DATE: October 2006
TITLE: Passing the Point of No
Return
AUTHOR: LosingInTranslation
(AKA Jennifer, losingntrnslatn)
DISCLAIMER: Don’t own anything
associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it now and
then. Dance, Monkeys! Dance!
RATING: T for Teen.
PAIRINGS: GSR
SPOILERS: Post Ep
for Season 5 Episodes “No Humans Involved” & “Nesting Dolls”
SUMMARY: Sara’s thoughts as she
starts to feel her control crumbling around her.
A/N:
Okay, so I was trying to work through a writer’s block, and I just happened to
be making my way through Season 5 disks last night in an attempt to also fight
the insomnia. Watching those episodes, it really struck me that Sara had to
have been dealing with an awful lot of stuff outside of what they were showing
onscreen. Here’s a little bit of what I think she had going on in her mind.
REVIEWS: Reviews are
the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one,
THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten
your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.
Passing the Point
of No Return
Sara watched as the deputies led the
unconscionable woman down the hall in cuffs, while Brass explained about the
mother being found in
As he finished talking Sara looked at
Brass and asked, “Where are you going to take her first, the hospital or the
morgue?”
With a deep sigh, he answered, “Guess I
might as well get it over with. I mean,
once she sees the kids, she's not going to want to leave them.” He shrugged with
the weight of the decision and asked, “What do you think?
With an almost wistful expression on
her face, Sara told him. “Go with the living, Jim. The dead can wait.” She turned and walked
away, hopeful that he would not follow. She wasn’t sure she could handle
talking any longer without spilling her guts. Instead, she got in her car and
drove back to the lab.
In her experience thus far, no one
needed that kind of headache, if they weren’t getting paid for it. She had
spoken briefly to her counselor about a few of her fears, but they had yet to
get to the real demons in her life. She thought she would have the chance to
discuss them all before she had to face them.
As she worked the case, she found out how wrong she was when one of
those demons had come out to find her.
She had seen so much of herself in that
girl in reception, the girl who’d already spent so much of her life in foster
care, so much more than Sara ever had. She wanted to
reach out and tell her not to be so tough, not to shut herself off from the
world, but deep down, she knew it would be wrong. She would the biggest
hypocrite around if she told her that, not while she was doing the same thing.
Sara had always been tough, even when
she wasn’t. She made sure everyone knew how tough she was, and she hated
anything that betrayed that illusion, even for a second. No, Sara did
everything in her power to never betray what was really deep down inside. While
everything around her was neat and orderly and controlled, inside she was a
whirling mass of confusion and despair and total chaos.
The chaos stayed at bay, for the most
part. Sometimes it would get away from her before she even knew what was
happening. One such instance was why she had started the counseling in the
first place. Another such instance was what had set her on the path she was
following now.
Control has always been the focus of
her adult life, because she had so little of it growing up. The fights and the
screaming and chaos surrounded her every waking moment in childhood. In
adolescence, it was the uncertainty, the chaos of never knowing what was coming
next, that ruled her life. So, when she finally had a chance to control her
life, she grabbed it with both hands and held on for dear life. Since that time
there were only two things that set her off and made her lose control; violence
against women and children and Grissom.
The one gave her a sense of vengeance,
a sense of justice, for all of those people she couldn’t help, for all those
people who still cried out, but were never heard. For
herself, for her mother. But, instead of giving her peace, each case
brought the pain of her past closer and closer to the surface. Each case made
her relive the horror again, and again. And each case let her grip on that
control grow weaker and weaker. She feared that one day, she would snap
altogether, and there would be no more turning back. That fear was what had
prompted her to continue the counseling, long after her required sessions.
