Title: SOS
Author: wobbear
Story rating: M/mature
Pairing: Grissom/Sara
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters aren’t mine; the story is.
Author’s notes: Here endeth the story, with my longest author notes ever. Thank you very much to losingntrnslatn for going above and beyond in smacky30’s absence. Not only did she do a very speedy and helpful beta, LiT also had to read the other eight chapters first in order to do it―all within a very tight timeframe, because I had this fixation I wanted to post the final chapter before the premiere. However, I tweak: any oddities are, of course, my responsibility.
Many thanks also to smacky30 for beta-ing all the way from chapter 2, and thank you readers for your patience as I slowly wrote my first actual WIP. I’m very grateful for the many kind comments I’ve had from readers; I appreciate your feedback more than I can say. And hasn’t it been amazing to see just how many SOS phrases are possible?! Now, without further ado―

Summary: Scintilla of sadness―story over, sweeties. GSR

Chapter 9

After Grissom unlocked the door, Bruno led the way inside and then waited for his leash to be removed. As the dog wandered off in search of that week’s favorite chew stick, Grissom went to collapse onto the sofa. It had been a hell of a first day back at work, and he still hadn’t fully shaken off his cold yet. They had only walked the short route today, with no throwing games, as Grissom’s energy levels were nowhere near normal yet, and he was feeling a little shaky. It felt good to sit down.

Walking Bruno was a great stress-buster—besides the benefit of the exercise itself, Bruno’s doggy delight in sniffing trash cans, lamp posts and other canines’ rears never failed to raise Grissom’s spirits.

Phone calls about work were generally counter-productive to the feel good factor, so he’d left his cell phone on the coffee table. He was off duty, and he wasn’t on call; if the lab needed him, the lab could wait until he got back. This was another facet of trying to take better care of himself.

He was about to relax back on the sofa’s squashy leather when the device warbled. Grissom stiffened at the sound. He was truly not in the mood or the shape to be called back to the lab, or out to a crime scene. After taking a moment to steel himself against the possibility, he reluctantly picked up the phone, and warily looked at the screen.

Ahhhhhh.

Sara.

Flipping the cell open, he swiveled easily on the leather and lay gratefully down against the pillows. “Hi.”

Sara heard the smile in his voice, and could tell that his cold had abated. “How are you doing?” she asked.

“Better. Exhausted, but a lot better. Just came back from a walk with the boy.” He paused; Sara was supposed to have met up with her mother the night before. He worried about pushing, but he wanted to know. Softly he inquired, “So, uh, did you see Laura?”

Despite Grissom’s trepidations, Sara was eager to speak. Very. His careful question unleashed a torrent of words.

First she told of the three other women with whom her mother shared a house: two of them, April and Jane, Laura had met at La Casa de las Madres, and the third was Jane’s sister, Dee. The fact that Dee knew Laura from her former job as a prison guard was, she said, just one of those things.

Then, scarcely taking time to breathe, Sara went on to describe how a long, narrow, south-facing yard sloped down the hill from the back door of the house, and how Laura had developed a flourishing terraced vegetable garden there. Sara recounted the steep climb up from the bus stop, the view from the dormer windows on the top story, the color of the walls in the downstairs hallway and how she’d like to paint something that hue too.

As she wound down from a detailed description of the vegetarian chili and spinach salad they’d had for dinner, Grissom decided to venture a direct question on the subject around which she was so deftly skirting. “How was Laura?”

There followed a long silence, broken only by a shaky sound, somewhere between a gasp and a giggle, Grissom thought. He was about to speak again when Sara began. “It’s … strange, stupid of me really. She’s .. old. Not old old, but, well, she’s in her sixties now. I’ve always thought of her as she was when I last saw her.” She sighed audibly and Grissom waited. “She was younger than I am now … when it all happened.”

xxxxxxx

Ever since that fateful night when her mother killed her father, Sara’s approach had been to knuckle down; to study and work, to set goals, both academic and professional, and to surpass them. Keep working, don’t stop to think, to feel. Let the cool clear logic of science be the driver, stick to the things she could examine, understand; emotions and memories were awkward, messy. They would only lead to heartbreak and sorrow.

