Vindicated

When we are first formed, we are perfect. We are surrounded by infinite light and life, growing and developing in a world of purifying water, noise, and movement. We see nothing, we hear very little, we have no coherent thought. We are a clean slate. There is not one single event that has been inflicted upon us to cause us damage. Our minds are not fully formed yet. We are simple beings; flesh, blood, muscle, nerves. We are not yet our scars. We do not yet wear our pain in our hearts, our heads, and our bodies like roadmaps of what was once infinite possibility. We all envy this state. Everyone wants to go back, go back just a little or go back to the very beginning. We all want to be this being, this life, this person who hasn’t been hurt. Who hasn’t been misused and changed from white to black, clean to dirty, simple to complex. We want to give away our pain, wash it away, forget it, and push it away until it’s as if it never occurred. This mechanism, this fleeting, futile hope is all we have. It is what we rely on. Sometimes, we rely on it for too long. We push everything away in hopes that it will disappear. If we don’t believe it, if we don’t think about it, if we ignore it, it will go away. What most of us learn at one point or another in our lives is that this notion is false. What is done to you cannot be undone. It will grow, it will gather strength, it will eat at you, and it will not disappear. No matter how hard you try. Supplicate, surrender, ignore, it doesn’t matter. It will remain there in the depths of the your mind until you release it. But what we don’t learn through our development, what has been neglected to be told to us, is that once you let it go, once your pain is out there in the open, it won’t cleanse you. It won’t. Once it’s out there, you’re dealing with it. You’re accepting it as reality, and it’s not fading back into what was once a hazy notion that you kept locked away behind a door you never opened. You cannot erase pain. You can hide it. You can make it known. You can let it build and build and break you down until it consumes you. But no matter what you do, you will never again be a clean slate. The waters than run deep inside you, the small, hidden place inside of you in which you store this pain and this scarring, it will always be somehow muddied, tarnished, and occupied. You develop in your mother’s womb, and you are perfect. The second you are born, you exposed to anything in this life from pain, to death, to love, to all of the above. They will all scar you. They will all hurt you in an irreversible way. You can tell yourself whatever needs to be said to get you through the day, but you will never be a clean slate again. We cannot go back to this state of bliss, because once we are removed from it, it no longer exists. And it is how we deal with this pain that dictates our emotions and our life. It is how we try to get back to perfect.

When Sara walked into their two-bedroom townhouse, a disconcerting feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. Nothing seemed out of place, yet something felt distinctly wrong. It was as if she had walked into a house she had known forever, had grown up in and lived in for her entire life, but it was inhabited by feelings and thoughts that she didn’t recognize. The energy buzzed and yet, at the same time, felt stagnant and suffocated. Something lurked in the shadows, waiting to become exposed. Something was definitely wrong. She walked into the living room, setting her keys onto the tiled counter with a hushed clank, and in the leather chair near the television, he sat with a blank expression painted across his tired face. It was as if the wind had been knocked out of her. How long had he been sitting there, in the house with the angry, buzzing energy? How long? She didn’t know. He was silent. He didn’t look up at her. There was a chasm between them. Filled with rushing water, waiting to usurp them into something that she had not prepared herself for. The silence scared her, and at the same time, it kept her calm. The chasm was the boundary, the dividing wall that kept the words at bay, that kept their thoughts inside of them. Had she stepped forward, stepped into this cataclysmic alternate dimension, she would have been sucked down into the deep, black abyss that awaited them both. She wouldn’t speak; or, rather, she couldn’t. She couldn’t move her mouth and cross the boundary. He looked up at her, his blank expression unwavering, plastered on his face like wallpaper that stuck so well that you could never remove it. She reached out her hand, for him to pull her into it, for him to begin this internal and external war that simply wouldn’t end no matter how many times they would wave their white flags in the air, screaming for help. And all at once, in one magnificent and crushing moment, his resolve broke, and the wallpaper peeled to the floorboards. “It’s time.” He said, so matter-of-factly, that she nearly choked on her own breath, and she knew at that moment that nothing would ever be the same.