However, it was her other trigger that seemed
to be weakening its hold on her heart. At one point, even being near him was
enough for her to slip those tight reins of control, but that had changed along
the way. While she was certain she would never lose the feelings she held for
him, she no longer sought out that rush she received by throwing caution to the
wind when it came to him. With him, she almost felt like she didn’t need to
have the control, that it would be okay to let him hold the reins. He was the
only one she had ever thought like that about, but something had changed. Over
time, he had shown her again and again that he was either not willing, or he
was unable to handle the responsibility she was willing to give him. It had
been a bitter pill to swallow, and an even harder dream to give up, but she was
trying her best to put those thoughts behind her.
When she arrived back at the lab, Sara
found the place to be oddly quiet, yet still alive. Their cases were solved,
and everyone had finally gotten a moment to breathe after the tumult of the
last week. The team had been broken up, Catherine promoted,
As Sara sat down in the Processing
Room, she opened up her laptop computer and turned to look around. She
immediately found Grissom in his office looking through a book. But then her
focus was drawn to
She turned again and found the guys
hamming it up in the Break Room over a bag of popcorn. She missed being a part of
that whole thing, but it was just as much her fault as it was anyone else’s.
She had withdrawn from a lot of things to protect her control, because the best
way to do that was to never let anyone in too far. What they don’t know can’t
hurt you.
Sara watched as Catherine walked into
the hallway and stopped when she saw the guys in the break room. Catherine smiled wistfully and sighed, and
Sara thought for sure there was a look of pride on the older woman’s face. She
also thought that she had every right to be proud, Catherine had a hand in
building the careers of each of those men, and she should be proud of that
accomplishment.
For a moment, Sara entertained the
notion that Catherine had seen her, sitting apart from the others, but instead
she just glanced at her wristwatch, turned and headed back the way she had
come.
Sara thought again about the events of
the case, of the three boys making it out of the system, only to end up dead or
near it, because of a bad decision their mother had made. Apparently lots of
mothers made bad decisions. Or, so she thought, because she never really knew
for sure. It had all happened so long ago, when Sara was still just a girl, and
there, in front of her, on that laptop, she had the key that would answer all
of those questions for her. She only had to find the courage to finally face
the demon and see it for what it really was. She only had to type in those
words she had memorized so long ago.
She took one last look around at the
people that now filled her life, closed her eyes and then looked back at her
laptop. There on the screen, she had already pulled up the database site;
LexisNexis was beckoning to her with that flashing cursor in the search field.
She had already navigated to the Federal and State Court Cases directory, and
all she had left to do was to type those remembered words. The words that had
ruled her life, the words that had marked her forever…
THE PEOPLE VS. LAURA SIDLE W/2
It wasn’t much, but it was the only thing
she had ever known.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
It finally happened. She finally
snapped. Sara knew it was building to that, knew that she was getting close to
the edge, but she just couldn’t stop herself, no matter how hard she tried. She
knew what it was, and she should have stepped back and let someone else handle
it. She should have told Grissom she needed to step back, but she hadn’t been
able to talk to him for a while, they barely even existed in the same space
anymore.
Looking through those medical records
of all of those domestic abuse victims had done it. They looked far too much
like the ones she had found of her mother’s. In every face, she saw her
mother’s staring back at her, with those desperate eyes boring into her heart.
And in her mother’s face, she shivered at the reflection of herself coming from
those images. Each folder brought her closer and closer to the edge, farther
and farther from being able to hold on to her control. It was all slipping
away, and she needed to do something to hold it all in. What she did was wrong,
wrong on so many levels.
First, she totally lost it with that
suspect. Sara had no idea where any of that came from, but it had obviously
been boiling for a long time, because even after Melton walked out, she still
had some steam left in that engine. Why she thought Catherine would be willing
to keep that fire stoked, she’d never know. And she’d never know why she then
turned on her the moment she realized Catherine was standing her down. But even
worse than that, she’d never be able to forgive herself for what was said, or
the way it was said.
She and Catherine may have never been
the best of friends, but Sara had always admired her for the accomplishments she’d
gained, even in the face of terrible odds. The realization that she was also
harboring some resentment towards her for all the same things that she admired
in her had never entered Sara’s mind. Catherine had been able to walk that fine
line of being a woman in a man’s world, and yet still maintaining her
femininity. Sara had always felt like a failure in that department.
