A/N: Hi. I'm JellyeanChichi, and in the past several months, I've needed a distraction and during one of the lowest times, I found myself writing CSI fanfiction out of the blue again. I guess my mind wanted to return to some 18 years ago when I first became a member of this community. 18 years. It just doesn't seem possible.
The following is one is a whole bunch of fics that examine Sara's and Grissom's states of mind during their first and second separations. I'm sure there are better stories out there. I'm sure this is old and cliché. I'm still not sure I should have even published this. I'm not even sure why I even wrote this. I just needed a distraction in my life and this came to mind.
Not beta'd. I owe nothing related to CSI.
Messages — CHAPTER 1
From the moment he read the letter, he was lost.
His hands shook as he read it for the third time until, finally, he frantically called her cell phone.
"Where are you?"
"I can't talk to you."
"Sweetheart, please. Please talk to me. We can work this out. I'm sorry if I haven't…"
"I said I can't talk to you. Please try to understand."
He held in the angry pain he felt in his heart. "I want to be there for you. I want to help you. Please let me help you."
There was silence, but he could still hear her breathing.
And then, nothing
"Sara? Sara? Please, Sara?!"
He rubbed his face but couldn't grasp what was happening. He called her again.
She didn't answer. And with that, he practically ran out of the lab. Then ran to his car. His plan: Speed off and find her.
While he had no idea where to go, he felt time was of the essence. He read the letter minutes before she kissed him in the hallways of the lab.
Why didn't he hold her at that moment? She looked so lost and miserable. Why didn't he embrace her and not let her go?
He didn't know. He should have known. Why didn't he know?
Oh God. I do this to us.
He got in his car and felt his heart urgently pounding and tears streaming down his face. He pulled into the car park of his condo and saw Sara's car there.
Could she just be inside? Maybe he's not too late?
"Sara! Sara!"
His faithful boxer greeted him, whining and looking sad. Hank plopped down across Grissom's feet.
He bent down and patted his faithful companion. Focus, he said to himself. See what she took.
He went upstairs and found the bulk of her clothes there in the closet. But her favorite travel bag was gone, along with her boots and running shoes. Looking in her dresser, she saw all her underwear, bras and socks were gone. In the bathroom her toothbrush was absent from the holder and her favorite shampoo and body wash were gone from the shower.
"Oh fuck."
He ran downstairs to her desk. He frantically opened all the drawers. "Where is it? Goddamnit where is it?"
Her passport. He couldn't find it.
He slinked down to the floor. His brain yelled, "Her car is here. She must have taken a taxi. Call all the companies and ask if there was a pickup at the house. Or at the lab. What the fuck are you waiting for?"
But his body and his heart kept him on the floor. He sat against the desk and lied down on the cold floor. She was gone. She said goodbye.
And now he couldn't breathe. He couldn't keep his eyes open. He couldn't function.
Hank ambled to his master and licked his arm. Grissom opened his eyes, and Hank laid down next to him.
He reached into his pocket and pushed two buttons to redial her number. This time it didn't ring. It went straight to voicemail. She shut off her phone. So he hung up.
Hank whined and Grissom got up to let him outside. He closed the sliding glass door and let out a grief-filled scream in their otherwise empty townhouse.
It was now three hours since he read the letter. Three hours since she said goodbye. Three hours since she broke his heart and crushed his soul.
Returning to her desk, he searched for something, anything, she might have written down. Any clue to where she might be or what she was facing and feeling. The only thing he found were sheets of paper that she threw away in her wastebasket. Apparently they were prior attempts to write the letter to him. Words were crossed out, each paper had different paragraphs in different places.
She wanted to get the words just right. When you explode someone's world, it is best to get the words just right.
His mood fluctuated from sour to sad. The line her letter haunted him:
"I have to go. I have no idea where I'm going, but I know 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."
He was busy trying to make her happy, and identified her as being happy, yet, he missed her pain.
He was so angry with himself he punched the wall.
As he held his hand, knuckles bleeding, he tried to recapture every memory he could of her. Happy. Sad. Whatever he could. She might have said goodbye, but she could never vacate his mind, heart and soul.
It was sunset when he actually left a message. From where he stood, he could see a portion of the Vegas skyline and feel a breeze. He hated the place where he stood, but felt he needed to be at that location to leave his first message.
