Chapter 3

Regret Me Not

"I was just about to call you..." he murmured quietly, surprising her by speaking first.

"Great minds and all that..." she said softly,

She made to stand up but Nick had already gotten to his feet, and wandered into the kitchen to give her privacy.

She could not believe how awkward this felt. She was sure that someone had called him. That was the only reason he would have wanted to call her or would have responded to her own call...Her money was on Greg...They had not spoken since the phone call where he had suggested they should consider a separation. They had used every excuse under the sun, work, time zones, bad signal, but that was all they were, excuses, smoke and mirrors to cover up the truth...The truth that they could not bear to attempt a thirty second phone conversation because it was just easier to pretend that it hadn't happened.

It was as though they had gone back in time, back to her first few months in Vegas, where that initial attraction from the San Francisco conference still lingered but they were both unsure of where the other's feelings lay. They had worked, they had talked, they had flirted and all the while with the uncomfortable, unsure air that clung to them both, afraid to open themselves us, afraid to share their feelings with the other in case they were not returned. Now after thirteen years of working together, seven years of being together and three of being married and they were back to that same uncertainty that had dogged them. She had hated it, and loved it at the same time, it had been part of the attraction and part of the prevention, now, she despised it, a thirty second phone call had destroyed thirteen years of their lives...

"Yes..." he said with a strained laugh, "...How are you?"

"I, I'm fine..." she replied, slowly, this time he really did laugh,

"Now I'm worried..."

"Not concerned?"

"Always..." he responded, softly, "Greg told me what happened..."

"I knew it." she breathed

"What?" he asked, surprised.

"I knew it would be Greg."

"He's worried about you, he thinks you're not coping..."

"Why? Because I was framed for murder, I appear to be taking dangerous combinations of alcohol and sleeping pills, because I've been stalked and someone has been picking through our house without my knowledge, because of a ridiculous one-night-stand or because of the breakdown of my marriage?" she sighed, suddenly catching herself, I am always over talking around you...Some things don't change...

"All of the above..." He replied, softly, knowing that they needed to discuss at least one of the many things on her list, for her sanity if nothing else.

"I'm sorry Sara, I should have checked up on you..." he began, quietly, immediately regretting his words, knowing how she would react to them.

"Why? You don't owe me anything Grissom..."

He noted the change in the way she now referred to him by his surname with a pang before saying, softly, "I didn't know I had to have a debt in order to care about you Sara..." he murmured, quietly,

"No, no I'm sorry I didn't mean that, I just..." she took a deep breath, looking towards the ceiling as though the answer to her life was scrawled across it in large, helpful letters, "I just, I, I don't know..."

"Sara, we shouldn't be doing this over the phone..." he murmured, softly, putting her out of her misery as she struggled to grasp the English language once again,

"No, no we shouldn't, but it needs done, and it needs done now, this can't wait Gil, it won't wait, and besides, there could be some benefits to doing this over the phone as opposed to face to face..."

"Really?" he said, surprised by this observation,

"I'm afraid I'll throw things..." he laughed genuinely at this,

"I can be at your apartment in an hour, if that's what you want." he told her, quietly

"What you can fly now?"

"Yes, in a plane a few hours ago...Your boss, Russell called me and told me I should come back for you..."

This surprised her, to think that they had been less than a few miles apart as opposed to a few thousand miles and still, stil the distance between them lingered...

"And what you just decided to just jump on a plane, just like that." She said, bitterly, thinking that if it was that easy they would have done that a long time ago.

"He was fairly vague, he told me that something had happened to you and if I cared I would get my ass back to Vegas immediately...You have a lot of people who care about you Sara..."

"Why didn't you just come straight here?" she whispered,

"I didn't want to do anything that would upset you...I'm sure Nick found out what happens to unexpected guests..."

It was her turn to laugh shakily at this, "I want you...I want you to come here I mean..."

True to his word Grissom arrived at their apartment in about an hour. It only struck Sara when he walked through the door what kind of state they were in if he had to ask for her permission to come home...

"Hey..."

"Hey..." she murmured,

"You look beautiful..." he told her softly, without thinking.

She did, dressed in a light, blue, summer dress, her hair hanging loosely around her face, still damp from the shower.

"But I don't look beautiful for you anymore..." she trailed off, looking at the floor as she led him wordlessly to the sofa and sat him down,

"Sara..." he began, cautiously,

"No, I'm sorry that was a stupid thing to say..." she murmured, quietly, before deciding to just bite the bullet, "How much did Greg tell you?" she asked, softly,

"Everything..."

