AN: First of all, I want to thank all of you for the wonderful feedback on the final chapter of 'Buddyflies' – it really blew my mind! I don't know if it was my own subtle hinting that this was my favorite of my fics at the moment, but option 2 (which is this story) got the most votes, so here we go
Full disclosure – this story came to me in a dream, I know that sounds weird… Actually, the exact scene from my dream is not in the final fic, or it's been reworked into something new, basically, because it was, well, really weird, but the bones of that scene, and the story at large, are still there
I was in the middle of the sabbatical episodes of season 7 when I started working on this, which probably contributed to the inspiration, so it goes AU after 'Leaving Las Vegas', basically, and starts around the beginning of season 10, time wise. It being AU, some things that happened on the show won't have happened here. It might be a little confusing at times, but I think you'll figure it out as we go! There will be flashbacks here and there, or people talking about what has happened, to clarify some things, but this is all going to be from Sara's perspective, so we will be finding out about a lot of stuff along with her
The title of the fic is from the song 'Please Forgive Me' by Bryan Adams
Oh, and rating is for later chapters!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything relating to CSI
Chapter 1
Sara lets out a deep breath as she leans back in her chair. It's been a loooong shift.
"You look about as tired as I feel."
She looks up when Riley slides into the seat next to her. "Bad case?"
"Nick made me dumpster dive," she groans.
"So that's what the smell is?" An elbow in Sara's side makes her snort. "No, it's not bad, honestly.
"What's your excuse?" Riley asks. "You had Greg, couldn't you get him to do the grunt work?"
Sara shrugs. "Scene was out by Lake Mead, the terrain was awful, and someone found what we believe are the vic's clothes eight miles away, so we had to trek all the way there to make sure we didn't miss anything. I'm pretty sure my blisters have blisters."
"OK, I'll take my dumpster over that," Riley admits.
"Over what?" Warrick asks as he, Nick, and Greg enter the break room.
"Over our scene," Sara explains.
"What, you didn't enjoy hiking all shift? It was free exercise with lovely company!" Greg says with a mischievous glint in his eye, and she kicks him under the table. "Ow!"
"I'd take either of your cases over my bug-infested decomp," Warrick notes. "Plus, Cath abandoned me with the evidence as soon as we got back, something with Ecklie."
"I bet she'll be in a good mood then," Greg mumbles.
"As a matter of fact, I am." They all look up at Catherine in the doorway. "Are you trying to decide who had the worst case tonight?" she asks, stepping into the room.
"Pretty much," Riley confirms. "I think you might have us all beat if you had to spend the last few hours with Ecklie, though."
A chuckle spreads through the room at that.
"Trust me, I hate his little meetings as much as the rest of you," Catherine says. "But in this case, he actually had some good news."
Sara exchanges an incredulous look with Nick. "Oh, yeah?"
"Yup. I think you'll be happy to hear that you'll get some help on your case tonight, Rick."
Warrick frowns at that. "Are we bringing in someone?"
"A consultant, yeah. An entomologist, in fact."
The word makes Sara's heart rate pick up, but if it was him, Catherine would just come out and say it, wouldn't she?
Oh, who is she trying to kid – of course she would draw it out.
"Who?" Nick asks.
The smile on Catherine's face gives Sara a split-second warning, but it's not enough.
"Grissom."
Her ears start ringing and her vision goes blurry, and for a moment, she thinks she might pass out. But she doesn't, of course, because she's not a spurned heroine from an eighteenth-century romance novel.
Her hearing returns in time to hear Catherine answer a question, she assumes.
"No, he's not coming back to the lab full time. He's got a teaching position at the university, but he actually called Ecklie up to ask if he could help out as a consultant on cases involving bugs, so I assume he's missed it."
Missed it. He's missed the job. Of course.
She tunes out the room, focusing on remembering how to breathe, and almost jumps when a hand lands on her shoulder.
"You OK?" Greg asks when she looks up, and she realizes that everyone else has cleared out. She manages to nod, and he snorts. "Yeah, I don't believe that for a second. Come on – breakfast from Franks at your place."
She considers objecting, but honestly, she doesn't have the energy.
He sends her on ahead, so she picks up Hank on the way and gets him settled in the kitchen with his own breakfast. When Greg shows up twenty minutes later with food, she's got the kitchen island set for them, and after he's distributed their food, he picks up the subject.
"So, I don't even need to ask if you knew about this, it was pretty obvious from your reaction that you had no idea."
