Title: If, Then

Author: mystery

Disclaimer: Not mine; don’t sue.

Rating: PG-13

Author’s Notes: Experiment gone awry? It was fun. For K, an unexpected but cherished friend.

He was called out to a house just inside the city limits. A few more miles and this would have been Orange County’s problem. He was thirty-years-old, had been on the job now for eight years, but sometimes death still got to him.

The mother was upstairs in the master bedroom and had obviously been beaten to death. Blunt force trauma – he didn’t need an autopsy to tell him that but he would order one anyway. The girl, however, was another matter. She looked to be thirteen or fourteen and she would have been awkwardly pretty, perhaps even beautiful, if she had been allowed to grow up.

Her room was neat and orderly. Instead of the usual pre-teen girl fare of pastels and posters of boys there were textbooks and classics spread about the room. Some were stacked in the corner, and even more were under the bed. All arranged in alphabetical order, their spines perfectly even. From Moby Dick to books about Einstein and Galileo to a few books about horses and their upkeep. She would have been brilliant.

Sometimes it was this way, the pull of someone on him, as if they were reaching from somewhere beyond and begging him to know them so that they would not be forgotten. He felt her small, cold hand brush his cheek. All he could see was her frail, broken body protectively curled around a book. She must have been reading it when she was killed. There were bruises on her arms and legs, but it was a single gunshot wound to the back of the head that had killed her this time.

Her eyes were wide and unseeing but focused on the window all the same. The sun was now setting, and people were waiting on him to finish his initial examination of the bodies. Tilting his head, he was parallel to her face, and he looked out the window to see what she saw. There was nothing picturesque, nothing promising at all. Uncurling her arms from the book so tightly wrapped in her embrace, he revealed a little at a time the title: Shakespeare.

He would quote Shakespeare to remember her, because maybe love and a future and something better was what she saw in the window and that is why she turned over in her bed, away from her bedroom door, and never saw him coming.

Every year he brought flowers and a new quote from The Bard to her grave. It was all he knew to give her. A cop, fireman, coroner – there were always the victims they remembered. A picture tucked in a wallet, a file in the bottom drawer of a desk. For him, there were no pictures or files, nothing tangible that served to remind him of her existence; there was only his memory. It was just the way she was so innocently lying there on her bed, reading Shakespeare, her long brown hair matted by blood.

He would never be able to explain why she stayed with him, why in his later years some of his last thoughts were of her. He was talking with a colleague one day and his friend asked him, “Which one has stayed with you?”

He glanced toward the shelf in his office, a book of poetry by Shakespeare leaned against the side wall of the bookcase. “Sara Sidle, fifteen-years-old, shot to death by her father.”

“Terrible, terrible,” his friend said. “I don’t remember that one.”

And with a sad smile, Gil Grissom replied, “But I do.”

“She really does have legs that go for miles,” Nick laughed.

Grissom scowled. “She’s a prostitute, Nick,” he warned. “You might want to keep that in mind.”

She had a story to be sure; probably some sob story that was in no way unique, but that had landed her on the streets hustling herself just the same. She not only dabbled in heroin and prostituted herself, she was also an informant for the LVPD. A Jill of all trades; or, a Sadie in this case.

Grissom had an appointment with Sadie in half an hour because she only wanted to talk to, “The old guy who is always poking around our alleys,” Jim Brass had informed him.

Sadie had a mouth on her, and she did have nice legs. But then there were her arms marred by track marks, and a whole history in the lines across her face. She shouldn’t have been a prostitute, just like Rebekah and Trixie and Pixie and whoever the hell else was out there, should not have been prostitutes. He wanted to say that Sadie was special, that she could be helped or saved somehow. He would’ve tried to save her if he could have. As it stood, he could buy her a cup of coffee and listen to her brain-on-drugs version of events.

When she came into the small diner she didn’t so much walk as stagger to the booth. She was humming a tune under her breath but not long enough for him to make out the melody.

As she began to ramble her story to him, about the dirty cop in the alley who shot his partner and then raped her beside the corpse, she didn’t waver. It was like ordering breakfast only less exciting, and he had to wonder how a person ended up like this.

He put his hand on top of hers, and was somewhat glad when she didn’t flinch. “What happened to you, Sadie?”

"Yesterday? I just told you, asshole! Weren’t you listening?”

“I mean,” he stopped and shook his head.

Sadie smiled and laughed louder than was appropriate. “Oh, you mean what happened to me.” Nodding, she stirred three sugars and two creams into her coffee. “It’s funny, but what happened to me yesterday is what happened to me so many years ago. I ran away because my father was a frequent late night visitor to my bedroom, and I came here because it was close and a friend had a job working at one of the casinos. I don’t even remember which now.” Sadie stopped her story only long enough to light up a cigarette.

“Go on,” he prodded gently.