Blood from a stone, "Define 'everything'." She said, cautiously, thinking she could see where this was going already and not sure if she wanted to let it.

"Basderic, the frame-up, how you resolved said frame up.." he paused, they were both unsure of how to proceed, eventually he decided it couldn't exactly get much worse, "Your relationship with the victim...

"Don't, don't you dare judge me..." she breathed dangerously, "I was tired of being alone, I lived my entire life that way, me, myself and I...When I was a child I couldn't talk to anyone, I didn't have anyone and that followed me everywhere, haunted me as much as any nightmare. I could never be close enough to anyone to talk to them, could never bring myself to trust someone enough to let them anywhere near me. I told myself that it was just who I was, I was a strong, independent woman and I didn't need anyone...But I wanted them..." tears were shining in her eyes but she angrily blinked them away as she continued, "Then I came to Vegas I found you I found them, I had something that I could belong to and in the end I didn't even have that...After thirteen years in this city, with these people, with you, I had no-one, I may as well have been ten years old again, hiding the bruises all over my body with no-one to tell how they got there..."

She looked away at this point, she could tell herself all she liked that the reason she couldn't trust them, the reason she couldn't talk to them was her father, because of what he had done to her, broken her long before she came to Vegas but she knew that that was not entirely true...

"I couldn't talk to anyone here either, I couldn't talk to them, how could I? How could I force them to pick sides, to choose? That wasn't fair...Russell and Finn, they 'understand' but they don't understand me or you, and I sure as Hell couldn't talk to you. Whenever I did, I didn't care, I was happy and I didn't give a damn about the times I wasn't...For that hour, hour and a half, whatever it was, I just wanted to hear your voice, I just wanted to have the chance to remind myself why I loved you and why I still did this, I didn't want to let go of that, neither of us could, we couldn't say what needed to be said because we couldn't deal with the consequences. When it came down to it, when my marriage and everything I had had fallen down around me, in a city I had known for thirteen years, I had to go and get drunk with a stranger to get a shred of human contact...And he ended up dead, regular King Midas me, story of my life..."

"Sara..."

"No, it's true, I couldn't be alone anymore, I didn't have to be alone anymore, I was stupid and selfish and pathetic, I went out looking for a good time and I found a meaningless one-night stand while Basderic found his perfect little murder victim..."

"You can't believe that Sara, after everything we've seen and everything we've done on this job, you can't think that you were in any way to blame for this..."

"No? You tell me why not? I might not have stabbed him but I got him involved in this, If I hadn't kissed him, been caught with him, if I hadn't put a target on his back in the first place-"

"Then maybe he would have been hit by a bus." He said firmly, "Sara, this is not your fault, you know that..."

"May be...But...I honestly don't know what I know and what I don't anymore I thought I knew we had something, I thought I knew that I had them that I had something but when I was standing in his apartment and he had a gun pointed at me, when he pulled the trigger, a little part of me wished that it was real, wished that he had actually shot me because then maybe I would feel something other than the nothing that's been my company these last few weeks."

She did not know what she hoped to gain from telling him this, make him guilty, make him care, she just knew that it was the truth, and it was a truth she could not share with anyone else, and they had to start being honest with one another...

"You don't mean that..." he said in a low voice, mouth dry.

"I think I do...They were all worried about me, about the apparent alcohol and sleeping pill cocktail I was taking, they thought I was hitting self-destruct again and that I was trying to drown the ruins of this relationship in nothing, numb the pain...Truth is, I haven't had to do that in a long time, I haven't felt anything in weeks, I've lost the ability to care enough to bother trying to feel pain...I can't do this anymore..." the last words came in a strangled whisper as she stared at the ceiling once again, eyes closed to he would not see the tears that threatened to fall.

"I know..."

"No, I don't think you do, I'm done Gil, it's over, it's gone, whatever we had, it's never coming back. I can't keep kidding myself that we can't make this work because we can't we can't force this into something it's not and frankly I don't want to...I love you, I do, but this this isn't a marriage, this hasn't even resembled a marriage in a long time...Relationships are about sacrifices, on both sides, but I..I can't leave what I have here in Vegas, and I won't ask you to give up what you have either because I know what happens when people start making promises they can't keep, saying that they'll work through it and they'll stay together for the sake of their daughter and that eventually leads to bitterness and hate and I, I can't do that to you Gil, I won't...If one of us has to leave behind everything they love for the person that they love, if we agree to give up who we are in order to become something the other can't love...We'll both be miserable, and I want you to be happy..."

