A/N: Okay, everyone who wanted to see poor Sara with a broken heart – this one's for you!

Thanks for reading and reviewing!

I don't own CSI. Inspiration and some dialogue are borrowed from episode 317, "Crash and Burn."

The Harsh Truth

Sara carefully applied her lipstick and walked out of her bathroom, back into her bedroom. She smiled at the sight of Hank sound asleep in her bed. Hating what she had to do, she crossed to the bed and leaned down to kiss his cheek.

"Hank, wake up," she said quietly.

Hank mumbled something incoherently.

She kissed him again. "Wake up," she said again, this time a bit louder.

Hank struggled to open his eyes and smiled at her. "Hey."

"Hey, sleepyhead," she smiled. "I have to go to work."

"You're leaving?"

"It's what I have to do," she sighed. "It's the job."

"I think you care more about your job than you do about me."

Sara smiled. "You know how my job is."

"Yeah, I do know," Hank replied, finally sitting up. "So, I won't see you for a few days, huh?"

"Well, my mandated lab time is over," Sara said, "so I'm back to field hours. Which means … yeah, it'll be awhile."

Hank smiled and touched her cheek. "I guess I'll have to live with that."

"Did you want to hang around here for awhile, or …?"

"No, I should get home," Hank said, climbing out of bed. "Call me when you get a chance, okay?"

"Seriously, it could be a few days," Sara said. While she was thrilled that the month had finally ended, meaning that she was free to work overtime – which translated into field time – again, she was going to miss the extra time her "regular hours" had given her with Hank. "I'll be back to pulling doubles and triples."

"It's okay," Hank said, pulling on his clothes. He leaned over to kiss her. "Really. We'll talk when you have time again."

Sara nodded, and took his hand as they walked to the door. "Take care."

"You, too," he said. "Put the bad guys away."

She smiled and kissed his cheek. "Save lives."

They walked out of her apartment and to their cars, each going off in a different direction. Sara sighed as she turned on the radio, letting the sounds of her favorite top forty station soothe her on her way to work.

She loved her job, but sometimes it was murder on her social life.

During the preceding month, Sara had managed to max herself on overtime in less than three weeks. This meant that she was not allowed any overtime for the last ten days of the month. The best way to avoid getting overtime was to avoid field work; Grissom had not allowed her leave the lab for any cases until the month ended. After spending over a week stuck inside the lab, Sara was thrilled to be back to actual work.

As much as she had loved the normal hours, she had missed going out into the field. As soon as she got in that night, she was sent out again; she and Catherine worked a burglary case together. It wasn't the most involved case Sara had ever worked, but she was grateful for it all the same. She and Catherine managed to solve it in just two days.

"Does it feel good to be back in the field?" Catherine asked as she and Sara labeled their boxes of evidence to be stored.

"It feels wonderful," Sara said, grinning at her. "You know, I don't know how people can take desk jobs."

"Yeah, I know," Catherine agreed.

"I wish we could have had a more exciting case, though," Sara said.

Catherine laughed. "Even the little cases are important."

Sara grinned. "No case too small, huh?"

"Exactly."

"Hi, ladies."

They both looked up as Grissom walked into the evidence vault.

"Hi," Catherine smiled.

"Hey, Griss," Sara said cheerfully.

"So, you've wrapped your case?"

"Yes," Catherine answered for both of them. "Sara was just complaining that it wasn't exciting enough."

"Well, I think I can help with the lack of excitement in your life," Grissom said.

Sara and Catherine looked at each other with raised eyebrows and barely-concealed grins.

"Oh?" Sara asked.

"You're both coming with me," Grissom said. "We've got a car into a restaurant to investigate."

"What?" Catherine gasped. "A car went into a restaurant?"

"Yes."

"How could that happen?" Sara asked in shock.

"That's what we need to find out," Grissom said. "According to Brass, we've got multiple fatalities, possibly including the driver." He looked around. "Are you about finished in here?"

"Can you give us fifteen minutes?" Catherine asked.

"Sure," Grissom replied. "I'll meet you at the car."

He left and Sara looked at Catherine.

"That means that he's driving, doesn't it?"

Catherine grinned. "Don't take it personally. He likes to look like a player driving his ladies around town."

They looked at each other with matching sarcastic grins and eye rolls. The idea of Grissom as a player was really just too much.

