A/N: Thanks again for reading and for the reviews. This story, this chapter, was so hard to write. A lot of emotions. Also, I really want this story to be more of a Sara-centric story and I hope I'm doing her character justice with it. No one has complained so far, so I hope that means I'm doing a good job. Anway, thanks again!

Chapter 13:

As the morning sun rose up over the buildings, hills and mountains of the city, he spun an unopened cigarette pack in his hands. A cup of coffee was on the table next to him, he could smell the aroma in the air. In his body an ache he hasn't had this badly since 1990. It'd been sixteen years since he last smoked a cigarette. Once in a while, he'd crave one, but it never lasted as he turned his attention to something else. This time, the ache wouldn't leave.

"I used to smoke."

He turned his gaze from the landscape to the woman standing over him, cup of coffee in her hands. Keeping to her routine, Sara had gone for a run this morning. She'd gotten back and showered. Then they were supposed to go get breakfast.

Setting the pack on the table by the cup, he picked up the cup and leaned back in the chair as he said, "I know. I remember. You stopped when you came to Las Vegas, but, uh, you still, habitually, carry around a lighter in your pocket."

Sara sat down next to him, crossed her legs at the knee, and leaned sideways into the chair to face him. She was so beautiful. She was also right. What guilt and blame he'd been feeling towards her leaving, he had to let it go. The thing was, it just wasn't his own guilt and blame he was feeling. Much like the smell of the coffee that had wafted up into his nose, he could smell it rolling off her shoulders and into his mind.

"Why'd you stop?"

"I moved to Las Vegas," was what she said. What he heard was 'You'.

All the reasons why Sara had come to Vegas, stayed in Vegas, and changed her life was because of him. He couldn't help but think that the reason why she had to leave Vegas was because of him. And he wasn't reason enough for her to even believe that she would ever return.

Deciding against talking about it, because he needed to think some more about it without the fear and guilt, he instead told her, "The guy I'm after smokes. It was a mindless act on my part. When I stopped for gas on the way here, I bought it. I never smoked Newports."

Sara sipped her drink but didn't say anything. She was there to listen, and wait for him as equally as he waited for her. They waited in silence, in between the pauses in conversation, and in the smallest of touches that incited pleasure; they were always waiting.

Neil's words came to his mind as he thought about mercury in retrograde. He said that people became vulnerable to communication breakdowns. Relationships would turn to turmoil and misunderstandings become frequent, as if cosmic static could interfere with our normal communication patterns. Turning his eyes up towards the sky, he did feel that everything around him, his entire world, was in a state of turmoil. He was starting to fear talking to the woman he loved. He was afraid that whatever he said would destroy their relationship. She had told him it wouldn't. Then she told him goodbye.

The fear he'd seen in her eyes, the realization on her face, had wrecked him. She really didn't remember writing that word. She'd thought she'd written that she'd be back one day. But the truth was written instead. A very hard truth that he didn't even want to consider.

Sara was never going back to Las Vegas. Not even for him. He was no longer enough to keep her there. That left him with a decision to make. One he thought would be such an easy decision to make if ever confronted with an ultimatum: his work or the woman he loved. It wasn't that simple. Nothing ever was. Kevin was now in Las Vegas, and he was trying to rebuild that relationship with his son. He also didn't feel like he was done with the job. He wasn't ready to leave being a CSI. His job still gave him a purpose.

He wouldn't mind saving the whales one day. Today wasn't that day. He had two killers in Las Vegas, and one was a serial killer who targeted women who had an uncanny resemblance to the woman sitting beside him. She had every reason to stay as far away from Las Vegas as humanly possible. There was no reason for her to go back, especially right now.

"Why did you drive—"

"What're in the boxes?"

They both stared at one another before Sara was the first to breathe out. Tapping a finger on the side of the cup, she looked through the sliding glass door into the hotel room. "I told you."

"Then why aren't you going through them?"

"Because my childhood isn't something I want to remember."

As she said those words, a gunshot echoed through his head, followed by darkness. He'd been in his dream, sitting next to his younger self under a tree, and after the gunshot echoed through the dark, he saw the boy's face distort into a blur. A blur of identity. A million other faces twisted and formed in the distortion as the young boy grew into the Dragon.