"Sweetheart, I love you with all my heart. I wish I were there with you. I'm trying to understand. I'm trying not to call you every hour on the hour to hear your voice and assuage my grief and my guilt. And I know I failed terribly at that today," he said, trying to muster a chuckle.
He couldn't.
"I know this is your journey. And I know I must be patient for your sake. I can't promise I will always be strong. I can't promise there won't be days when I don't leave our bed. I can't promise I will eat healthy, like you always tell me I need to do. But I can promise you that I will always offer you every bit of my unconditional love and support. Whenever and wherever."
He paused for a moment. It felt like this connection was his only lifeline and he didn't want to end the call, but he knew he had to or he would run out of time.
"I'm sorry if I ignored your pain, misread your happiness. But I am not a ghost, my love. Please don't let me fade away from your life. I beg you. Please call me when you feel you can. Please come back to me when you can. You are my heart. You are my home. Both are broken without you, but both are ready to welcome you without question and with every ounce of love I possess. I will not say goodbye. I will say I already miss you terribly, my love. Be well, my sweet Sara. I will always be your loving Gil."
He put his phone away and kept a hold on the letter, reading it for the hundredth time. A strong breeze threatened to blow the sheet of paper out of his hand, and there was a part of him that almost let it go in the breeze.
But of course he didn't. He couldn't. Good or bad, this was a part of who they were as a couple. One was hurting, so the other is hurting. One is devastated by her past, one is paralyzed with worry over their future.
He folded the letter and put it in his pocket. He put his elbows on the cement railing and held his head in his hands and allowed himself to weep.
In the days since their separation, time would go slow and time would go fast. For Grissom it all depended on how he could distract his mind. For Sara, it was all about how she could purge herself of painful memories without distraction.
One of the hardest stretches was the first stretch. When he would no longer hide the fact she would not return to the lab. He went to her locker and found it empty. It seemed untouched. She even left a photo of the two of them taped to the locker door.
Why wouldn't she take that?
That was something Greg witnessed too, and to him it cemented the fact it was Grissom's fault Sara was gone. The younger man had always had mixed feelings concerning his supervisor. Deep down inside despite Natalie put away for good, Greg thought Grissom should have protected Sara.
So yes, Grissom received cold stares and curious looks from many in the lab. But honestly, he couldn't give a shit. No one wanted Sara back more than Grissom. No one.
He promised himself not to call her for a week. If she wanted to call him she would. And how he longed to hear her voice. But he knew he couldn't push Sara. He learned that in the last three years they have been together.
So he threw himself into work. He made sure he took complicated cases generally working with Warrick, who never asked and never assumed. It was a working relationship Grissom greatly appreciated.
Pulling doubles became Grissom's go-to model, which is why he made it a week without a call. When he came home he would care for Hank who recognized Sara's absence keenly. It was when Hank dropped a toy at Grissom's feet and then put his paw on Grissom's lap that led Grissom to call Sara.
He knew she wouldn't answer, but he hoped she would.
She didn't.
"Hi, honey. I'm sitting here with Hank. He just deposited his pull rope at my feet. I am going to play it with him, but I will bet you he will get upset because I don't play with the rope like you do. Apparently I don't possess the Sidle touch, as it were." Grissom put his cell on speaker and put the phone on the coffee table. "OK, Hank. Come on." There was a soft sound from Hank and the sound of his nails on the floor. Finally there were two seconds of the "canine grrr" that dogs make when they play. But it stopped suddenly and then Hank started talk-barking, loudly and demandingly.
"Yup, I did it wrong. He's looking at me as if saying, 'You're not doing it like she does.'" Grissom chuckled but then he thought, Is she going to think this is a guilt trip? "I couldn't help but call you when Hank dropped the toy. It was just… something I thought … I know you thought it was cute when he did that. We're hanging in there. We hope you are, too. But we both miss you. I… ah… I hope I can hear your voice soon, but I understand. I just want you to know you are never far away from my thoughts. And I hope you are safe. I love you."
He ended the call feeling much worse then when he started the call.
For the first month, he kept with phone calls, sometimes every four or five days. But as no message was ever reciprocated or even acknowledged, his enthusiasm waned. His desire to be with her grew, which really made the lack of acknowledgement worse. He had to admit it when she never reached out during the holidays, it hurt. A lot. Like not-get-out-of-bed-for-19-hours a lot.