Sara had never seen anything like the crime scene that awaited her. As she walked toward the restaurant with Grissom and Catherine – Grissom holding a large umbrella over all three of them to protect them from the rain – she was sure that she couldn't actually be seeing this. It was too bizarre.

However, her career in criminalistics had taught her that nothing was too bizarre to be believed. She walked with her colleagues through what had been a picture window into the destruction of the restaurant dining room, which currently had a very battered Jaguar sitting in the middle of it.

Brass greeted them with the news that two people had died and four were critical; in answer to Catherine's question, they learned that the driver, who was still trapped in her car, was non-responsive. Sara was never sure if Catherine and Grissom kept talking or not after Brass walked away; another voice had reached her ears, invading and taking over her conscious mind. She turned to see Hank behind her, working on a man who was lying on a stretcher. He was wearing street clothes; this clearly had not been his night to work. She crossed to him, immediately concerned.

"Hey, Sara," he greeted her. "Typical Thursday."

Sara's eyes skimmed over the man on the stretcher, focusing on her boyfriend's wrist. "Hank? Your wrist is broken."

Hank looked down at his wrist as though he had never seen it before. "Yeah, it is." He passed his patient off to another EMT – this one in uniform – and stepped back.

"What happened?" Sara asked.

"I was sitting at the table," Hank said, clearly shaken by the entire experience. "Next thing I knew –"

The firefighter who had freed the driver from her car yelled that the woman still had a pulse; Hank brushed past Sara to take care of her. Horror filled Sara as she realized how lucky Hank was – how close she had come to losing him. A broken wrist was not so bad when two of the people who had been sitting at the tables near his had died. She shivered involuntarily as she thought of what could have happened. It was just too horrible to think of losing him.

Less than an hour after their arrival, Grissom was called to another scene, leaving Sara as the primary at the restaurant. If Catherine was upset by this, she didn't show it. Grissom promised that Warrick would be along to help them, and left to take care of a woman who had died in her home, presumably due to a natural gas leak.

Sara spoke with the restaurant manager, who provided her with a seating chart. After ending her interview, she joined Catherine, who was taking photos of the car.

"I'm sorry. I got wrapped up in …"

Catherine looked at her with a slight nod. "Hank," she finished.

"Yeah," Sara admitted a bit reluctantly. She had never let her personal life interfere with her job before, and was a little annoyed with herself for doing so now. She immediately tried to rectify her mistake by discussing the case with Catherine.

Catherine, for her part, was more than willing to overlook Sara's lack of attention to the case. She was glad to see Sara letting the world see that she was human.

Warrick arrived at the scene, climbing through the remains of the window to join Sara and Catherine.

"Someone couldn't get a good enough table?" he joked.

Sara rolled her eyes and Catherine smiled.

"Look, I've got to follow the driver to the hospital," Sara said. "Call me if you find anything fun."

"Oh, yeah," Warrick said, pulling out his flashlight and shining it into the car, "I'm sure this will be a laugh a minute."

The woman was still alive when Sara arrived at the hospital, but, according to the police officer outside her room, just barely. Knowing that she'd probably never get a chance to talk to the woman, Sara spoke with her grandson, Corey, who couldn't understand why his grandmother would have even come to Vegas – she hated the city.

As Corey kept speaking, Sara found her attention completely distracted. Hank was at the other end of the hall, kneeling on the floor to talk to a woman in a wheelchair. She interrupted her conversation with Corey to go to Hank, grinning widely at him as the woman in the wheelchair was taken down the hall.

He was completely unwilling to take any of her compliments about his skills as an EMT, suggesting that if he were better at his job, there would not have been any deaths. Sara knew it would be useless to tell him that he had done all he could; Hank hated losing patients.

"Elaine – the girl in the wheelchair – she's one of the lucky ones," he said.

"You were amazing," Sara said, looking up into his eyes.

"Eight years in a rig … first time I've actually been a part of the scene," Hank said. "I can't stop it going through my head."

"Yeah," Sara said, looking down for a moment. She looked back up at him. "You never know when your life's going to change."

"Listen, I – I gotta get out of here," Hank said, touching her hands as he walked past her.

"You need a lift?" Sara offered.

"No, I drove," he said, letting her squeeze his hands for a moment before disentangling himself to walk away.

"Hank?" Sara called.

He turned to face her.

I love you. "I'm really glad you're okay," she said.

Hank smiled. "Thanks."