Even now, there were times when he looked into the mirror and didn't recognize his own face. It blurred and twisted around into someone else's before forming into that of his shadow. Empathy made him able to become so many other people. Did he truly know who he was? How could he if he couldn't even remember his own childhood.

What made the void? What made him be able to do what he could do? How did it start? Did it start with that echo of a gunshot that revibrated throughout his head? He had so many questions and no answers.

He finished the coffee and sat the cup down as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. They've talked about her childhood. She told him about her parents, her pain, and the fear of having a murder gene. She also feared her anger. She'd sworn that she could never take a life, but that belief had been shaken when she had become a victim of a psychopath. Sara's world was also in turmoil.

"I, uh…I don't remember much of mine. I mean, I know of it. I know the stories, and I've seen the pictures, and I know what I know because of it…"

His mind drifted into that dark place once again where a southern live oak lived. Its branches were expanding out further into the shadows of his mind. The further it spread, he felt it trying to reach out to something and he could feel every one of those branches poking at the edges of the void. Sharp pricks all around his skull.

"I have an eidetic memory. There is no reason for when I try to remember my childhood that it's like…a shadow covers it, preventing me from seeing it." It was all disconcerting and terrifying. Was his mind protecting him from a past trauma? What didn't it want him to remember? "That scares me more than anything. It makes me think that uh, something bad happened…Something so bad it doesn't want me to remember. But, I do know that whatever it was…it's the reason why I'm…" he finally looked into her eyes and saw his own pain reflected back. She understood. "It's what made my Dragon."

Her brows wrinkled together as she said in confusion, "Your—Dragon?"

He hadn't told her about his dragon. The one that currently stood behind her, hovering over her, in order to protect her. He used to think the Dragon wanted to kill everyone he loved, including himself. What it wanted to do was save everyone he loved. It wasn't something to fear. So, he no longer did. His dragon was his shadow, and it followed him everywhere.

"The manifestation of who I am. That darkness. A mythical creature that is made up of all the serial killers I ever faced and stopped in order to save lives. It was what was waiting in the darkness. It was what reached back."

"And you see it?"

He gave a nod. Glancing up, he saw the crooked smirk that spread across its face. It was getting harder to breathe as the edges of his vision darkened. He felt it in his chest first and then his legs and feet. He wanted to fall. The darkness was moving all around him, in his peripheral vision, like snakes slithering all around the ground. And he was the mongoose that waited in the dark to kill the snakes if they got too close.

"Have you ever had to kill a snake, Sara? It's so easy. You catch it at the base of its head and then crack it like a whip. Kills them instantly. You can feel it in your hand and hear the pop as their vertebrae separates right before they go limp." Finding Sara's eyes in the light, he saw a momentarily spark of fear in her eyes. He sounded crazy. And she feared 'crazy'. "For me, killing a killer is as easy as killing a snake. I've done it twice. I spared Lecter, but I still snapped his spine like a snake by paralyzing him. There's something deep down, in the shadow of my childhood, that made that killer inside of me. And I don't know what it was."

Sara had tears in her eyes and he was so afraid that he'd scared her. This was why he never wanted to tell her. The truth of himself was so hard for him to see so he had always looked elsewhere to find it. Molly feared him, so he feared himself. The FBI called him the fox in the hen house. So, he thought of himself as the fox in the hen house. Sara called him a savior. He had to believe her, because he loved her and she loved him, and her opinion mattered more to him than anyone else's.

"You still think I'm a savior?"

The tears slipped from her eyes. She wiped them away before placing her cup down to tell him, "I do. Gil—" she tried to speak, but her voice choked up.

Feeling her pain and sadness, he reached out and took her hand into his. Last night, he had pulled her into a hug. In the morning light, he didn't have the courage. She could push him away after seeing him more clearly.

It took a while for her to push through her tears, to find her voice again, before telling him, "My mother didn't kill my father. I have a brother. He…I pushed it down, blacked it out, and even convinced myself that he didn't exist…all so I could forget. He's been what's haunting me at night, in my dreams. That night, he was the one who killed our father. Our mother took the blame to save him. 'Cause she believes he's the savior of the world. A descendant of spiritual royalty. A king. They shared a delusion. She told him that over and over since we were kids, so much that he believed it."