No matter his feelings, he tried to be positive. But there were times life hit him and sucked all the positivity out of him.
"I don't know what to do with Warrick. He's being reckless. I don't know how to get through to him. He is going to …" he stopped before he said the word "self-destruct," remembering Sara's letter. "God, I wish I could see you, hold you, talk to you. I need you."
He didn't know if Sara was even listening to the messages.
But she did.
Eventually.
When Sara answered the call from him saying she couldn't talk to him it wasn't because he hated him, or was angry with him, or didn't love him. She just didn't trust herself to follow-through with what she was doing. It broke her heart to hang up on him. Broke it in pieces.
So despite desperately wanting to hear his voice and keep a connection to him, she put a personal moratorium on listening to his messages. She wasn't on vacation or at a conference, she was on a journey to heal, which involved introspection and isolation. She knew no matter what he said, it would cause her pain. No matter if his tone was sad or soulful, selfish or somber, sexy or sweet, sarcastic or self-deprecating, she knew she would be listening to a Grissom so far away — physically and emotionally — that it would create a feeling of loneliness that would spiral her backwards.
She told herself she had to avoid listening to messages for two months. More if she felt necessary.
When she first said goodbye to him, left him that note, she didn't even travel far from Vegas. For a few days, she stayed in a small motel in Pahrump where she meditated and mapped out where she might go first. She opened a bank account using the funds that was a settlement from the city after her "job-related injury."
The description — so glib. It should have read "job-related experience that shattered her soul, broke her spirit and made her both question the four decades of her existence and leave the one person who loved her unconditionally." But she guessed that was too long to fit on the check's memo line.
She settled on the primary and first source of her anguish — California. She paid the remaining $2,000 off on her car, left it at the townhouse, and became very familiar with the bus routes between northern and southern California.
She visited different sites that she had to call home through the foster system. Sometimes she would just stay in front of a house, inconspicuously of course, and try to recall what happened to her there.
Sometimes, if she saw someone she recognized, she would knock on a door. She would spend anxiety-filled seconds standing in front of doors. She journaled her memories, her reactions with those she met, the feelings she felt in the pit of her stomach when some houses came into view.
One of her foster mothers was still in the home where Sara had stayed for a few months. There were no longer foster children there, as the foster mother was now in her 70s. Sara wasn't sure if the woman even remembered her, until she recalled a memory that Sara had sealed in a chamber of her brain and not recalled since she was 11.
"That boy should have never been in our house," the old woman said. "You were a brave young girl, and I cried for your pain. I wish I could have found you sooner."
The boy was only one of her demons, and a ghost who resided in her soul. She researched him and found he was in prison — had been since 1998. She looked at his mug shot on the California Department of Corrections website. A career criminal, a career abuser. She looked at his mug shot listed there but she couldn't recognize him. That memory that had been locked away so deep had dissolved Sara's ability to recall any of the abusive boy's features. She couldn't compare the 49-year-old convict's mug shot to the faceless boy who hurt her.
That was until two days later when Sara dreamt of what happened. That boy's face was clear in her mind. And she wept, wishing she could feel Grissom's arms wrap around her, as he did every time she awoke from a nightmare.
But it was too soon. She had much work to do. It was too soon.
When she worked at CSI, Sara had attended a conference where she discovered how to retrieve and save voicemails that came through her cell phone to her computer. That way voice files could be catalogued and listened to whenever needed, instead of leaving them on the phone, where the service might delete them after a certain period of time. She thought this was one of the best ways to save any phone calls from witnesses to aid in cases, and it did.
Now she was using that protocol for personal reasons. She still paid for the phone plan on her Vegas phone, but kept the phone off. She had since got a cheap phone, with a cheap phone plan to use as her primary source of communication. The Vegas cell would only be used when absolutely necessary.
After 84 days Sara felt strong enough to listen to phone messages. By this time in her journey, she was meeting with her mother and brother, along with a therapist she had learned about through a support group she attended. She had gotten a part-time job at a coffee shop, and kept house in an extended-stay hotel nearby.
Most of the messages were from Grissom. She wondered if she should start listening to the messages from oldest to the newest or vice versa. Regardless, she knew she should listen in small chunks. It was something she had spoken about with her therapist.
To prepare herself to listen to the messages on her computer, she made herself a cup of tea and put it on a table, along with a box of tissues. She chose the earliest messages first, and pumped herself up before she pushed play on the first message, which from the time stamp, she knew was from Grissom.
