A/N: I posted two chapters today. Be sure to read chapter 14 first.
Chapter 15
Gil had stepped out to take a phone call while she paid for their breakfast. He'd been trying so hard that it filled her heart up. All his effort to reassure her, his willingness to carry all her burdens on his shoulders, and the comfort that he tried to emit towards her to ease her fears hadn't gone unnoticed. If there was one thing that she loved about him it was that he truly was the one person on earth she could always rely on. It took him awhile to get his head up out of his work, but once he did, it hadn't been hard for him to make her his whole world.
Truth be told, that scared her a little. She didn't want that world to come crashing down upon his head with the perpetrator who'd betrayed him being the one who'd built it. His words were sitting heavy upon her heart right along with everything else. He was scared of losing her, of her leaving him and breaking his heart. She'd told him that she would never do that, and she'd gone and wrote him a goodbye letter. She felt like the damn bad guy. He wouldn't see it that way. He would blame himself, just as he'd already done.
He thought he was moving too fast with the proposal and moving in together. They'd gotten a dog. Life was speeding along all around her while she felt the ground sinking. He hadn't meant to make her feel that way, she knew, but under that was a heart that was breaking.
She could feel it because her heart was breaking right along with his. Everything was hurting, breaking, and she didn't know how to mend any of it. She didn't know how to fix them, or herself, but she was willing to try. The first thing she had to do was let it go. Let all the uncertainty fade into the darkness that seemed to settle around the peripheral edges of the world they'd built with one another. Every relationship was an uncertainty; that was what made them risky but also worthwhile.
Trying to push everything down, she pushed open the door and heard Gil's voice say, "It's not necessary," into the phone. His head was turned, eyes roaming up the steep incline of Filbert Street as a woman was navigating a baby stroller down towards the corner where he stood.
For a moment, she took a deep breath in and then let it out as she looked up and around at the clear blue sky. The breeze was cool with a hint of ocean water and not a cloud in sight. It was going to be a beautiful day, yet the ground she stood on still seemed like quicksand. Everything inside was tense and numb, unwilling to move for fear that with each step the ground would get deeper, the more she'd have to fight and struggle, until it devoured her completely.
"I'm not arguing against a cross-jurisdiction collaboration, Jane—"
Jane. He was talking with Jane Snyder, and they were on a first name basis. That was interesting. Gil hardly broke from formality with respected colleagues. She should have been Doctor Snyder. She wondered if Jane asked Gil to call her by her first name. They had spent hours together the day before working on reconstructing the facial features of the John Doe in order to properly identify him as the real Nathan Cole. Hours, side-by-side, talking and working. He called her Jane.
Gil's voice cut through the sudden surge of jealousy as he said, "He's no longer a crime scene investigator—"
Who were they talking about? There was a troubling unease in the way Gil stood. His voice was sharp and curt. He stood straight, his shoulders tense, and his hand kept clenching and unclenching at his side. His sharp blue eyes were fixated on the mother with the stroller as if any minute he was going to have to help her, but it never happened. The women arrived at the corner and pushed the stroller between the two of them.
Gil turned, his eyes still watching the mother and child, and the moment they passed between them, his eyes stopped on hers. In that split second it took him to realize she was standing behind him, she'd seen the confusion in his eyes, like he hadn't recognized her. Then it was gone as clarity softened the sharp edge he'd been on. Again, she was reminded how much power she held over him. His whole world shifted at just the sight of her. He was less angry and tense as a soft smile appeared on his face.
She pulled out her sunglasses and slipped them on before giving him the same soft smile as if that was all it took to make things better. And maybe it would. Just as she changed his whole world, he also changed hers. In change was where growth was possible. This was needed, she had to remind herself. She couldn't do this alone despite thinking she couldn't do it any other way. She thought she would drag him down with her if she stayed in Las Vegas, but she'd been falling since leaving because she had no safety net. Gil was her safety net. When her ground was quicksand, his was as solid as a rock.