He turned again and walked away, leaving Sara alone in the hospital, wondering why it was so hard for her to say what she felt.

As anticipated, the driver did not live long. Sara assumed that she had had a heart attack, stroke, or some other age-related problem that had led to the crash. However, Doc Robbins informed her that no such event had occurred. There had to be some forensic, evidence-based reason for the crash. Sara sighed, knowing that she was in for a lot of overtime.

Catherine created a digital model of the dining room, hoping that it would be helpful. When Sara walked into the layout room, Catherine had input the patrons' names, occupations, photos and other relevant information. Sara was rather impressed as she watched Catherine show off her work.

"Who is Elaine Alcott?" Catherine asked as she brought up a young woman's picture.

"Who?" Sara asked.

"Um … well, she was seated with Hank; I just thought maybe that …" Catherine trailed off, sensing that she might be headed into a bad situation.

"Oh," Sara said, sitting down at the computer to look at the woman's picture again.

Catherine kept talking, but Sara barely heard her. She finally placed Elaine; she was the woman in the wheelchair from the hospital.

"They must be friends; I saw him with her at the hospital," Sara said at last.

"Okay," Catherine said.

She continued listing off details about the patrons until Warrick walked in with the information he had gleaned from a conversation with the DMV. Sara left to inspect the car, leaving Warrick and Catherine in the layout room.

As she went over every inch of the car, noting that it was in perfect working order, Sara couldn't get Elaine Alcott out of her head. She was willing to admit that the woman must be a friend of Hank's, but she could not understand why he had never mentioned her. If they were good enough friends to go out for dinner together, they should have been good enough friends for his girlfriend to know about her.

Everything about their case taught them that the driver had intentionally driven her car into the building. The question that remained was why.

Sara and Catherine went back to the digital model of the dining room, thinking that perhaps a patron had been the target of the driver's rage. As they went through the tables, the one thing that was common to three of the five people seated in the windows was that they worked for Sillmont Healthcare – and the only survivor of those three was Elaine Alcott.

"Maybe I should go talk to her," Sara suggested.

"Yeah," Catherine said, knowing deep in her heart that Sara would discover something completely unrelated to their case, "maybe you should."

Sara's initial impression was that Elaine was a very nice person. She was willing to help, at any rate, which was not an entirely common thing in Sara's line of work. Sara sat down with her on her couch as Elaine searched the list of policy holders that she oversaw, looking for the driver's name. While Elaine looked through the files on her computer, Sara's eyes fell on a picture on her coffee table. It showed Elaine on a beach, leaning up against Hank.

Sara felt her head begin to spin as she picked up the framed photo. Elaine smiled as she looked at what had caught Sara's attention.

"My boyfriend," she said. "I saved up my miles and took him to Hawaii last year. He's going to take me to Tahiti in a few weeks. I can't wait."

Sara put the picture back down, focusing on not screaming, or crying, or vomiting. All she could think was that she had to get out of that house – fast.

She gave Elaine some excuse, told her that she needed to get back to the lab, and handed her a business card, telling her to call if she found any further information. With that handled, she nearly ran back to her car. Once safely inside, she took several breaths to calm herself down.

Maybe it wasn't Hank. Sara dismissed the absurd thought as soon as it crossed her mind. The man in the picture was Hank. It was all too obvious what had happened …

She made it back to the lab, managing to get her emotions under control by sheer force of will. She found her way into the layout room, where Catherine was surrounded by files pertaining to their case. She was thankful that it was just Catherine in the room. She knew that Catherine would understand, and that she wouldn't force Sara to talk if she didn't want to – and she also knew that once this story got out, Warrick and Nick would pressure her to let them kill Hank.

"Hey," Sara said as she walked in.

"Hey," Catherine replied. She watched as Sara sat down silently. "So? How did it go with Elaine Alcott?"

"She didn't have anything to add to the investigation," Sara said without looking at Catherine.

Brass walked in with the driver's phone records, and, in a moment, everything made sense. Sara called the one Vegas number listed, and discovered that Sillmont Healthcare had an address almost identical to that of the restaurant. The woman wasn't targeting the restaurant or the people sitting in it; she had gotten her directions mixed up. She had intended to drive through the insurance building.

Sara and Catherine found themselves in the office of the director of the insurance company. Elaine was also there, completely distracting Sara. Catherine, sensing what was going on, handled a considerable amount of the interview.

