A/N: Thanks to those of you who are reading and reviewing, I really do appreciate it immensely. I'd also like to give huge thanks to ILoveJorja for being my very own personal PR machine and hopefully drumming up some interest in my little foray into the unknown. For anyone who has not yet checked out CSI Forever Online then I strongly suggest you do, they are a fabulous bunch of crazies ;) xx
A smile broke out across the mans face as he stood there watching her grappling with her reality. Sara was a logical person and while she had dabbled in the supernatural and unexplained she had always come out the other end with some kind of scientific closure. This was beyond even her understanding and still somehow she found herself accepting it like a fact read off a page. This was happening to her and she knew better than to fight against it.
She could remember how it felt to fight against death. She had been there before, more times than she would care to count and this time felt different. She had told Nick once that everyone had a time to die and that the key to surviving was to accept when it was your time and understand when it was not.
This was her time and she felt a strange sort of peace at the concept.
She did not, however, feel peace when she looked at her father. He had impacted on so much more of her life than she gave him credit for. Her childhood had simply been one step of her journey and she had been forced to carry some heavy baggage on her back since that crucial step. She thought she had buried the ghosts of her father but as she looked at the man before her she felt nothing but rage. Deep, burning rage that had been following her around for most of her terrestrial life.
"I knew you'd figure it out" He smirked. The look on his face made her skin crawl "You always were smarter than me. Welcome to heaven...or at least a part of heaven"
Sara curled her hands into fists and adjusted her footing. She was assuming a defensive posture, something she wished she had learned to use as a child but then of course she would have been too small to fend him off. That was the way he liked it.
"What do you want?" She growled through her teeth "Why are you here?"
"You mean you're not pleased to see me?" He sneered.
Sara had to admit that she had forgotten just how much he got to her. She felt like a little kid again as every fibre of her body told her to run away and hide.
"I'll never be pleased to see you" She whispered.
In her head the words had been a roar of defiance and anger but by the time she forced them to her lips they had tamed to a sigh. This had often been the case as a child with her father, she had tried to say the words but they had fallen silent on her lips. There were so many things she wished she had said to him.
Perhaps that was why in her adult life she never could stop herself from saying what was on her mind. That same defiance she had unintentionally supressed as a child in an abusive home and eventually in the care system had turned into a veritable volcano of a woman, ready to erupt at any given moment.
"So much anger Sara, that's why you're here you know. That's why you can't move on" He explained.
Sara had read research into the concept of heaven that followed theories of some kind of divine passageway into heaven. She had laughed it off as a fantasy concept at the time, an illusion created by religion to control people and also to give a little bit of peace to people in their final moments.
Sara hadn't had any final moments to speak of, she hadn't had the chance to dwell on the past as she waited on the final judgement. It had all happened so fast.
Maybe this was her chance to put to bed all the ghosts she had been harbouring and move on with a clean slate. Maybe this was her chance to start over...but first she had to face the things that tied her to her body and filled her soul with regret.
"I've been waiting for you" He explained "It feels like its been a long time"
Sara shrugged her shoulders, deciding that even if this was a dream or a hallucination of some kind that she should just go along with it. There really wasn't anything else for her to do.
"It has been a long time.." Sara mumbled.
"I've been waiting to say that I'm sorry.." He muttered.
The words seemed so foreign coming from his mouth. She had never heard him say sorry, despite the many occasions where it would have been appropriate and justified. He would skirt around the subject, he would be overly nice and buy her gifts but he would never say sorry. Sorry was a submission of guilt.
"You're not sorry and you are the last person I wanted to see here" Sara admitted.
In her mind, her afterlife would be filled with the happy memories. If she had to relive parts of her life before she could move on then this would certainly not be the part of her life she would choose to go back to.
"That's the point, I think. You have to put the bad to rest before you can move on to the good"
Sara raised an eyebrow, stunned by this sudden outburst of wisdom. She couldn't remember if he had been an intelligent man, he had put a lot of emphasis on her being a smart child but she had never wondered if he had been the source of her intellect. She took all the credit for that herself.
"Did you have some good in your life Sara?" He seemed to be hopeful she had and a wistful moment of remembrance settled over her. She soon shook it off, remembering was something she preferred not to do. As time wore on even the happy memories were too hard.
"I did..." she nodded sadly before adding "No thanks to you"
"I am sorry Sara" He began "I should have been a better father...a better husband"
Sara didn't offer him any kind of reassurance or forgiveness. She had tried many times to forgive him for what he did to her. Grissom always told her that forgiveness was key to moving on and she always told him that it was easy for someone who had nothing to forgive.
"I didn't want you to grow up like that...like I did" He continued.
Sara turned away, intending to walk away from him and spare herself from listening to his excuses. She had been naïve and trusting at one stage, she had gone through the whole rigmarole of hearing excuses and justifications just to be let down again. She had learned that there was no time in life for that and therefore she held onto the belief that she would have no time for it in the afterlife either.
Curiously she only found herself standing toe to toe with the man again, unable to escape or retreat from him or his monologue.
"My dad was real tough on my brothers and I too, I always said I would be different...I always said I would be better you know?" He laughed then, a humorless breathy laugh that confused her more than her inability to retreat.
"I remember waiting at the hospital for you to be born, I begged for a little girl. I prayed to god for the first time in my life...I thought I couldn't hurt a girl. I thought you would be safe..."
Sara was taken aback by this display of honesty. He had been taken from her before she had the chance to attach a soul to her memory of him and it struck her as strange to realise he had such thoughts. Growing up in the system broke her down to the point that she accepted it as fact that other people didn't harbour regrets like she did. They just didn't seem to suffer the same burden of conscience but as time wore on and she ventured into the adult world she began to realise that some people did have a soul and some people did care.
Just not the people she seemed to surround herself with.
"I wasn't always a bad person Sara, you know that..." He was pleading with her to remember; to recall those years she refused to bring to the forefront of her mind on days her chest felt empty and her breath lingered in the air.
"Do I?" She quirked an eyebrow, crossing her arms across her chest in a defiant manner.
"You do...Think" He met her eye attempting to draw the honesty from her.
"I don't want to" Sara replied spitefully not giving away her weakness. She had learnt at a young age that showing vulnerability didn't get you anywhere but hurt.
"You used to say that to me when I asked you questions while we read stories" He smiled. It was one she recognised. Despite her best attempts it was an image she had locked up and kept at the back of her mind and suddenly she was flooded with memories. Memories of holding his hand as she skipped through rock pools, settling into his lap to read stories and watching the stars on the roof when she was old enough to climb past the window sill. That was before it all got to him, before the drugs and alcohol invaded his system, before her mother wore him down.
"That didn't last... It wasn't too long before the whiskey won..." She stated taking a step towards him. "So go ahead tell me what a wonderful father you were... Remind me that I deserved what I got"
"I wasn't. And you didn't" He looked defeated. "I was a terrible father and you didn't deserve any of those things but I...We can't take life back... it happened..."
"And what I'm supposed to just let it go?" Sara spat at her father.
"No... It, all of it, made you who you are..." He paused. "And Sara you're a wonderful person..."