Author's note: Much thanks to those of you who are still hanging in with this story after all of this time. I've had a busy few months for various reasons (among them that I just moved and I've had a lot of computer trouble). I so appreciate all of you who have messaged me or added a review to ask about this fic or encourage me to continue. Thanks for spurring me on.

FYI, unless something changes, I'm planning on two more chapters after this one.

Enjoy! Feedback is always a treasure…

Moments of Truth

Chapter Nine

Grissom and Josh sat side by side in a pair of hard plastic chairs.

Waiting was hard.

They had everything in the world to talk about, but they said nothing to each other now.

They'd said very little to each other in the few hours since they'd met, in fact.

Grissom had made a necessarily blunt time-sensitive plea after their simple introductions.

"I need you to be tested. For compatibility. As a donor."

He'd sounded almost out of breath, and could only write it off as a reaction to his racing heartbeat.

They'd looked at each other silently for some of the longest seconds of Grissom's life.

He'd wondered vaguely about why he had said 'I' and not 'Sara'.

He'd wondered if that was a mistake.

He'd prepared to organize his screaming thoughts, to try to more effectively plead his case.

But then Josh had nodded. Just once. Firmly.

He'd kept his head down for a moment, his haunted eyes locked on the ground.

And then off they'd gone to find the appropriate medical personnel.

Now, alone together and waiting for the compatibility test results, every muscle in Grissom's body was tensed, every fiber of his being soaked in a kind of tangible desperation, every thought that raced through his mind trailed by the word please.

On an irrational, almost instinctual level, it didn't make any sense to him that he could be sitting so still at a moment when so much was at stake.

But there was nothing else to be done.

He sat looking forward, watching Sara's brother out of the corner of his eye.

Josh had yet to explicitly state that he would go through with the surgery if he tested compatible, but he had spent almost an hour perusing the pamphlets he had been provided with, and he hadn't explicitly said 'no', either.

That was a good sign, wasn't it? Grissom didn't trust his own judgment anymore.

He was so devastatingly close to this.

"How long have you been dating my sister?"

The question caught Grissom off guard. They had been sitting in silence for so long that it seemed unnatural that the other man had even spoken.

And the word dating… was that what he and Sara had been doing?

"We've been co-workers for years," Grissom finally answered, glancing over at Josh briefly. "And friends. The rest is… recent."

They fell into silence again for a moment.

"Her friend Nick says it's serious."

Despite the uncertainty in Josh's tone, his words held a vague note of 'what are your intentions toward my sister?' It seemed strange, to Grissom, given the apparent distance between the two siblings.

Grissom looked over at Josh, for longer than just a glance this time, and took in the anxiety on his face. He couldn't quite read the expression, and wasn't sure if he was unsettled by the idea of the surgery or if there was something else there.

"It is," Grissom finally answered him simply, and Josh nodded, and then began tearing tiny little rips into the end of one of the pamphlets he was still clinging to.

"You've been taking care of her?"

"I have."

Josh nodded again, and now Grissom thought he detected a hint of guilt or remorse in his downcast eyes.

"That's good," Sara's brother said.

Silence reigned again for several moments, and despite the turmoil going on in his own mind, it wasn't lost on Grissom that Josh drew in several slow, deep breaths.

"I'm gonna do it," Josh finally announced, and Grissom's head shot up and he froze, waiting for clarification. "If that guy comes out here and says I can do it, I'm going to do it. This living donor surgery."

Josh took another deep breath and nodded again, as if to confirm.

Grissom nodded back, a lump in his throat.

He didn't trust himself to speak. But there were no words for this, anyway.

His heart started racing again as it all sunk in.

This was one more hurdle passed.

They were getting so close.

There was so little time left.

But they were so close…

The doctor they had been dealing with approached mere seconds after Josh agreed to the procedure, as if on cue.

Grissom stood on legs as unsteady as they had been that first night that he had learned that Sara was sick.

He stared at the doctor expectantly, waiting for him to answer the only question there was.

And then that wonderful little man in the white coat smiled.

"You're an excellent match."

…

A blend of adrenaline and euphoria and terror had Grissom feeling a little bit sick to his stomach as he and Josh walked hurriedly, side by side, back up to Sara's room.

They felt something like partners now, discussing what needed to be done.

There was just one more hurdle to pass, to get Sara the transplant she so desperately needed.

And that last obstacle was Sara herself.

Her consent was all they needed now.

Just before they reached the door to her room, Josh gripped Grissom by the shoulder to stop him.

"You've tried talking to her about this, yeah?"

"Yes," Grissom answered him quickly. "But that was a long time ago. She was adamant that she didn't even have any family to go to then --"

"Which means she decided a long time ago not to even think about letting me do this, and nothing you said changed her mind, that about right?"

