Part 13/13

See Part 1 for disclaimers

Author's Intro Notes: This chapter is rather heavy, but it is
also the final one for Inequity.  Thanks to everyone who has
reviewed.  It always pleases me to know that someone is
enjoying what I'm writing. This was my first story in this
fandom and I didn't expect it to take over twelve months to
complete.  For that, I must also apologise to the readers. 

And a final, big thank you to Alison (Vigirl) for all the time
and effort she put into editing.  It was wonderful to get the
feedback on what works and what could make the story
better.

Previous parts may be found at
http://www.geocities.com/missyliannem/csi.html

Part 13

The scream jolted Grissom out of his slumber.  Lukewarm
coffee spilled over the lip of the mug as he was jerked awake
in shock.  He ignored the damage to his pants, more
concerned about Sara.  The deep-set agony contained in her
scream pierced his heart.  

Placing the mug down on the polished floorboards, he
quickly moved to Sara's side.  Grissom knelt down on the
floor so that he would not exacerbate the spine-chilling fear
that held Sara in its grasp.  He tentatively reached out to give
her shoulder a gentle shake.

"Sara... wake up.  Sara!"

Morbid fear filled her eyes when she initially opened them. 
Within a moment, it was replaced with relief.  "Grissom?"  

"Yeah. It's me."  Grissom smiled down at her.  He raised his
eyebrows, a silent question in his eyes.  "You okay?"

"I am now."  Sara unsuccessfully tried to push herself up into
a sitting position in the bed

Grissom sat down on the bed beside her and gently eased her
up.  He left his arm comfortably around her shoulders.  Sara
rested her body against his solid mass, taking quiet
reassurance  from the warmth and security she felt within his
embrace.

"I thought you would've gone home," Sara said quietly,
turning her head towards him as she spoke.

Grissom shook his head, a smile twitching at the corners of
his mouth.  "No.  I wouldn't leave you."  To himself he
added, "to face your demons alone."  

Sara shook her head.  Her brain felt as if it had been filled
with cotton-wool, but she also could have sworn that
Grissom had said he wouldn't leave her; it must be the drugs.

"It's the tablets." Grissom unwittingly confirmed her
suspicions, not realising the full extent of her thoughts.  He
had merely interpreted the clouded expression in her eyes. 
"Sara, you forgot to tell the doctors about your
antihistamines.  You don't normally make that mistake.  Why
this time?"

"I wasn't thinking.  I wanted to get out of the hospital, to
remove the mem..." Sara broke off and looked down at her
plaster-encased arm.  She had said too much.  Sara knew that
Grissom wasn't going to leave it alone.  Maybe it was time
to share her fears, her past -  to give up a part of herself rather
than have the pain eat away at her instead.  

"Have you ever talked about it?"  Grissom took the
opportunity to finally broach the subject that had been so
difficult since Tom Adler's call the previous afternoon. 
Gently resting his chin on top of her head, he suggested, 
"Why don't you tell me about your nightmares?  Those
memories you don't want to remember."

"It was a long time ago," Sara said, her voice defeated.  Her
fingers fiddled with the edge of the crocheted blanket.

"It may be a long time ago, but obviously you are still
suffering its effects." Grissom reminded her softly.  He didn't
want her to back out of telling him when he felt she was so
close.  "Who was it?"  He ran a hand lightly over her dark
hair, trying to ease her nervousness.  Grissom hoped that his
actions wouldn't frighten Sara.  He needed to know the
events that weighed down so heavily on her, so many years
into the future.  It was the only way he would be able to help
her.

"A friend.  She was murdered by her boyfriend." Her voice
was flat, devoid of the heavy emotion that filled her eyes.

"Was he caught?" Grissom knew that this revelation was
going to be fairly brutal and he worried as to the exact nature
of Sara's involvement.  

"Yes and no."  Her mouth twisted as she remembered back
to the day the man who had been responsible had been
sentenced.  A smile had been fixed on his face as the judge
declared the sentence, his eyes telling her that he had won. 
Not only had he beaten the system, he had taken her friend
away from her.

