Disclaimer: Disclaim this!

Spoilers: Living Doll, for one. Then lots of little things along the way. I refer to tiny parts of old episodes, so if you're not familiar, you might want to pass.

Rating: M for mature subject matter and I'm NOT talking about sexy stuff. I'm serious.

Summary: Sara is under a car. What's going through her head? GSR

A/N: This was even too angsty for my beta, so…beware. Much thanks to her for looking it over, anyway. This isn't really my style of writing, but I've gotten maybe six hours of sleep in three days. Lack of sleep changes the personality. A whole week sleeplessness and who knows? Maybe I'll start 'shipping the GCR.

Floodgates

Part I

Nevada dirt wasn't really dirt at all, not that soft kind you could plant flowers in, or make mud pies with. No, the dirt that covered the greater Las Vegas area aspired to be rocks -- tiny, microscopic boulders that were currently digging in to Sara's chin as the rain loosened up the top-most level and washed it her way. Her teeth chattered as she raised her neck ever-so-slightly, not bothering to focus on the generic stretch of desert that lay before her. She had given up trying to figure out where she was. Knowing her exact location wasn't going to help her.

Nothing was.

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling scant tears escape to mix with the rain on her face. Sara grit her teeth and whispered, "So we meet again."

XXX

Forehead, bellybutton, right shoulder, left…no, no. Left shoulder, then right shoulder. That's it. Okay…God? You there? Testing, 1, 2, 3. Oh, what am I doing? Okay…I'm Sara Sidle. But you know that. If you exist. Although I shouldn't exactly insult you when I'm going to be asking you for a favor, so let's just say you do exist. Okay. God? You know the deal here. She just got out of the hospital and this last time…I didn't think she'd make it. I really didn't. Now, I don't ask you for much. I haven't asked you for anything, in fact. But I need this one thing. I need you to make it stop. You have to make it stop. You have to. The next time…he's going to kill her. I know it. He can't kill her. You can't let him kill her. I'll be good. I swear, I'll be good. I just…I really need this favor.

Thanks.

Um…Amen? Am I supposed to say that at the end? Or God bless you? Wait, why would I say that? Never mind. Just…do me this favor, alright? Thanks.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

There was blood, but it was his. It stopped, but it also ended.

Sara Sidle learned an important lesson the day her father died: just because God answered her prayers didn't mean He was on her side.

At age twelve, she faced a whole new set of problems, and, at age twelve, decided she would deal with them Godless, God-free, without the help of any deity whatsoever.

Unaccompanied by God, Sara went on her first date at age seventeen. She liked it and went out again with the same guy. She should've been suspicious when he insisted she drink from the flask he kept in the glove compartment of his ratty Jeep Wrangler, but Sara was too innocent and too much in awe to realize he was slipping her a roofie. Her first clear memory of that night was waking up in the front seat of his car, alone. He had parked in front of a frat house. Sara numbly read the Greek letters above the doorframe as the soreness between her legs registered. Blood. There was some blood. She blinked, shaking her head before her eyes caught the sheen of something near her feet, illuminated by the lights of the frat house.

A condom.

Sara blindly reached for the door handle, falling out of the 4x4 and onto the firm New England soil on her hands and knees. Her stomach lurched forward and bile mixed with bourbon streamed out of her throat, splattering as it hit the sparse grass. The music from the frat party pounded in her ears. Her eyes began to water. She spit the last of the vomit out and sat up, slightly out of breath. Figures moved in the lit windows in front of her. Leaning her head back against the slate blue Jeep, Sara looked up at the starless sky.

I don't need you.

She got up, dusted herself off, and walked the mile and a half back to her dorm. I don't need anyone. I'm fine.

And as if she needed to prove it, on her way to the showers, Sara asked out one of the boys she knew had been admiring her in her economics class. The next day, after recitation, she did her best impression of sultry as she gamely suggested they skip the planned movie. Only the day before she was a virgin, and now she was deflowering an engineering major under the "Don't Worry, Be Happy" poster that hung by his bed.

She did it again the following week with a different boy.

The next eighteen months saw Sara Sidle morph into a creature that was altogether not Sara Sidle. Oh, this new creature maintained her GPA, grade-grubbed, and did every extra-credit project she could get her hands on, but her extracurricular interests tended toward the more…unwholesome. Though barely a hundred pounds, this new Sara could drink the boys under the table. And she did.