Hope dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption

The chasm broke and the water flowed, dragging them into something they had never wanted to confront. She sat numbly on the sofa, hands perspiring and feet cold as ice, mind swimming, thoughts racing. Everything had been turned upside down with two simple words, and she knew deep down that before the night was over, those two words would turn to hundreds and thousands of words that could never be unsaid. Words that could never be taken back. They’d be out there, floating between them, out in the open. Words that had never been said, but that had always hidden behind shadows. She could feel it before she even saw him sitting there; there was about to be a reckoning of which she was terrified. His glasses slid down on his nose and his eyes were visibly red from lack of sleep. He looked older in that moment than she had ever seen him look. Perhaps she had never examined him too closely, denying the truth, or perhaps she knew just all-too-well how tired he is. How tired he had become. Seven years could age a person nearly beyond recognition, and he knew better than anyone. It wasn’t so much his outward appearance; it wasn’t the color of his hair or the number of wrinkles in his face. It was the way he felt, spilling out into the open, seeping out and turning him into something that he had never wanted or expected to become. Someone who was continually unhappy, someone who put everything else before himself to keep peace and continuity. It killed her. It killed him. Everyone around them was so fixated on the fact that he had been selfish, that he had agreed to this new life, that they blamed him unequivocally for the change that they had both undergone in the past months. Nobody ever stopped and thought, even for a moment, that perhaps he was not at fault. Gilbert Grissom was a man who had been worn down so fully and completely, he finally gave in. What she demanded, what she chased, he could no longer hide from. Too young to understand, too damaged to trust, she would chase a fantasy. And he gave it to her. And at first, they had felt a simultaneous rush of feelings from relief to happiness to finality. As time progressed, however, this man who was once a living legend, a great man of many talents and scholarly knowledge, realized his mistake. He became too tired of running from his demons that he gave into them. He cannot be blamed.

Winding in and winding out
The shine of which has caught my eye

“It began when I called you and asked you to come to Vegas. How long ago was that?” He sat in amazement, voice quiet, yet hoarse. “Seven years? It feels like so much more, Sara. God, it... it feels like a lifetime.”

No, this was not a lifetime of events. Photos of blood and loss flashed before her eyes, the smell of rain on asphalt and the screaming coming from her parents’ bedroom flooded her senses, and all the muscles in her body tensed. The knife, the phone call, the woman who took her away and the houses she lived in. The friends she never had, the social life she never experienced, the tests she always aced. The love she never knew, the people she met along the way, the college she couldn’t bear to part with. Her only true love, Boston, and it’s snowy winters. The cold she thrived in, the professor she crossed the line with, the alcohol she drowned herself in. Every single solitary horrific and amazing moment in her life flashed before her, and she could scarcely say that she had ever heard anything more insane. No, this was not a lifetime. Seven years was not a lifetime. The past seven years, however, had become a perpetual time warp. A circle of frustration and want and supposed need that she could not break. The same moments, playing over and over like a broken record, never to be fixed. A scratch in the vinyl that couldn’t be repaired. An addiction, a habit she couldn’t fulfill, even now. Even still. She got what she wanted, didn’t she? She got it all and then some. And yet, she was emptier and even unhappier than she was seven years ago. She smiles lamely, weakly, she knows it’s coming and she can’t fight it. “It does. It feels like forever.”

And roped me in
So, mesmerizing and so hypnotizing,
I am captivated, I am

“I remember when you first came here. There was something about you, a quality I couldn’t define. I knew right away that I had my hands full. That I had met my match.” He stopped, his lips twisting, almost into a smile, but not quite. Not quite. “And the first case that broke you, the first case that you lost sleep over, I never forgot it. Pamela. Do you remember what I told you?”