Refusing to see her mother had been part of that. Sara had been torn by so many conflicting emotions: relief that her father was gone, guilt that she felt relief, regret at the loss of a life and the uncomfortable realization that she was glad it wasn’t her. But most of all, she felt grateful and angry, a confusing mix; grateful that the long trial of abuse was over, and angry that it had gone on so long. It was too much to deal with. And so she chose to shut her emotions away, to deny their existence, and by extension, her mother was caught up in that decision. From that stemmed her refusal (the few times she ever spoke of her mother) to refer to her as “Mom”. The use of “Laura” was a further distancing, another way to push away the memories.

But they had tarried, lurked, those memories, no matter how hard Sara tried to banish them. They had become spectres floating in her sub-conscious, haunting her sleep.

Sara had also avoided thinking about Laura’s feelings, how the whole situation might have been for her. Now she was starting to realize that her mother, too, must have struggled.

xxxxxxx

“So, take a break, have a cup of coffee, whatever, and we’ll head back out to the scene in 20 minutes.” Grissom paused outside the break room as Nick and Warrick went in, before deciding to follow them. Coffee was a very good idea. It was 2:45 pm and they were well into their second shift.

A messy gang shooting, resulting in multiple casualties, managed to occupy the entire graveyard crew for most of the night and they still weren't finished with the scene. But Grissom had sent them all back to the lab to get the evidence processing started, their kits refilled and to generally give everyone a time out from the gruesome, blood-soaked and trash-strewn alley.

Warrick and Nick sat down, one with a soda, the other coffee, and resumed their episodic chess game. Warrick edged out one of his bishops and then sat back, satisfied. Nick furrowed his brow and leaned forward to squint at the pieces as he considered his options. Warrick watched him for a moment then stretched over to pick up the TV remote. “You look like you’ll be a while. I’m gonna check what’s happening in the world. Anywhere but here.”

Intent on his strategy, Nick just grunted.

Warrick raised an amused eyebrow and turned on CNN. On screen was a shot of the Golden Gate bridge and the voice over was saying “… hit the Bay area at 6:07 am, magnitude 4.1.”

Grissom was just lifting his “Entomologists don’t bug me” mug, an April Fool’s gift from Sara, to his lips when he tuned into the program. It wasn’t a big quake, but still.

He lingered for a moment to hear the minimal damage report, and then repaired to his office. Taking a sip of coffee, he wrinkled his nose at the stewed taste. Setting the mug aside, Grissom fished the cell phone out of his pocket and keyed a message.

xxxxxxx

Sara was on a BART train on the way to UC Berkeley. She was working part-time as a pseudo-TA for Frances Hellman, the chair of the Physics department. They had met through a former professor of hers, and Sara was finding the mix of tutoring and research a welcome intellectual challenge. Being able to work, to stretch her mind and skills, without the taint, the pervasive dark shadow of criminal activity was refreshing. So much so that Sara found herself contemplating the possibility of going into academics full-time. This was an ideal entrée, as it also helped pay some of the bills, avoiding too much damage to her savings.

As Sara was ruing the fact she’d forgotten to bring something to read, her phone bleeped. Grissom. But he should be asleep at this hour. That meant he was very likely pulling a double and taking a short break to help him stay awake.

GG: Stirred or shaken?

Sara read that and had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

SS: Sense of sentence?

GG: Shivering of soil. Seen on screen.

That doubtless made sense to Grissom, but Sara was none the wiser. Ordinarily she would have simply called him, but she preferred not to speak on her cell while on crowded public transport. It was simply a matter of both privacy and propriety; she didn’t like to be overheard or to overhear others’ conversations. She could just text him a regular question, but the SOS thing was a fun sort of discipline and she had some time to kill on the train anyway. She thought for a bit.

SS: Still oblivious, sorry.

It was Grissom’s turn to wonder how to phrase his next message. He was not at his freshest.

GG: shaking of substratum

Sara squinted at that and looked around the car, hoping that inspiration would strike her. As she did so the train stopped short of the next station, and Sara wondered why.

A woman in medical scrubs across the aisle was reading a newspaper. Just below the Examiner‛s banner heading was a black strip with white letters yelling: LATE NEWS: QUAKE HITS BAY AREA EARLY A.M..

Ahh. But she hadn’t felt it.

SS: Schedule of seism?

The time of the earthquake was one of the things Grissom had heard on the news report, and he had to laugh. It was one of those unbelievable coincidences.

GG: Six oh seven

Sara looked at the answer and snorted quietly. “You have got to be kidding me.” Just then an announcement came over the PA to explain that there was a broken-down train on the track ahead of them which needed to be dealt with before they could proceed.