He closed the short distance between them, wrapped his arm around her waist. She leaned into him and breathed in his scent. Holding her to him, he spoke into the phone, "Then, I guess we'll be seeing the two of you in Las Vegas…Yeah, you too."
Once the phone was put away, she asked, "Who's coming to Las Vegas?"
Rubbing her back, he told her, "Dr. Snyder and Doug Wilson. He was the lead on that John Doe case."
That explained his anger and the unease she'd felt. Gil had been trying to keep Doug as far away for this as possible, away from her, but it hadn't worked. She didn't know if it was solely due to the fact that Gil didn't like Doug, or something else. It could have been jealousy, but she'd never know Gil to be jealous.
"Does that make you jealous?"
He peered down at her as his brows knitted. "Why would it?"
"Have you ever been jealous?"
He thought about it for a brief moment then shrugged. "When I was younger. Not so much anymore."
"Why not?"
"There's no reason for it." Gil was still eying her, confused as to why she'd questioned him. If he hadn't been jealous, then what was it? "What?"
"You appeared quite jealous when you met Doug."
He almost grimaced but caught himself. Shaking his head, he said, "It wasn't jealousy. Maybe a little possessiveness came over me—"
"Isn't that the same thing?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess they do stem from the same place but—I wasn't jealous of Doug, Sara. I saw your fear of him, and…it made me fear him. I wanted to protect you."
He said it so effortlessly because he didn't have to think about something that he'd believed so deeply. She also respected Gil, and trusted him…so why had jealousy rocked her body and infected her mind at the sound of Jane's name coming out of his mouth? It was absurd, but it had been there. It wasn't him, she told herself again. It was one of the reasons why she had to leave.
She was afraid of what was burning deep inside, ready to explode, and catching Gil in the crossfire. And it already started, hadn't it? She feared Doug. Gil felt her fear, internalized it, and turned it outward towards Doug as well. She'd put that fear into him.
"I'm jealous."
He wrinkled his head in confusion, shook it as he tried to make sense of what she'd said. "Who are you jealous of?"
"Jane."
"Doctor Snyder?"
"You called her Jane on the phone."
He thought back and frowned before smirking slightly, saying, "I also call Catherine by her first name—"
"It's not the same. At least, it doesn't feel the same. I just…I wanted you to know that, since she's meeting us in Vegas."
He gave a nod but didn't say anything. Without saying another word about it, she took his offered hand as they started walking back to the hotel. "We'll pack and get on the road. I want to be back in Vegas before the graveyard shift starts."
Back to Las Vegas and back to work. With every step she felt a looming dark cloud over her head despite feeling the sun's heat on her face. She didn't know if it was due to the job itself or the fact that her brother was possibly there killing people.
It was probably both.
He was driving. The world outside passed by Gil's vision in one long blurred streak through the reflection of his sunglasses. His mind was elsewhere. He'd been trying to hold onto it since Sara had left Vegas, but now he only felt as if he was grasping at straws. It almost felt like they were back to normal, but he knew they weren't.
It was a temporary fix to a bigger problem. They weren't back to normal, and he didn't want them to be because what he'd thought was normal hadn't been. There must have been trouble in their relationship before that he hadn't seen, and there had been. He knew that now. He could look back and see the holes, see the problems, and all the warning signs.
Like Sara's jealousy. It'd been there before. Appearing around any woman who seemed to gravitate into his personal space. She still didn't like Sofia and his continued support and friendship with Heather didn't exist without uncertainty and a few follow up questions. She told him that it wasn't him she didn't trust, but her.
The thing about Heather that he's always known was that she never loved him and never would, not at least in any romantic way. They crossed that road a long time ago. And he thought Sara understood but apparently, she didn't.
Maybe it was because Sara didn't really have any friends of her own, other than him. And they were lovers. Maybe she thought two people couldn't be friends without being lovers? Or that former lovers could no longer be friends?
But those weren't the only things running through his head. He hadn't lied to Sara, but he hadn't told her the entire truth either. He didn't tell her that Doug had confronted him. It'd been at the restaurant, in the restroom. The words ran over in his mind, clouding it with a darkness he hadn't felt in a very long time.