Of course she did. Burned into her memory. Couldn’t ever forget it. Every second she spent with him, every syllable he had ever uttered, she had catalogued and filed away as evidence, a case on which to build her chase. Of course she remembered; he should know that she wouldn’t have forgotten. “You told me to find a diversion.” She said flatly, cautiously, slowly, as if to test the waters. She didn’t know where he was going with this. Or, she did, and she didn’t quite yet want to admit it. If she admitted it to herself, it would become true, not just a photocopied version in her mind of a moment long since past. “I told you not to become too attached, or you would burn out. And in some ways, I was right. You told me you wished you were like me. Wished you didn’t feel anything. What you didn’t know was that I wasn’t this cold, robotic man you made me out to be. There are different ways in which people show emotion, and I was always the type to channel into something non-work related. Like a hobby. Like roller coasters. I told you to get a diversion, and while that was good advice, you took it to a level that I had not anticipated. I... became your diversion, didn’t I?”

She nodded sullenly. Not enough strength for this conversation. This end-all conversation that would drown them both in the rushing, flooding current. She could hear her heartbeat rapidly thumping in her ears, and could feel her stomach churning. It was coming, and had been for quite a while. In retrospect, perhaps, this conversation had been seven years in the making. “I was a different person, then. We were different people. I’ve learned to deal.”

Vindicated
I am selfish
I am wrong

“You risked my career, Sara. To test me. You went behind my back to become a decoy for Culpepper, and you knew I’d come running. For the longest time, you seemed to be in self-destruct mode. I didn’t know how to help you but to let you be. We had our good times and our bad times, but you scared me when you were in that supermarket. Not because I was afraid of what that man would do to you; I knew you could handle yourself. I trusted that you could. But that was a serious cry for help that I knew I couldn’t avoid. I knew it would get worse, and it did, for quite a while. You risked everything again, at Renteria’s building. Anybody could have seen us out there. Somebody did see us out there, and then it was brought up in court. It was almost as if you wanted to be caught red handed.”

Speechless. She was literally speechless. He had never talked so openly before, with such raw truth. It scared her, to be honest. “I was stupid, back then. I was scared and confused, and I didn’t know what I wanted yet. But I figured it out, and eventually, you did too. I didn’t mean to jeopardize your job. I was acting out. Out of fear and jealousy; you know that.”

He paused, inhaling quietly, gathering strength. “Jealousy of what, Sara? There was no one to be jealous of. I sent you that plant to let you know that I cared, that I was there for you if you needed me. I tried to be a good boss and a good friend, and yet you were still unsatisfied.”

I am right
I swear I'm right
Swear I knew it all along

Without thinking, she blurted out the first irrational thought that popped into her mind. “Catherine. You were so close to her then; it scared me. I thought that you had something with her, something genuine. Something more than a workplace relationship. I was jealous. I’m a jealous person, I can’t help that.”

“I’ve known Catherine for a very long time. She’s one of my best friends. I care about her, a lot. She’s saved my life. I can’t help but have a certain connection with her. But that type of connection shouldn’t have concerned you; it may have been strong then, but it’s becoming weaker and weaker. And while that ties into the fact that you felt that you had to assert yourself with her, it’s not what I want to talk about right now.” His assertiveness caused a whole new set of butterflies to swarm rapidly in her stomach, and she attempted to calm her nerves by breathing deeply. It didn’t help. This apocalypse had begun, and it was gaining speed. It wouldn’t slow down now, not for anything.

And I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well
I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself

“Were you lying to me? At the ice rink, were you lying? If you were just trying to be a good boss, just trying to help me, were you lying to me, or just stringing me along?” Her lower lip quivered. No, she would not lose it now. Not when she had to keep it together. If there were ever a moment when she needed to keep her calm, it was now. When there was too much at stake, too much to lose, she couldn’t let her anger and her irrational fear control her now. “Because that was a cruel thing to say if you didn’t truly mean it.”