She leaned across the aisle and spoke to the woman with the paper. “Excuse me, but do you know what time the earthquake was?”

“Uh, a little after six, not sure exactly. I had just started my shift.” She shrugged. “They may say somewhere in here,” she flapped the newspaper, “but I haven’t seen it yet.”

Sara had gone out for a run about ten to six. It was near the end of April now and the sun rose not long after six, so the brightening sky and street illumination gave sufficient light to see by. Running, it would have been easy to miss the motion of a minor earthquake, and anyway it couldn’t have a strong quake, or she would have heard about it—nervous chatter on the Muni or BART trains for a start—before now. As if he were reading her mind, Grissom sent more detail.

GG: Strength of shake: 4.1

SS: Sara out striding. Speed obscured shaking.

“Hey, Grissom.” He looked up to see Hodges in the doorway. “I’ve started on the trace evidence from your gang case, and there’s something I think you need to see.” The tech simply stood waiting for his supervisor’s response, looking earnest and a just little smug. Since the early days, Hodges had somewhat toned down his suck-up routine, for which Grissom was extremely grateful.

“Uh, okay. Give me a minute and I’ll join you there.” He made a brief waving motion with his hand to encourage Hodges to go back to his domain, and was pleased to see him take the hint.

GG: Sorry, others summoning.

He pressed send and slipped the phone back into his pocket. Then, deciding not to have another sip of the dreadful coffee, he headed to the trace lab to see what Hodges had found.

After seeing that message Sara knew Grissom had gone. The train started to move again, so she put her cell away in her bag. They weren’t far from her stop.

The train juddered to a halt once more. Sara started wondering if the earthquake had dislodged the rails. That was a fairly pointless exercise, so she redirected her thoughts. So what if this journey was being held up? She had come a long way since last November.

As she was recovering from her kidnaping, Sara had begun to fear that she was losing herself, that she was being consumed by the relentless grind of crime in Las Vegas. In the midst of her turmoil, the emotions and memories she had ignored for decades could no longer be silenced. After struggling silently with it for months, Sara had realized that she had to find a way to move forward, to confront the ghosts she had so long carried with her. In a perverse way she was almost grateful to Natalie Davis and Hannah West; they had provided the impetus for her to make a move.

Facing up to those ghosts was the hardest thing she had ever done, although leaving Gil to do it ran a very close second.

Gil.

He had been a constant source of loving support since they reconnected with that phone call. She remembered his recent visit, when he was just about over his heavy cold. They had gone again to Tomales, this time staying at Aroha. In the lengthening evenings they had played bocce with Tom and Dale on the gravel-strewn sandy strip of soil behind the B&B. And how on a previous trip, in late February, he had met Izzy Tokay. That had been a lively meal.

She recalled, with a quiet sense of satisfaction, how the other day, when talking to Gil, she said, “I had lunch with my mom today.” It had just slipped out. Only when she heard his sharp intake of breath, and then after a pregnant pause, his careful voice replying, “Oh yeah? Where did you go?” did she realize what she had done. It would be another leap, she knew, before she would feel comfortable calling Laura “Mom” to her face, but it was a definite sign of progress.

xxxxxxx

“I know what you’re trying to do, Captain, your innocent expression doesn’t fool me.” That was the most the skinny, unshaven man in the sweat-stained Cardinals cap had said since they’d brought him in. He had answered questions with the bare minimum of words, affecting a cool formality that seemed at odds with his shabby appearance.

“I’m just asking what you were doing with a body in the trunk of your car. The way I see it, if you’re all-fired innocent as you say, you won’t mind telling us what you were doing out by the body farm.” Brass paused for a moment, giving the man a chance to speak. He had lapsed back into silence, however, so Brass continued. “Look, Mr Ketterman, the only fingerprints on the car were yours, so unless you have a real good explanation, it’s looking bad for you.”

Brass shrugged, tilting his head towards Grissom, who was leaning against the wall of the interview room. “You wanna take a crack?”

Grissom shook his head, a quick negative. He was there to take the suspect’s clothes for examination, but first Brass was taking a little run at the guy. Grissom wrinkled his nose, thinking with distaste that he would also have to comb the man’s greasy looking hair. Give me an inanimate crime scene any day.

Brass squinted assessingly at Ketterman for a moment before he tipped back his chair, balancing it on the back legs against the wall. He put his hands behind his head and smiled calmly. “Hey, Jerome, you know what? I’ve got all night. I can wait until you want to talk.”

