Fandom: CSI Rating: PG Pairing: G/S Summary: Post-ep for the Season Seven finale. Disclaimer: Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Alliance Atlantis, CBS, Anthony Zuicker and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All other characters are my invention, and if you want to mess with them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any. Spoilers: through "Living Doll" Many, many thanks to my patient beta Cincoflex, who has been enthusiastically cheering me on while keeping me on the straight and narrow!  Couldn't do it without you, dearest.   ********* It was dark.  He preferred it that way.   For many years, Grissom’s office had served as his sanctum--almost more so than his home, at times.  It was his library, his toolbox, his retreat and his center of power, and the only part of the lab he had complete control over.  This door he could lock or unlock, these lights he could turn on or off, these shelves were his to fill or empty.   Right now the door was locked, the blinds were closed, and the lights were off.  Grissom could still see shapes moving past the windows beyond, but sounds were muffled and he was wrapped in a protective layer of isolation.  His only movement was the thumb of his left hand, rubbing slowly over the worn rosary he held; not counting, not prayer, just the absent, habitual stroke.   On the desk before him, barely visible in the dark, lay an evidence bag.  Within it was Sara’s cellphone, found lying neatly next to her kit in the back of her Prius.  Its tiny window informed him, if he cared to look, that she had four messages.   Three were from him.  From before they’d realized.   The phone had already been dusted for fingerprints, of course, but only Sara’s had come to light.  If Natalie Davis had had an accomplice, either they hadn’t touched the phone or had worn gloves.  The little device was of no further use, forensically, but it wouldn’t be released from evidence until the case was closed or shelved.   Grissom supposed he should turn it off, rather than let the battery run down, but he couldn’t find the energy, somehow.   He honestly didn’t know what to do.  Natalie was still unresponsive, and the shrinks had insisted that she be hospitalized, claiming she was on the brink of catatonia.  The Sheriff had ordered that someone remain at her bedside at all times in case she showed any signs of wanting to communicate, but no one was holding out any hope.   They’d found Sara’s badge in the trunk of Natalie’s car, and a few strands of her hair, but nothing more (no blood, his mind whispered, no blood at least); Greg and Warrick had stripped the vehicle almost down to its component atoms, but the tires and the undercarriage turned up only more generic, ubiquitous sand.   Brass and a squad of his officers were waking up towing services all around the city, trying to find one that might have taken the wrecked car to the putative scene, but had struck no gold yet.  And, unvoiced yet known, was the fact that there was no guarantee that Natalie had used a legitimate towing service, or a tow truck at all.  There were other ways to move a car, and some of them involved friends of friends and payments in cash.   Grissom knew that S&R teams were moving outward from Las Vegas in a slow spiral, that as many choppers as could be spared were in the air.  But he also knew just how hopelessly large an area they had to search…and that budgets, and fresh crimes, and the rapidly falling chance that Sara was still alive would eventually bring the efforts to a halt.   And he didn’t know what to do.   Grissom had spent years perfecting the art and science of crime scene investigation.  He could spot the tiniest clue, figure out the context of the most obscure evidence, find the keystone of a scene as though he’d committed the crime himself.  Of course there had been cases that defeated him; there always would be.  But if the evidence was there to be found, he would find it.   The trouble with evidence, however, is that it has to connect to something to be of use.  Cold cases were often unsolvable not due to a paucity of evidence, but because the evidence didn’t link to anything.  Fingerprints are of no use if they generate no hits in a database; DNA requires a match of some kind.  A surprising number of criminals escaped justice not because they were smart, or careful, but because they simply weren’t in the system.   This case, this terrifying, agonizing, supremely personal case, had a metaphorical mountain of evidence, all linking back to Natalie Davis.  They could pin all the miniature murders on her now, even if they still didn’t quite understand her motivation.   But none of it, not one sample or fiber or scrap of data, told them where she’d taken Sara.   Grissom could not follow where there was no trail.   He could not remember ever feeling so helpless.  Not even when Nick had been taken, for there was always something to do, some idea to chase.  The race had been against the clock, but even then they had known Nick was still alive.   