"I know, I feel the same way, that's why I stopped this, we've been trying each other down, suffocating each other for too long...I never wanted to make you unhappy Sara, I think we can both agree on that and I know that you have been unhappy, and that I am partly to blame for that and for that I am sorry, truly, and while I understand why you're saying you can't, it surprised me..."

"Why?" she said, a little wrong-footed by this.

"You were always the fighter in this relationship, I knew I would be the one pushing for change, one way or the other, and I expected you to push back, to fight for something..."

"I don't want to fight..." she whispered, "I've seen what fighting does in a relationship, whether it's for it or in it, it never produces anything good..."

"I don't think you believe that, I think you'd like to because it would make this easier to deal with but I don't think you can..After everything that's happened in this relationship, after everything we fought for at the beginning, everything we've done for this, we may both have been in the same place during that phone call, but we both started at the same point as well and I don't think that you believe that it can end like this, what's happened in between says it can't..."

"I do..." she said, quietly, she was surprised to hear him saying this, he was right, he would be the one pushing for the relationship to move forward, whether that was a separation to free them both or something that let them live and love together, he would push for it and she would push back, terrified for anything to change, terrified to trust what he was saying, even though she knew it was true because it would mean starting again with nothing and leaving herself vulnerable to change, something she had never had a strength for.

"I don't...What if he had pulled that trigger? What if he had killed you? What if I had lost you? What would I have then?"

"You would have what you have now!" she screamed coldly, anger flaring in her chest as they both got to their feet.

"No I wouldn't, I wouldn't have anything and I can't lose you as senselessly as that bullet would have taken you from me."

"Why not? You lost me a long time ago Gil and it didn't take bullets of phone calls, it took the distance between us being too great, in every sense of the word..."

"What are you saying Sara?" he asked, taking her by the arms and holding her close to him, "Look at me," she did, " Are you telling me that you wouldn't lose anything if I died right now?"

"No, of course not! Don't twist what I'm saying Gil!" she snapped, pulling herself free, turning and taking several steps away from him, he followed,

"I don't have to twist anything, answer me, just answer me, what would you have if I was gone?"

"Nothing!" she shrieked, without thinking, becoming confused and furious, "I-"

"Exactly." He breathed, pulling her around, her back against the wall, his hands on either sides of her waist, pinning her down without ever having to touch her, "We would have nothing...I can't give up everything as easily as you can-"

"Easy! You think this is easy?" she snarled trying to push him away but he refused to move, "We don't have a choice, we would both move on-"

"No we wouldn't, we couldn't, we can't."

"We can...We have to..."

"Why? Why do we have to 'move on' to give up?"

"Because we can't keep going like this."

"Why not Sara? Why can't we just go on pretending?"

"Because it's not fair."

"Why not, we've both agreed we'll have nothing without it?"

"We have nothing now! I can't keep making you unhappy."

"Why?"

"Because I love you!"

He had been heading towards this since the beginning of the conversation and she knew why. Without ever remembering giving her body permission she found her lips pressed against his.

In that one heated argument, the first real emotion they had shown towards one another in what felt like years, it now felt like they were waking up, that they were back in the beginnings of their relationship again when the tension between them had been tangible and they had resorted to anger and passion to diffuse it, making each other jealous and angry while trying to pretend that they didn't care. The tension between them crackled like electricity but it couldn't last, it could never be more than a fleeting memory...

She broke the connection between them, closing her eyes and dipping her head. She felt his hands gently resting on her arms, locking them together. She pulled away and this time he did not stop her. When she was able to open her eyes she found that it made little difference as she still could not see him through the thin film of tears that was clouding her eyes and her judgement that she had so firmly told herself she would not let him see.

Would not let him see how much she needed him, how much she wanted him, how vulnerable she was without him, how hard she was fighting against this, even though she knew it was the only thing she had.

She began backing slowly from the room, slowly shaking her head as the forbidden tears spilled from her eyes, hands raised in front of her, to form some sort of barrier between them,

"I can't, Gil, it's over, it has to be over, I can't, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I just-" her voice caught and she found her hand pulling open the door that she threw herself from, doing the only thing that that ever felt natural to her, running, running until she could no longer run, until she had ran far enough from her own demons that they would leave her alone until she was able to start running again...

A/N: I'm experimenting a little with this story, maybe a little too much, it's not my usual style of writing and it's a little (big) bit out of my comfort zone, as a result, I would love to hear your thoughts on this, constructive criticism is always welcomed on any of the content/writing, I'd like to improve, thank you all :)