Sara couldn't stop staring at Elaine. It was like looking a prettier version of herself. Elaine, too, had dark hair – thicker and darker than Sara's. She, too, had brown eyes – a prettier shape and color than Sara's. Her teeth were completely straight when she smiled – she didn't have an unsightly gap like Sara did between the two front ones. Sara wanted to cry as the last thought occurred to her – Elaine worked an office job. Her hours were set, she wore cute skirts and blouses to work, and she never came home smelling like a decomposing body. It was easy to see why Hank would choose her over Sara.

Sara forced her thoughts away from Hank and back to the woman who had been so angry at her health insurance provider that she had been willing to drive herself into a building. The victim had been diagnosed with cancer; the insurance company had left her doctor's request for treatment "pending." She had no way of getting them to either approve or deny her claim. Her only way out, in her mind, was to show them her fury. The director stated the absolute truth when he claimed his company's lack of responsibility or liability in the elderly woman's actions.

"For what it's worth," Catherine said, drawing the interview to a close, "that makes me sick."

Sara and Catherine wound up at the police department to question Corey, the driver's grandson, to make sure he had no knowledge of his grandmother's intended actions. He was obviously quite shocked by what she had done; they both left the interrogation room feeling sorry for him. They walked out into the hall, ready to go back to the lab and file their final report, when they saw Hank waiting for them. Catherine gave Sara an understanding look.

"I'll meet you at the car."

Sara continued on alone to meet Hank halfway down the hall.

"I called the lab; they said you were here," he said. He looked at her for a moment as though waiting for her to start raging against him. "I heard you met Elaine," he finally said.

"Yeah, she's really something," Sara said.

Hank just stared at her, wondering when she would start screaming. The Sara he knew would certainly fly into an emotional rage over an injustice like this.

"I didn't tell her about us, if that's what you're wondering," she said.

Hank looked down for a moment. "I'm really sorry, Sara."

"Yeah, me, too," she replied.

"I don't know what else to say," Hank said.

Sara looked at him for a moment, wondering why she had wasted her time on a man who couldn't even find the words to try to explain or defend his actions. "I'll see you around," she said.

It was done.

She brushed past him and walked straight outside without looking back. She could see Catherine already in the driver's seat of the SUV they had driven over, waiting for her. Sara opened the passenger side door and climbed in, looking straight ahead.

Catherine just looked at her for a moment. "You got plans?" she asked.

"Nope," Sara said.

"You wanna get a beer?"

Sara finally turned to look at her. The concerned, compassionate look on Catherine's face brought tears to her eyes. "Drive," she said.

Catherine smiled and backed out of the parking space.

Catherine drove them to a favorite bar of the CSIs. When the team went out for a drink together, this was where they inevitably ended up. They sat down together at a table and ordered the promised beer.

"So," Catherine said, taking a sip of her drink, "do you want to talk about it?"

Sara sighed. "Elaine is his girlfriend."

Catherine nodded. "I had a feeling."

Sara's eyes grew to the size of saucers. "When did you get this feeling?" she asked a bit angrily.

"When you didn't know who she was on the restaurant seating chart," Catherine replied. "If he's having dinner with a woman you don't know, chances are, he's cheating on you."

Sara shook her head. "He wasn't cheating on me, Cath, he was cheating with me."

It was Catherine's turn to look across the table with huge eyes. "What?"

Sara lowered her eyes for a minute, then looked back up at Catherine. "She has a picture of them in Hawaii on her coffee table. She said that he's taking her to Tahiti in a few weeks. That is not what someone does with his mistress. That's what he does with his girlfriend."

"Sara, you didn't know –"

"He didn't treat me like a girlfriend," Sara said angrily, cutting Catherine off. "He didn't take me on trips. He didn't want to take me out to do the Vegas party scene. Warrick told me ages ago that I was missing out on something there. Why didn't I see it then? It's like he was trying to hide me – to hide our relationship. What he did with me – that's cheating. I'm the other woman." She spat the last two words out as if they had a bad taste.

"Sara, you didn't know," Catherine said again. "You don't count as the 'other woman' if you don't know that there's another woman in the picture. You can't blame yourself."

"Shouldn't I have known?" Sara asked. "I'm a crime scene investigator! Why couldn't I see what was going on?"