He closed his eyes, an impending migraine lying just below the surface, and he willed it away. He needed his wits about him now; he couldn’t have something distracting him from what needed to be said and done. The pills, these days, they weren’t helping. Once the pain came, it stayed until it left willingly. A vicious cycle he couldn’t escape. “You know I wasn’t lying. You are... one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and you know that. But you can’t take my words and balance all of your hopes on them like some sort of house of cards, ready to topple at the first sign of a gust of wind. I wouldn’t take back what I said. But I think you misconstrued it as more than it was.” Honestly, he hoped to make it out of this alive. And honestly, so far, it wasn’t looking so good. His resolve had crumbled, and he was past the point of reason now. He would get through this however he could, with whatever sanity he had left when it was over. “And what you said about Catherine, I could say about Nick. A few years back, you could say that there was reasonable suspicion that something was there between you and Nick. You worked well together. But at some point, you drifted apart. You became more withdrawn, more problematic, in a downward spiral that I couldn’t stop if I tried.”

So clear
Like the diamond in your ring

“Nick and I, we’re just good friends. I guess you could say, at one point, there was a spark there. But it’s long since flickered out. And you’re right. I was caught in a downward spiral. I just kept getting worse, and you weren’t there for me like you claimed you were. A plant is not comfort. A plant is a gesture of friendship, but it wasn’t the support or the help that I needed. You can’t say that you were there for me; you weren’t then. But you’re here now.”

“I’ve always been here. I gave you everything I could, Sara. I let you work solo, and you weren’t happy. I gave you time off, you weren’t happy. Nothing I did helped, and I ran out of options. We were a team; we had a system of give and take. But you never seemed to be satisfied with what you got, and always wanted more from me that I didn’t have to give.” In truth, he wasn’t sure if he exhausted all of his options. But, being exhausted himself, he felt as if he had. He tried. Furiously, he tried to help her, to steer her in the right direction, down a path that lead to sanity and a career that she could be proud of. God help him, he tried. In the end, she had the career to be proud of. But the sanity, the sanity would come much later with years of therapy and hard-learned lessons. Not now, not yet, not while she was still caught in this circle, destined to revolve endlessly. Nothing had changed. Their roles, their attitudes, their careers, but not this cycle. It would never break itself; it must be stopped. It must be broken by them, and only them, or else it would consume them. Maybe it already had.

Cut to mirror your intention
Oversized and overwhelmed

“You can rationalize this all you want, but where does Heather come into play? I know there was something going on there, and whenever I ask you what it was, you avoid the topic. Were you involved with her? I mean, it’s kind of hard to be telling me that you were there, when you were off at some whorehouse.”

“It was a learning experience.” He said simply, swallowing thickly. “And Hank was what? A friend?”

She was losing it. All she kept hearing, over and over in her head was his voice, telling her that it was over. She knew it was coming; the sense of impending doom was a shroud that encompassed her, suffocating her, causing her to lash out purely to defend herself and what she believed was right. “Don’t go there. He was a mistake. A mistake that I made because I wanted to get back at you. But the more time I spent with him, the more I realized how wrong it was.”

The shine of which has caught my eye
And rendered me
So isolated, so motivated

Minutes ticked by on the clock on the wall. Shift had ended a while ago, but they had not eaten yet. Shift would ultimately start again, and far too soon. They needed sleep. He needed sleep, most of all, to keep this migraine at bay. This is what he had become, and he would not let it encompass him any longer. This pain that he harbored could not be held in any longer. Even if it destroyed what they had built, even if it ruined what they had or broke something he couldn’t fix, it would be out there. It wouldn’t be eating him alive anymore. “You made assumptions. After it was over between you and Hank, you came to my office. A few weeks later, I think. You asked me to have dinner with you.”

“I remember. You were busy.” There was a bitter chill to her voice. Of course he was busy. He was always too busy to try to make things work. Until now, of course, when he let everything out all at once like some display of desperation that captivated her like a car crash, yet scared her immensely. She didn’t know if seeing him like this was a good or a bad thing, but she had the feeling in her stomach that even if it wasn’t distinctly bad, it could not be good.

Her tone was indignant, and it irked him. She was always assuming that she was right, when she didn’t have all the facts. “You never thought to ask me why. Do you know why I was busy? I was having surgery for the hearing problem that I had developed. Hereditary, they said. My mother was deaf, as I told you before, and I developed the problem a few years after you came to Vegas. Maybe a little bit farther back than that. I finally swallowed my denial and made a last minute appointment, because it turned out that I needed the surgery. And I did, Sara, I really did.”