"Nope," Sara confirms, reaching for her coffee.
"Have you talked to him at all, since…"
She shakes her head. "Not since I tried to talk him out of signing over the townhouse to me."
"Yeah, well, considering how he treated you, I always thought that was the least he could do, not force you out of your home."
She supposes he has a point. "Yeah, at least I got a place to live and a dog out of it…"
She wasn't sure if she could stay, at first. There were just too many memories everywhere. But after the movers packed up everything Grissom wanted shipped, she stood in the middle of the mostly empty living room and just decided she would. Hank was at home here, and so was she. She had already decided that she wasn't leaving Las Vegas – he might have gotten her to move there, but he wasn't going to run her out of the city too – and she just didn't want to move for the second time in a few months.
Since Grissom owned the place outright, she doesn't have a mortgage and has been able to completely redo the place. In the last two years, she's painted every single wall, replaced all the remaining furniture as well as rugs and curtains and artwork, refurbished the bathroom and even painted the kitchen cabinets. She's pretty sure Grissom wouldn't even recognize the place, if he stopped by.
The fact that he could, theoretically, do that now is just a little overwhelming.
"So, how are you going to play this?" Greg asks, pulling her back to the present.
Sara sighs. "I honestly have no idea. If I could just… decide to not react to him, I would, but…"
"You still love him," he cuts her off.
She could deny it, but really, what's the point? "Yeah."
"Well, you know I'll have your back," he offers. "Whatever you need, just let me know. Do you want me to give him the cold shoulder? Done. Actually, I might do that anyway. Key his car? You got it. Tell him he's a complete asshole who doesn't deserve to even breathe the same air as you? I'm your man."
As was no doubt his goal, Sara's smiling by the time he finishes talking. "No, Greg, I don't want to ruin your relationship with him."
"Yeah, well, you're not – he did that when he left."
Hank, who's finally finished his own food and realized that one of his favorite humans is here, comes ambling up to the island, happily putting his head in Greg's lap.
"Look, things are already going to be awkward enough," she reasons. "Don't make it worse by… holding some grudge, OK?"
Greg scratches Hank behind his ears for a long moment before he responds. "I won't call him out on anything, OK? That's the best I can do, because I'm not just going to let him pick up where he left off and pretend everything's fine."
She supposes it's the best she's going to get. "Yeah, I didn't think you would."
"Are you going to be able to work with him?"
"I don't know. I guess I'll find out soon enough." There aren't bug related cases all the time, but there are enough she knows she won't be able to avoid him in the long run.
And if she's completely honest with herself, she doesn't want to.
How pathetic is that?
"You could ask Catherine to not assign you any of the cases he'll be consulting on," Greg suggests.
"She'd ask why."
"So tell her." At Sara's shocked expression, he shrugs. "What's the worst that can happen? It's years in the past, even if she did go to Ecklie, which you know she won't. And, honestly? I'm not sure she would even be surprised. You were… a mess after he left, I'm pretty sure she picked up on it and connected at least some of the dots. Maybe not all the way to long-term relationship, living together and sharing a dog, but probably past it being just a one-sided crush."
It's probably true. Looking back, there was more than one time when Catherine gave her concerned looks, or asked how she was. And it might not even be just Catherine – the whole team were very careful not to talk about Grissom after he left. At the time – when she even thought about it, which wasn't very often, since she was busy trying to hold it together and not let anyone see how badly she was actually hurting – she figured everyone was upset about the sudden disappearance and didn't want to talk about it, but she definitely walked into the break room or one of the labs more than once and noticed the conversation quickly ending.
"Tell me the truth," she says, fixing Greg with her best 'do not even think about sparing my feelings' look. "Do the guys know?"
"Warrick suspects," he admits, giving her a sheepish smile. "He asked outright a few months after Grissom left. I didn't confirm his suspicions! But I told him it wasn't my place and that he should talk to you, which I assume he never did, so he could probably read between the lines. Nick's never said anything, though, so I don't think he knows."
Well, she supposes it could be worse.
"Seriously, if you don't want to work with him, talk to Catherine," Greg repeats. "You guys are tight now, right? And I know she was pissed back then too; I have a hard time believing she's just going to forgive him for everything because he's suddenly back in town."
Sara snorts – pissed might be the understatement of the century.
Nick and Warrick were having some sort of serious conversation when Sara entered the break room, but both went silent when they spotted her.
"What's up, guys?"