Now, they had only the miniature’s promise that Sara lived.  And even that had been dismantled, the motor itself pulled to pieces in Grissom’s increasingly desperate search for a hint as to her location.  He wondered dully if the battery life was somehow linked to Sara’s time to live--he wouldn’t put it past Natalie--but it was impossible to tell now.   The truth he didn’t want to face was closing in on him, as inexorable and silent as the darkness of his office.  Sara might still be alive, somewhere out in the desert and the rain, but the odds fell with every passing minute, and already the searchers were preparing themselves to find a corpse instead of a living woman.   All the skills he took such pride in, the work that for so long had been his life--none of it had made a difference, in the end.  Sara was gone.   Sara was probably dead.   He would never see her again.  Never touch her, kiss her, hear her laugh or speak or yell at him, never curl around her and find peace in sleep.   He hadn’t known the true taste of happiness until he’d let her in--the rich sweetness of it on his tongue--the sheer contentment to be found in the simple presence of another human being.   He never would again.   Grissom knew that he should get up and go out, speak to his team, be there for them and allow them to be there for him.  After all, they were missing her too, colleague and mentor and friend.  He was not alone in grief.   But he just couldn’t bring himself to move.   The rain slacked off not too much later, then stopped as abruptly as it began.  Sara sat for a while, her mind dulled with pain and fatigue, but her shivering increased and with each shudder came renewed pain.  She forced herself to concentrate.   Gotta move, Sidle, you can’t stay here.  She patted down her pockets, taking inventory.  One handlight, still working despite the water and abuse.  Her LVPD ID was gone, but her wallet was still in her hip pocket; she didn’t bother to try to work it out of the soaked cloth.  No gun, no cellphone.  Not that either of those would work now anyway.   One pack of breath mints, now a squashed and sodden mess.  Sara shoved them back into her vest pocket, reflex not letting her litter the desert floor, and scraped her soaked and muddy hair back from her face.   She was so tired.  She wanted sleep and rest so badly that she could taste it, but along with that taste was an ominous hint of copper on the back of her tongue, and the knowledge that her friends were looking for her.   It took two tries for Sara to get to her feet, and for a moment she wasn’t sure she would stay on them, but in the end she balanced.  Wrapping her arms around her torso hurt, but then almost any move she made hurt.  Turning in a small, unsteady circle, she looked around.   With the handlight off, she could see a little; the faint flashes in the distance as the storm skated away, the shadow of the wrecked car to one side…and the faint glow of the clouds ahead of her.  The storm, having rescued her, was offering her a beacon as well.  Beneath that spot lay Las Vegas.   Sara made careful note of the direction, then turned her handlight back on and searched for tire tracks.  But the rain had washed them away, and all she had to go on was the vague memory of the jolting ride in the trunk.   Well…I don’t remember any turns…   Hoping that the batteries would last long enough to get her to a road, Sara clicked on her handlight and set out in a limping walk for the glowing horizon.   She had gone about fifty yards when a sudden metallic groan behind her made her freeze.  A weak surge of adrenaline pulsed through her before she realized that the sound was coming from the car.   The groan came again, longer, and was washed out by a complex noise that combined the breaking of glass and the sodden squash of mud.  Sara held still for a long moment after it stopped, debating whether to turn around and see what had become of her trap.   I...don’t think I want to know.   Taking as deep a breath as she could manage, she went on.        Dawn came slowly for Sara, so imperceptibly that it took her a while to realize that she could see beyond the little circle of her failing handlight.  The clouds had blown away, and the stars were fading overhead as a greyish light spread on the eastern horizon.   She looked up, every muscle aching, and took in what she could.  She had been walking in the dark for what seemed like hours, but couldn’t have been too many unless she’d slept an entire day in that trunk.  The desert looked much the same as the spot she’d left behind; flat and stony, with the occasional bit of scrub.   Kinda boring, actually.   A flicker in the distance caught her eye, and Sara squinted, trying to get her tired eyes to focus.  It looked like…headlights.   Hope surged.  They were tiny with distance and moving left to right, but as Sara watched, another gleam passed, going in the opposite direction.   Gotta be a road.  