Washing his hands, he heard the door open and saw in the mirror Doug Wilson. He wondered if his appearance at the restaurant had been as accidental as he'd let it on to be. In fact, he knew it wasn't. He knew Doug was lying.
Doug smiled. "Gil," he said as he came up beside him. "Just the man I wanted to see."
In the mirror, he watched him. He turned off the water and grabbed a couple paper towels from this dispenser.
"I wanted to apologize if I did anything. Caused a riff. That wasn't my intention."
He kept his eyes on him but still didn't say anything as he dried his hands without turning around. In his chest was what felt like a tightly clenched fist. It pressed against his ribs, threatening to punch through his body and out. If he turned around and confronted the man that welled that fear inside his body, he'd punch him. It wasn't a theory, but a fact.
"I'm not trying to come between you two," Doug continued his lies. "But I have to let you know that the first thing she did when she got here was ask Jane about me."
The lies stopped. He heard it in the shift of tone and saw it in his eyes. That was no lie, but the truth. Sara asked about Doug?
"I don't know why, but I can't help but think it's because she never forgot me. Then I see her ignoring your calls…I felt sorry for you."
Again, nothing but the truth. He tried to steady himself as he focused on the task of drying his hands. It wasn't working. On the inside, he was shaking with fear and anger.
"She did the same to me six years ago. She left me too. She ignored my calls after leaving in the dead of night without any explanation. At first, I was angry. Then I realized that I dodged a bullet." He placed a hand on his shoulder.
He flinched out of fear. He tried not to let it show but it was in the mirror. He saw it. The ripple effect in the glass as it waved and then cracked.
"I guess you're the one who caught it." Doug released his shoulder, washed his hands, and then walked away.
He let out the breath he'd been holding, gripped the counter, and closed his eyes as he pushed the fear away. But the fear never did learn how to leave; not completely. It was always there under the surface and hidden away deep inside. Opening his eyes, he stared at himself and tried to see something other than the fear. As he searched, a drip of water fell from the faucet.
Drip…
It dropped down the drain.
…Drip…
Then another drip fell from the ceiling and slid down the glass.
…Drip…drip…
He glanced up and saw all the tiny drops of water above him. The ceiling was drooping, threatening to collapse and drown him in the water that dripped down all around him. The walls bulged as more water leaked and seeped from the creaks that broke from the pressure.
…drip…drip…drip…drip…
Returning his eyes to his reflection, he heard a voice. Lecter's voice, as he said, "I imagine what you see and learn touches everything else in your—"
He clenched his eyes shut as he tried to push that voice down but the moment he was left in the dark, he appeared. In the void, sitting in his therapist's chair, was Lecter. His eyes watching him as he fought to control his breathing as it started to pour down rain all around him.
Lecter finished his sentence as he said, "—mind. Your values and decency are present yet shocked at your associations, appalled at your dreams. There are no forts in the bone arena of your skull for things you love."
"Stop psychoanalyzing me. You know I don't like it."
"Can't help it. It's in my nature as it's in yours. I told you we're the same, and observing is what we do. I can't shut it off any more than you can. I observe you; you observe me. And in each other's eyes, we see who we really are. I see you, Will. Can you?"
He was soaked. The rain drenched him to his bones as he started to shake and shiver from the cold wetness of the water. Blinking back the droplets on his eyelashes, he looked up into the nothingness of the void and saw the water raining down upon him.
"Am I the one observing you now?"
He shook his head. No. Lecter wasn't the one observing him now. Through Lecter's eyes, he was seeing himself standing in the rain. He'd turned the high-powered perception around and was taking a good long hard look at himself, just like Lecter had asked him to do all those months ago.
This was the result. This was his reflection.
"Perception is a tool pointed at both ends. That's a dangerous gift to have, Will. I tried to warn you."
"Warn me of what?"
"Hic sunt dracones. Here be Dragons. Now that you've let yours out of the proverbial box, I wonder what's going to happen next. Does madness await you?"