There was something in the shadows that moved around them. It crept in like the fog that crept into the bay city at night. A threat had been circling around them for a while, one he had refused to see before but saw now. The snakes slithering around them and the fox circling her bed.

His mouth went dry as he asked, "What's his name?"

She was still wiping the tears away as she told him, "Nathan. Nathaniel, actually, but we always called him Nathan."

He heard it in the silence that followed. The deafening 'click' as if a piece to the twisting puzzle in his mind snapped into place. Letting go of her hand, he stood and opened the sliding glass door. On the floor by the desk were the boxes of Sara's childhood.

"Gil?"

He had to be sure. Pulling out the desk chair, he grabbed the box at his feet. "Is this yours?"

"No. That's my brother's stuff. Why? Babe—"

He ripped the top open, and inside, he saw notebooks, about twenty of them, along with a book sitting right on top. On the cover was an owl. It was "Stories That Could Be True: New and Collected Poems. William Stafford". He stared into the box and then looked once again at the notebooks, and then he saw something else.

Lifting it up, he heard Sara say, "That's the Eye of Horus dreamcatcher. We helped our mother make them when we were kids."

He turned to face her. She was standing near the balcony door, and walking through it behind her was the Dragon. The fear grew inside his head as he tried to will it to go away. It wasn't working. He couldn't steady the swinging of the pendulum in his mind no matter how hard he tried. It was no longer in his control.

Sara sat on the edge of the bed as she asked, "What's this about? Why are you so insistent—"

"We need to talk about what I discovered during the investigation I conducted with Detective Delancey yesterday."

"Okay."

It was hard because she was already suffering enough. What he had learned could shatter whatever it was that had been holding her together for so long. He could see it; the fragile case that seemed to enclose her off to the pains of her past. It all became so clear in his mind. The words she'd written ran through his mind: "No matter how hard I try to fight it off, I'm left with the feeling that…I have to go. I know where I'm going, and I know that I have to do this. If I don't, I'm afraid I'll self-destruct, and worse, you'll be there to see it happen—"

She was so close to self-destruction that she had to leave. But this wasn't something he could hide from her. If he was right, and he knew in the very depth of his soul that he was, then she was in danger. She also held the key to unlocking their killer.

"I, uh…found Nathan Cole's body."

"Here?"

"Yeah." The only way he could do this was to push everything down and focus on the evidence. He had to cut off the personal. Because this case just got as personal as it could get. "Nick called me earlier. He has a John Doe. Cause of death was an overdose. Wallet found on scene was that of Nathan Cole, but all the evidence suggests that the db is not Mr. Cole. He has a Gulf War tattoo and Mr. Cole was never in the service. The face was unrecognizable, teeth broken, and the hands were removed, which is not very common. So, I thought, maybe he's done it before. We checked and found another victim who died under similar circumstances." In his mind, he focused on the file that Detective Delancey had found. The words appeared so vividly in front of him as if he were holding the casefile in his hands. He read the words and spoke them aloud. "On September 22nd, 2005, a deceased male was found with severe contusions to his face, broken and missing teeth. Amputation of his hands post-mortem, which were never found. The cause of death was overdose. There was no wallet or any other identification found at the scene." He took a breath before continuing. "They ran his DNA through CODIS. No hit."

"Then how do you know it's his body?"

"I have a picture. We, uh…your old colleague, Dr. Synder and I reconstructed his face and made a positive match. There were old needle marks on his arms. He was probably in recovery, trying to make a new life for himself. Instead, someone gave him a lethal dose of methamphetamine and then that someone made him unrecognizable and unidentifiable, or so he thought, and took his wallet."

"Then Cole showed up in Vegas?"