Ketterman glanced uncertainly at Brass, over to Grissom, then back to the police captain. “You can’t psyche me out you know. I have a BS in Psychology, I know what you’re trying to do,” he repeated.

“A BS, huh? Bet you graduated summa cum laude in BS, didn’t you Jerome?” Brass was attempting to needle the uncooperative man, Grissom knew. It was often a highly effective tactic.

Ketterman bowed his head for a moment, closing his eyes. From his vantage point, Grissom saw the man shift his feet to either side of his chair, and the bunching of his hands under the table. “Uh, Jim—”

At that instant the man exploded into action, leaping up and pushing Brass over onto his side. Brass’s chair went flying into the glass door, the pane shattering but staying in the frame. Grissom tried to drag the suspect off of Brass, but Ketterman had hold of the policeman’s hands and was trying to pummel him with his own hands, all the while saying in a rigidly controlled voice “It’s. A. Bachelor. Of. Science. You. Bozo.” For such a slight man, he had a tenacious grip.

“Murphy, get in here!” yelled Grissom, exasperated that the officer outside the door made no move to enter the room.

Backup soon piled in and unceremoniously bundled the suspect away to a cell to cool off. Brass had managed to avoid punching himself, but bruised his shoulder when he hit the floor. He fingered it gingerly as Grissom righted the chairs.

Watching him, Grissom remarked, “You need to get that checked out.” Talking over Brass’s protest that it was nothing, he continued, “We need to have the injury documented.”

Brass nodded, conceding the point, then cocked his head and smirked wryly at Grissom. ”Ya know, that teasing tactic usually works. Sometimes I wonder if I’m losing my touch.”

“C’mon, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and we can call Doc Robbins to see if he is available to look at your shoulder.” He held the door open, waving Brass through.

xxxxxxx

“So, is Brass all right?” asked Sara.

“Yeah, he says he won’t be re-painting his house anytime soon, but somehow I don’t think he was planning to re-decorate.” Grissom’s voice became serious. “And the suspect will be cuffed and shackled for the next interview.”

“Plus at least one officer in the room, I hope.”

“Mmmm. So, that’s a re-cap of my day. What’ve you been up to?”

“Well, this afternoon I helped Laura weed her veggie patch. And we talked.” Laura had talked a lot. About how if there had been a battered women’s refuge in reach of Tomales Bay at the time, Sara’s father might still be alive; how hard it had been not to see Sara all those years, but how she had respected Sara’s choice; about how pleased she was that had finally made contact. Sara talked about her helplessness at the time, how she had felt abandoned afterwards and about the life she had later made for herself, and her recently-found happiness with Grissom.

Sara told Grissom all of this, and then fell silent.

“Sara?” He knew not to prod her too hard around the subject of her mother, but someone had to say something.

“She said ‘you can’t change the past, but you can shape your future’. Sound familiar?” Her tone was wry.

Grissom had been saying something very similar to Sara for the past eighteen months. He smiled at the phone and said, “You know, she sounds like a wonderfully wise person. I’d like to meet her.”

Sara shook her head, grinning. “Oddly enough, she said pretty much the same thing about you.”

xxxxxxx

Sara’s cell phone vibrated, shuddering across the scratched oak surface of the nightstand in her attic room. She groaned as she came to, clambering to consciousness out of a bizarre dream. She had meant to turn her cell off before she went to sleep, but had obviously forgotten.

It was still dark outside. Probably a wrong number. Rolling over, she picked up the phone, flipping it open and clamping it to the side of her face in a practiced move. “Sidle.”

Hearing nothing, she brought the phone in front of her face, and squinted at the glowing screen. It was Grissom’s number. Suddenly Sara’s heart was pounding in her throat. Something was wrong. “Gil? Gil! Talk to me!”

“Sara.” His voice was low, husky, infinitely sad.

Sara tensed, asking urgently, “Are you OK?”

“Okay?” Grissom sounded like he didn’t know the meaning of the word.

“Griss?” Sometimes only the old nickname got through to him. She heard an enormous sigh, and waited.

“Sara … oh, Sara.” He was despairing; something terrible must have happened. “Uh, yeah, I’m OK. But … Warrick … he’s been shot. It’s really bad, honey.” His voice broke at the end and Sara squeezed shut her eyes, feeling his pain. Warrick.

As she listened to his choppy breathing, Sara knew what she had to do.

END