"It already happened. I stopped you," he said as he opened his eyes and glared over at Lecter seated in the chair.
"Yes, but who's going to stop you." Lecter stood and took a step towards him. "Did you want to kill me?"
"I wanted to stop you."
"But you thought about it. Yes?"
He could lie to himself, but there was no point. He knew the truth. "Yes, I've thought about it."
"And?"
He remembered standing in Lecter's chateau, gun in hand, aimed at his back. The bullet he designed specifically for that occasion. Instant stop. It broke his spine. One bullet was all it took to bring down Hannibal Lecter. "And…I'm still not entirely sure that wasn't my intention. It still could've killed you. And—"
"And you would have enjoyed it."
"And you would have forced my hand. You would've made me."
"But I wouldn't have made you enjoy it. That would've been your own doing. Relishing in your own wickedness. Tisk-tisk. What a naughty boy you've been, thinking about enjoying killing."
"But I didn't. I told you I didn't want your life."
"Not mine. No. How about his life? This masked Casanova? This Sun God? What about them?"
He shook his head. He didn't know. He hadn't dreamed of killing them, yet.
"You think you can open the Pandora's Box of your mind and then shut it without any consequences? Is the box even shut? It still appears to be wide open from where I'm standing. Your dreams and demons are running rampant and free throughout the streets of Las Vegas and through the halls of your mind. Seen any wolves running around trying to catch that fox as snakes slither about? I told you what I thought of you. You're the mongoose. So why aren't you killing any? Isn't that what you do? It's so easy, remember. Just snap their spine, like you snapped mine."
"Those snakes aren't real."
"Do you even know what's real anymore, Will?"
The rain wasn't real. This void wasn't real.
"If none of this were real, how can we exist here? It seems pretty real to me."
It was hard to breathe. He had to escape. He had to get away. Had to hide. This was where he hid. It's always been his mind that was his refuge. His safe place. Ever since—
Bang!
A thunderclap of a gunshot crack over his head. His eyes jerked open. "Proverbial box," he said as if he were out of breath. And he was. It was so hard to breathe. Was he drowning?
Lecter smiled before walking around him, in between the raindrops. Not a single one landed on him. "Imagine the world you know it to be inside of a box…"
"Put everything in it," he said, picking up where Lecter left off. "From the morals you live by to the clothes you wear. All your thoughts and dreams…It's said that astronauts who have gone to space, once they get up there and look back at the earth, they're changed people. The world they thought they knew becomes something else entirely. Just a speck in the universe."
"You use the phrase 'thinking outside the box' in order to get your mind to move past your limitations. Beyond the walls of your mind. But how can you possibly think outside your box if that's all you know? You're limited to your own experiences, your own knowledge. It's ludicrous to think otherwise. As for you, dear Will, you opened a box you never should have opened. You peeked inside it and your world, like for those astronauts, was forever changed." He spread his arms out and said, "This is it, dear boy. Welcome to your new world. A dark void. You didn't want a box of confinement. No, you wanted a world with no borders and no walls. Emptiness. It's very lonely, Will. Cold. There is no place here for the things you love."
"This was a therapy session," he said in understanding. He remembered now. It'd been after Lecter told him that they were going into his past. Into his darkness. He hadn't remembered the sessions at all because Lecter had put him under hypnosis. What he did remember was the talk of the 'proverbial box' right before Lecter put him under. "You're why I can't remember."
The rain kept pouring and felt himself start to become it. He looked at his hand and saw the rainwater dripping from his fingertips as if it was his own existence pouring out of him.
"How does that make you feel?"
"Are we really doing this right now? A therapy session?"
"Words are living things. They have personality, point of view, and agenda. Give what you're feeling personality."
He took a moment to consider how he felt. All the rain pouring, splashing into him as if he were the body of water collecting all the droplets of water. "I feel like I'm spilling over. Droplets of me, spilling out all over the place, forming their own separate puddles." He was falling apart. Tears filled his eyes. "What's happening to me, Hannibal?"
"You tell me. Do you feel alive, Will?"