They exchanged a look. "All I'm saying is that I called it," Nick says. "Ask Cath – I told her when we were up in Larkston."
"Called what?" Sara asked, but before either of them had a chance to respond, Catherine breezed into the room.
"I assume Nick's been spreading the news," she said, voice clipped. "I'm working on Ecklie, trying to get him to hire someone, but you know how tight he holds onto that budget, so we should probably assume we'll be short for a while after Keppler moves to days."
Sara frowned. "What do you mean? I thought he was supposed to stay until Grissom got back?"
"He was," Catherine confirmed. "But that was before our dear supervisor decided to extend his sabbatical."
"What are you talking about?"
The words made no sense – Grissom wouldn't just decide to stay longer without even discussing it with her, would he? Sure, they hadn't talked in almost a week, between his classes and her case load, but still.
"He called Ecklie earlier today – they offered him a position until the end of the spring semester, and apparently, he decided to take it."
"Mark my words – before the semester is over, he'll quit altogether," Nick said, but Sara barely heard him.
The conversation continued around her, but she didn't even notice.
"Sara!"
The loud voice pulled her back to the present and she found Catherine frowning at her. The others had apparently left, because they were alone in the room. "Sorry, what?"
"Are you OK? You really spaced out there for a while."
She put on what she hoped was a convincing smile. "Yeah, just… surprised, you know."
Catherine snorted. "You and me both."
"Ecklie didn't say anything else? Just that he was offered an extended position?" she asked, trying to pry without sounding too eager.
"Yeah, that's it. But trust me, I am going to call Gil and give him a piece of my mind as soon as I can. Taking off like that, not even giving me a heads up. You know, we've been friends for a long time, and God knows he's pissed me off plenty, but this definitely takes the cake."
"I think I'll see how things work out," Sara says as she returns to the present. "Like you said, Catherine and I are pretty good right now, so if she did figure it out, I assume she'll try to keep us from working together if she can."
"Probably, yeah," Greg assents. "Then again, she might be limited to putting him with Riley if she's sticking with people who aren't pissed at him."
She has to snort at that. "True."
Sara's not sure how much sleep she gets, but it's not much. Her brain keeps coming up with different scenarios, things she might say to Grissom when she sees him again, entire conversations that will, of course, be of absolutely no use in real life since she has no control over his side of them.
But tell that to her over-active imagination.
She finally gives up on sleep around four in the afternoon, and decides to clean the house – if she's not sleeping anyway, she might as well be productive. While she forces down some left-over Thai takeout for dinner, she debates the pros and cons of going in to work early. On the one hand, she hates surprises, so she would prefer being there before he arrives, but on the other hand, she can't actually imagine anything worse than sitting around the break room just waiting for him to show up.
So as a compromise, she sticks to her usual schedule and arrives at the lab about an hour before shift starts.
And the first thing she sees is the back of her former… whatever, as Conrad Ecklie leads him down the corridor towards his office.
"Excuse me."
The words, along with someone brushing by her, makes Sara realize that she just froze in the middle of the corridor. She also realizes that she stopped breathing for a moment, so she sucks in a deep breath, then heads in the other direction towards the locker room.
She's waiting for results from DNA, so she lingers in the lab waiting for shift to start, hoping Grissom won't just go wandering around the building. Five minutes before she's officially on the clock, she finally makes her way to the break room.
Everyone's there except Catherine and Grissom, and Sara takes a seat next to Greg. He squeezes her hand under the table, checking in, and she offers a smile she knows won't convince him. But it's the best she can do at the moment.
Grissom's voice precedes him down the corridor, so she has a moment to collect herself before he appears. Not that it helps.
She meets his eyes for a brief second before quickly looking away, focusing somewhere around Catherine's shoulder. She's apparently decided that he's going to take the lead, because the room is quiet for a long moment before he clears his throat.
"Well, this isn't awkward at all."
It draws chuckles from Nick and Warrick, and Catherine snorts. "Good start, Gil."
"Sorry, just…" He sighs. "I wasn't expecting to be welcomed back with open arms, but it's still really good to be back. I've… missed this, missed all of you. I hope to get to talk to everyone at some point, so we can… maybe try to put the past behind us and hopefully be able to get back to some sort of… good working relationship, but I will defer to you how and when you want to do that. I'm not here to make anyone uncomfortable, so if you feel like you can't work with me for the time being, I understand that. Just let Catherine know and… no hard feelings."
