A/N: I may now understand why the writers haven't brought Grissom back, the man is bloody difficult to write, fingers crossed this was alright despite that, I thought it was only fair that they both get their say and this was supposed to be a very deep, insightful, sad say but I'm not really sure. Anyway, enjoy, potenitally with tissues...

Chapter 2

Withering Nights

He sighed as he gently poured a splash of cold water into the saucer below the little plant.

He didn't know why he was still bothering to keep it alive, it had been meant for her, but it was unlikely that she would get it now...He should just have let it die, as a tribute to everything they had, or more appropriately didn't have. Just another sacrifice in the chain of destruction that had led to this.

If he was honest with himself, brutally honest, he had expected it to come to this, eventually...Mortals in a mortal world where everything is finite and nothing lasts. He had tried to stop this, to prevent the inevitable, he had asked her to marry him, back in a time when they had both been more successful at pretending that they were happy and still able to delude themselves into believing that they could find the secret to eternity and somehow last when they were not made to...

"We were never meant to have those things..." he murmured, delicately holding one of the small green leaves between his fingers as Hank padded into the room and he felt the need to say something to stop him looking at him in that way...

It was funny, now that he thought about it, the little plant habit that had started as an innocent gesture between friends, colleagues, nothing more and had developed into the only way for them to remind each other that there had been love in their relationship once, it had been the only tangible connection they had had left, providing a crumbling pillar for their marriage.

It had become more than sending pot plants and referencing ancient history, it had grown and matured with them and had become a symbol of their relationship almost. He had started planning for events such as birthdays, anniversaries and Christmases, and had grown whatever he had chosen for her from seed, the love and affection that went in to growing it and sending it across oceans meant to show that they still cared, made it a little more personal than the customary card that was sent with it, as always saying only 'From Grissom'. That summed up their relationship a little too well...

He should just let it die...

But he couldn't.

He knew he should, their relationship had been a one-way train crash since they had first bought tickets for it, they were two people who were never destined to be together, never destined to be with anyone, alone always, both of them too damaged to maintain a healthy relationship for any length of time.

And it was both of them...People would pick sides, they had to, it was human nature, whether they kept it to themselves or not, in their minds at least there would be ultimately, someone to blame, there always had to be someone to blame...

In truth, he did not blame either of them. They had both loved one another, but that was not enough...He blamed the world they lived in...They had spent more time apart when they were together than they ever had when they had been apart for all those years, dancing around one another. It was only now that he realised that they could never have been any more together than they were while working at that lab. It had been stupid of them to think that two people so defined by their work, could exist in the same way when separated from it, when their definitions had been so altered by their lives.

They had attempted to live in a fairytale for far too long. Life was not roses and rainbows, it was hard work, it was pain and frustration, passion and hate, hurt and Hell, tempered by just enough love and life to make it seem worthwhile.

They were attempting to have a marriage, a relationship on different continents and they may as well have been on different planets, they must have been to believe that this could have worked for any length of time, they had been hiding from reality because they had not wanted to accept its consequences, but soon the false little worlds of lies they had wrapped themselves up in so tightly, had become worse than the reality they had been running from. They had refused to accept that they could not make each other happy against everything and in the end, they were both miserable.

Despite this however, that decision and that phone call, had been one of the hardest things he had done in his life. On paper it was simple, too simple, they were making each other miserable, the phone tag, the missed messages, the time zones, they were having more of a relationship with their voicemails, and in these last few weeks, all of the things that had got to them about their relationship, had become excuses, excuses for why they were avoiding one another, they both knew what was happening... Logic told him that this was the right thing to do, the only thing to do...But it was then one of the rare times in his life that reminded him he was human, a distant and distracted with more than a few extremities, damaged, imperfect, emotional human being and that he didn't give a damn about logic and reason and what was the right thing to do, he gave a damn about his wife, the woman that he had loved for more than thirteen years, who he still loved, and how much this would hurt her...

As always however, the evidence won out, because the evidence had told him that, in the long run, he would hurt her more by continuing to pull strings and toy with her. He loved her, and he knew that he was slowly destroying her and he could not allow himself to do that...Something had to give, he knew that...

He had known how she would react, he knew her, but he still felt when the line went dead after her agonizing, choked, "Maybe we should..."

She knew that he was right, they were both trapped in the same pretence of marriage, keeping it up for the sake of the people who knew them and for the fact that they loved one another and still thought that somehow that would bridge the gap across the ocean, physical and emotional.

Denial was both a blessing and a curse...

He jumped and grimaced slightly at the painfully loud interruption of the ever ironic phone,

"Gil Grissom?" he said, answering automatically without bothering to check who was calling, needing the option to talk to someone that did not have four legs...

"Grissom, it's Greg..."

"What's happened?" he asked instinctively, thinking the worst because of the unexpected phone call and the usually up-beat younger man's grim tone.

"It's Sara..." he began quietly,

"Oh God no..." he said in a strangled whisper, any number of increasingly unlikely scenarios erupting into being in his mind, leaving his conscience leaving him with the horrific words she could be dead and the last thing you said to her was that you didn't want her any more, that she wasn't good enough for you...

"What-Oh, no, no, nothing like that." Greg said, hastily, realising his poor word choice,

Grissom sighed with relief, resolving to call her as soon as Greg was off the phone and fix this,

"She's fine...Physically...Emotionally she says she's fine too but...Well, I'm not sure, she told us what happened between you, I'm sorry..." he said, awkwardly, getting to the meat of the matter. Picking sides...

"You're worried she's not coping?" he murmured, concerned, but ensuring to deflect any conversation that touched on how he was coping, suddenly berating himself for not trying to get in touch with her, for not checking up on her, for doing what they both did in these situations and burying their heads in the sand, ignoring the world around them.

"I don't know...She says she fine but you know what she's like..." Did he? "The only thing that really makes me worry about her is when she says she's fine..." That was true, he shouldn't have ignored that..."Nick's gone to check up on her," Well that couldn't be good, Nick knew Sara as well, they must be worried about her if he was risking invading her personal life without invitation, "I thought you should know..." he muttered, trailing off awkwardly.

"Greg..." he said, slowly, "What's happened?" he knew that Sara would not just have spontaneously decided to sit them down over tea and biscuits and discuss her marriage, no matter how much she cared about them, the line between profession and privacy was never crossed, that meant that something else had happened to provoke this.

"How long have you got?" Greg sighed,

"As long as it takes." For her, until the end of time itself...

Once Greg had recounted the entire saga of the last few days, Grissom found himself wishing that teleportation was not a molecular impossibility...He wanted to be with her; but he was not entirely sure that she would want to be with him...

Screw it...

They were not officially divorced, she was still his wife and God help whoever tried to stand between him and her when she had been treated like this. He still cared about her, the fleeting feelings that had coursed through him in the moment when he had thought Greg was trying to tell him that something had happened to her, that he had lost her by someone else's design, told him more about himself than the months of pshychological analysis that had led to this.

His fingers found his phone, and, as if in response to his touch, it began to ring and this time, he did check the caller ID,

Sara Grissom.

A/N: Thank you all for reading, hopefully you enjoyed it, if you have a minute, I would love to know your thoughts, whatever they may be...