"You can do this Sidle. You are strong. You can stop whenever you need to," she said to herself aloud in her empty room. "This is about your healing. You can stop listening whenever the emotions get too much."
From the moment she heard him call her "sweetheart," she felt a visceral reaction so potent she almost vomited. She had only been able to hear him say, "Sweetheart, I love you with all my heart. I wish I were there with you. I'm trying to understand."
Then she had to stop the message. She stepped away from her computer and paced, not knowing whether to go to the bathroom to throw up or get under the scratchy covers of the bed and cry into the sheets.
She did both.
Sara didn't realize she had fallen asleep until the alarm on her laptop summoned her to get ready for work. She got out of bed and went to turn the alarm off when her email binged with a notification.
Voice mail … it listed Grissom's number.
She stared at the voicemail icon for two minutes. How did he know?! she screamed in her head. Goddammit, Gil.
Angrily getting work clothes ready, she hastily clicked on the icon. 15.67 seconds. Come on Sidle, you can handle 15 fucking seconds, she thought as she stripped to her bra and underwear. Before pulling on her shirt, she pressed play.
"Hi. It's me. Just thinking about you. I would love to talk to you. It's been a long time. I'm worried about you. I love you, Sara."
And there she stood in a barista shirt and black panties. She wondered how many more of the voice mails were just like that. There she was cursing him for sending a voicemail to tell her he loves her and is worried about her.
She took a deep breath fraught with fatigue and sorrow, and shut her laptop. Later. She'd listen to messages later. Maybe. Maybe not. It's her own goddamn choice whether she listens to them or not. She wouldn't chastise herself for either decision.
But now was no time for an internal debate. She needed to get to work. They called her in for an extra shift. The holidays are always so much more busy.
As the new year rolled around Sara made a decision to leave California, if only for a while. She thought about driving from California to the East Coast, but in the end she gave up that idea. While she knew she could do the trip herself and take good care of herself, she really didn't want to do it alone.
It took a session or two with a therapist to help her realize deciding not to do an activity solo does not mean she is making a weak decision.
It was reasoning the therapist hoped Sara might employ in other decisions of her life. That reasoning was not lost on Sara; she got it. But this was Sara's solo journey, something distinctly her own.
She hadn't been back to the East Coast since she left Harvard, and was kind of excited. She made plans to visit with some old college friends. But once they did connect, Sara realized it's been so long since they reconnected because they really didn't have much in common. The visits were perfunctory.
Except with one college friend, Lidia. She and Sara shared a common bond of being bounced around from family to family, in Lidia's case it wasn't the foster system but from one drunk relative to another. Sara remembered Lidia's reserved nature and felt comfortable around her, perhaps because Sara had a reserved nature herself.
They met at a coffee shop near an attorney's office where Lidia worked. She and her fellow attorneys worked solely on immigration law. While other college friends couldn't believe Sara would "sideline" her earning potential as a CSI, Lidia was not surprised at all. She said the job fit Sara.
"I get it. So many victims are the ultimate underdog, and if there's one thing Sara Sidle champions it's underdogs," Lidia said. "But it's got to be rough out there."
"I'm sure it is for you, too," Sara said. Lidia had offered a few heartbreaking stories of family separation and false imprisonment faced by her clients. "Have you ever felt you're just burned out?"
Lidia looked at Sara critically, but still with a wistful smile. "Do you remember Dr. Sanchez?"
"Who could forget him," Sara said with a bit of disdain.
"Yeah, you guys butted heads," Lidia said. "I remember he said you couldn't understand how working too hard could lead to being too emotional or worse too unemotional."
"He was a real ass. What the fuck did that even mean? He would tell us to work as hard as we could but we couldn't feel anything too much about anything or feel too little about anything. Like we were meant to be even-keel robots," Sara said, immediately transported to a time she had said something similar to a coworker.
"I remember you said something exactly like that to him, and I was like, 'You go, girl!'," Lidia said, garnering a laugh from Sara.
"But, I gotta admit, I have never forgotten him saying that," Lidia continued. "There was a stretch a couple of years ago where I was working nonstop on 27 different cases for a good seven months. By that eighth month, I had it. Truth be told, that probably happened by the fourth month. But the eighth month, my whole mind and body just shut down. And that's when I realized Dr. Sanchez's worst quality wasn't his brusqueness, it was his inability to use the best words to hit home an important point."
