"Since when have you been interested in beauty?"
"Since I met you."
--Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom, "Primum Non Nocere"
**********
What am I still doing here?
The question Sara Sidle asked herself had nothing to do with where she was or what she was doing. After the snow had melted off, Grissom had scooped up the tooth fragment and hightailed it back to the lab, leaving her to pack up the multitude of heaters they had used.
Typical Grissom, she thought as she wound electrical cord around her elbow. He gets an idea in his head and he takes off, leaving everyone else to catch up.
But back to why she was still here. It had been two weeks and two days since she had applied for a leave of absence. It had been two weeks and one day since that plant had shown up at the lab addressed to her. It had been two weeks since she had withdrawn the request.
Sara had been fully prepared to leave. She had left Grissom's office after turning in her leave form and had gone straight home and begun packing. She had been ready. She needed to get away, to get out of this town for a while. Hell, "Leaving Las Vegas" had been primed and ready in her car's tape player.
She was proud of her reasoning behind leaving. Respect in the workplace was important to her, always had been. She liked being a member of a team...and hated being a tagalong. She was tired of chasing after Grissom all of the time. Tired of trying to keep up with him. Tired of dreaming of intense, confused blue eyes.
That was the damndest fool thing you've ever done, Sara mentally snarled at herself as she yanked two more plugs apart. He had been so upset, so frustrated after tearing into those walls and finding nothing. All she had wanted to do was offer some reassurance and some support. To tell him that she believed him and that she agreed he was right. But when she felt his skin under her fingers, when those eyes flickered with confusion, it had taken all of her control to calmly drop her hand back to her side. And just when she had managed to push that episode back into that little corner of her mind that she did her best to ignore, came the woman in the cage.
She and Catherine were wrapped up in the SUV vs. train case at the time. What little she had known about what Grissom was working on came from Nick's worrying about anthrax, or something like that. Later, Nick had filled the two of them in on the poison, the autistic Aaron, and the librarian turned would-be black widow. But for several days, Sara had caught Grissom looking at her with a thoughtful expression. She had also noticed the copy of Othello sitting on his desk. His choice of reading material didn't surprise her, but the fact he had brought it to work was.
When the murder of the Marks' sisters had been solved, Sara had gone back to her apartment and undergone a kind of purge. Seeing Donna Marks' home and sifting through a life so similar to her own had shaken her badly. That night, when she reached for the phone, she was looking to reach out and convince herself that she really did have a life. But deep inside, she knew. Knew that any life, no matter how stark or work-related, was worth living if he was in it.
And then, when she had tried to leave before she gave anything away, came that damn plant. She had managed to withstand Grissom's shock, that almost pleading look on his face, and even his "the lab needs you," which was as close as he would ever get to "I need you." The next day, she had seen the plant. A large fern, just sitting there on the table in the break room. A bright, vibrant green that seemed wildly out of place in its antiseptic surroundings. Thinking that perhaps it was a goodbye gift, she had plucked the note bearing her name out of the leaves. All it had said was "from Grissom." She lost complete track of time while standing there, trying to make sense of it. A last mind game? No, he wasn't capable of being that kind of cruel.
Sara managed to get through the entire shift without speaking directly to Grissom. She had planned on it being her last night, but when she knocked on his office's doorframe, she knew she was staying. She withdrew the request, for once grateful for his silence. She thanked him for the fern, receiving an equally cryptic response. "I heard you liked vegetation."
Tugging on another plug, her thoughts returned to the comment that had started this whole line of thought.
"Since when have you been interested in beauty?"
"Since I met you."
What the hell had he meant by that? Ego stroking because of her near-desertion? A way of making her feel more respected? No, no. Sara had known him for too long. Gil Grissom did not make a habit of saying things he didn't mean. So what was he trying to say? Was he even trying to say anything? Her mind kept flipping those four words over and over. Funny how four words can turn everything on its head.
Maybe she should have left. Gotten out before she slipped up, did or said something she shouldn't. Before the inevitable cracks began forming in her armor. She knew that every single day she saw him, she ran the risk of revealing a part of herself she thought long buried. Sara privately wondered if and when her luck would run out.
Yet, in the end, she admitted to herself that leaving Las Vegas wouldn't have helped. She was quite sure that the memories and questions would have followed her wherever she had run to.
"Nowhere is far enough away," she sang tunelessly, her breath forming a large cloud around her head as she tied off the last bundle of cord.
And when the last of the heaters had been hauled away and Sara made her way to the parking lot, she looked skyward.
"Damn you, Gil Grissom. Damn you for giving me hope."
**********
"Such a muddy line between
The things you want
And the things you have to do...."
--Sheryl Crow, "Leaving Las Vegas"
******************** END