You fold his hands and smooth his tie, you gently lift his chin
Were you really so blind and unkind to him?
Can't help the itch, to touch, to kiss, to hold him once again.
Now to close his eyes— never open them...

A shadow passed, a shadow passed, yearning, yearning
For the fool it called a home...

All things he ever lived are left behind.
All the things that ever flickered through his mind.
All the sadness that he'd come to own.

And it whistles through the ghosts still left behind...

She hugged her knees in her lonely hotel bed as she stared at the television which broadcasted nothing but snow and distortion. Her alarm clock was blinking eights. She had accidentally pulled to cord out of the wall in a fit of grief and when she plugged it back in again she wasn't sure what time it was.

Her blinds were drawn. She didn't know if the sun had risen yet or not, but she hadn't slept. It had been so difficult those first few months to sleep without him beside her and now she will never sleep beside him again. She hovered in this limbo, contemplating everything from suicide to whether or not she should go eat breakfast.

Her whole life had finally shattered because of a mistake she had made five years ago. She always imagined she would find her answers in San Francisco, but all she found was that everything she ever cared about was lost. Her mother's mind was slowly oozing down the drain of Alzheimer's sink. She had confronted all her ghosts and buried them under the ground where they belonged. Two years away from Vegas, she had contemplated returning. All her soul-searching had come to an end because her real soul resided inside of Grissom's eyes. But she felt as if she barely knew Grissom anymore, only through letters and the odd phone call. And she didn't know any of her old friends at all. Once again, she'd let her fear control her life and it had destroyed it.

She didn't know what to do, or where to go because she no longer belonged anywhere. In a way, she wanted to stay in her dark hotel room forever.

And then there was a knock at the door. Sara was frustrated. "Do not disturb! Come clean later!"

"It's not the maid."

She didn't want to move, so she pouted like a child. "Go away."

"Sara, why didn't you tell me you were back?" So it was Nick. It had to be Nick. Sara had suspected, but hadn't been sure. She felt it wouldn't be fair to him to deny him, despite how much she really didn't want to see him.

With great effort, she rolled off of her comfy bed and made her way over to the door, undoing the chain lock and the door's lock and then headed back to the safety of her bed, calling to Nick over her shoulder. "It's open."

She fell back onto her bed and threw the covers over her head. She heard the door open and his footsteps approaching her, and then she heard his distinct Texan drawl again. "Can't I at least see you, after five years?"

"I'm sick," she lied. "You'll catch it."

"I have a feeling we have the same disease."

She hesitated, then threw the quilt off of her head and turned to look at him. To her surprise, he smiled at her, seemingly amused.

"What are you laughing at?" she demanded.

He shrugged. "Nothing, it's just... your hair."

She propped herself up to catch her reflection in the mirror over the dresser and realized that static electricity wasn't her friend. She smoothed down her hair and tried to straighten it out a little before wondering what the point was and falling back down on her bed. She sighed.

"I was so sure that if I came back, we could work things out," she said quietly. "I took him for granted. I never thought that... he ever wouldn't be there, behind his desk, putting off paperwork or breaking a case..."

"None of us ever really did," Nick admitted as he sat on the edge of her bed. "But among all this tragedy, it is good to see your face again."

She sat up and looked at his face, studying how he had changed in five years. All in all, he seemed to be the only one unchanged. His hair was exactly the same shade and length as it was when she had left, though his face did look five years older.

"You haven't changed a bit," she told him.

He smiled at her. "Neither have you."

"I've changed a lot," she assured him. She shifted in her bed. "I have nowhere left to go."

"You always have a home here," Nick assured her.

"That's what Catherine said," Sara whispered, her eyes staring at the wall absently. "But that's not true anymore."

"And why isn't it?"

She blinked, then looked at him again. "Aren't you mad at me?"

"A little," Nick admitted. "Because you're acting like a child."

"I know," she told him. "But I can't help it."

"You're better than this, Sara," Nick said sadly, shaking his head.

"Not without him I'm not," she snapped.

Nick sighed. "Is that what this is about? You survived without him for five years—"

"And I regret that every second!" she growled through gritted teeth. "I should never have left. I know that. I should have stayed here, with him, I should have had five beautiful years beside him, but instead I ran away because I was scared. Scared of myself, scared of him, scared of everything. I should have married him, but I was a child. I am a child. And I've lost my way. I've lost my way..."

She was crying by now, her face buried in her hands. She felt Nick's hand on her shoulder but jerked it away. "Please..." she whispered. "Don't touch me." He withdrew his hand and she looked up at him. "I'm sorry..."