"That's ambiguous." Grissom lifted his eyebrows in surprise. 
Sara normally saw things in black and white.  There was no
halfway measures about her, including her sense of justice.

His words brought Sara back to the present.  "It was
inequitable justice." A spark of the Sara he knew shone
through.  She had straightened her back, pulling away from
him slightly as she said the words with conviction.  

"Tell me," Grissom encouraged quietly, his voice soft and
barely audible as he whispered the words beside her ear.

"Naomi and I met at Harvard."  Sara remembered the day the
two of them met.  They had been unlikely friends through
their very different social experiences, yet they had gravitated
towards each other.  While opposites in so many ways, they
had found many levels on which they had commonality - an
understanding that had been borne of true friendship.  

"We shared a dorm and hit it off immediately.  She taught me
how to enjoy life - she showed me a different life to what I'd
always been used to.  Naomi was one of those students who
really didn't need to study to get outstanding grades.  And
she was pretty.  She had the choice of all the guys she could
want and tended to play the field, never settling down with
one for too long.  But then in our final year, there was Matt. 
He was the one thorn in our friendship.  I couldn't stand him
and Naomi adored the guy."  Sara stopped, lost in the past -
the ghosts rising from their graves to haunt her during her
waking hours.  

"What happened?" Grissom prompted, still gently stroking
her hair.  

Sara relaxed under his touch, the action reminding her of her
mother's hand when she had suffered from nightmares as a
young child.  She leaned back into his chest, slipping further
down on the silky, jacquard quilt cover.

"After a few months, Naomi moved into his house.  That was
when the abuse really started.  He controlled who she was
seeing and when.  It wasn't long before she was beginning to
miss classes.  When she did attend, she wasn't the vibrant
friend I'd always known." Sara's voice wavered as she
relayed the events that had led up to her friend's death.  "I
tried to keep in touch, but it was virtually impossible.  Matt
seemed to always know when I was visiting and make sure
she couldn't see me.  We spoke on the phone when we could,
but that was all.  And I missed her most important call.  The
call that would have saved her life."

Grissom waited as she stopped talking for a couple of
minutes.  He held her.   She was struggling to get her
emotions under control, to keep the tears that filled her eyes
at bay.  When he felt that Sara was able to continue, he
prompted, "What call was that?" 

"She left a message at my dorm the night she was killed.  I
was at a party and didn't get home until late."  Sara shook her
head, brushing away the tears with the back of her hand. "By
that time it was too late.  If only I'd been there, I could have
stopped it."

"Could you?" Grissom asked, his hand searching his pockets
blindly for a handkerchief.

"What do you mean?" Sara twisted her head to look up at
him.  "Of course, I could.  I would have got her out of the
danger, out of his grasp."

"Why do you think you could do something that so many
friends and relatives of other victims are unable to do?"
Grissom asked as he finally pulled the elusive piece of cloth
out of his pocket.

"Because I was her friend.  She trusted me." Sara broke off
again as she thought about the powerful words she had just
said.

Trust.  It was something that they had given each other
implicitly.  Sara thought about the people in her life, those
whom she trusted with her secrets.  After Naomi, she had cut
herself off from everyone emotionally.  Even with Grissom,
she had held back.  She had not allowed him into every
corner of her life, refusing to risk losing a friend again.  It
dawned on her that today she had to reassess that decision of
long ago. 

The arms around her were strong.  The hand that ran over her
hair gentle and reassuring.  The soft rise and fall of her body
against his own comforted her.  It was time to trust again.  

Sara took a deep breath and continued, "she rang me that
night.  Wanted my help.  Except I wasn't there to answer her
call.  By the time I got to her, it was too late.  He'd stabbed
her and left her to die in her own blood."  Sara remembered
the blood.  Blood that didn't seem to stop.  It seemed like a
river flowed from her friend.  The carpet around her was
discoloured and spongy with its sticky mass.  Frantically Sara
tried to stop the blood, but there was so much, so many cut
that the viscous fluid flowed from.

