Map of You
Summary: For some reason, it's a typical plot device to have Sara injured in the line of duty. What can I say? I'm a sucker for clichés. CS.
Title from the song, "Map of You" by Susan Voelz:
What about your lips?
Underneath my fingertips
In a dark room
Touch is true
I'm drawing a map of you
Step lightly
My dreams are at your feet
-------------
1.
"Sara, I need you to work the bathroom. I think the original crime scene is the bathroom, not the backyard, and I want you to work that." Catherine braced for the argument she knew was coming. Sara always wanted to be in the middle of every investigation and for her, that meant the place where the body was found. Catherine was already framing her counterarguments in her head, but instead of the spirited rationale she expected, she got a quiet, resigned "okay" as Sara picked up her kit and turned her back.
Catherine watched as the taller CSI headed indoors, puzzled. That wasn't like Sara at all, not even considering how subdued and quiet Sara had been the last few months. She frowned in concern, not for the first time, over the changes that had come over the younger CSI, before turning back to her work of mapping and photographing the scene.
Catherine straightened up from where she was crouched and had been for the last half hour, feeling a little lightheaded, to realize she had been hard at work for the last two solid hours. She hadn't seen Sara come out of the house yet, and she frowned in irritation, as she headed to the bathroom.
Sara was laying on the floor, surrounded by at least a whole container of fingerprint dust layered over every surface in the bathroom. Her long legs stretched out almost the entire length of the bathroom and she would have looked like she was sleeping, except for the quiet, almost-whispered strains of a Joan Jett song. She often sang when she got caught up in something, but she tried to hide it from the rest of the crew, Catherine knew, because it seemed to embarrass her even though she had a nice singing voice. Catherine couldn't make out what she was working on; a small stack of evidence bags was piled by the kit, but Sara seemed intent on swirling even more fingerprint dust on the underside of the rim of the claw-foot tub. Catherine crouched in the doorway to get a better look as Sara blew even more fingerprint dust over a small section.
"Sara?" She got a grunt in reply, but she was still singing, so Catherine didn't know if she really heard her. Sara applied a film to the spot she had been powdering and humphed again. "Sara?" Catherine called her name again, a little louder. "How are you doing?" She expected Sara to jump or react, but instead she just started talking like they had been deep in conversation for the last few minutes.
"Looks like our perp cleaned and bleached the whole tub. There's blood, probably the vic's, so you were right about the crime scene being here." She lapsed into silence as she peered up at the rim again.
"What did you get?"
"Partial." Sara replied. She frowned up at the film in her hand, as if it had failed her somehow.
"So are you done in there?"
"Huh?" She was back to looking at the underside of the rim. "Oh." She came out of her daze just a little, looking around the room and pushing herself up into a sitting position, her long legs tucking under her as she rose. "Yeah, I guess so." Sara dragged a gloved hand across her face, leaving a long streak of dust along her cheek. "Yeah, I'm done."
"I told you to be thorough, but... whoa." Catherine's sentence was cut short as her legs buckled a little as she tried to rise. She caught the doorframe and pulled herself up, bodily.
"Catherine? You ok?" Sara was looking up at her from where she was crouched by her kit, packing up her gear. Her voice sounded concerned and she had half-risen, as if to catch her.
"Yeah." Catherine shook her head to clear it. "Got up too fast or something."
"When's the last time you ate?"
"I dunno. Is this today or tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow. Probably got low blood-sugar or something." Sara's voice was clinical as she snapped the locks to her case shut and stood. "Come on, let's go." With her long legs, she quickly out-paced Catherine and was out the door. Catherine shook her head and followed with a wry look on her face.
Sara's kit was packed and the SUV was already running by the time Catherine got to the truck. She climbed into the passenger seat, still trying to get the slight dizziness to recede. "Here." Sara offered her a powerbar from whatever stash she always seemed to have when they were working. "This will hold you until you get real food."
"Thanks." Catherine smiled gratefully, although Sara's manner was abrupt and cold. "You sure you don't need it?" She asked, but Sara was ignoring her completely.
"Dispatch. CSI Unit 2. We are leaving the scene with an ETA of one hour, over."
"An hour? It's only about 20 minutes back to the lab."
Sara put the SUV into gear and pulled away from the curb, tapping her fingers restlessly against the steering wheel as she drove. "Lunch. We're over three hours into a double and we need to eat. Besides, I know a good cafe right around the corner."
"I can wait til..." Catherine started to protest until Sara cut her off.
"I can't." Sara seemed to be taking a page from Gil's playbook, Catherine mused. Gil often made autocratic judgments based on whatever he thought people needed without asking. But Catherine knew Sara was right -this time- and decided not to argue.
Sara swung the SUV into a gravel parking lot and cut the engine. Catherine caught her arm as she was about to get out of the truck, and said, "Um, Sara? Catherine tried to smother her grin at the puzzled look and the big smear of pink power, and indicated her own cheek.