If I’m really lucky, it’s a highway.   The lights were at least two miles away, and it took Sara a long time to get there.  The ground was flat but stony and rough, and her soaked socks had rubbed blisters on both her feet way before dawn.  She was still cold and damp, if no longer dripping wet, and her clothes and hair were stiff with sandy mud.   And despite the release of pressure, her ribs hurt madly.   She had to keep one arm wrapped around them as she walked, and she still couldn’t take a deep breath.  The analytical portion of her mind knew that she’d probably injured herself further getting out from under the car, but Sara ignored it as best she could and kept putting one foot in front of the other.  There was no profit in stopping, she could just as easily perish of exposure within sight of a road; and she feared to halt even for a rest.   She wasn’t sure she could start moving again.   By the time she reached the highway--oh, thank God, it is a highway--the sun was climbing into the sky and she was actually starting to get warm.  It was a little hard to see in the increasing glare; her eyes didn’t seem to want to work properly without her sunglasses.  But she could focus enough to tell when cars were coming.   It went totally against the grain to flag one down.  Sara had grown up on tales of the dangers of hitchhiking, and as a CSI she knew the dangers for truth.  She had no badge and no gun, only her filthy vest as proof that she worked for the LVPD, and she was in no shape to defend herself.   But I don’t have a phone either, and I really don’t think I can make it much further.   It took her seven tries to get a car to stop.  There weren’t too many of them at that hour of the morning, and she was getting a little desperate, but finally a battered pickup pulled over onto the shoulder, gravel crunching under its tires.   Sara limped up to it, catching a glimpse of herself in the wing mirror and wincing.  No wonder nobody’s stopping.  I look like a complete whackjob.   Her hair was a tangled, matted mess; her face was pale where it wasn’t scraped and bloody where it was; and she already knew that her clothes looked like she was a walking mudpile.  I don’t think I’d stop for me either.   The man behind the wheel wore a white Stetson and an expression that mixed boredom with suspicion.  He looked across the seat towards her.  “Yeah?”   Sara had to cough to get her voice to work, and damn, it hurt.  “Las...Las Vegas?”   He stared at her.  “You’re on the wrong side of the road for that direction, chickie.”   Sara blinked.  Her exhausted brain hadn’t considered that.  “Oh.  Uh--could--“   Before she could articulate, the man shook his head.  “Dumb stoners,” he muttered, and revved the engine, almost hitting Sara as he swung the truck back onto the road.   She briefly considered making a rude gesture at his vanishing taillights, then decided that she had better save her energy to cross the highway.   Forty minutes later, she was sitting on a hastily deployed towel in the passenger seat of an eighteen-wheeler, clutching the cellphone of the tough, sturdy woman who drove it.  Sara’s focus kept slipping, and it took her three tries to punch in the correct number for Grissom’s cell.   It went directly to voicemail, though, which made her blink.  Why the hell is it shut off?  Oh...maybe he’s out of range.  She cleared her throat carefully.   “Uh...Gil...it’s, uh, me...I’m okay, I’m on my way into Vegas right now...”   Sara hesitated, realizing that she didn’t quite know what to say.  She had expected a living voice on the other end.   “Um.  I think I kind of need a hospital, so I, I’ll try you again later--or call home--sorry...”   Confused, she cut the connection, and managed to dial their home number through blurring eyes.  It rang the usual six times and went to voicemail as well, and this time Sara couldn’t think of what to say.  She closed the phone.   “You okay, hon?” asked the driver, glancing over at her.  “Nobody home?”   Sara shook her head, shivering in the truck’s air conditioning, worried.  Where is he?  Has something--  “No--is it okay if I...”   The woman snorted.  “Go ‘head, I’ve got unlimited minutes.”   “Thanks.”  It was hardly more than a whisper.   Something was wrong, Sara could feel it.  Something was wrong and getting more wrong every minute.  Moving fingers that felt stiff and shaky both, Sara dialed one more number that she knew by heart.   “Las Vegas Crime Lab, may I help you?”   The voice wasn’t quite as perky as usual, but Sara had never been happier to hear it.  “Judy...it’s Sara...I mean, CSI Sidle...”   The squeak on the other end was almost ear-piercing.  “Sara?!  Ohmygosh, Sara, you’re alive!”  A gulp of air.  “Where are you?  Are you okay?”   Funny, Sara thought, how quickly dusk had arrived.  It had just been morning, hadn’t it?  “No...don’t think so--“   The word turned into a cough, and another, and suddenly she couldn’t stop coughing even though each spasm seemed to tear a hole in her chest.  