He shook his head slightly. Meeting Lecter's blue eyes with that speck of maroon, he told him, "I feel like I'm fading."
"Therapy only works when we have a genuine desire to know ourselves as we are. Not as we would like to be." Lecter kept walking in circles around him, between the raindrops. "The work we do here will create a sense of stability. Stability will be good for you."
"Stability requires a strong foundation, and I'm afraid that my moorings are built on sand."
Lecter stopped in front of him as the rain was no longer pouring on top of his head along both sides of them. Lecter had parted the rain like Moses parting the Red Sea. "You're getting biblical on me, Will. Isn't there a passage warning of things like this? Divination?"
"This isn't that. This isn't magic."
"Sure it is. I already told you in that poem by Lord Byron. Power of thought. Magic of the mind. How else can we be having this conversation?"
"You're not really here. This isn't real."
"Everything you believe is real. All you see. All you feel. All you dream. It's all real. And so am I."
He shook his head as the rain turned to sand. Reaching his hand out, he felt the sand as it piled into his palm. It did feel quite real.
"The power of thought has people growing cancer inside their own bodies and yet you think you can't exist within space and time itself. Empirical science. The truth is right in front of your face."
He dropped the sand as he said, "Intuition. Empathy. Memory. And an overactive imagination. That's what this is. A perception, like sand in an hourglass representing time. I'm creating images from memory by making connections that represent thoughts and concepts visually. In other words, you're only a manifestation symbolizing—"
"The devil on your shoulder, I'm sure." Lecter smiled. "Memories, now there's an interesting subject. I read that they change every time we access them. If true, how can you be so certain of who you really are, or what you've actually done? You've still never answered my question."
"Which is?" he asked.
"Who are you really, wanderer? I know, but do you?"
"How can I, when you're the reason why a shadow comes over my mind every time I try to remember my childhood. You've blocked it out so I can't. What did you do to me?"
"Memory gives moments immortality, but forgetfulness promotes a healthy mind." Lecter took a step backwards, towards the falling sand. "All I ever wanted to do was help you."
"What you did to me is in my head, and I will find it. I'm going to remember."
"As Shakespeare wrote, 'When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul'." Lecter walked back through the sand, once again never getting hit from a single grain. "I'm always rooting for you, Will," he spoke before disappearing into the dark.
Once he was gone, the pouring sand stopped. He caught his breath. And the real world reappeared in his vision. He was still standing in the restroom of the restaurant, staring into the mirror, as the faucet dripped.
The road appeared in his vision as they entered the dry deserts of California. He checked the clock and saw that it'd been three hours. He'd been driving for four hours and they hadn't spoken a word to one another.
The Shakespeare quote once again came to mind, "When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul." Meaning that when the body's on fire with love, how reckless one could become. They said and did things that they normally wouldn't. Love makes people stupid, and blind, and crazy. When caught up in love, people said things they didn't mean.
They lied. The line in Hamlet had been a warning. A caution about false intentions.
"Do you even know who you are? You're too busy feeling everyone else around you that you don't know what you feel. What's real and what isn't. Does she really love you? Do you really love her? Is it a reflection of truth or a lie?"
Lecter's words that he'd spoken in the hospital hallway came to mind as his mind ventured back to the hotel room. He knew that he'd handled it the way Grissom would have. Thoughtful, supportive, and uninvolved. He would have waited. Grissom would wait for years if he had to. It would take him that long to realize that it took them years to break up. It would take her being gone that long to accept the distance for what it was.
Under all that thoughtful calm, he felt it. It stirred, it ached, and it was burning in his heart daring to burst open his entire chest. His rage. He tried so hard not to feel it but he couldn't push it down any longer.
Grissom was calm, but he, Will Graham, was so angry his blood burned, and his soul ached.
Five hours. They've been on the road for five full hours and Gil hadn't said a word. She once again wondered why he'd driven. A flight would have been faster. Driving wasted so much time and it wasn't like Gil to not care. He knew that every second counted.
So, she had to ask, "What's going on with you?"
He didn't take his eyes off the road as he asked right back, "What'd you mean?"