I am certain now that I am
Vindicated

She sat there in shock, mouth partly slightly. Everything she had based upon this, every tear she shed, every empty bottle of beer that laid on the floor of her old apartment, leaking the amber liquid into the floor boards, it was all for a ghost of a notion. He kept everything so hidden, so concealed, that she could never tell if he was being completely honest. Everything seemed so out of the blue with him. If something happened, she had to find out second-hand from one of her co-workers, unless he decided to bring it up years later in an argument. An argument. No, she thought bitterly, this was not an argument, a discussion, or a conversation anymore. It had morphed into something else entirely, and it seemed as if it would never end. Not until everything that needed to be said was said. Not until he cleared his head well enough so that he could think again. “I never... knew that. I never knew why.”

“You never asked why.” It sounded selfish and hollow to his own ears, and he knew he was partially wrong. Maybe he should have told her, right there, on the spot. Maybe he should have said that he couldn’t make dinner; no, he would by lying on an operating table instead. But even if he hadn’t had an appointment, even if he hadn’t had something to pull him out of the situation, should he have gone? Should he have indulged her, given into her half-threat of it being too late once he finally figured it out? He didn’t think so, but hindsight told him he was right; even though he felt as if he couldn’t be right. Couldn’t win, no matter what he did or said or felt. He couldn’t be right with her, because she’d always wanted more, and would always want more than he could give, on her own terms, through her own mistakes, risking anything to get it.

“I don’t get it. I... honestly, I don’t understand.” Tears threatened fall, but she would not let them. Too proud. Too strong. No, too weak. Too weak to let herself become exposed. She was already caught, caught in this trap, this vortex. Her wounds seething, her heart cracked, she could not let herself become any more exposed. Her strong front was all she had at this point; her strong front and her resolve, and she would not let herself crumble under this pressure. “What was this all for? I thought you... when you were talking to Dr. Tripton... I heard you... I thought you... loved me.” There. It was done. She said it, and she feared the repercussions. There had always been an invisible line for words and actions and thoughts that she had never crossed with him in the previous years. Love was a word that floated loftily in her head, secretly and cautiously, stowed away with pain and relish. For only her to know. Now it had rolled off the tip of her tongue into the air between them, only spoken less than a handful of times in the last six months, only whispered in the privacy of their home. Now it was out there, loud and clear, conspicuous and stinging like hot, prickling fear mixed with deafening regret. Here it comes, crashing down.

So turn up the corners of your lips
Part them and feel my fingertips
Trace the moment for forever

“I knew you were listening, Sara.” His face was set, rigid. As much as she felt she was going to lose it, he knew that he needed to keep it together. That he would have to. This could be the most important thing he would ever do in his life, and he would not screw it up. It would not become another catalogued moment in their minds to review later, to be analyzed; this was the end of the means. No more questions and burning doubt; that was over and done with. What he would say next would shatter her like a thin pane of glass. He knew it, and she knew it. It was years coming. She would never understand how he felt about her. There was always feeling and wanting, there was always sorrow and pain. It was always inside of him, turmoil that he couldn’t identify specifically. She knew. Oh, she knew how she felt, and she acted on it. But he knew something else; he knew that he loved her, ever since he met her. But there are levels of love, levels of commitment, and she would never know where he stood. He didn’t know where he stood, maybe still didn’t, even now. But there was always a feeling, always love. But love is not enough. Love is not enough, not even close. There can be love, an undying, unrelenting love that would consume them both, but it is not enough. It would never be enough, and she would never understand. It wasn’t about love, this relationship. It was about coming together to be torn apart. It was about finally reaching a certain point, and then jumping off, free-falling thousands of feet, wind whistling in your ears until you’re consumed by your surroundings. For love to be enough, everything else has to be solidified. She would never understand this. “It’s as if you’re listening, but not hearing me. Looking at me with blinders on. This isn’t about love, Sara. When I had that conversation with him, you missed my point by miles. I said to him that I could not do it. And if I ever did, I would be risking my career. My career was all I had, and look at me. Look at me now. I can’t go through one workday without a handful of migraine medication. I can’t sit through one court hearing without a pounding headache. Everything’s... so complicated now. It shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t be this hard.”