“So yeah, I come out here. It’s the classic set-up,” she laughed, hating herself the most for this part. “Guy starts showing an interest, and we start dating. He treats me like a fucking queen for three months,” she purposefully blew smoke into Grissom’s face. It was an accusation: all men were the same. “Then he starts hitting me, just like my bastard father had always hit my mom. It hurt yeah, but I think I was so surprised, so dumbfounded that I just kept letting him hit me. He started loaning me to his friends a few months later, and then he was my first pimp, but I wasn’t his first whore.”

“I’m sorry, Sadie,” Grissom said sincerely. “I can help you get medical care, you know for what happened yesterday,” he offered, although he already knew what her answer would be.

“No, it’s fine. I already got everything I need taken care of,” Sadie hedged.

Every few months they would meet up at the diner. He would buy her a cup of coffee and toast. If she ever had any information, which she often did, she phoned it into him instead of the police.

One night as she was leaving the diner, he said, “Goodnight, Sadie. Take care of yourself and call if you need anything.”

She wasn’t stumbling tonight, she was trying to stay clean – every day she was trying to stay clean, and this was a good twelve hours. It wouldn’t last, it never did. She turned and threw over her shoulder, “My friends call me Sara.”

Grissom smiled. “Goodnight, Sara.”

She looked a little sad, and turned around to face him, “My friends call me Sara…” she repeated, and he wondered if maybe her fix had started to kick in. “No one has called me that in seventeen years.”

For a moment he sat on the edge and she stood near the exit and they wondered about all the reasons why.

“Sara? Why me? Why do you only talk to me?” That question had gone unanswered for years, and it had always intrigued him.

She sighed and the breath left her looking so tired, so inexplicably devoid of any emotion; and, then she inhaled and there was a little life in her yet. “We passed on the street one night. You said hello and didn’t seem to notice what I was. What I am,” she explained. She shook her head and walked away, and he sat there and wanted to do something, anything to help her.

Four years later she showed up in the morgue. He buried her with his own money, because there was no one else, and because he wanted to be someone to her.

He didn’t know what exactly, maybe just a friend. Maybe he wanted to be the one man in her life who was different from the rest.

“Coffee, black. Steak, medium rare. Eggs, over easy,” he ordered monotone.

She smiled and repeated his order back to him. When he nodded, she walked away and headed in the direction of the kitchen. “Carl, steak medium rare, and eggs over easy!” she shouted in the direction of the short order chef.

“Coming up, Sara!” he yelled back to her.

The porcelain clanked as she removed a coffee cup for the man at booth three in her station. He was looking out the window, staring at the passersby. She carried the cup and the steaming pot of coffee toward the table. “Here you are, sir,” she said, setting the cup on the table, filling it to the brim.

“Thanks,” he said without looking at her.

Small talk was never her forte, so she left him to his thoughts and went to wait on the elderly couple that had been seated in booth five.

When she went to set down his food on the cheap Formica covered table, she was taken aback by the photographs spread out in front of him. A body covered in what looked like maggots. She gasped, and he looked up. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, noticing her pale face. “I work for the crime lab,” and that was an apology too as he shuffled the photographs and documents back into a manilla folder.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the pictures; even though they were now put away, she knew what they looked like, the image of that woman forever seared into her memory.

“Miss?” the man inquired gently. “Are you all right?”

She shook her head and his plate hit the table as she turned and ran toward the back of the restaurant. Gil Grissom’s steak and eggs landed in his lap, and he couldn’t be angry because he deserved it. He knew better than to view that kind of evidence when others could mistakenly see it, but the case was getting to him. He scooped the eggs out of his lap and picked up his t-bone steak and set it on the plate. Tucking the folder under his arm, he followed the path his waitress had taken. He knocked on the bathroom door and without waiting for permission he entered. She was splashing water on her face, and pushing her curly hair behind her ears.

“Are you all right?” he asked for the second time.

She turned on her heel. “I could have been peeing,” she announced haughtily.

He smiled. “But you’re not,” he observed.

The wind went out of her sails a little then. “No, I’m not,” she said. Pointing to the file under his arm, she said, “I’m not usually grossed out by stuff, but that was…”

“Horrible,” he offered.

“Yes,” she agreed.

Looking at him, she saw the greasy stains on his pants, and surmised that his breakfast had skidded off the plate. “I’ll reorder your breakfast, it will be on the house,” she said.

“No, don’t worry about it,” he hedged. “I wasn’t really hungry anyway, but I have this friend who nags me until I comply with her demands. As it stands, with all the time that has passed, she’ll think I’ve eaten. You’ve actually done me a favor,” Grissom smiled.

“I’m sorry I dumped breakfast in your lap,” she apologized.

“It’s all right, really,” he said. “I should probably get out of the ladies room now,” he grinned.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Well, have a nice day then,” she said, following him.

He put a hand on her arm as she maneuvered around him and toward the door. “I really am sorry. Sometimes I don’t really think about other people when I’m engrossed in a case.”

She looked away. “Have you caught the person who did that to her?”

Looking at the floor he shook his head. “No,” he admitted.