Sara glanced in the mirror and looked dismayed. "Shit. Why didn't you tell me?" she asked as she smeared it further. "Dammit."
"Here. Hold still." Catherine leaned over, catching Sara's chin between her fingers and wiping carefully with a tissue. Sara's eyes went wide and she started to jerk her head back at the unexpected touch, but Catherine finished before she could complete the gesture. "There." Sara was still giving her an odd look. "What? It was the least I could do since I didn't tell you about it in the first place. I was going to, but I then I almost fell over from lack of food." She flashed Sara a lopsided grin. "And it did look kind of cute." Sara's nose wrinkled in a look of disbelief and she bolted out of the SUV, and laughing, Catherine followed.
Sara was already seated at a booth when Catherine found her. Catherine slid into the seat across and considered switching the coffee in the break room to decaf and not telling anyone. Sara needs to slow down, she mused, as Sara's fingers drummed on the table top, not impatiently, but to some hidden beat.
"Hey Sara, long time, no see." The waitress came up, pouring a cup of coffee automatically for Sara before looking at Catherine questioningly.
"Hey." Sara smiled up at the waitress, the first time Catherine had seen her smile in days. "Yeah, I haven't been eating out as much. "How's biz?"
Catherine pretended to study the menu while watching Sara and the waitress, Liz, chat for a couple of minutes. Sara's smile glowed at the waitress as she teased her about someone named Mike.
"So what are you having today, now that you've finally decided to grace us with your presence?" The waitress teased back, swiping at Sara with a menu.
Sara realized that she wasn't alone, and looked across the table. "Cath? Are you ready? Oh, btw, Liz, this is my colleague Catherine. Catherine, Liz."
"Nice to meet you." Catherine smiled at the pretty brunette, who smiled back. "And yeah, I'll take the turkey club on wheat, no bacon, and water, thanks."
Sara gathered up the menus from the table, handing them to the waitress, as she told her, "The usual."
"Smoothie?"
"Of course! Thanks. Oh, hey, Liz, make that two smoothies. Thanks." She caught Catherine's comical outraged look and shrugged. "What? They make the best fresh fruit smoothies here. It'll boost your blood sugar faster than anything."
"So you are, or were, a regular?" Catherine's voice picked up right at the end to turn the statement into a question.
"Yeah. I live not too far from here and often stop by for a smoothie or something when I go for a long run, like my reward for having gotten the seven miles in. But I haven't had time to run in like a month." She smiled at something Catherine wasn't privy to, and then explained when she caught her puzzled look. "Usually I sit up at the counter and harass the wait staff."
"What, you?" They shared a smile for a second before Sara brows knitted and she seemed to withdraw, as if she wasn't sure if that was a dig at her or not. She had done that too often, Catherine thought, cut her down like that. "Sara, I..."
The ringing of Sara's cell stopped her. "Sidle. Yeah? What?" She snapped at whoever was on the other end. "We just stopped for lunch on our way back. I don't think I have to explain to you what happens to the human body... Yeah, we'll be there shortly." She snapped the phone closed without saying goodbye and glared down at it.
"Grissom?" Catherine ventured a guess.
"Yeah."
Catherine glanced down to the cell phone on her belt to check that it was on. "I'm primary on this. Why'd he call you?"
"I'm more fun to yell at, I suppose." She answered, her eyes and voice flat and emotionless.
"He's been really hard on you lately."
"Yeah." Layers and layers of meaning were packed into that single word, and Catherine had no idea how to read them.
Catherine waited for Sara to say more, but she just sat there, staring off somewhere in the middle distance, lost in thought. Her cheekbones seemed more pronounced than usual, and Catherine realized she had lost some weight. Along with her sense of humor, she thought, and again wondered at the change. Sara had never been outgoing in a personal sense; she hadn't talked much to any of the other CSIs about anything much beyond work. Grissom seemed to be in her confidence the most, but Catherine doubted she opened up to him any more than the rest of them. Professionally, though, she had been outgoing and involved. Had been, that is. Until about seven months ago, right after the lab explosion, when she had become, not less intense about her work, but more, bitter. Like a light had been snuffed out, some burning passion that had always shone through the way her mouth would twist, both in confusion and pleasure, as she relentlessly tracked down traces and clues, was extinguished. She still did her work as conscientiously as always, as the bathroom this morning evidenced, but without her prior energy.
Sara noticed Catherine's gaze and her eyes narrowed, causing Catherine to take a sip of her drink quickly. "You were right, by the way." Catherine smiled one of those smiles that usually works on just about any body with a pulse and was glad to see the hard lines of Sara's face relax a little. "This smoothie is great. I should let you order me around more often," she teased.
There was a snort of laughter from the other side of the table. "Yeah, that will happen."