He gave a nod. "Yeah. Sara…in the apartment that I searched, I found a dreamcatcher. The Eye of Horus. I also found a notebook where the killer wrote his thoughts, poems, haikus…" He placed the dreamcatcher back into the box and picked up the book. "And, this same book with a poem marked. 'A Story that Could be True'...He left a palm print on the car window of the two people he killed. His hands had been burned. We think he was in a fire—"

In all the years he's known her, he never saw her break so quickly. The tears welled and spilled over before she even got the word out, "What?" She shook her head. "What are you—You think…"

He tried to still the swaying of his mind, the pendulum, as he closed his eyes. He let out another breath to steady his nerves and push down the fear. "I think, Sara…I think that your brother claimed a new identity by taking Nathan Cole's. He used that identity to move to Las Vegas. And, so far, he's killed three other people: Ashley Lang, Daniel Vetrini, and now another man…most likely to take over his identity since he had to get rid of Cole's. That's what I think. The fact that he's choosing men who have the same first name as him, that indicates to me that he's either trying to reclaim his life…or it's convenient. How he's finding them…we don't know yet, but they were both drug addicts. The car victims were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

He watched as the denial hit her first and then the anger. She stood up. He stood. Her hands shot out at him to keep him away. She pushed by him as she headed to the bathroom where she shut the door behind her.

All he could do was wait. As he waited, he took out a notebook out of the box and flipped it open as he went to grab his reading glasses out of his jacket.

Once again, the truth was staring her in the face as she stood in the bathroom as her hot tears stained her face. All she kept thinking was how it was her fault. Her silence all those years ago had led her brother to murder four innocent people. She felt so wrong on the inside, like she herself was just as guilty as her brother. Blood was on her hands. She was the bad guy, the villain. What had she done? A betrayal stabbed at her heart as she hit the floor and cried.

Once Dr. Tran left the 'visiting room', she sat and waited for her mother. It was getting harder to breathe in the open room. She got up and walked over to the table to get a bottle of water. Her hands shook as she twisted the cap off the bottle and took a sip. She could do this, she told herself. She'd interviewed suspected killers and rapists and wife abusers. She could talk to her mother.

She could sit across a table from her and have a conversation. The door opened and she looked and saw a woman much older than she remembered standing next to an orderly all in white. Laura, her mother, appeared confused for a moment before her eyes lit up at seeing her.

As she walked towards her, the tears welled in both their eyes. Laura's hands came together as if giving a silent prayer before reaching out to her. They embraced and she thought it'd feel awkward, but instead she felt an old familiar warmth that surrounded her in comfort. Her mother's hug did that. It brought her right back to being a child, wrapped up in her mother's arms, and sliding into a sense of being welling that only her mom could bring.

The tears spilled from her eyes as she suddenly felt the need to apologize that gripped her chest. "I'm sorry," she spoke and hoped that she could be forgiven.

How could have possibly denied herself from her own mother all this time? Her fear and guilt had invented a narrative that prevented her from seeing the truth. It prevented her from accepting the hard reality that despite everything, the death and the illness, that she loved. She loved her mother so much. It wasn't her fault. The only one to blame was her father. His lies, and his fists, and his violence that spread through all of them like a disease. It was time to find the cure, not just for herself but for all of them. The only way to do that was to accept the love that was beating so hard in her chest that it hurt.

They finally let go, and as they both wiped their tears away, sat at the table. Laura took her hand between hers and held onto it like she was afraid if she let go that she'd vanish. "Sara, my baby…" she said as she touched her face with her other hand. "I tried for years to imagine you as you are now…" More tears fell as she told her, "You're so beautiful."

She almost laughed as she gripped the hand that touched her cheek and moved it back to the table as he held onto it. Gripping both her mother's hands in her own, she told her, "Same. I remember how you looked in court. How small and frail…All the bruises, and never could get past that look." Her mother was older, but healthier and stronger. "You look good, mom." Trying to figure out what to say next, she said, "Dr. Tran said that you're doing good, but…you still have your delusions." Laura closed her eyes as her grip tightened on her hands. That probably wasn't the best place to start. "I know now, I know that you didn't do it. I saw all the evidence in the death of my father, and I know you did what you thought you had to do to protect your son. I'm sorry I ever thought that you could…Even if it had been you, I don't blame you. I don't hate you."

And she didn't. She never did. What she hated was that it even happened. She hated all the secrets and lies and everything in between. Her own anger that made her believe she could turn into her father, and the fear that had her thinking that she could lose control of her mind like her mother. She had reasons to fear both her parents, and what happened with her brother was proof of that fear.