“Life is hard. We live, we learn, we deal. I never expected it to be easy, I knew it never would. But I pushed through, I stuck it out, and we’re here now. We don’t need to go back.” The tears still lie dormant, unwilling to fall.

Defenses paper thin
Just one touch and I'll be in

He leaned forward, the deafening swirling of pain in his head blurring his vision. Once again, she was missing his point. “But we go back, every day. Every day that I come into work, it’s seven years ago, and everything is complicated. Us being together, this finally happening, it hasn’t solved anything. If anything, it’s made things worse. Look at us, objectively. I can’t work like this anymore, it’s too difficult. People are starting to wonder, Sara. They’re starting to give us looks and ask questions. What are we going to tell Ecklie? What’s going to happen when he calls us into his office and reprimands us? What’s going to happen with the team finds out? They’ll think I’ve been giving you preferential treatment. And maybe I have. Look at how many cases we’ve worked together lately. Nick and Warrick are out mapping Greg’s crime scene, and you’re working the serial killer case with me. When everything hits the fan, it’ll hit us hard. We’ll be under the microscope. Everything we’ve ever done will... come into question.”

She closed her eyes tightly, willing away the raw pain gnawing away at her. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be. “Just say it. They’re going to ask me about my drinking.”

“It’s not up to me to decide what they’ll bring into question and what they won’t. There’ll be speculation; you know that. It’s how it works.” She was glad that they had called him to pick her up that night. She needed someone who wouldn’t create an inquest into why she had decided to go to the local bar and drown herself in alcohol. The one person she had drowned herself to escape was the one person who would not ask questions. And he didn’t. Silently, he took her home, giving her space. She stayed alone that night, head resting on the toilet seat, stomach lurching. Had anyone else found out about what had happened, they would have stayed and created more questions than she cared to answer. Nick would have been all over her, asking her if she needed anything, telling her what a stupid thing it was to go get drunk and then get behind the wheel of a car, and didn’t she know that she could lose her job? Greg would have sat with her, holding her hair back, giving her space yet invading it at the same time. She would have broken down, which she did not want. And Catherine, oh Catherine. She would have made her a pot of coffee, sat her down, and explained to her the finer points of how to drink and not go overboard. She needed someone who wouldn’t pry, and she got what she needed. What she wanted. But had she stopped to think, to re-examine, she would have realized that she needed someone else that night. Someone who would attempt to fix her broken mess.

Too deep now to ever swim against the current
So let me slip away
So let me slip against the current

“I tried to talk to you, to resolve it. I tried to talk to you about my counseling, but there was always something else happening that got in the way.”

“You needed to slow down; you were so self-destructive. Do you know what I did when I found out that you tried to get the trace off of that closet door, in the house where the bombs were set off? I asked myself where I went wrong. I thought I taught you to put your safety and the safety of the team above everything else, but you didn’t care. And I only realized later that... it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have stopped you. But you see what I mean? Everything came back to this complicated web, everything we ever did will come into question. If I hadn’t let it get this far, if I hadn’t... given in, this wouldn’t be happening.” Her face twisted at his last sentence, twisted in anger and hurt, and he knew he had gone too far. Good. Something needed to get through, to break the barrier, to let her know that she had done something wrong and that she would ultimately be punished for it, one way or another. “When the team broke up, I thought we would grow apart and things would even out. But I was wrong, and Ecklie kept us together. I thought we would get the break we needed, but he forced us closer together, and our problems magnified.”

“Let things... get this far? Did you ever intend to deal with this, or did you hope it would just fade away?” She was furious. No, furious was the wrong word. So utterly and completely disappointed, a blow to the stomach, and her air was gone. He was a conquest that had let things get too far? She never thought he could be so insensitive, or perhaps, so truthful. It hurt. But she would not let it become roadblock. Everything was out in the open now, and she would not push it away like he had for so long. Dealing was part of living, like she said. She would deal with it, and move past it.