Sara shuddered as she remembered her frantic attempts to
save her friend's life.  

"The problem was, she didn't die.  But she was dead to
everyone around her. He stole her soul and left an empty
shell in its place.  Except the shell breathed.  So the law said
it wasn't murder or manslaughter.  It was inflicting grievous
bodily harm.  For that, he was given five years jail.  He got
out after three years - apparently for good behaviour.  It's
inequitable justice."    

The tears that had been threatening finally began to fall. 
They rolled down her face in jagged rivulets of pain. 
Grissom handed her the handkerchief he had found not long
ago.  

"And for how many years have you been punishing
yourself?"  Grissom asked, his hand stilling on her head.  He
turned her head to face him with a gentle finger against her
chin.  "When are you going to give yourself time out for
good behaviour? Sara, you need to forgive yourself or you're
going to lose control.  You can't compromise your integrity
or your safety because of the past.   You have to learn to
forgive yourself, Sara.   No one else is blaming you for what
happened to your friend."

"I am," Sara told him stubbornly.  "I should have recognised
the signs.  They were all there.  If I'd paid attention and
wasn't having so much fun with my other friends, I could
have prevented it from happening."  Sara hit the mattress on
the bed in frustration.  "While she was suffering abuse at
Matt's hands, there I was dancing away at parties, going out
to movies, enjoying life without my best friend who had been
my constant companion for three years."  

"It's also easy to blame yourself in retrospect," Grissom said. 
"Sara, you were young.  There's no way to know whether it
would have worked out differently if you had answered the
call."

"I would have gone to their house earlier, not as late as I did. 
I wouldn't have tripped over her dead body in the dark.  All
her life had been drained out of her.  But not enough to kill
her."

Grissom's eyes widened as he realised that Sara had placed
herself in danger.  If Matt had still been there when she
arrived at the scene... He shuddered to think what might have
happened. "You could have also ended up a victim, been on
that floor with your friend."  The words brought him back to
the events of today.  Sara covered in the blood matter,
huddled on the ground.

"But I didn't.  I wasn't."

"No, you weren't.  And I want to make sure that you keep it
that way.  Sara, last night was too close.  When that gunshot
was fired, I thought you had been hurt...I thought that you
were dead.  I don't ever want to feel that fear again."

"I didn't put myself in danger," Sara said, defensively.

"I'm not saying you did," Grissom corrected her.  "I'm trying
to tell you how I felt.  I could have lost you tonight, Sara. It
scared me."  The words were rushed as if they had been sent
on gale force winds. 

"Really?"  Sara was surprised.  Her eyes slowly rose to meet
his, the intensity of his fear clearly visible in their depths.  
She slowly admitted her own fear.  It only confirmed to her
the mutual trust they had with each other at this moment. "So
was I.  I never want to be on the wrong end of a gun like that
again."

Sara felt amazed that it had been so easy to say the words. 
All the years she had bottled her emotions inside herself. 
Now that she had told Grissom about Naomi, there was only
a sense of relief at having shared the burden of guilt.  Despite
what Grissom said, whether rightly or wrongly, she would
always feel that she was partly responsible.  
    
"Sara, I don't want you to be in that sort of situation again. 
Tonight was an error on the part on the officers at the scene,
but the way you react to some cases, you put yourself in the
place of the victim.  In doing so, you are putting yourself at
risk and the others around you.  You need to learn to distance
yourself.  Don't allow your personal grief to cloud a case."

"It's not always that easy.  If we don't speak for the victim,
victims like Pamela Adler and Naomi, who will?"

"Evidence, us and time."

"But sometimes we don't always have time," Sara reminded
him.  

"We can't compromise a case or ourselves by our emotions. 
But we can use that to bring about an end," Grissom
reassured her.  His many years of experience had taught him
that.  Now he needed to teach Sara the same.

"I don't see how."  

"Through time and experience.... it will show the evidence."