There was an odd tone in his voice. She's heard it before when he wasn't fully present in the moment. How could he drive if his mind wasn't focused on the road? "You've been awfully quiet. You haven't spoken a word."
"I'm thinking."
"You're shutting me out—"
"Oh, I see. When I need time to think it's shutting you out. When you do it, it's because you need space—"
She almost gapped in shock. Where had that come from? "Whoa. Really? You think that's—"
"That's what you're saying, isn't it?"
She was at a loss of words for his sudden change. He'd been so understanding and very like himself earlier, but now, all she heard was hurt and restrained anger. She felt it there, between them in the space between her heart and his mind, a distance that hadn't been there before.
Finding her voice, she only said one word. "Gil?"
He shifted in the seat and let out a breath as he slowly let the truck drift off the road onto the shoulder of the highway. He shifted into park, removed his sunglasses, and sat for a long moment staring out into the desert.
There was a lot going on inside his mind. He got that faraway look again as he stared out the windshield. His breathing was becoming short and erratic almost as if he were suffocating. He hit the button to lower the window and closed his eyes as he took in deep breaths.
She's never known him to have an anxiety attack. Was that even what it was?
When his eyes finally met hers, he looked so scared and apologetic. "I'm sorry, Sara. I—" He stopped and had to take another breath.
She wasn't quite certain what the hell happened. It was almost like he was a different person. He was so angry. That question bugged her mind again. "Why did you drive when you could've flown?"
He gave a nod, like it was time to finally answer that question. "I needed time. A flight would have been too quick."
"Time for what?" she asked as her own anxiety set in.
"I needed to prepare myself," he said. "Nearly twenty years ago, I stood on a beach in Florida and listened as my wife told me she was tired. Too tired to care about what happened to me. And I saw it. That look in her eyes that told me the truth. That we were over. Everything was over and gone. My entire life, my family…Then, just a week ago, I read a letter left for me on my desk at work, from you, telling me the same damn thing."
The hurt in his voice was so strong it grabbed a hold of her throat and squeezed so tightly she couldn't speak. She could barely breathe. She was crying. "Gil—" she tried to force out only for him to stop whatever she had to say next.
"I had to prepare myself for the look in your eyes that told me the truth. That you were done. Done with me, with us, and that you were never coming back to Las Vegas. You said what you said, Sara. I want to be supportive, and I am. You're dealing with a lot and I want you to find closure and your own version of happiness…but you have to understand that everything I thought we were…ended up being a lie—"
"It wasn't a lie. I've always loved you and will always—"
"But you don't want to be with me, do you?" he asked, angrily.
She wanted to rush out an answer. A quick, "I do" but stopped herself. His eyes stopped her in her tracks. There was also something else inside of him that she only saw when he got this angry. When he became that other person. She saw his rage.
She realized that in those moments she was seeing a man she barely knew. A man named Will Graham. The real man that hid beneath the cover of the man she fell in love with. There was a duality inside of him that both surprised and scared her. It became apparent after France, up until then it'd been masked as eccentric quirks and hidden insecurities. Now it was out in the open and she knew the face she was staring at wasn't that of Gil Grissom.
He'd told her once that he was who he was regardless of name. But in the moment, being confronted by this side of him, she wondered if that was true. If he set himself apart, gave different parts of himself a different name, then didn't that make him two different people in one?
"I can love you from a distance," he said. "I can love you from here to the damn moon and back…but I'll be damned if I'm going to wake up years from now only to find out that what we were actually doing was slowly breaking up for all that time…and that everything, all that love I gave to you, had been a waste." He released the seat belt and got out.
Hearing the door shut felt like a final nail in the coffin. He was shutting her out completely as he put even more distance between them. She was too stunned to move as she watched him walk into the desert alone as a single tear fell down her cheek.
She didn't wipe it away. She couldn't as more fell. The hurt she felt wasn't just her own but his. She'd hurt him so badly that he'd lost all faith in their relationship. Releasing the seat belt, she got out. He'd stopped walking a good way away from the truck as the sun beat down on the hot sand. And it was so hot. She followed his steps to come up behind him. His hand was rubbing the back of his neck, head bowed, and she saw the tension in his back.