"We're not meant to be everyone's champion, and we aren't singular in this universe," Lidia said. "There is humanity and there is being human, and sometimes we can't reconcile those notions properly in our jobs where we meet people on terrible days. For us to offer humanity to victims or clients or families, we can't just be a living breathing human, we have to be something more — a superhuman, a robot or an apathetic asshole. And I think that's what he meant. When we are in the midst of the work, we have to remember we are just human. No more and no less. And it's kind of hard to realize that."
"I never thought of it like that. It's kind of deep and complicated."
"I think a lot during Boston traffic. It's either that stuff or thinking of how to develop a temporary stun gun for Boston drivers."
Again, that elicited a laugh from Sara. "But did you burn out?"
"Yeah, I did. I have a good support system at home, and this might sound dumb, but I had to learn to use it, to trust that support system. And man, I know it shouldn't be tough to trust the closest people in my life, but it was really, really, really tough to do that. I don't know about you, but growing up, trust was like a unicorn."
Sara nodded. She understood that feeling intimately.
"I didn't burn out on my job so much as I burned out on being a simple human being and I burned out in thinking the only humanity in life was my own because I could control it. I stopped seeing humanity in the people, even those who were most important to me," Lidia said. "Girl, it's all about trust. Asking yourself, 'Who do you trust?'"
"How do I want to trust," Sara added.
"Yeah," Lidia said, noticing how reflective Sara was. "You know, I can tell this whole visit to the East Coast wasn't some whim to get the tail end of frost-bite season."
Sara looked down towards her lap. "It's been really, really bad this past year and a half. I needed to get away."
"I get it. Us bouncers, we get each other right?"
"Right."
"Sometimes it really sucks when you are searching for answers. I hope you find them, girl."
"I hope so too."
It was towards mid-February, while Sara was in Boston, that she caught up with listening to six months worth of messages from Grissom. She would listen to them, digitally rename them by date and a word or two about the context — Hank's toy, sounding sad, sounding happy, sounding tired, work related. Things like that. Then, all the messages were then saved in the Gil file, which was one of the first things she saw when the laptop was powered up.
The messages did wane in number as weeks went by, and the same was true for present day messages as she listened to them while she was back on the West Coast. A lot of the more recent messages were short "thinking about you" messages, but the tone of his voice would vary. There were times he started with a terse, "Hi," and then there would be a pause as if he was thinking what she should say, how he should say it. Sara could picture him in his mind doing that mental chess in a matter of seconds. She also knew sometimes the result would be him opening his mouth, saying nothing and leaving the conversation.
But he never just said, "Hi, and hung up. There would be something said after his pause. "I hope you're safe." "I miss you more than I know I should probably tell you." "I'm trying to understand." "Your African violet is still alive." "I got a sunburn on the back of my neck. I need a new hat." "This job … it… ugh… I miss you."
The last message was preceded by a couple of messages about Warrick. In those messages, Grissom's voice sounded anxious, yet clear. But the "this job" message, Grissom sounded absolutely nasally.
While Grissom would be plagued by migraines, he wasn't someone who got sick with a cold or the flu. Even when Sara was sick, somehow Grissom wouldn't catch the bug, which helped hide their relationship from people at work.
Hearing that nasal tone tugged at Sara's heartstrings. He always made a pot of a vegetarian version of his mother's chicken soup recipe when she was ill. It was the only perk of being sick.
She wondered if he would make himself some chicken soup. Maybe she should call in an order of soup from a restaurant.
Or, maybe she should just call him.
By this time it had been eight months since she had spoke to him. It's all about trust. She needed to trust herself to talk with him.
She held the phone in her hand and scrolled to his name in her contacts. But instead of pushing the call button, she pushed the message button instead.
"It's me. I heard your message. Well, messages. I'm gonna try to call you this week."
She quickly pushed send before she could press the delete button several times.
Grissom was getting ready to leave the house for court and having a hell of a time getting his act together. He hadn't been sick with a cold in maybe 15 years. Maybe more. And he felt like he was in a fog.
And it didn't help that Catherine was in the townhouse opening every drawer and door in an obvious snooping expedition.
But he put his soup on low, told Catherine what to do for Hank, who was moving a lot slower these days, and went out the door as he was tying his tie.
