"Do you ever feel like your life is a used puzzle?" Sara asked Nick as they sat in Nick's Denali, about to begin driving back to CSI headquarters after visiting a suspect's home. He tried to analyze what she had said; to decipher the code, to understand the depth of her words.

"What do you mean Sar?" he stopped, putting the car back in park as she looked at him before glancing away. The breeze created by the cranking air conditioning caught her hair and swished it around in gentle tufts upon her shoulders. He wanted to reach out and touch it, but he held himself back.

She avoided his eye, but he waited for an answer.

"You know the kind with a thousand pieces that has been done seven times?" she continued, still not meeting Nick's eye fully until she began her next statement, "It's like, no matter how many times you are broken and then put back together, there's always a few pieces missing."

Nick thought for a moment before flipping off the music and turning down the air. He looked at Sara, even though her head was angled downwards, her eyes focused on her lap, and took her hand from where it rested at her side, and gave it a squeeze.

"Yeah." He replied, and at his tone of voice her head snapped up on its own. She looked sad and sorry and began to babble out an apology.

"Nick, I'm sorry, I didn't think…I shouldn't have asked…" she tried before Nick silenced her with a finger over her lips.

This, to say the least, startled Sara. Nick had never done anything like that before.

He slid slowly across the middle seat of the Denali to face her.

"Sometimes, I feel like the pieces of a vase that has been shattered upon the ground, much too broken to ever be fixed. Sometimes I feel like a chair with three legs, unstable, like I'm missing a huge part of myself. Sometimes I feel like I'm under a microscope, like everyone can see each individual part of me and take it for what they may."

Inches from her lips, Nick smiled as he spoke.

"I only feel complete when I'm with you."