“I thought you would realize that we couldn’t be together, I... I made you Greg’s mentor, I tried to help you move on. He was crazy about you, Sara, and you completely pushed him away and kept chasing me, kept chasing something that wasn’t there, and hadn’t been for a long time. He was a reality that you wouldn’t allow yourself to confront, and you got close to him, close enough to feel something real, and then pushed him away. This doesn’t just affect you and I, Sara. This affects us all. In every part of our lives.”

So let me slip away

Her throat was dry, her voice hoarse. The tears would fall eventually, but not now. For now, they would blur reality and hold her sanity at bay. The words that have been said, they could not be taken back. That scared her more than anything. If something was left unsaid, it couldn’t be analyzed and realized. It couldn’t help and it couldn’t hurt, it could just sit there, benign. But these words, they were hurting. Scarring the reality that she had come to know, ripping it away like a band-aid off of a fresh wound. “I wasn’t chasing something that wasn’t there. I wasn’t. You, you were there for me when the abuse case affected me, when I went too far with Catherine, you were there to listen. You were there, holding my hand. I thought that you cared, that you wanted me to be happy.”

“Sara, that’s all I’ve ever wanted. But the attempts I made at making you happy, keeping you happy, you misconstrued them. Ultimately, it was easier to give in and to accept this, to try to make it work, but it isn’t working. Clearly, it isn’t working. When I saw you on the other side of that window in the mental institution, something inside of me snapped. He was about to... about to take you away from me, and I couldn’t handle it. I froze, and something told me that I couldn’t lose you. I didn’t know how to deal with it, so I kept you close, closer and closer, until it became a reality that neither of us could avoid. I was selfish. I couldn’t lose you, but I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t want it... to go this far. To get this complicated.”

She ran her fingers through her hair, and it fell gracefully onto her shoulders as she laid her head in her hands. Breathe, she had to breathe. Everything she knew, crumbling before her feet like an empire long since abandoned. If only this analysis had come earlier, she could have dealt with it better. But not now, with so much at stake. Her head throbbed with pain and guilt. This crossroads that they had found themselves at with this outing of feelings, it was telling her to pick a road. Pick a path. Fight like hell, or run like mad. Do it, whatever you need to do to get through this, and if you want what you’ve worked so hard for, you’ll fight. “It wasn’t all you. It was me, too. When Nick was taken, I broke down. Everything shut down and all I knew was that I had to be with you. I had to live now, risk everything, do everything I could to make myself happy. But you were right, I’m... I’m not happy.”

“I learned from Nick’s experience, too. I learned that life is too short not to take risks, but Sara, some risks taken and some roads ventured should not have been.” He needed another migraine pill, before his head exploded. This was too much for him to be dealing with right now. He couldn’t handle it anymore, he knew he had to, but he didn’t know if he could. He could see that she was about to break, break down, and he had to keep going. Keep talking. Keep exposing everything that had been previously locked away so secretively that it ate away at him, destroyed him so fully that he couldn’t function in the simplest of ways. This was what they were about, this wound that wouldn’t heal. No matter what either of them said or did, they would never be healed. But it needed acknowledgement; it needed closure, if for nothing else but his own sanity. Between the lines of fear and blame, the lines they had crossed so many times, he lost himself. “I realized my mistake too late, and I thought that you had picked up on. I thought maybe you would finally move on, find some closure. When you said that you thought we shouldn’t be together, I was relieved. But it wasn’t over. It’s... it’s never going to be over, is it?”

Hope dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption

She stammered, spinning dizzily in her own mind. “I was angry. I was upset, that was all. I didn’t mean what I said.” It was as if she was stuck in a time warp. This reliving was killing her inside, taking her back to places she didn’t want to be in or remember. She had moved past that, and she was here now. But perhaps she had moved past that while simultaneously moving past him, ignoring the signs that something was wrong. He needed closure, too. This was not his closure. This relationship did not solve his problems, it multiplied them. It made her physically sick. She had a realization, a gripping realization that twisted her stomach into knots. It was coming into focus now. “I suffocated you, didn’t I?”