In his pocket, he heard it bing a text notification. He struggled with trying to get his keys to drive the car, his handkerchief to blow his nose and his phone to see what else he was supposed to put on his agenda today.
A terrible sneeze gave the handkerchief precedence over the keys and phone. And since he had dropped his keys, the phone pulled ahead in second place. He put his handkerchief in his back pocket, and scrolled to find the new message. He was going to multitask and bend down to get his keys and stopped.
Sara cell.
He felt paralyzed. It had been eight months of unreturned calls and now a text message? He read the message and felt his brain go on overtime.
What does she mean by messages? Did she just listen to messages now? That's a lot of messages. So she never bothered to listen to the messages before? Why wouldn't she care enough to at least take less than a minute out of her day to listen to a message from him.
Those thoughts bubbled in a brew of resentment, but then something else kicked in - the logic of love. Who cares when she listens to the messages? She's going to call you. You're going to hear her voice.
Only if she actually calls.
Don't you trust her? You told her you did. Remember? After you left without notice and didn't reach out?
He thought about that trip to Williams College. But the cocoon.
Without a note.
I just forgot to put it in the box. Ugh. I have to get to work.
He picked up his keys and started the car to drive to court.
With three days of exhausting work dealing with urine-laced pages in books created by a murderous gang member and ADA Maddie Klein who could be monstrous in a different way Grissom hoped to get some rest. Before he could, he wanted to walk Hank. It wouldn't be a long walk. Not because of Grissom's fatigue, but because he didn't want Hank to overdo it. The glucosamine Grissom gave him seemed to be only effective for a while to help with the poor pooch's arthritis.
After walking in the door, Hank immediately limped slowly to his water bowl and Grissom plopped on the couch. He was rubbing his tired head when his phone rang. From the way things had been going, he was sure it would be work.
Then he looked at the caller and discovered it wasn't work.
With a smile on his face he answered the phone with a simple "Hi" and laid down on the couch.
"You know, I was wondering if you might have a sexy, raspy voice courtesy of what I suspect is a cold. Something like Liam Nelson without the accent. "
He let out a chuckle.
"But how am I supposed to hear if you have that voice with just 'hi?'"
"Is this better? Because I really don't do accents."
Sara felt this sad smile come on her face and she let out a deep breath. "Much better."
"So do I pass the sexy voice test?"
"Actually, you always do. Liam Neeson has nothing in you, babe."
Another chuckle.
"How are you feeling? Do you have the flu or a cold?"
"A nasty cold. I feel better now. Like right now."
The implication was not lost in Sara. "I'm glad."
"Where are you?"
Sara sighed. "Not in Vegas."
"I'm well aware of that," Grissom said, not so much in an accusatory tone, but a melancholy one. "Sara, it's been eight months without you. Give me something, please?"
Sara had heard his pleading like that in plenty of his messages. She didn't realize how much easier it is to deal with hearing emotional begging from a message versus a live phone conversation. "I'm back in California."
"Oh," Grissom said. "It's a big state."
Again, the implication was not lost in Sara. "I'm very familiar with the bus routes around the state. It's kind of amazing all the different places I landed while I was in the system." Sara knew she hadn't answered his question. Was she ready to trust him with that information?
It seemed Grissom understood what she was thinking. "You know, if you're worried I might immediately run to you if you tell me where you are, then that's a legitimate worry. Because I would love … I want to see you. But I won't go to you if you tell me not to do that."
"I'm in the Bay Area," she said softly. "And… you know I miss you too. Terribly. But … Gil this is difficult."
"Missing me or telling me to stay away?" His tone was laced with fatigue and disappointment. "Because I've left you dozens of messages and heard nothing back, so I think you've done an admirable job in the 'staying-away' department."
It stung. But it was accurate. "Thirty-seven," Sara said. "I've saved them all."
"So you did listen to them." Grissom was so conflicted with that information. The warring voices in his brain went back and forth. She listened to them, but never reached out. Even though I told her I loved her, missed her, needed her … But she listened to them and saved them. Not to mention she didn't block your number or change numbers. Take it easy on her.
With that, Grissom softened his voice. "I left them because they were my lifeline to you. It was all I had. And I wanted you to know no matter where you were, my thoughts were constantly with you. You are always on my mind, sweetheart."
Deep down Sara knew he needed to send those messages for himself and not just for her. "It took me a long time to listen to them. I would start and then have to stop."