Summary: For some reason, it's a typical plot device to have Sara injured in the line of duty. What can I say? I'm a sucker for clichés. CS.
Title from the song, "Map of You" by Susan Voelz:
What about your lips?
Underneath my fingertips
In a dark room
Touch is true
I'm drawing a map of you
Step lightly
My dreams are at your feet
-------------
1.
"Sara, I need you to work the bathroom. I think the original crime scene is the bathroom, not the backyard, and I want you to work that." Catherine braced for the argument she knew was coming. Sara always wanted to be in the middle of every investigation and for her, that meant the place where the body was found. Catherine was already framing her counterarguments in her head, but instead of the spirited rationale she expected, she got a quiet, resigned "okay" as Sara picked up her kit and turned her back.
Catherine watched as the taller CSI headed indoors, puzzled. That wasn't like Sara at all, not even considering how subdued and quiet Sara had been the last few months. She frowned in concern, not for the first time, over the changes that had come over the younger CSI, before turning back to her work of mapping and photographing the scene.
Catherine straightened up from where she was crouched and had been for the last half hour, feeling a little lightheaded, to realize she had been hard at work for the last two solid hours. She hadn't seen Sara come out of the house yet, and she frowned in irritation, as she headed to the bathroom.
Sara was laying on the floor, surrounded by at least a whole container of fingerprint dust layered over every surface in the bathroom. Her long legs stretched out almost the entire length of the bathroom and she would have looked like she was sleeping, except for the quiet, almost-whispered strains of a Joan Jett song. She often sang when she got caught up in something, but she tried to hide it from the rest of the crew, Catherine knew, because it seemed to embarrass her even though she had a nice singing voice. Catherine couldn't make out what she was working on; a small stack of evidence bags was piled by the kit, but Sara seemed intent on swirling even more fingerprint dust on the underside of the rim of the claw-foot tub. Catherine crouched in the doorway to get a better look as Sara blew even more fingerprint dust over a small section.
"Sara?" She got a grunt in reply, but she was still singing, so Catherine didn't know if she really heard her. Sara applied a film to the spot she had been powdering and humphed again. "Sara?" Catherine called her name again, a little louder. "How are you doing?" She expected Sara to jump or react, but instead she just started talking like they had been deep in conversation for the last few minutes.
"Looks like our perp cleaned and bleached the whole tub. There's blood, probably the vic's, so you were right about the crime scene being here." She lapsed into silence as she peered up at the rim again.
"What did you get?"
"Partial." Sara replied. She frowned up at the film in her hand, as if it had failed her somehow.
"So are you done in there?"
"Huh?" She was back to looking at the underside of the rim. "Oh." She came out of her daze just a little, looking around the room and pushing herself up into a sitting position, her long legs tucking under her as she rose. "Yeah, I guess so." Sara dragged a gloved hand across her face, leaving a long streak of dust along her cheek. "Yeah, I'm done."
"I told you to be thorough, but... whoa." Catherine's sentence was cut short as her legs buckled a little as she tried to rise. She caught the doorframe and pulled herself up, bodily.
"Catherine? You ok?" Sara was looking up at her from where she was crouched by her kit, packing up her gear. Her voice sounded concerned and she had half-risen, as if to catch her.
"Yeah." Catherine shook her head to clear it. "Got up too fast or something."
"When's the last time you ate?"
"I dunno. Is this today or tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow. Probably got low blood-sugar or something." Sara's voice was clinical as she snapped the locks to her case shut and stood. "Come on, let's go." With her long legs, she quickly out-paced Catherine and was out the door. Catherine shook her head and followed with a wry look on her face.
Sara's kit was packed and the SUV was already running by the time Catherine got to the truck. She climbed into the passenger seat, still trying to get the slight dizziness to recede. "Here." Sara offered her a powerbar from whatever stash she always seemed to have when they were working. "This will hold you until you get real food."
"Thanks." Catherine smiled gratefully, although Sara's manner was abrupt and cold. "You sure you don't need it?" She asked, but Sara was ignoring her completely.
"Dispatch. CSI Unit 2. We are leaving the scene with an ETA of one hour, over."
"An hour? It's only about 20 minutes back to the lab."
Sara put the SUV into gear and pulled away from the curb, tapping her fingers restlessly against the steering wheel as she drove. "Lunch. We're over three hours into a double and we need to eat. Besides, I know a good cafe right around the corner."
"I can wait til..." Catherine started to protest until Sara cut her off.
"I can't." Sara seemed to be taking a page from Gil's playbook, Catherine mused. Gil often made autocratic judgments based on whatever he thought people needed without asking. But Catherine knew Sara was right -this time- and decided not to argue.
Sara swung the SUV into a gravel parking lot and cut the engine. Catherine caught her arm as she was about to get out of the truck, and said, "Um, Sara? Catherine tried to smother her grin at the puzzled look and the big smear of pink power, and indicated her own cheek.