“Well then, you’ll have to come back and let me know when you do,” she smiled, squeezed his hand, and left him standing in the women’s bathroom.

He came back to the humble but quaint diner two weeks later and told her that justice had been found for Ella Payne. By the fifth time he came into the diner seeking solace from the tragedy of his profession they stopped pretending he was there for the food.

“Sara, you and Nick have a robbery at…” Grissom paused and glanced at the assignment sheet in his hand. Distraction was par for the course these days and Sara really didn’t need to be wearing that shirt to work. She knew what it did to him. Careful to preserve some modicum of propriety Grissom shifted in his seat at the head of the table and affected disinterest. “Yes, here it is” he said, “a robbery at the Gas and Sip off Barkley.”

Nick stood up and told Sara he’d meet her out front. Through practice Sara had learned to maintain a poker face at work which was difficult, at the moment, considering she’d been on her knees in front of Grissom an hour earlier performing what he described as, ‘Arguably the best blow job of my life.’

Their physical relationship was new enough that some boundaries had not yet been obliterated, but they were becoming non-existent quickly enough.

“You be careful,” Grissom said, his voice low and serious and full of love. It surprised her how seamlessly he went from boss to lover and back again.

“Same to you,” she said.

He nodded at her as he had a thousand times before, but it was different now that she had seen the man behind the mask. Under new light she viewed his many idiosyncrasies. She saw now how truly vulnerable to her he’d always been. There were times now she’d turn to go and would turn back and find that his eyes wandered over her as she walked away, that his expression softened and that on the tip of his tongue there was always something he wanted to say but didn’t.

Turning to leave and then turning back toward him she saw that this time he was smiling. “You seem happy,” she said.

He walked toward the door and briefly their hands touched. He didn’t stop as he whispered, “I am.”

A week later he resigned from his position as supervisor because he was presented with a choice. When she asked him about it he looked at her and said that the choice had been made years ago. Of course she questioned him about when the choice had been made, and he let his fingers glide through her hair and told her what she’d known in her heart all along.

She was brilliant, her solve rate damn near perfect, and that coupled with her unshakeable ethical behavior had earned her a distinguished reputation in the world of forensics. None of that, however, had been a factor in Grissom’s decision all those years ago when he called her to tell her he needed her in Vegas as quickly as she could get on a plane.

Three hours earlier she had been interrogating a suspected rapist when he’d reached across the table and taken her hostage. In the fifty-eight minutes following the initial attack Gil Grissom had walked a tightrope of sanity. The suspect had become increasingly agitated and had threatened to kill Sara and himself if Brass didn’t call off some of his buddies. In the moments before she was freed Brass ordered Warrick to get Grissom the hell away from the interrogation room. A struggle ensued but Warrick being younger and stronger had managed to get Grissom a few feet down the hall.

When the gunshot echoed through the corridors of the station Grissom had looked at Warrick and told his friend he’d better pray to God that Sara wasn’t hurt. Michael Fitzgerald was dead and Sara was staring at the door when Grissom finally made it back to the scene of the crime. Something had happened that neither Sara nor Brass would discuss, although Sara said she would tell Grissom in time. The man’s fingerprints were bruised into her wrists and that alone made him want to kill Michael Fitzgerald all over again.

His thoughts were troublesome and even when he fell asleep he was awakened by a world of frightening, unthinkable what-ifs. She sat up in bed as he returned from his pilgrimage to the bathroom. Sitting on the edge of the mattress he pulled her into his embrace. “Dreams,” he explained.

“What about?” she asked.

“You,” he said.

She comforted him with a kiss. “Were they about what happened tonight?”

“What did happen tonight?” he asked.

The silence was deafening. Slowly she eased out of the tank top she was wearing. The bruise across her breast was dark purple and roughly the size of a hand. Grissom stood and punched the wall three times in rapid succession. Sara slipped back into her shirt. He should have known something was wrong when she wouldn’t get undressed in front him.

“Son of a fucking bitch!” Grissom yelled.

Sara’s voice was soft, pleading. “Griss,” she said. “It’s over.”

He sat on the bed and his hands fluttered over her never staying anywhere long. “Are you all right? Are you in pain, sweetheart? Tell me what to do,” he said, torn between rage and the need to comfort her somehow.

“I’m all right, Griss. It’s over now,” she said, bringing his hand to her breast.

He bent his head and dropped a kiss near her collarbone. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

“Tell me about your dreams,” she said in an effort to change the subject. “Were they about tonight?

He shook his head and brought his hands so they rested on her shoulders. He couldn’t help but feel as if he was a burden. “No,” he said. “Not really.”

“Tell me,” she whispered, making him feel anything but a burden.

There was no way to describe what he saw in his nightmares and he didn’t want to frighten her so instead he settled on a version of the truth. “I think, Sara…I think that no matter what you were bound to be in my life. I don’t believe in fate, but with you I wonder if it’s a possibility.”

-END-