But her greatest blunder of the day
came from her interaction with Ecklie. She was still
flaming mad and nothing was going to be accomplished by Ecklie
talking to her at that moment. However, it was obvious the man couldn’t take
the clue. He practically shoved her into his office and began to go after her
immediately, but she wasn’t having any of it. Sara was getting angrier, and instead
of blowing out the steam, she just seemed to be building up pressure. The final
straw came when he gave her one of those “my lab” tirades and she just went
off. Told him exactly what she thought of it being his lab, and then proceeded to tell him what she thought of him as
well.
By the time Sara was done, she knew
that was exactly what she was: done. The only thing she had left to do was wait for the paperwork to go through.
When she got home, she started to feel
like the walls were closing in on her. She tried to calm herself down with
everything in her arsenal. Her therapy thus far had been all about diverting
her energies, and finding better outlets for the anger and pain. They hadn’t
gotten to the pain yet; to the demons that haunted her every waking and
sleeping thought. She hadn’t been ready to give over that power to her
counselor yet, it was the only thing she had left that was all her own, and it
was her only source of control. She could still control who she told about her
past, about her worst demons.
When all the exercises she could
remember failed, she started to stalk the floors of her apartment like a caged
animal. She could feel the chaos threatening to overtake her completely, and
the only thing she could think of was that the counselor had given her an
emergency number after their last session. It had become obvious to her that
Sara was holding something back, and she was just as afraid as Sara that it
would all come down on her in a wholly uncontrolled rush. She rifled through
her bag to find the number.
After a few calming breaths, the
counselor had told Sara to find a safe spot in her apartment, get something to
drink, turn on some music and write. Write down everything she was feeling,
everything that she was thinking and then read it back to herself. She told
Sara to analyze her own thoughts, just as she would any other evidence, and try
to make the evidence talk to her. She needed to let the evidence speak for the
part of Sara that could not speak for itself. Sara could relate to that, after
all, it was her job.
And so, Sara got a beer from the
fridge, clicked on the stereo and sat down at her simple desk in the corner of
her living room. She took out a pen and some paper and started to write.
Sara wrote about the fighting, about
the fear, about the abuse, about the pain, about the loss, about the isolation,
about the longing, about the-… She stopped before she got to the last thing,
and read back to herself what she had written. She wasn’t quite ready to write
about that last thing just yet, so she decided to process the evidence she had
so far. What she saw told her what she already knew, but had been afraid to
see: Sara was losing her control.
She read through it one more time as
she thought about all of the things in her life that had led her to his moment.
To the moment when she had gone so far as to throw it all away, without once
really trying to fix the mess in her life.
Taking in a deep breath, and then
blowing it out, Sara knew she needed to deal with…that night. She had pen to
paper and was about to start writing when…
…Someone knocked on the door. Using the remote, she turned the stereo off
and the gentle background music was quieted.
She carried her beer with her as she crossed the room to answer the
door. She had a pretty good idea who was on the other side of that door, and
her suspicions were confirmed when she looked through the peephole.
She opened the door and found Grissom
standing outside her front door. Sara
sighed, and lowered her gaze for just a moment. “Well, if you're here, it can't
be good.”
Grissom looked as though he had the
weight of the world on his shoulders, but all Sara could think was that he
should have tried her load for a little while.
He looked into her eyes, and she felt
like something had just cracked through her shell. She had been preparing to
fall apart, so his arrival frightened her to the core, and not just because of
what his arrival signified, but because she was afraid of what his proximity
meant to her fragile state of mind. She could deal with losing her career, but
wasn’t sure she could handle losing her control, and subsequently him, should
he finally see inside that carefully crafted façade barely containing the chaos
and keeping the demons at bay.
And then he asked the words that Sara
was certain would haunt her for the rest of her days. “Can I come in?”