"Why don't you let it out?" He didn't say anything, but his hand stopped moving. "You know you want to. I deserve it. I told you before that you can do anything, even yell at me, and—"
"And you won't leave?" The restrained anger she heard nearly floored her. It wasn't hot like the desert but cold. He felt so cold because she had left. "Can I throw you down and yell at you and you won't leave? That's what you said, yet…here we are, and I did none of those things. I also didn't shut you out. I let you in. Had that been a mistake?"
The tears welled up as those words hit her chest. They could act and pretend like none of this mattered. That the letter and her leaving didn't matter, and it was a moot point because there they were back together again, and she was going back to Las Vegas. They could push it all down and go about the day as if everything was back to normal. They could do that.
Or they could do this. Right here and right now in the middle of the damn desert. They could finally have it out with one another. He wanted to. He wanted to yell. She could feel it rolling off his shoulders. He was so fucking angry. If he checked his pulse, it'd be well over ninety-five.
"I would never ask you to, but I have to know," she said before she asked, "Would you have dropped everything to be with me? Your job? Your son and friends? Everything? I don't think you would, so, why ask—"
He turned to face her and the absolute fury she saw froze her in place. "You think you're not that important to me?!" He stopped and took a breath as he reeled his anger back in. Another shake of his head as his eyes looked to the ground. Then he spoke words so softly that she had to strain to hear them. "'For nothing this wide universe I call, save though, my rose; in it thou art my all'." When their eyes met, he said, "I would have thought by now that you would know that my everything is you."
The breath she let out rocked her entire body. She'd been holding it in that long and that hard that it shook her entire world once it was gone.
"You told me you wouldn't leave; you told me that you wouldn't break my heart, and then you did. Intentionally or not, it's what you did. Something broke between us, and I don't know what it is. I want to be with you. I do, because I still love you. But right now, I don't even know if that's real." As those words settled into her heart, he walked by her towards the truck.
She felt as if they were at an impasse and for once she had no idea what was going to happen. She could no longer see her future and that scared her more than anything. Gil had been the one person she could always rely on and then she'd left him and broke his heart.
"Gil, stop." She turned around and saw that he'd stopped but his back was still to her.
She walked around him to face him. He got to have his say. It was her turn. "If something broke between us, it's me. I did this, and I want to figure out a way to fix it."
He shook his head. "There's two of us in this relationship, I played a part. I had to do something. Sara, you've been trying to get me to accept my feelings for you for years. We finally get together, and…you leave. I can only assume it's because you realized I wasn't the man you thought I was, or you realized that I'm not who you really wanted—"
"Who do you think I want if not you?" She couldn't see his eyes, but she saw his jaw set along with his shoulders. He had thought about it. She shook her head at him. "Is that why you're really angry? You think I want him—Doug."
"I don't know," he said so calmly it actually startled her. "Do you?"
The anger he fought so hard to hide came out in near possessiveness. He'd said it'd been due to her fear of Doug. It came out in protectiveness, but right then she saw a coldness that washed over him that nearly froze her in place. It was jealousy, and it was very threatening.
She shook her head. "No. Gil, I don't. I told you why I had to see him."
"You told me a lot of things. So did he."
She stilled. "You talked to him? When?"
"At the restaurant. He cornered me in the restroom. He told me that the first thing you did when you got there was ask Jane about him. He also told me that you ran out on him too. If you were a criminal that I was profiling, I'd call that a pattern of behavior. One that you'll do again."
She stared at him in disbelief before the disbelief turned to acceptance. It was a pattern of behavior. She couldn't stay. She would leave again.
Then, as if the dark veil had been lifted, he let out a breath and the anger vanished. In its place was defeat. "If you want us to be done, if you tell me goodbye again, don't expect me to follow after you. I won't. Once could be thought of as a mistake, but twice…I can take a hint. Do whatever you want, it's your decision to make, just don't give me hope for something that's hopeless."