Grissom nodded impatiently.

"But a lot has changed since then," he insisted. "And I'm going to have to change her mind now."

Grissom reached for the door handle, but Josh caught him by the wrist and met his eyes.

"Let me."

Grissom opened his mouth to disagree, instinctively wary of surrendering any control of the situation to anyone else.

But the look on Josh's face stopped him. It almost stole his breath, in a way.

He hadn't noticed much of a physical resemblance between Sara and her brother upon first meeting him.

But now he saw it.

It was in the eyes.

The fierce determination lurking there.

In Sara it was a look that had always meant he'd have to spend the remaining days of an open investigation worrying about her, because come hell or high water – or a dangerous lack of food and sleep – she was going after her goal if it killed her.

That same look shone in her brother's eyes now.

And Grissom knew better than to question it.

He stepped back and let Josh enter alone.

…

Sara was asleep.

Or at least Josh hoped she was just asleep.

He watched her breathe from across the room.

She'd changed. Quite a bit.

Or maybe that was just the effects of the disease.

She looked sicker than anyone he'd ever seen.

She looked like she was barely clinging to life.

She was so damn pale. Worse off than he'd ever seen her. Even worse than when she was seven, and she'd had an ear infection that no one took seriously, and it had gotten into her blood, and she'd been so pale lying under her covers that he'd actually thought for a second that she was dead.

Guilt crept up on him now, slower than it had then.

He should have been here, should have done this sooner.

She was hurting. Again.

And her big brother was too busy getting into trouble to be any help. Again.

It was the story of their lives.

And it was on him.

He sank into the chair next to her bed, wondering how to go about waking her up.

When they were kids he would have hollered her name, given her a little shove, and probably been gone again before she even opened her eyes.

Now, he leaned in toward her and spoke quietly.

"Sara."

God, it felt funny to say her name like that after all of these years.

He got no reaction.

"Sara."

She still didn't stir.

"It's Josh."

Her eyes opened into tiny slits of glazed darkness.

It was strange, that that was what got her.

Maybe it was just that he'd spoken a third time at all, maybe he'd spoken a little louder…

Maybe not.

She stared up at him, her eyes opening wider, surprise and confusion registering on her face. She looked around, and then down at her own body in the hospital bed, apparently trying to determine something.

"I'm not dreaming," she finally rasped quietly.

It was a statement, not a question, and her eyes locked on him.

"No, Darlin', you're not dreaming," he confirmed.

They said nothing for a moment.

And then he felt the need to establish something.

"I'm not using, for whatever that's worth," he told her, quietly and simply. "I'm not selling, either."

"That does make us being in the same room a hell of a lot less complicated," Sara noted, with just a hint of the wry sense of humor he remembered.

They fell into silence again, and then it was her turn to speak up suddenly.

"This isn't fair," she noted simply.

His eyes narrowed in response, wondering whether she meant this disease or his very presence.

"I should get to be at my best for this," she clarified. "I like to be prepared."

"What's that like?" he teased, and he cracked a little smile.

There was something warm and familiar about this.

Talking with Sara was always either comfortably easy or painfully difficult, and today they seemed to be falling into the pattern of the old days, the one he much preferred.

"I met your boyfriend," he told her, and he didn't miss the hint of amusement that crossed her face. "What?"

"I don't think I've ever actually called him that." Her eyes closed briefly, and then opened again. "That how you knew?"

"Knew?"

"Did Grissom find you?"

"He sent a guy, Nick, a friend of yours, apparently, after me."

"And you came."

"Nick's a stubborn guy," he told her, wary of the appreciation in her tone.

"Where've you been living?"

"N.Y.C." He said it just like that, pronouncing the individual letters. "For years now."

"Any contact with Mom?" She had to ask the old familiar question, even though the answer never changed.

"None. You?"

"None."

Josh sighed and leaned back in his chair, glancing over all the medical machinery in the room.

He had to get to the point before long. Time mattered here, and he knew it.

But there was so much else that she needed to know.

"It's, uh, it's actually been years that I've been on your side of the law. Mostly, anyway. More than I used to be." He paused for just a moment. "I have a kid. Daughter. Little girl." He added this second piece of information as if it fully explained the first, because, to him, it did.

He watched Sara's face for a reaction, and felt a little unsettled when her eyes filled with tears.

And so he just kept talking.

"She's not real girly, though. Likes soccer a lot. Her mom named her Annabelle Jane. Fits her about as well as a dog named 'cat'. I like to call her A.J.. Pisses her mom off, but she seems to like it well enough. I, uh, don't see her as much as I'd like to. Better for everyone that way. She's in Albany."

He finished this rather random stream of information and found that Sara still had nothing to say, and her tears had spilled over onto her cheeks.

