A/N:

YUP, IT'S THE PIT OF DESPAIR.

I may have hit the melodrama particularly hard with this one. 💔

Winter 2013 to Fall 2015. Elsewhere, in the World.

I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.

– Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre.

The Awful Truth: Gil Grissom

Gil Grissom was heartbroken. He'd been heartbroken for years. He'd known, in the greatest depths of his subconscious, that he'd never been good enough for Sara. He didn't know why he'd ever allowed himself to think otherwise. He'd believed she'd loved him for a time, but that time had passed, and eventually she was just holding on to a memory.

He'd told himself that, if he really loved this woman, the best thing he could do for her was to set her free. She would make herself a new life; she would find someone younger and handsomer and more socially adept and better equipped to make her happy—someone altogether more deserving of the goddess he adored. So Gil Grissom had broken (ripped out, completely decimated) his own heart, and he had divorced Sara Sidle.

When Grissom's contract with his then-current forensic entomology posting had ended, he'd taken to the seas. He had bought a boat, and he had named it for a character in one of his and Sara's favorite books. Like Ishmael, Grissom was a loner and, now, a wanderer of the seas.

Though he did not expect Sara to spend much—or any—time considering his endeavors, and he certainly never expected her to join him, Grissom subconsciously chose a cause (if not a tactic) he knew would make her proud. He worked on marine conservation, and he thought it a worthy cause.

Grissom had let Sara down; he hadn't made her happy the way she deserved. So he had taken to the seas in penance; he wore an invisible hairshirt. But he expected no redemption from his voyages. If asked, he probably would have acknowledged a certain self-destructiveness in his project—after all, he had gone from the most law abiding of citizens to something of an eco-pirate—but no one asked.

Grissom had ripped out his own heart, and now he was bleeding. He couldn't see the blood, but he knew it was there. He might have made a Lady Macbeth reference, if anyone had been around to hear it.

Sometimes Grissom wondered whether the sharks he was working to conserve couldn't sense the blood. He wondered whether they weren't circling him, slowly, waiting for the right moment to swallow him whole. He would disappear from the earth then, disappear without a trace, and become the ghost he had always known himself to be.

Occasionally Grissom sought to drown his sorrows in drink, but that didn't help him. It didn't even make him feel better while he was doing it. He didn't enjoy it. It was just what he thought a man in his position should probably try to do: drown his sorrows in drink and loose women. Grissom had snorted at the thought. He couldn't imagine anything he would enjoy less.

One night, at his lowest of lows, Grissom spent some time contemplating what the consequences of such an action, to his mental well-being, would be; he concluded it would destroy him. He thought the sadness would be more than he could bear. Sara had been everything good in his life, and he wanted his last memories to be of her. He may not have had her anymore, but at least he could remember the wonderful life that, for a time, they had shared.

When Grissom dreamed, he dreamed of Sara and of that wonderful life. Grissom didn't try not to think of Sara; he knew this would be futile. He spent most of his days alone, and she was the voice inside his head.

So Grissom spoke to Sara, both aloud and in his head, and, when that was not enough, he wrote her letters: he wrote of his day-to-day activities; he wrote of his thoughts on the universe; he wrote of his undying love for her. He knew she would never see the letters. He didn't intend for her to see the letters. He simply wrote them, folded them up, and shoved them in an old tackle box in the hull of his boat; the tacklebox slowly but surely filled.

In his mind, Gil Grissom could see every detail of Sara Sidle's being, but he expected he would never again see her in the flesh.

Grissom continued believing he would likely never again see his beloved Sara right up until the day he was detained in San Diego and Conrad Ecklie called requesting his help. Suddenly Grissom was going back to Las Vegas. More importantly, he was, if only for a day or two, going back to Sara. Fuuuuuuuuck. But also: he couldn't wait.

UP NEXT: NEXT CHAPTER: FALL 2015. LAS VEGAS, NEVADA AND SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA.

EPISODE REFERENCE(S)

16. "Immortality." Original air date: September 27, 2015.

A/N:

Thank you so very much for reading! 💛 I hope you have a wonderful week! 💛

Next week this story will be moving on to "Immortality" (16). 💛