The alcohol made it easy to be, well…easy. Every new notch on her belt put one more man in between her and the first. Though her finals were upon her, Sara refused to slow down. After a late night of drinking before her Abnormal Psych exam, she showed up for the test nauseated and on the verge of collapsing. Though not a stranger to the aftereffects of overindulging, her tolerance had built up quickly. She managed to concentrate enough to get through the final with out collapsing.

You're staying in tonight, Sara, she told herself as she scurried back to her dorm so she could fall into bed and sleep until she felt better.

Fourteen hours of sleep and she should've been well-rested for her Philosophy final.

Well-rested people don't puke on their exams.

Sara stared at the mess in front of her. She hadn't had a drink in over twenty four hours. She watched numbly as a janitor was summoned to clean up her mess.

Her professor approached her. "Miss Sidle, would you like to take a make up exam later on in the…"

Another wave of nausea hit and this time she made it to the wastepaper basket.

"…uh…never mind."

She was in a mess so big, janitorial couldn't clean it up.

XXX

The clinic was small and not the futuristic lab-like setting she imagined. There were flowered curtains framing the frosted window in her exam room. Flowered curtains, for fuck's sake. How was she expected to have an abortion in a room with curtains exactly like the ones in her grandmother's kitchen?

The nurse held her hand the entire time. It would've been a comfort -- the first maternal type of contact she had had in years -- but the gleam of the lamplight bounced off the woman's thin gold cross, making the pendant on her chest glow as if the tiny figure of Jesus had hung his head and wept over Sara's failures, her sins. She could feel God there, judging her.

She squeezed her eyes shut. I don't need you. I don't need you. I don't need anyone.

The doctor, seeing that she had come alone, pat her knee afterwards and smiled sympathetically. "The world has plans for you, Sara."

Plans.

Plans.

She made her plans. Sara began her senior year sober and focused entirely on her studies. Anything and everything personal, she blocked out. She just wasn't good at that sort of thing. It only led to heartache. Nothing would ever take her by surprise again because she was just simply not going to put herself in those kinds of situations. She graduated magna cum laude and left for San Francisco with no thought beyond the fact that success was ahead of her. It was hers for the taking.

No personal entanglements would get in her way.

None.

She was Sara Sidle, Super CSI. She was the workaholic, invincible, dogged criminalist who never --

"He's supposed to be really boring."

"I'm bringing my headphones."

"He's so dull."

Oh, no. Not dull. Subtle. Not boring. Intense.

And gorgeous. Did she forget gorgeous? Gorgeous.

One look at Dr. Gil Grissom and Sara could feel it all unravel. He was her undoing. She knew it on some level, but welcomed it anyway. Welcomed him. She wanted. And wanted something that wasn't an achievement, that wasn't a status symbol that stroked her ego like the Ivy League degree did, or the new promotion at the lab. She wanted in a way that had nothing to do with where she'd been or where she was going.

XXX

Fourteen years.

It didn't seem like fourteen years, looking back on it. During, definitely. But it's funny what happens when you get what you want: all the pain and heartache becomes an afterthought. What was it he once said? The heart has no memory for poison? Sure, it was case-related and he meant an actual beating heart and actual poison, but it worked as a metaphor, too.

She suffered at times during those fourteen years, but it was a different kind of suffering than she had been used to -- it was the bittersweet suffering of waiting for love. The wait had proved fruitful, leaving the bitter behind. They tasted only the sweet. For two years, it was mostly sweet. Two practically uniformly sweet years.

Sara was sure Grissom assumed he knew the worst of her past, and she let him go right on thinking that. He was an amazingly steady boyfriend, all things considered. There were one or two moments when she felt uneasiness on his part, but any and all feelings of panic she had had little to do with his actions.

No, what seized Sara with fear beyond reason was him realizing there was more to her story than a dead dad and a knife-wielding mom.

XXX

The rain continued to beat down around her, splashing up off the hard ground and wetting her cheeks.

"I…I don't need you," Sara said aloud, her teeth chattering from the dankness.

"I don't need you," she repeated. "But I need him. I need him. We need to make a deal…"

Her neck was stiff and sore from holding it up slightly, so she rested her cheek on the ground and cried. …I'll tell him everything. Just get me out of here so I can see him again. He can leave me if he wants. I just…I need to see him. I need to hold him one more time.

Please.

"Please," she eked out, fearful her next breath would be her last.

Lights flashed. Sirens blared.

Prayers answered.

TO BE CONTINUED…