Title: Evidence of Things Not Seen

Author: ScullyAsTrinity

Rating: PG

Category: Angst/Humor/Romance

Summary: But how could they disengage when they had never even... engaged in the first place?

Dedication: To GraveDigger Resurrection, whose review this morning really warmed me up. Thank you!

Thanks: To Matthew, who made some sort of metaphor using this story and a wet butterfly. And who told me to slow down and nurture this idea, not to rush to post it.

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There were moments, tiny fractured moments of unabashed weakness. He'd reach his arms out, longing for something to fill them, and she'd be there, arms splayed just as wide, waiting to receive his grief, his guilt, his confusion.

How could it be, after all of that time shoving her painfully away after she had fulfilled her duty... she came back for more? Some masochistic propensity for pain. And yet he couldn't help falling back into his plush illusion, filled with thoughts of her, with thoughts of them together.

Every time he allowed himself such an indulgence, he'd inevitably have to pull himself back out of the technicolor fantasy, infinitely more depressed than he was before. It appeared that he too, was masochistic.

For such a brilliant man, he felt incredibly, incredibly dense. Having to bat limitless emotions around inside of him, attempting to fit them all in place just so, to capitalize on space and function. The more volatile emotions were shoved to the back of his empty self: rage, love, lust, passion. Analytical emotive responses dominated the bulk of his self.

But, the only problem was... the volatile emotions would churn. They'd burn. Spread like a virus, creeping out of their storage area to sweep through him, presenting themselves in his everyday actions. Actions that before were flawless and calculated.

The left side of his face twitched, and it looked like he was grimacing, but really, what he was doing was attempting to forget about her, just for ten minutes. Ten, uninterrupted minutes of 'just Gil' time. That was impossible. As much as he couldn't stand to be around her alone, he couldn't be around himself. But that was for an entirely different reason.

He figured that maybe, just maybe, through some random, unforeseeable property of physics, she had fused to part of him and it had become thoroughly unable for the two of them to disengage.

But how could they disengage when they had never even... engaged in the first place?

That was it, Sara Sidle had his mind, the one thing that he prized above all else, running in circles, chasing ghosts. Or, he hoped they were ghosts. It would make it so much easier if they, the phantom emotions weren't real. That she wasn't real.

A sigh was just what he needed to push some hastily-culminating tension out of his body. Instead of invigorating him, as his sighs were prone to do, he sulked, slumping in his chair, falling under the weight that was the mere thought of Sara.

Years ago... was it years? Perhaps months. He valued their friendship months ago; it was good, growing, healthy. Platonic. And though his outward appearance bore no signs of anything more, his insides screamed for her in his arms. His blood surged to be heated by the passion she would surely infuse him with. He wanted, needed, loved, lusted for, hated, relished and despised her, all at once.

His face had been twitching alot lately in her presence, the thought of forgetting her seemingly so refreshing. Like jumping into the St. Lawrence in January-once you touch that icy water, all other thoughts leave your mind... except for how cold you are. And it hit him then, as he tried to forget her once more...

When he did, forget her that is, he was more devoid of everything than he had been when she was in his head, bogarting all of his thoughts for herself. So cold, without her in there.

So the decision was made: never let her get away from him, because, well, he didn't want to be devoid. Even with his inner filing system seriously compromised, she would stay there, in his head, in his heart.

He sighed again, slumping down further in his chair. If he did any more sighing, he'd be on the floor, under his desk... then where would he be?

A small voice popped out from the back of his carefully constructed web of emotions, taunting him, in that familiar female voce: "Under your desk, you idiot, that's where you'd be."

Oh yes, the desk was a compelling place for him to slam his head, and he heeded to it's siren call, skull resonating against the work-littered surface with a dull thunk. Thank goodness there were a few expense reports in between his head and the wood, it absorbed some of the impact.

He'd been perfectly fine living his life alone, until she had begun to pursue him. No, no. He had to reason with himself. Reorganizing his thoughts he realized, pinpointed the time when he'd realized the whole 'being alone' situation was going to be seriously compromised. It had been the third meeting of their seminar together. Not that she wasn't tantalizing enough as it was, she was discussing maggots and divesting evidence from their innards... and she had worn red.

Yeah, all she'd had to do was wear red and he was ready to throw up his hands in submission and move to the suburbs, maybe get a house, tear down the chain link and put up a picket fence.

Hello, Mr. Grissom, you have officially gone insane. Please proceed to that padded room on the left. Sara? Who is this Sara person, Mr. Grissom? We've told you, there is no Sara, she's just in your head.

But Sara Sidle was not content to simply plague him during his waking hours, both in body and in spirit. She was in his dreams, taunting him. Sometimes doing nothing more than sitting solitary in a room, stared at him. Waiting, so, so patiently, just waiting for him. The meaning wasn't lost on him. Sure, he was a psychologist but it didn't take much to interpret that sign.

Just the thought of her formed an endless spiral of steps, leading down through his being, much like the nine circles of hell. It was hell. It was heat, passion unbridled, love and lust and oh so much more that while his left brain struggled to pinpoint the emotion with a specific word... his right brain bitchslapped it's brother and told it to just shut the hell up.

It was impossible for him to stumble down a stair and understand what the step meant. What the stepping itself actually symbolized. But he was displacing again, stringing together foolish metaphors in order to outwile his heart. He'd never reach the basement, never get to the root of the problem, never really understand...

Voicing his thoughts, the little Sara spoke, would probably do wonders to alleviate him of his silent torture. But that would mean laying it all on the line, which in their case would be unbearly hard because, well... it wasn't straight. The line wasn't a parabola or a steady slope, it was a cacophony of peaks and valleys.

And dizzying peaks, followed by impossibly low valleys.

They were like a defunct connect-the-dots. Sure, the picture was supposed to be a donkey, but you missed dot thirteen and you instead wound up with an image that could quite possibly be found within the pages of the Karma Sutra.

Ugh, all of this manic jumble was giving him a headache. But, as always, the tiny persistent itch at the back of his skull escalated into incredible levels. Perhaps beating his head off the desk many times in rapid succession would cure him of it... No, no... that had just made it worse.

What was it? That intensely nervous feeling in his stomach which somehow spurred his fingers to dial six numbers in rapid succession, hovering over the seventh. What was it? That tiny push-pull in his head that pressed the 'end' button instead of the last, all-important nine? Why the hell couldn't his body work in sync with itself? Why was it a constant tug of war between his heart and his mind? And why, why were there so many whys, so many damned questions, questions he couldn't answer.

Truly hated the whys, especially when they were seemingly so answerable. If the whys were a person he'd risk the death penalty just to kill them all off. It was true, and he shrugged, just to prove to himself that his thoughts weren't as insanely obtuse as they seemed.

Worst of all, he was pretty sure if he just gave in (which wasn't as hard as he wanted it to seem, and he knew it) that he might just be happy. The notion was foreign, so foreign that if the jump was indeed made, he'd surely have to take a map along, just to be on the safe side. Maybe a passport too, you could never be too careful.

She fluttered about before him, dancing too and fro, at incredibly speeds and his eyes attempted to keep up. It was difficult to decipher just was she was saying or doing it, and by the time he did, she had already moved on the next piece of her own intricate puzzle; the next piece of his evidence.

He felt something creep outside of him and his mind attacked it.

'Damn you. Love, get back in your damn box. You don't come out unless I tell you to, damn it!"

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The end???