives and were just reading barely legible notes from her huge stack of medical files, each visit to the emergency room carefully documented.
Broken nose, dislocated jaw, sprained shoulder, black eye.
So many, over so many years.
Yet, no one had questioned her when she had repeatedly told them that she had slipped, tripped, fallen.
No one had mentioned the alcohol on her breath or the frightened look in her eye that pleaded for someone to notice.
Whilst her sweet, sweet daughter had lied like she had asked her too.
Had stepped in and taken charge when she couldn't. When they had gone home again, the first time, after the very first trip to the hospital, with her husband still behind bars sleeping off his drunken rant at the policeman, her daughter, barely seven, had guided her to sleep in her own tiny twin sized bed, and curling in beside her had rocked her own mother to sleep, stroking her hair, bathing her wounds, pressing gentle kisses to the bruises on her forehead as she whispered her stories, innocent stories about nice things, nice things like handsome princes from storybooks she had read and birds and insects and creatures she had learnt about in school.
She had promised her the very next morning that it would be the last time, the very last time that her Daddy would never get mad like that again. That Mommy wouldn't shout, or cry. That everything was going to be okay.
But it hadn't been, and things had not improved, despite her manically held belief that it had, and her delusions that it would.
It had happened over and over, far too many times.
Her advancing symptoms of schizophrenia more and more apparent, but used by her husband to lay blame.
And Sara had been there.
Sara had been the parent, comforting the sobbing broken mess.
Tidying up the damage caused, cooking the dinners, washing the clothes.
Until that night.
A fingertip trailed the two dimensional curve of her daughters cheek, careful not to smudge the paper picture.
That night had been the last time she had seen Sara.
Glimpses of her being lead away, hand in hand with a Policewoman through the undulating light of the Police beacon.
Until today.
When she had just happened to watch the image of the figure on the gurney.
Her thoughts going out to the rescued woman, never guessing that her interest should be more than just normal human compassion.
Whatever hardship her daughter had endured in the desert, she had survived.
She had been returned to her, by chance.
She had been given a second chance.
She murmured her name, a pang of longing to care for the broken woman on the gurney, just like she had always cared for her.
She could still see that child in the pictured woman before her.
And more frighteningly she could see herself.
But Sara was beautiful.
Haunted, but beautiful.
And she knew however far she had come in the twenty three years what was to blame for that.
She studied the picture hard, admiring the delicate features, picking out what was familiar from the memories of her baby's cheeky cherubic face, she had her own unruly dark hair, and she still had that gap between her teeth.
A distinguishing feature that the Police were asking the public to take notice of in case they were to see her.
Young Sara had always wanted to fix it, but braces had never been within the Sidle house budget.
The image was blurring.
Tears ready to escape.
This was it.
She had found her.
And the temptation she had always fought was back.
She wanted to see her.
For years, when she knew she was in San Francisco she had held back.
She did not know if Sara would ever want to hear from her.
She had never tried to find her mother.
When she had been released from the hospital she had changed her name, had gone back to using her maiden name, Laura Morris.
She had done it to allow herself to restart, a new future.
To avoid people remembering the name in the papers, even a decade on from her incarceration she had been afraid of someone remembering and had wanted to avoid the stigma of murder and mental illness.
She would tell people if she had too, could talk calmly about it now, but there was no need to air her dirty laundry all the time.
With no way of finding her daughter by then as she was out of government organised social care, and with little money to even care for herself let alone search, she had no choice but to do nothing. With Sara now a fully grown adult, she could have been anywhere in the world.
She had wondered if her daughter had searched for her, and not been able to find her under her old name, but at least there was a link, and there were records of her change of name deeds.
Her daughter had been smart, even at twelve, she would remember and know where to look.
But no such call had come.
And self depreciatingly she had thought it was inevitable, no one who had witnessed what Sara had would want to be burdened with a daily reminder.
So there had been no sign of her until the sight of her name in the Chronicle paper had nearly stopped her heart.
It had to be her, there couldn't be many Sidle's and on top of that the chances of one spelling Sara without the H? Too much of a coincidence.
She had felt such awe and wonder at a child of hers gaining a masters degree, and she had found a small amount of peace in that. No child she could have raised would have come that far in life. She had been better off, wherever she had been.
She hadn't been afflicted with the illness she had battled; she hadn't ended up on the streets, or any of the many things that could have easily befallen her.
But she had imagined scenarios of every kind, but mainly simple kismet accidents, bumping into her daughter in the windy streets of Frisco. Stepping into a bakery and finding herself behind her in a queue. Looking across at a streetlight to find her in the next car.
And every time she just knew her.
Instinctively knew her.
She had even hovered around the university buildings on her lunch breaks, hoping.
And been disappointed.
Wondering if the University office might give her an address, or at least a current workplace, but she was never brave enough to ask.
And all this time she had been in another State.
Working in an amazing job.
Helping others.
Loved by others.
She couldn't help but see this as a sign.
A reminder that not all was lost.
Her daughter was alive, when by all accounts she shouldn't be.
Her daughter helped people for a living, that beautiful soul, that caring light within her hadn't died that night as she had always feared.
What harm could contacting her do?
She did not have to reply if she did not wish too.
She could contact her to wish her well in her recovery.
The notion was in her heart now.
After all that had happened.
This was a chance to begin to set things right.
To rid them both of old ghosts.
She had so much to tell her, so much she wanted to show her.
About how far she had come, how different her life was now.
And she had so many questions.
At the edge of the parking lot a lone telephone box stood, and the gear well was full of parking meter change.
She wouldn't be able to hear the voice she longed too.
But she could do this, reach out, change everything, and give her daughter the choice.