Sara feels his eyes flash to her now and then during his little speech, but she refuses to meet them. She assumes most of his words are for her benefit, though she can imagine Greg is shooting daggers, so maybe Grissom's realizing he burned more than one bridge leaving the way he did.
"OK, with that out of the way…" Catherine takes over when he goes silent. "Riley's off today – Nick, do you need any help with the case you two were working on yesterday?"
Sara's relieved to be able to turn her focus to Nick across the table. "No, I'm just waiting on DNA and ballistics to get back to me. If we get a match, I'll get an arrest warrant and go from there."
"Good. Greg, Sara – you're still working on your Jane Doe from Lake Mead."
"Yup, we're waiting for DNA as well, and we have some stuff with Trace," Greg quickly reports. "We're probably in for a night with the missing persons' database, though, since we don't have an ID yet."
"That sounds good. Luckily, it's a quiet night so far – I'm heading out for a sexual assault a block from Freemont, but that's the only thing that's come in yet. Warrick, you're working the timeline for your decomp, right?"
"Right. I've got the bugs collected, but yeah, a bit of a hand with establishing the timeline would be good." He flashes a smile Grissom's way.
"That's what I'm here for," he replies.
"Great, that's it," Catherine says. "Sara, Greg, if something else comes in, I'll probably need to send one of you out on it, anyone got a preference?"
"I guess I can take one for the team and suffer the tedium of scrolling through the database," Greg offers, thinking – correctly – that Sara would prefer being out of the lab if possible.
"Great, then I'll call Sara. OK, people, get going."
Sara remains in her seat until Warrick's gotten to his feet and guided Grissom down the corridor. When she gets up, Catherine's lingering in the doorway.
"You OK?" she asks quietly when Sara reaches her, and she shrugs. "Yeah, I don't blame you. Just let me know if… well."
"I will," Sara promises, squeezing Catherine's hand briefly. "Thanks."
Unfortunately, the night remains quiet, so she's stuck in the lab. Luckily, she doesn't see Grissom again since Warrick's got his work set up in a layout room at the other end of the lab.
A little after three in the morning, Greg pushes away from the computer he's been using and rubs his eyes. "OK, my eyes are starting to cross – food break?"
The last thing Sara wants to do is go to the break room, but she's learned that there's no point in arguing with Greg's seemingly casual suggestions of getting something to eat. "Yeah, sure."
Her heart rate increases with each step she takes towards the break room, and by the time they round the last corner, it's hammering in her chest. When she sees Warrick seated at the table by himself, though, it slows a little.
"Hey, where's your buddy?" Greg asks as they join him.
"He left for the night," Warrick replies, and it's almost anti-climactic. It's not like she wanted to see him again, but she kind of thought that she would.
And, OK, maybe she did want to see him again. A little.
"Seriously?" Greg snorts. "Well, nice of him to make a guest appearance."
"He's just consulting these days, remember?" Warrick says pointedly. "We finished the timeline, so his work was done. And he has a class at ten, I assume he wanted to get some sleep before that."
Greg doesn't respond, just goes to open the fridge. "Which one's yours, Sara?"
She actually has to think for a moment. "Tuna salad sandwich," she then replies.
He rummages around for a while. "One tuna salad sandwich coming up. And… my carefully prepared lunch is apparently still sitting in the fridge at home."
Warrick snorts. "Tough break, man."
Greg sighs. "I guess it's the old vending machine for Greg."
He hands over Sara's sandwich before leaving the room, and she peels back the plastic wrapping.
"You doing OK?"
Warrick's voice makes her look up, and she finds his concerned eyes fixed on her.
Again, she shrugs. "I guess."
He nods thoughtfully. "I know that I don't know what happened back then, and I'm not trying to make excuses for him or anything, but… I have a feeling he's really been beating himself up. Still is."
"Really? Well, that just makes everything better, doesn't it?" she snaps back.
"That's not what I'm saying, and I think you know that." His reasonable tone makes her bristle, but before she can say anything else, he continues. "I just… it's so obvious that he still… cares about you. A lot. I'm not asking you to just forgive him without any kind of explanation, but I also don't want you to… miss out on something good just because you're holding a grudge."
She doesn't know quite what to say to that, but luckily she's saved from trying to come up with something by Greg's return.
It does make her think, though. As much as she hates to admit it.
AN: I know there must be a lot of confusion after this first chapter, and I'm sorry. I promise, things will become clear eventually – some of it even in the next chapter – but like I said, this is all going to be from Sara's perspective, so we will be learning what happened along with her