"I don't really want to apologize for sending the messages, but if the act of doing that hurts you…"
"No. Don't ever apologize for them," she said with resolve. "Gil, even though I didn't … I couldn't respond to the messages, I treasure them because they remind me you didn't leave me. And I know that would have been easy to do."
Grissom let out a humorless laugh that erupted a small coughing fit. "You think it would be easy to leave you? I'm living without you and wondering if you will ever return to me so I can feel whole again. I don't want to leave you. And sure as hell didn't want you to leave me."
Sara let out what sounded like a muted sob. "Can we start this phone call over? Because I don't want to hang up, but I'm not ready to process some of this."
Grissom closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. That urge to scream, that urge he felt when she had just left and he was scrambling around the empty townhouse, returned. It's about patience. If you love her you will let her set the timeline. After a moment or two he spoke again.
"Hi."
She knew he couldn't see the relieved smile that came in her face, but she hoped he could hear it. "Hi. How are you feeling?"
"I'm better."
"Did you make yourself some soup?"
His tone softened even more. "Yes. I did."
"Did you put rice in it?"
"I did not. Rice doesn't belong in this soup. Potatoes, yes. Noodles, maybe depending on the variety. But not rice."
"That is short-sighted thinking. You could cook the rice in the broth."
"Then the rice is overcooked and mushy, and the starch doesn't blend well with the flavor."
"Then make the rice ahead of time and put it in at the last minute."
"And ruin the texture profile of everything else in the soup?"
"You would put rice in the soup you would make me."
"Yes, because when you're sick, you're delusional, and having this debate when you are living on NyQuil and vapor rub just isn't productive."
The conversation did its job. It gave the couple a sense of normalcy in a situation far from ordinary. It has them both smiling.
"So, when I'm sick, I'm delusional?"
"Do you not remember the conversation about the caterpillars climbing up the wall with toothpicks as swords?"
That memory made Sara snort. "They were uprising."
Grissom joined with a soft laugh. "Are you well?"
"I'm trying. Some days I have no idea what I'm doing. And other days I figure things out, and journal them through."
"You sound better."
"You mean from the phone call when I first left. God I hope so."
"I mean even before that," Grissom said. "I missed signs. I so desperately wanted you to feel better, to feel whole but I missed signs. I can't apologize enough to you."
"It's hard to recognize a sign if I'm hiding it, and I hide things well."
There was another lull before Sara asked, "How is Hank?"
Grissom's tone became sad. "He's older. He's having some problems moving around, but he's still with me."
"Give him a kiss for me."
"I will."
"And Warrick?"
Grissom sighed. "I'm worried about him. He's being reckless. He's like a powder keg. I'm trying to get him to calm down but… They want me to fire him but he needs this job. It's the only stabilizing part of his life."
"I'm sure you're doing your best to watch over him."
"I'm trying. I partner him with me a lot of times."
"You're a good supervisor."
Grissom shrugged and Sara immediately called him out on it. "Don't shrug that off. You are."
"I didn't shrug."
"I know you did. Don't deny it."
He pursed his lips wishing he could see her. "I love you, Sara."
"I love you, Gil."
"I know you are in control of this journey and I respect that. I do. But please don't make me wait so long to hear from you." This time it was Grissom swallowing a sob. "This phone call has meant the world to me."
The sincerity of his voice made her put the phone down for a moment so she could dab the tears sliding down her face. "I shouldn't have waited this long to contact you. I could explain myself, even make excuses, but I'm not sure that would help us. Can you trust me on that?"
"Yes, sweetheart."
"I'm not sure what the next week will hold, but there's no reason we can't speak to one another. Message one another."
"I would like that."
"I promise you if you leave a message I will listen to it and I will get back to you," Sara said. "We should be speaking with each other at least once a week."
"I would like that."
"So would I," Sara agreed. "Are you working tonight?"
"I work most nights."
Sara was afraid of that. He was overworking, which is probably why he caught a cold. "Then be safe."
"You, too," Grissom said, knowing the conversation was winding down. "I love you and miss you with all my heart. Be well, love."
"I love you. I'll talk to you soon."
Although miles between them, the couple simultaneously ended the call and let themselves cry. For Sara, the call let her know her home was still there for her. For Grissom, the call let him know Sara was still there. Absent physically, but present in love.
