January 2004
Grissom walked slowly down a long narrow hallway. He hugged the walls, protective booties covering his loafers. He walked slowly through the primary suite and entered the bathroom. He saw the cast-off on the glass first, then her feet and tattoo. It's when his eyes found her face that time began to warp to a molasses speed. The wind knocked out of his lungs. He crouched down to get a better look at her, unable to believe his eyes.
Her rounded face was lifeless, eyes open, staring right past him. He felt sick. His forehead tingled and his hearing went out for the first time since the surgery. He studied her face. Every inch, every crease, every hair. It wasn't her. But it looked so much like her. Even her haircut. Her chin. His stomach churned something awful.
Eventually he found his way back to standing. He carefully retraced his steps to the front door and walked outside. His eyes darted, searching for Sara immediately. There she was, standing with the team. Alive. Looking back at him, the blue and red police lights illuminating her features. He didn't feel the relief expected to upon seeing her.
Grissom's eyes drilled into her so intensely that she turned around to see if he'd been looking at something behind her. But he wasn't, he was looking at her. And Brass, who was standing just behind Sara could see it too. He looked sad and defeated.
Brass decided it was time to break his eye contact, having gone on for a long time now. "You ready for us?" He asked as he stepped forward.
"For now, no one enter this house except for CSI." Grissom kept his gaze on Sara. He was unable to peel his eyes from her.
"Sara. You take the perimeter."
"What You just did a one hour walk through. The perimeter cannot be a priority." Again? He was pushing her off again?
"I need you to work the outside. Catherine and I will be inside." He watched as she stormed off. He couldn't have her inside there. He feared that she'd see the same thing he did in the victim, and worse, she'd see what it was doing to him.
Sara took her hit and began to walk the perimeter.
Sara army crawled under the house to drain the pipe's from the primary suite per Catherine's request. Meanwhile, Grissom and Catherine continued to work inside the bathroom. Spraying luminal, testing swabs.
"He cleaned everywhere except inside the shower."
"We're never going to know where the blood end and the bleach begins." Catherine responded.
She turned around and looked at the victim.
"Gil." She looked up at him now, and saw how drained his features were already. "Does the victim look like anyone to you?" She saw the resemblance immediately and immediately she'd known why he put Sara on perimeter duty.
"I know." His voice was so small and so sad. It nearly broke Catherine's heart.
"You saw her outside, she's fine."
"I know." He said again. "I—" He looked into Catherine's eyes, "She's upset with me."
"You know Sara, she wants to be at the heart of the investigation. Relegating her to the outside is boring for her." She paused a moment before adding, "You did the right thing. She shouldn't see this."
Grissom nodded ever so subtly.
Sara furrowed her brows. The pipes acted as the perfect current for their voices. It had carried Grissom and Catherine's conversation right to her. An unwitting witness to their private thoughts. There voices became muffled and Sara realized they'd must have walked out of the bathroom into the bedroom. Screwing the cap on the jars of liquid Sara army crawled her way back out from under the house. Shortly after she'd made her way back to the lab with the evidence she'd collected. Grissom stayed at the house.
Grissom shined his light over the victim's vanity. Butterfly trinkets everywhere, little bottles of perfume and lotion. He thought about Sara's vanity in her home. Was it covered with similar items? His phone ringing pulled his mind out of his daydream.
"Grissom."
"Hey." Sara's voice caught him off guard. Her tone pierced through him. He couldn't handle talking to her right now. It was all to much for him. He'd quickly made up an excuse, cell service being spotty, to get off the phone.
"Do you want me to come over there and give you a hand?"
"No. No." He spoke quickly and stumbled over his words, "I'll uh, I'll catch up with you back in the lab." He hung up before the conversation could continue. He couldn't have here there.
Three shifts later and Grissom was still at the house having never left. He couldn't. When Catherine walked in she found him on the ground taking swabs of every inch of that carpet.
"Don't tell me you haven't gone home."
"Okay."
"Have you eaten anything? You know after 16 hours you lose your edge."
His knees ached in his kneeling position. He stood to follow her to the kitchen where she looked for something for him to eat. She grabbed peanut butter and yogurt and gestured for him to sit as she handed him a spoon.
They talked through what they knew so far and decided they needed to continue their search in the bedroom.
The case was raging on and Grissom was keeping her away from him and the vic. Sara couldn't understand why. This felt different then his typical short, cold and dismissive push that he typically shoved her way. This felt… sadder? Emptier? Sara felt exhausted by it. She was out of energy for an argument so instead she carried on as the foot solider he was treating her as.
"Hey you seen Grissom?"
"He's still at the crime scene. You uh— you see Debbie?" Catherine asked from her seated position on the locker room bench.
"Yeah." Sara spoke, "I collected her toe prints." Her voice was so small.
"You see her face?" Catherine probed.