He shook his head. “This was not all your fault. This was years of ignorant bliss that we chose to live in. When you told me that you weren’t ready to say goodbye to me, it killed me. I wanted you to be happy, but not like this. Not at the expense of everyone and everything else. We thought we were happy. I thought we were happy, but... it was an illusion.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this. I have everything invested in this, Grissom. I... I don’t know how to live without you. I haven’t for so long, it... I can’t. This can’t be happening.” Her desperation tore away at him, crushing his heart. He had never wanted this. He had helped create this through fear and self-deprecation, but he had never wanted this. This, whatever it was now, that destroyed them both. It had gone too far. It had spun out of control and gone too far.

“I’m taking some time away, to gain some perspective.” He swallowed thickly, once again, willing away the nausea. “When I get back, I... I don’t want you here, waiting for me. This isn’t to hurt you, Sara. This is for both of us, and though you’ll hate me for it now, though you won’t realize it now, it’s for the best. I need... space. I need to remember who I am, without this burden we’ve inflicted on ourselves.”

She stood, every muscle in her body screaming in weakness and in pain, shaking with self-doubt and utter exasperation. Images faded out within her memory, as he sat, head lowered, eyes red, worn down to the very last shred of energy he possessed. This house, this house she knew so well, it was different. It was encircled with negative energy, swirling in the dark depths of what she had once known as happiness. A false sense of security she had lived in for so long. The tears finally came. Silently, streaming slowly down her nose, dripping onto the carpet she had vacuumed a thousand times over, in a home she had once known as her own. He would not move. It was his turn to rest; it was his turn to be selfish again. No, she would leave on her own now, yet on his terms. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Her ice-cold index finger and thumb grasped the gleaming metal, which now seemed dull and insincere, and slid it off of her ring finger. She held it for a moment, clasping it desperately, before letting all of the muscles in her hands relax, and with a quiet gasp, it fell onto the glass top coffee table. It settled with a sickening clank, years of progress and hope falling away like rain off of a roof, dripping down onto the muddy ground, never to be pure again. “I guess it’s over.”

He let out a small puff of air, his voice cracked and strained. “I guess it is.”

I am certain now that I am
Vindicated

Everything she owned, she left behind. She would come back for it when he wasn’t home. The rain outside pelted her, making her shiver with regret and loneliness. The door clicked softly shut behind her when she exited. No broken vases, no loud profanities. It was simply over. But yet, it wasn’t. Her clothes were soaked, her hair matted to her face, her makeup already creating pathways down her cheeks. The rain was supposed to cleanse, to wash away what had once been dirty and tarnished. It would wipe a slate clean, it could take everything away and allow you to start over. But it was all a lie; it always had been. She could go back to the day that her father had been killed, and she could do something differently; anything differently. Or she could go back to Boston, to the snowy winters, and build a stronger wall of ice around her heart, never to be melted. She could have skipped the lecture, skipped out that day to go drinking, and she could have averted everything. But no one can run from the inevitable. Once you are born, there are scars and pain that you cannot take away. The only safe place, the only place where you are completely clean and untouched is a place that you can no longer revisit. The place with the calming water and soothing noises, where you weren’t yet accustomed to the outside factors that would ultimately break you down until you couldn’t live with the pain anymore. Until it all came flooding out in a wave of unbelievable and complete shock and disbelief. It is between leaving this world of safety and entering a world of hurt that your protective walls are torn down, and you are exposed. Nothing can be taken back. Not words, not actions, nothing is reversible. Until you leave this earth, until you are once again free from all coherent thought and life, you will not be cleansed. You will never again be a clean slate. It is how we deal with the pain that dictates our emotions and our life, and the stasis in between the two worlds in which we leave and enter that affects our personal identities. It is how we try to get back to perfect.