In the subsequent weeks, they would communicate once, sometimes twice a week. Generally Grissom would call and leave a message and Sara would call back. There was one time they missed talking for a week, because Sara took an opportunity to go to Costa Rica for a surfing trip.
When they talked, they tried to keep the conversations as light as possible, until that became an impossibility. And fortunately, this was a phone call Sara answered instead of listening to a message from Grissom.
"Hey, babe. How are you?"
"Sara." A single word spoken with so much sorrow.
So much sorrow, it frightened her. "Hey, are you OK?"
"No."
"What's happened? What's going on?"
"Warrick. He's gone. He died in my arms," Grissom said as he sat against a wall in a blood-soaked shirt while Warrick's body was nearby. "I couldn't save him…"
She couldn't hide the sob. "I'm coming to Vegas."
"I have to go. They want to talk to me," he said, sorrow and shock evident in his voice. "Sara, can you…"
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
The taxi dropped her off at the townhouse. She hoped he would be there but he wasn't. But since she was there, she could drive her car to the lab.
If it started. It has been 10 months.
She was fairly certain Grissom would have taken care of the car, and he must have. Because it started with no problems.
After parking her car she had to take a deep breath before she entered the lab. She not only was going to see him after so long, but walk the halls she thought she would forever abandon. She felt like she needed some type of mental armor to get to Grissom's office.
She got her visitor's badge easily, and continued towards Grissom's office. She tried to keep her gaze forward, but she couldn't help looking to her right and left every once in a while to get a glimpse of a lab.
The second she was in front of his office, her battle armor dissolved and she waited for Grissom to see her. He looked exhausted mentally and physically and all she wanted to do was embrace him to give him strength and support.
So, she did and felt him dissolve. She held him tight and felt him cradle his head on her shoulder.
"Thank you," he whispered.
She guided him to sit down so they could be eye-to-eye. Their knees touched as she held his hands and asked what had happened.
While he tried to give the appearance he was calm and collected, Sara could tell he was struggling. The slight tremor of his index finger, the way he unconsciously dragged his foot about four inches back and forth, the way his lip barely quivered.
But he felt good enough to talk to her, as if he had just saw each other the day before.
She was hoping they could just stay in the bubble they created, until people started filtering in the office. They would say hello to Sara, bring her into a hug, ask if she was there to stay. It felt a bit overwhelming. She immediately recognized she wouldn't be able to be in this space with the safety of being with Grissom.
And that scared her a little bit. Her goal was to be strong and independent when it came to her work. Would she be able to return without him being there?
The next few days were a blur of investigations and funeral arrangements. The time they spent together had both an air of closeness and a threat of a chasm. The death of Warrick hit Grissom hard. Cradling his lifeless body after the young man took his last breath. Realizing he was a father figure to him, yet having no ability to save him from being killed. Breaking down during his eulogy.
Sara recognized the indelible mark Warrick's death made on Grissom. She hated it for him. She hated that Warrick met such a violent end. She hated that Warrick's murderer could have very well shot Grissom dead in that same alleyway.
So after all was said and done, she wanted him to leave with her, if for a little while. But he said no.
It hurt her. She had only been back in Vegas for a little more than a week, and when she offered the opportunity for them to be together without the spectre of violence encompassing them, he said no. But he said the lab was short-handed.
She didn't question it, and he didn't elaborate upon it. So the chasm began to widen.
Then there was Pam and Tom Adler. Grissom didn't understand why Sara, who had to escape from the cases and the work, dove headfirst in the waters surrounding Pam Adler's death. Then came that awful conversation where things were said in a wave of depression, and assumptions were made out of fatigue and misunderstanding. It climaxed into yet another separation. The conversation should have gone farther, but neither of them fostered a dialogue. It was as if they both gave up.
Sara packed her bags while he was at work. She thought about going to the lab, but she just couldn't. So she left without saying goodbye. He made his choice. She made hers.
When he returned to the townhouse, he immediately felt her absence. It made him cry on the spot. He went to her desk again to search for anything. A note. A travel itinerary. Anything.
He found one thing. Her ring.
And it made him cry again. The pain was tenfold from a year ago. Grissom wondered if he would ever see Sara again.
Eventually, she called saying she was safe and on a ship called the Sea Shepherd. It was a voicemail. He hoped she was telling the truth when she said she was doing OK. Because he wasn't.
TBC