"Grissom, do you always have to be so cryptic?"

"Only when you're around.  Sara, seriously, time will prove
to you how you can utilise your strong sense of justice to
your advantage."

"I thought I was."

"No.  But you do seriously compromise your health by
allowing your cases to be your sustenance.  It's unhealthy to
not only your physical well-being, but also psychologically."

"So now you want me to see a shrink?"

"Sara, stop putting words in my mouth."

"It's such a nice mouth too..." she added, her fingers reaching
up to trail along its edges.

"Don't change the subject.  No, I'm not saying that you need
a psychologist, but I want you to think about the fact that you
have a family.  We may not be your blood relatives, but
we're always there for you.   I'm always here for you... all
you need to do is ask."

Sara gently smiled at him.  The words meant a lot to her.  It
was important to her that she had been accepted as part of the
family.  But it was his final ones that truly struck a chord in
her heart... he  would always be there for her.

She ran her hand carefully over his, feeling that she owed
him an explanation.

"I walk through cemeteries."

Grissom looked at Sara, confusion marring his face.  He
expressed his incomprehension at her statement. "What?"

"You asked me what I do to relax.  I walk through
cemeteries."  Sara gave him a grin.  Sometime she got a kick
out of throwing him off balance.    

While he understood intimately the intricacies of
entomology, the human psyche left him confused.  Sara had
a knack of doing it to him more than most.  This was not the
first time that he had been left speechless by one of her
abstruse statements.

"Why?"

"It gives me a sense of balance to the grim loss of life we see
daily; the damage some people will inflict on the innocent. 
In a cemetery, there are families linked through generations. 
Lives may be lost through disease or tragedy, but the majority
reach their end naturally.  Lives reunited through death; a
patchwork of history carved into stone.  It reminds me that
there's more out there than the vicious criminals that create
the havoc we investigate."

Grissom smiled.  When she had mentioned the word
'cemetery', he had immediately suspected a more gruesome
reason for her walks.  It was reassuring to know that his
assumption was incorrect.  As he would often remember a
teacher mentioning to him - don't assume, it makes an ass
out of you and me.

"Oh, I nearly forgot, Catherine gave me this."  Grissom
pulled the watch out of his pocket, passing it over to her.  

Sara fingered the watch, a smile flittering across her face.  "I
don't need it anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because you've reminded me tonight of all the things this
watch was meant to remind me of."  

Grissom wasn't sure what she meant by this statement, but
let it flow by.  Obviously his words had had some effect and
he hoped that she would now take heed of what he had said. 


Sara allowed the watch to fall to the quilt cover and reached
over to capture his hand within hers, tracing lightly over the
lines that time had shaped and weathered.  She rested
comfortably on his chest, his other arm gently resting on her
back.   It wasn't long before they both were drawn back into
the comforting web of sleep, content in the fact that home
was where the heart is. 

The End.
                         
Author Notes: 

Too Tough to Die still leaves me pondering each time I
watch the show and this story was an attempt to fill in some
of the gaps.  We don't know about Sara's past and I am a
firm believer that Sara herself did not suffer any abuse, yet
she had close contact with it.  We also have from the CBS
website that during her years in Harvard, she partied,
something she had never done before.  I thought that there
had to be a reason why she began and also why she stopped
that partying.  Inequity was my answer.  It took a lot longer
to get to the end, to provide the scenario that I'd developed
in my mind from what I'd seen in the show and what had
been written about Sara's past.  I hope you enjoyed the ride.

I drew the watch into the story because I could never
understand why Sara would wear a watch that loose,
particularly since the nature of her job requires preciseness. 
Interestingly, the watch I was referring to disappeared in
Season 2, so that's why it disappeared in this story as well.

Finally, I wasn't intending to bring a case file into this story,
but it just happened.  It is a sad scenario that there is always
the possibility when you are dealing with a psychiatric illness
that lives may be lost.  However, this is no way reflects the
majority of people who deal with their disease effectively and
are able to function in society.