Sara glanced in the mirror and looked dismayed. "Shit. Why didn't you tell me?" she asked as she smeared it further. "Dammit."
"Here. Hold still." Catherine leaned over, catching Sara's chin between her fingers and wiping carefully with a tissue. Sara's eyes went wide and she started to jerk her head back at the unexpected touch, but Catherine finished before she could complete the gesture. "There." Sara was still giving her an odd look. "What? It was the least I could do since I didn't tell you about it in the first place. I was going to, but I then I almost fell over from lack of food." She flashed Sara a lopsided grin. "And it did look kind of cute." Sara's nose wrinkled in a look of disbelief and she bolted out of the SUV, and laughing, Catherine followed.
Sara was already seated at a booth when Catherine found her. Catherine slid into the seat across and considered switching the coffee in the break room to decaf and not telling anyone. Sara needs to slow down, she mused, as Sara's fingers drummed on the table top, not impatiently, but to some hidden beat.
"Hey Sara, long time, no see." The waitress came up, pouring a cup of coffee automatically for Sara before looking at Catherine questioningly.
"Hey." Sara smiled up at the waitress, the first time Catherine had seen her smile in days. "Yeah, I haven't been eating out as much. "How's biz?"
Catherine pretended to study the menu while watching Sara and the waitress, Liz, chat for a couple of minutes. Sara's smile glowed at the waitress as she teased her about someone named Mike.
"So what are you having today, now that you've finally decided to grace us with your presence?" The waitress teased back, swiping at Sara with a menu.
Sara realized that she wasn't alone, and looked across the table. "Cath? Are you ready? Oh, btw, Liz, this is my colleague Catherine. Catherine, Liz."
"Nice to meet you." Catherine smiled at the pretty brunette, who smiled back. "And yeah, I'll take the turkey club on wheat, no bacon, and water, thanks."
Sara gathered up the menus from the table, handing them to the waitress, as she told her, "The usual."
"Smoothie?"
"Of course! Thanks. Oh, hey, Liz, make that two smoothies. Thanks." She caught Catherine's comical outraged look and shrugged. "What? They make the best fresh fruit smoothies here. It'll boost your blood sugar faster than anything."
"So you are, or were, a regular?" Catherine's voice picked up right at the end to turn the statement into a question.
"Yeah. I live not too far from here and often stop by for a smoothie or something when I go for a long run, like my reward for having gotten the seven miles in. But I haven't had time to run in like a month." She smiled at something Catherine wasn't privy to, and then explained when she caught her puzzled look. "Usually I sit up at the counter and harass the wait staff."
"What, you?" They shared a smile for a second before Sara brows knitted and she seemed to withdraw, as if she wasn't sure if that was a dig at her or not. She had done that too often, Catherine thought, cut her down like that. "Sara, I..."
The ringing of Sara's cell stopped her. "Sidle. Yeah? What?" She snapped at whoever was on the other end. "We just stopped for lunch on our way back. I don't think I have to explain to you what happens to the human body... Yeah, we'll be there shortly." She snapped the phone closed without saying goodbye and glared down at it.
"Grissom?" Catherine ventured a guess.
"Yeah."
Catherine glanced down to the cell phone on her belt to check that it was on. "I'm primary on this. Why'd he call you?"
"I'm more fun to yell at, I suppose." She answered, her eyes and voice flat and emotionless.
"He's been really hard on you lately."
"Yeah." Layers and layers of meaning were packed into that single word, and Catherine had no idea how to read them.
Catherine waited for Sara to say more, but she just sat there, staring off somewhere in the middle distance, lost in thought. Her cheekbones seemed more pronounced than usual, and Catherine realized she had lost some weight. Along with her sense of humor, she thought, and again wondered at the change. Sara had never been outgoing in a personal sense; she hadn't talked much to any of the other CSIs about anything much beyond work. Grissom seemed to be in her confidence the most, but Catherine doubted she opened up to him any more than the rest of them. Professionally, though, she had been outgoing and involved. Had been, that is. Until about seven months ago, right after the lab explosion, when she had become, not less intense about her work, but more, bitter. Like a light had been snuffed out, some burning passion that had always shone through the way her mouth would twist, both in confusion and pleasure, as she relentlessly tracked down traces and clues, was extinguished. She still did her work as conscientiously as always, as the bathroom this morning evidenced, but without her prior energy.
Sara noticed Catherine's gaze and her eyes narrowed, causing Catherine to take a sip of her drink quickly. "You were right, by the way." Catherine smiled one of those smiles that usually works on just about any body with a pulse and was glad to see the hard lines of Sara's face relax a little. "This smoothie is great. I should let you order me around more often," she teased.
There was a snort of laughter from the other side of the table. "Yeah, that will happen."