And so he started up again.

"I should have said already, she's six. Just barely. Her birthday was last week. I actually just got back to town, to New York, I mean, when your buddy Nick showed up."

A thought occurred to him after a minute, and he reached into the inner pocket of his denim jacket.

When he and Nick had been leaving his apartment, he'd grabbed the stack of Polaroid photos off the fridge on a whim.

He was glad to have them with him now.

"Photos don't get much more recent than this," he noted as he held them out to her, and then thought better of making her reach for them and instead held them up above her face, showing each of them to her in turn. "Kid eats like a horse, but she's thin as a rail," he noted, glancing down at the picture of A.J. and her cake. "She's smart. Sometimes I even think she's smarter than you were, but with her it's not so much the books. She's a clever little thing. I, uh… can't take credit for much of it. Never did figure out how to do the full-time dad thing."

He paused for a second, as another bit of information to impart occurred to him.

This was heavy, but then, so was the mood in the room.

And Sara had probably already seen it.

"She's got her grandma's eyes."

More tears escaped onto Sara's cheeks, and Josh sat down in his chair again, replacing the pictures in his jacket pocket.

He just looked at her for a moment, miserably.

"You okay?" he finally asked.

"I just would have liked to meet her," Sara finally whispered.

"Okay," Josh told her, simply, as if it wouldn't be a problem at all.

Their eyes met meaningfully, and he knew that she knew.

She knew exactly why he was here, and what he wanted to do.

She was just waiting for him to say it out loud.

He leaned forward again, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, in a posture that defied the seriousness of the moment.

"I'm going to need you to do me a favor," he started carefully, in a falsely casual tone. "See, I'd really like to call up my kid in a couple of days and tell her I got to be somebody's hero."

Sara sniffled and tore her eyes away from his, staring up at the ceiling through a sheen of tears.

"She hears a lot of crap about her dad," Josh continued, keeping his voice even. "She's not supposed to, but she does. And the bitch of it is that most of it is true."

He paused for a second, waiting for Sara to turn and look at him. She did, and his voice dropped to a whisper, and his eyes filled to the brim.

"Just this one time… for you, for me, for my kid… why don't you let me pretend to be one of the good guys? That's not so much to ask for."

"You're asking me to risk your life," Sara nearly whispered, tormented by the very thought.

"It's barely a risk. Less than one percent. I take bigger risks than that every day of my life, and with a lot less to show for it."

"Josh --"

"Look, Sar --"

"I would rather cut off my own arm than have you die because of me!"

Her voice rasped painfully as she emphasized the last part, and he shook his head sadly and flicked away the latest of the tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Darlin', how do you think I feel?" He waited a beat, then added, "I got enough to live with."

She stared at him for a long moment.

She was torn.

So very torn.

Fighting with herself.

Because she wanted to live.

She wanted years.

She wanted that life with Grissom that had always seemed so impossible before.

But if anything went wrong…

If Josh was part of that one percent…

And he was somebody's dad now…

It was a hell of a struggle, working all of that out in her foggy mind.

She heard the door open, and suddenly Grissom was there, and it was odd, to have both him and her brother by her side at once, looking down at her, their eyes red-rimmed and watery.

With just a look, Grissom silently asked Josh for a moment alone, and to his credit, Josh took the hint and exited the room.

Grissom took the chair by the bed.

"The doctor says he's an excellent match," he offered quietly.

His eyes pleaded with her.

And her resolve started to crack.

"We could both die in surgery," Sara warned gently. "That could happen."

Grissom reached out and stroked the curve of her jaw with the back of his fingers, his touch feather-light.

"Or you could live."

He spoke plainly.

But the raw emotion was there.

And as near-silence took over, and they stared at each other for several seconds, Grissom made a choice.

He was going to have to be selfish.

Because she had to survive this.

She had to live.

And if she wasn't willing to risk her brother for her own sake, she was going to have to do it for his.

"If you don't let him do this, then you're asking me to sit here and wait for you to die."

He spoke with quiet, understated intensity.

Her eyes overflowed again.

He thought she might be about to apologize.

So he squeezed her fingers gently with his, and then pulled them to his face and kissed her knuckles softly.

"Don't ask me to do that, Sara. Please, Honey, don't ask me to do that."

He left his plea at that, and waited, watching her every breath.

Seconds passed; maybe a minute or two.

And then finally she squeezed his hand, with what little strength she had left, and she met his eyes.

Her nod was almost imperceptible, and she looked grateful and apologetic and terrified and hopeful all at once.

And he kissed her fingers again, and let his own tears fall, and then a moment later he was out in the hallway, glancing around blindly, looking for her doctor, and hearing a single phrase ringing in his ears, over and over and over again.

Here goes everything.

…