Was he John Doe? She had to know.

"Mom, the uh…Dr. Tran told me about the other patient. John Doe. You believed that he was Nathan? Did he—"

Her eyes opened as she smiled. It was so soft yet scary as a bright light lit up her eyes. "He's here."

"He's here? At the hospital?"

"No," Laura said. "He's here on earth. It's his time now, Sara. Your brother will ascend this mortal life to become something more. He'll take his place as the King, as the angel has foretold of his rising. You need to help him, Sara. He'll come to you. You will help him, won't you?"

She got her answer. It was Nathan who'd been here with her for the last fifteen years, but why? Why had he spent all this time here and with their mother?

"Why did Nathan come here? Did he tell you?" she asked.

"He was waiting. He couldn't find you and we have to be together, all of us. He couldn't leave my side, Sara. His devotion to me burned into his blood. We are family. We are one. Out of one, we are many. We are the saviors of this world. We are the stars…" She smiled wide and said, "Oh, honey, don't you know who you are?"

Another tear fell from her eye, but it wasn't from love but fear. She had no idea how to answer that as she felt the fear once again render her mute in the face of insanity. Her mother's belief ran so deep that there was no rational thought left. Her disease had run rapidly and took away the woman she'd loved and in its place was the woman she feared. A woman who believed in a fantasy world.

She knew who she was. And it wasn't the woman her mother wanted her to be. "I know who I am, mom. I'm Sara, but I'm not royalty. Nathan isn't royalty. We are not special. We are not Gods. We're just people, like everyone else."

Laura's hand hit her face and she realized she'd been smacked. Sitting stunned, she barely registered the blur of white that rushed towards them. The orderly grabbed her mother's hands before she could smack her again.

"You're not my daughter," Laura was saying as she was being restrained. "You have her face but you're not her. You're not my daughter!"

It was cold in the bathroom. A chill ran up her arms and into her heart as she shook against it. She didn't want to feel that way. Alone in the cold and in her secrets. Her head hurt from crying, but she was done crying. She was done keeping it all in, just as she was done letting it all out. She felt so tired. Drained of all that was in her past. She was looking for closure. Gil told her that truth brought closure. This was the truth, but there was no closure. Was there ever such a thing?

What it brought was growth. Growth wasn't perfect and easy. It wasn't a calm journey. It wasn't even comfortable. Growth was painful. It was messy and it was hard. It shook the very foundation that made a person the person that they thought they were. It challenged their thoughts, their beliefs, and their sense of self. All the questions she used to have seemed either too innocent now in the face of the truth or as sharp as a knife with how painful it was to get an answer. One question kept lingering in the back of her mind for years: why am I not happy?

She used to think her happiness was attached to man. She wasn't happy because she wasn't able to be with him, and if only they could be together, then she could finally be happy. Gil did bring her happiness, but it wasn't' the happiness that she needed to make her feel whole again. She thought it would be, but it wasn't. He was enough to satisfy her as a partner for life, but not satisfy her own emptiness that still had her questioning, even though they were together, her own happiness.

Not wanting things to change because she'd become so used to them and then realizing that all the comfort and all the familiarity it brought still didn't make her happy was what had driven her away from Gil. It was what told her that she had to leave. It was that feeling, and that question of happiness, that made her doubt what it actually meant to her. What was happiness to her? Why wasn't Gil enough?

The answers she believed were in her past. The ghosts that haunted her daily had to be confronted to bring her happiness so she could accept the happiness she had with Gil. That was her reasoning. That was her rationalization of her problem. This was supposed to be the answer. Her closure.

Her happiness wasn't attached to a man. It was attached to the only thing that she could change, herself. She knew how she could love someone but still know that they weren't the right person. What to do when you could love yourself, but know you weren't the best, truest, and happiest version of yourself? You could break up a relationship, end it with another person, cry about it for days or months, but at the end of it you grow. You learn and become more than you once were.

A person wasn't able to break up with themselves, but that was what she felt she had to do. She had to end this relationship between the person she was now and the person she was then, or else she'd never be the person she wanted to be. She was not Laura's daughter, she wasn't that scared little girl hiding in the closet, or that confused teenager or the angry young woman she'd become.