She watched as he walked back to the truck and got in. His pain was making it impossible for her to even want to be in the same car as him. She'd done this to him, to them, by leaving. She'd broken his heart.
She shook her head as the truth hurt. He was right. How long would he have waited for her to come back to him, only for her not to? She was done with Las Vegas. And since he wasn't, since that was where he lived and worked, where his son lived and worked, that also meant she was done with him.
She honestly had no idea what to do other than to get in and sit beside him in silence. As he drove, she felt her insides swell up as if all the air was stuck inside her body. Her nerves itched and her hands shook. This wasn't anything she wanted, but she caused it to happen.
"Stop blaming yourself."
She regarded him in annoyance, saying, "What am I supposed to do?"
"I don't know. You tell me. What do you want?"
"I want us to work this out."
He glanced over at her as his hands tightened on the wheel. "But, what?" When she only kept her eyes on the road, he said, "I heard it in your tone."
"My tone?"
"Yeah. That one."
There was a condition. She hadn't spoken it out loud, but he heard it nonetheless. "I can't stay in Las Vegas."
There was no argument, only a simple, "Okay."
"Okay? Okay, what?"
He smirked. She wanted to hit him.
"Babe?"
He reached over and took her hand into his and squeezed it. "Okay."
Okay. That was his answer. After all that, just…"Okay." He was at least back to his old self. She knew this man sitting beside her holding her hand. This was Gil.
He gave a nod. "Why'd you think I'm teaching Greg entomology? Someone needs to know how to chart blowflies once I'm gone."
Greg had told her on the phone what Gil was doing, and she had told Greg that Gil would never quit his job for her. She really didn't think he would. His whole life was in Vegas.
She looked at their joined hands and felt more tears on her face. That wasn't the truth. Gil had told her that his whole life was sitting beside him with her hand intertwined with his. There was no choosing between her and everything else, because there wasn't anything else. There was only her. She was everything. She was his all.
"I am sorry, Gil."
"Sara–"
"Just," she wiped the tears away and felt his hand squeeze hers tightly. "Shut up and let me have this apology."
He fought to keep a straight face before nodding. "Apology accepted."
"It shouldn't be." He glanced at her, a frown on his face. "Back there, you changed. I changed you."
He let out an exaggerated breath. He was so annoyed. But so was she. Was that her fault too? "What are you talking—"
"You're an empath. You got angry and jealous, because I was angry and jealous—
"I was angry, Sara, because I was angry—"
"And now you're annoyed. I'm annoyed."
"If this is the game you're going to play, darlin', it's never going to end."
"There are times when I don't know you. I'm not sure who it is I'm talking to. I know you know it, whether you want to admit it or not."
"You're right," he said, surprising her once again. "Where Gil Grissom ends and Will Graham begins, I have no idea anymore, but it doesn't matter. You know why? Because it's me. All of me, instead of only parts like it was before."
"You know what my fear is? Not only my self-destruction, but yours. You stick with me, and you'll fall apart. You said it yourself. You let me in and now you will always feel what I'm feeling. And that will change you, like it did back there."
He didn't say anything for a long time, but his hand never left hers. "Maybe being changed by someone is a good thing," he finally said. "The way I see it, I can either put that wall back up between us, bury the part of me that's Graham all the way down, and go back to not feeling you at all. Or I can try to find a balance. That's a problem for me to solve, not you. What I do know is that it's not all or nothing. Don't make it into something it's not, because no matter what, whether it's from you or me, I feel love the most. I'll hold onto that and…forget the rest. Can you do the same?"
She tightened her hold on his hand. "I can."
He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed the back of it. "Then stop blaming yourself. Have you thought about talking to someone? A friend, maybe? It never hurts to get a new perspective on things."
"Is that what you do?"
"Yes."
"Who do you talk to?"
He was quiet a moment before answering, "I'm seeing a therapist."
She heard the distance once again in his voice before she saw how detached he appeared once again. Then he was gone, back into his head, but his eyes stayed on the road.
TBC…