Catherine sighed. "Sara … I had no idea when Eddie was cheating on me." She gave a hollow laugh. "Grissom knew before I did." She paused. "And, I believe, so did you."

Sara's eyes widened. "Griss told you that he told me?"

"Yeah."

"Cath, I am so, so sorry."

Catherine waved her hand as if to brush it off. "It doesn't really matter much now, does it? My point is, Sara, that we can't possibly notice everything. With the hours that we keep, there is no way we can possibly know what's going on at home all the time. We just have to trust that our men are being faithful."

"I did trust Hank," Sara sighed. "And, I'm sure that Elaine trusts him, too."

"Some men aren't worthy of our trust," Catherine said wisely.

Sara sighed. "Men suck."

"Most definitely," Catherine smiled, chinking her bottle against Sara's.

"Well, I'm swearing off them for awhile."

Catherine smiled again. "Sure you are."

Sara made a face at her. "You don't believe me?"

"You don't want to make poor little Greg one very happy lab tech?" Catherine teased.

"As much as I hate to break his heart, no."

"Oh, well. I guess he'll just have to come to terms with that."

"He will," Sara acknowledged. "And, please don't even mention Nick and Warrick – they're like brothers."

Catherine smiled and nodded. She noticed that Sara didn't mention Grissom's name, but elected not to comment. "Look, I've never been a big believer in dating the people in your office," she said. "It just always seems like a bad idea."

"I suppose," Sara agreed noncommittally. "Hank is pretty close to a coworker, don't you think?"

"Definitely," Catherine said. "That's why it didn't work."

"No, it didn't work because he decided that he needed to have two girlfriends instead of one."

"Greedy bastard."

Sara finally smiled. "He is, isn't he?"

"If you ask me, Elaine's the one with the problem. Hank was with you for – what was it? A year?"

"Yeah."

"An entire year, and she never realized what was going on. And, you know he's not going to stop acting like that. He'll find someone else, and do the same thing all over again. That poor girl will stay with him forever, never knowing that he's being anything but faithful."

Sara sighed. "She's prettier than me," she said. "She doesn't smell like dead bodies."

"Sara, you listen to me," Catherine said fiercely. "She is not better than you. You are a wonderful, intelligent, passionate, driven, beautiful woman, and you deserve far better than a man who will cheat on you with the next pretty girl who walks by. Do you understand me?"

Sara smiled. "Yes, Mom."

Catherine's face relaxed into a smile. "Sorry about that ending. But, Sara, I mean it. You are far too good for someone like Hank."

"Thanks, Cath," Sara said. "For everything."

Catherine smiled. "That's what friends are for."

"No way. No way. Hank was cheating on Sara?"

"Yeah, that's what I heard."

Warrick raised his eyebrows. "State your source."

"Sanders," Nick replied.

"Oh, man, we're sinking to getting the gossip from Greg?"

"He's the source when it comes to this sort of stuff," Nick said. "Remember, he knew that Sara was dating Hank long before we did."

"True," Warrick said. "Seriously, though – Hank cheated on her?"

"Yeah," Nick said. "According to Greg, Hank never broke up with his old girlfriend, but Sara didn't know it. He sort of made her the other woman without telling her that that was how it was happening."

"Oh, that rat bastard!" Warrick exclaimed. "He can't do stuff like that to our Sara."

"I agree," Nick said. "We did promise Sara that we'd take care of him if he hurt her. Should we get to work on that?"

"We could," Warrick mused. "We need to do something. Something painful."

"Poor Sara," Nick said. "She was really into Hank."

"Yeah, she was," Warrick agreed. "I still can't believe that he cheated on her!"

"Hello, gentlemen."

Nick and Warrick both looked up as Grissom walked into the break room.

"Hey, Griss," Warrick said. "We didn't see you standing there. How much did you hear?"

"Enough to tell you that doing something painful to another person is a good way to lose your jobs," Grissom said grimly.

"Hey, Grissom, look, Sara didn't tell us about this thing with Hank cheating on her, so we don't know it for a fact … Greg told us …"

Grissom held up his hand to stop Nick's flow of words. "Let's leave the personal lives at home, shall we?"

"Right," the two younger men agreed.

"Good," Grissom said. "Now, let's get to work."

He had to get to work. He knew that if he wasn't working, he'd be looking for Hank Pettigrew himself – and he'd be looking to do far more than "something painful."

Nick and Warrick were right. No one treated his Sara like that.

No one.