Judy’s voice dropped away down into her lap, and she heard the hiss of air brakes and her rescuer’s alarmed voice.  “Hey, you all right, hon?  Whoa!  That’s not--“   There was something sticky and coppery in her mouth, and she couldn’t breathe.  The big vehicle lurched and began to slow, but Sara felt her eyes closing.        Grissom didn’t want to wake up.  He hovered just under the surface of consciousness, knowing that something dreadful waited in the waking world; pain and intolerable grief.  For a while he managed it, hearing vague sounds of shouting and banging and then drifting off again, but the sudden sharp burr of his desk phone jerked him awake and he lifted his head.   The movement made him grunt.  He’d been sleeping with his arms and head pillowed on his desk, and his back was stiff and his neck ached.  Regarding his phone with bleary disfavor, he waited until it had stopped ringing, then rubbed his face with both hands.   It wasn’t the first time he’d fallen asleep in his office, but it was the first time for such a reason.  The tears had come on him unexpectedly; not since he was fourteen had he cried like that, a flood of unreasoning misery that had torn sobs from his throat and eventually left him to fall into the blank oblivion of heavy sleep.   It had been one phone call.  Just one, Jim’s voice flat with suppressed emotion, taking refuge in cold facts.   “Gil.”   He knew it was bad news.  Somehow, he’d known before he even picked up the phone.  “Tell me.”   “S&R found the car.”  He could hear Jim swallow.  “It’s half-sunk in a mudpit full of water.  They’ll have to get a crane out here to lift it, but it’s, uh, it’s...the right car.  Down to every detail.”   Which meant, Jim was carefully not saying, that Sara was underneath it.   In the mud.   Dead.   He really was too late.   “Thank you, Jim,” he said, or tried to; he wasn’t sure the words made it out of his mouth before he hung up the phone.   He’d shut off his cellphone in absent precision, planning to walk out of the building and go...somewhere, but the weeping had taken him almost before he set the phone down, and he had given up thought in hopeless mourning.   The voices came again, loud and excited in the hallway, and a small and irrational fury stirred under his breastbone.  Why are you making noise? he wanted to shout.  Sara’s dead and nothing will ever be good again.  Be quiet!   “No?” someone said loudly outside his door--Nick.  “You sure?  Okay--“   Grissom gritted his teeth at the pounding knock, and gave no response.  He would wait until they gave up, and then he would call Brass and find out if they’d lifted that car yet--   “Grissom!  Open the door, man!”  More pounding.  “Ah, the hell with it--“   The kick that broke his door in was powerful and precise, and the window only cracked instead of shattering as the door slammed open and whacked against the wall.  Nick stood in the doorway, eyes wide and wild, and with him stood Judy, her cheeks flushed and her mouth trembling.   Nick dove into the room before Grissom’s grief-dazed brain could come up with the words to make him leave, trailing Judy behind him by one wrist like a triumphal, if somewhat fluffy, banner.  “Grissom!  Man, we’ve been looking for you--come on, we have to go--“   He reached across the desk and grabbed Grissom’s arm, tugging hard, and Grissom found himself stumbling towards the doorway.  As Nick pulled him through, Grissom slammed his free hand against the jamb and halted.   “Would you care to explain what is going on?” he demanded, the fury growing; he knew it was petty and unreasonable, but it was a good distraction from the black grief.   Nick rolled his eyes.  “Tell him, sugar, or we’ll never get out of here.”   Judy gave him a tremulous smile, but a real one.  “Dr. Grissom, sir, Sara called, she’s alive!  She called from a truck somewhere and--“   The rest of her words were lost under the buzzing hum that filled Grissom’s ears, and he found himself leaning against the doorjamb and watching Judy’s lips move, the way the corners kept turning up with an excited joy.  He couldn’t make out all the words, but-- “...not really sure what happened, but the driver said she was calling an am.... and everybody’s ...”   Sound came back with a rush as Nick’s hand slipped under Grissom’s elbow.  “Hey, Griss, you okay?”   His feet were moving before he actually commanded them.  “Which hospital?”   “University.  Come on--“  As they started hurrying towards the doors, Nick’s cellphone rang, and he pulled Judy into his place at Grissom’s side as he answered it.  “Yeah, Jim, we got him, we’re on our way--“   So it was that Grissom found himself all but running out into the brilliant sun of morning, his arm hooked through Judy’s, Nick already digging his keys out of his pocket, and something light and heady and unbearably sweet was running through his veins in place of blood, and all he could see was Sara’s smile.   Oh, honey, I’m coming.       Chapter 1     Chapter 2     Chapter 3     Chapter 4 CSI Home Feedback