She was Sara. And the only thing she knew about her was the fact that she was a damn good CSI and Gil's girlfriend. The rest of her was blurred. Removing her past self left her feeling as if she didn't know who she was anymore. She was adrift in the world and her only anchor was the man waiting for her outside that door.

He didn't need her to collapse in his arms. She wasn't that woman anyway. He needed her in so many ways, and one of those ways was to help him catch a killer. Picking herself up off the floor, she washed her face, took a deep breath, and decided that there was only one thing she could do.

She opened the door. The moment his eyes lifted from the notebook he'd been reading to meet hers, she told him, "He's taking the lives of men who have the same first name as him because he's his mother's son. She was the one who gave him that name. His loyalty to her, his imagined lineage, it's everything. He'll always be her son. He'll always be Nathan."

He removed his glasses and sat them down along with the notebook as he stood from the bed where he'd been sitting. Coming close to her, he reached out and touched her face. She felt the comforting warmth of his hand, the love in his touch, as he slid his arm around her waist and kissed her mouth.

Resting his head against hers, he asked, "What can I do?"

She had no idea, but all she needed him to do was… "Say you'll keep loving me no matter what. Say that you forgive me for telling you goodbye. Tell me that we're going to be okay."

He smirked as he told her, "Sara, I already told you all those things when I asked you to marry me. But if I need to tell you it every day then I will. I will always love you no matter what. You never have to ask for forgiveness because you already have it." He used his thumb to wipe the tear away that'd fallen from her eye. "We're going to be okay. I promise."

She nodded as she gave him a hug. It was easy to give into his warm embrace, to feel that familiar comfort he brought, because she knew he loved her. It wasn't lie and it wasn't fake or conditional. It was honest, it was real, and it would last because he held no stipulations.

"Then why can't I be happy?" She felt his arms tighten around her body as she let out her deepest fear.

"You can be," he told her. "You can be anything you want to be…once you believe it."

Was that her problem? She didn't believe that she could be happy. She always thought she was fated to becoming just like her parents. Always angry, always in fear of her own mind, and always one step closer to self-destruction. She thought she was going to fall apart. She thought she was going to go crazy. She thought he'd lose it when she did.

Could all those thoughts be lies? What lied ahead wasn't self-destruction but self-realization? Growth? But mostly, happiness? She had no idea, but she wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe that Gil was right. She could be happy.

She also had to go back to Las Vegas. If her brother was there, and if it was in fact Nathan, then she had to help them find him so they could stop him.

"So, um, when do we leave?" Gil moved back slightly to look down at her in confusion. "He's my brother. I'm not staying here." A fear sparked in his eyes, but he pushed it down as he gave a nod. There was something he wasn't telling her. Something that scared him. He hadn't wanted her to go back. "Babe, what is it?"

Gil never could lie to her just as she never could lie to him. He took a moment, but he finally said, "The serial killer we're after, he uh…he's targeting women with very specific physical characteristics." His eyes roamed over her face and hair as his fingers ran through her hair and then down her face. Her skin tingled at his touch. "Brunettes with brown eyes, and a diastema. They all look like you."

She nearly gasped. Shaking her head, she asked, "Me? Are—" she stopped herself from asking him if he was sure. Of course Gil was certain, it was why he was so afraid. She could be a target. "What're you thinking? That I could become a target because I match the physical description?"

He shook his head. His eyes were darkening, going inward as he spoke the words, "Someone's trying to get your attention."

"What could I have possibly done—"

"I don't know, but this killer—He's obsessed with you."

The way he said that left no room for debate. She knew that wherever Gil had gone in his head, the truth was there. He knew it. He couldn't explain it, but he knew.

Giving it some thought, and pushing her own fear aside, she told him, "Then we face it together. Like you said, together we can do anything. Even this. You're not leaving without me."

Cupping her face, he gave her another kiss before asking, "You still want breakfast?"

She wanted to smile. There was a time to worry and to think and figure things out. But there was also a time for pancakes. Vegan pancakes. "I'm starving."

He smirked as he took her hand into his as they left the hotel room. She loved that smirk.

TBC…