"No." She lied. She had seen the vic's face. She couldn't resist looking after she'd finished up the toe prints. Deep curiosity took over as the conversation she'd overheard replayed in her head.
"If I didn't know any better, I would have thought it was you on that slab." Catherine wasn't sure if Sara knew what was going on with the case yet, and she thought she should know.
"When you see Grissom, will you tell him." Catherine took in the melancholy energy that spread through every part of Sara, her voice, her features, her movements. She nodded in agreement but couldn't help but feel unsettled.
Sara heard they were bringing in Dr. Lurie for questioning in connection with the hair Grissom had found. She made her way to PD and stood behind the one-way glass. It was the first time she'd seen Grissom since the initial walkthrough of the house. She took in his demeanor. He looked exhausted.
Grissom and Brass launched into their questioning. One by one Dr. Lurie and his lawyer rebutted each.
"Do you have any other evidence?
"We may not have any other evidence but we do have a theory."
"That's not admissible in court."
The doctor and lawyer stood to leave but before they got far Grissom piped up, his eyes fixated on a point in space in another world. He spoke both pointedly and absently, seemingly unfiltered,
"It's sad isn't it, doc? A couple of middle aged guys like us. Men who have allowed work to consume their lives. The only time we touch other people is when we're wearing our latex gloves. We wake up one day and realize for 50 years we really haven't lived at all. Then all of a sudden, we get a second chance. Somebody young and beautiful shows up. Somebody we could care about."
He glanced up now and caught Dr. Lurie's eyes. He continued, "She shares your work. She looks up to you. She excites you. Your mind, your body, you're overcome with dreams of her. But you look yourself in the mirror and can't find the courage to tell her how you feel. Or tell yourself really."
He could feel Brass' eyes on him now, but it didn't really register. He was delirious with exhaustion and sadness.
"But as life would have it, she pursues you. And despite knowing you don't have much to give her, you can't seem to resist. The temptation threatens to overpower you. You engage in small ways to placate the desire. And that scares you. But not as scary as the day you imagine she'll look at you and realize who you really are. A middle-aged man who never experienced life. Stuck in his ways. Unloveable."
Dr. Lurie looked down at his shoes as Grissom continued on, "If you keep saying 'no' to embracing the moment, when you finally say yes, it becomes bigger than you. And you aren't really you anymore. You're somebody else. An abstraction that becomes reality."
Sorrow, Regret, misery. It all seeped across his exhausted face.
"You can't focus on your work the way you used to. Your hobbies lose their luster. All you think about is her. You want to be with her. Spend your days with her. Eat with her. Laugh with her. Touch her. Make love to her. Without doors. Without boundaries. Without restriction. But you have to risk everything you've ever worked for to have her. Every sacrifice you've ever made, every part of you that's set in your ways. The veracity of your desire for her is just as intense as your fear. And you battle the two every waking moment of your life since you met."
He smiled sadly and continued, "I couldn't do it. But you did. Didn't you? And she showed you a wonderful life. But eventually she saw you. Really saw you. Socially inept, romantically inexperienced, consumed by your work. So she took it away, and she gave it to someone new. And now you have nothing left."
"I'm still here." Dr. Lurie responded to Grissom's lengthy monologue.
"Are you?" He questioned as the doctor and lawyer exited the room. He sighed heavily and stared down at his hands. His heart and chest felt like they could concave, his body ached. Every hair on his neck stood up straight. Brass placed a gentle hand on his shoulder before leaving the room himself, but Grissom barely registered it.
Eventually, Grissom found his way to stand. He took a deep breath in. He needed to go to sleep. It had been days since he had and he clearly was not himself. He walked out of the room.
Sara stood frozen. For the longest time she'd wanted desperately to know what he was thinking. And now? She almost wished she hadn't. It was beyond painful to hear and she felt so sad for him. That he truly felt that way. She didn't know what to do with this information. It didn't even fell good to know that his desires were directed at her. All she felt was sadness, knowing that he'd sooner destroy himself before he'd ever let her in.
As he walked past the door of the observation room he caught her figure in the corner of his eye.
"Sara?" He was shocked to see her there. Was he so sleep deprived that he was hallucinating?
"Hi." She spoke so softly he strained to hear her. He took a step toward the room, stopping within the threshold.
"How uh— how long have you been here."
She shrugged.
"Oh."
There was a long pause of silence between them. Their eyes locked on one another but the space between them felt enormous.
"We'll get him. We just need to go back and find more evidence. Greg is still analyzing the evidence I dropped off there an hour ago..."
"You need to go home and go to sleep." She responded softly. He could see the sadness and concern for him that laid in her eyes.
He nodded knowingly and watched as she walked past him to exit the room. She turned back toward him when she was just a stride away.
"And Gil?"
His eyes flickered up to hers at the sound of his first name.
"You're not unloveable." She produced the saddest smile he'd ever seen on her face before she turned to disappear down the hallway.