"Don't be," Nick told her, sounding silently bitter. He rose to his feet and headed for the door. "Maybe I shouldn't have come here..."

"How'd you even know I was here?" Sara asked.

He gave her a half-hearted smile. "I'm a CSI, Sara. Don't underestimate my skills."

"You're upset with me now," she stated.

And then he snapped as he spun to face her. "Look... I can't help you if you won't let me. We all miss him, Sara. I know you loved him, but so did we. And we loved you too. So maybe you could grow up a little. For me. For Greg, for Catherine. We all have. And when you do, drop me a line. But until then, I can't do a thing for you."

He slammed the door to her hotel room before she could even reply.

And then, she finally began to grow up.

Ronnie hesitated before knocking on Greg's door and pushing it open. When she did, she saw him shove something under the sheets and held her breath. Oh how she hoped to God it was porn.

"What's up?" Greg asked her cheerily as he tried to look casual.

She glanced at his jeans and doubted the porn theory. "Hey, um..." She rubbed her arms, feeling the draft in the doorway. "I was going to make myself a margarita, I was just wondering if you wanted one."

"No, thanks," he said.

She slipped into the room and closed the door behind her, leaning against it. She chewed on her lip, a nervous habit of hers, before she asked. "So what are you doing in here?" She tried to sound suggestive and failed miserably.

"I was thinking of crashing early," he said. "Just, uh... Looking over some case files." He picked up a folder on his bedside table and smiled at her.

She chewed on her lip again. "OK... Well..." She moved closer then got on her knees by the bed, shuffling a little closer to him. She took his hand. "Maybe we could do something."

He sighed and opened up the folder, pretending to be busy. "Not now, babe, I got things to do."

Her heart sank like a cartoon anvil. "Is something wrong?"

He blinked and looked up from the folder. "Why would you say that?"

"You've been acting odd lately," she said.

He rolled his eyes. "Aw, it's just, with Sara back, it's kinda thrown me for a loop, you know? And then, losing Grissom, I just... I can't really think straight. So much going on, you know?"

She shook her head, her face serious. "It happened before Sara showed up. Before Grissom even."

He smiled and pushed a piece of her hair back behind her ear. "I don't know what you're talking about then, babe."

She wasn't buying it. "You do," she said. "You do, I know you do. But... for some reason, you won't talk to me about it."

He closed his eyes and sighed, exasperated. "Ronnie—"

"Look, I asked you out, I know that," she interrupted. "And I know that there's always someone in a relationship who loves the other more. And I'm not afraid to take on that role. I don't have any problems with being your second choice. But you're the one who proposed to me, and before we got engaged, you seemed happy with the way things were too. But for a while now, you've been all scatterbrained and distant and you won't tell me what's wrong."

She waited, and in typical Greg fashion, he avoided the topic. "Can we talk about this in the morning? This case—"

"I fucking solved that case for you earlier today and you damn well know it!" Ronnie finally snapped. She closed her eyes, fighting tears, at the end of her rope. "I love you, Greg. I really do. And I will do whatever it takes to make you happy. Let me make you happy. Please."

He put down the folder and shook his head. "You can't make me happy, Ronnie," he admitted at last as he stared down at his knees.

It was the answer that terrified her above all else. But she had been prepared for it. She swallowed the growing lump in the throat as she took off her engagement ring. She squeezed her fiancé's hand which she had been holding for far too long now and pressed her ring into his palm.

"Then maybe I should let you find someone who can."

He looked up at her, looking reluctant. "No, Ronnie..." he pressed the ring back into her hand. "You don't understand."

She let go of his hand and her ring fell to the hardwood floor with a clatter. "No, I think I understand better than you do. When I agreed to marry you, I knew that you had issues. I thought I could handle it, I thought that you would trust me to help you handle it. But I can't, and you don't." She turned to the door. "Don't worry, I'll sleep on the couch tonight."

"Ronnie, wait!" Greg cried, leaping to his feet.

Something fell to the floor loudly and it startled her so much she spun around to see what it was. Right next to her engagement ring was a framed photograph of another woman. The frame was cracked, but she could recognize the face inside of it. She couldn't help but laugh.

"I always knew you were having an affair with her," she said to Greg quietly. "Even if it was only in your mind."

They both stared at the guilty object as if it was a dirty magazine, when in reality, when it came to their relationship, it was much worse.

"Or maybe..." Ronnie spoke up, "maybe it was me who was the mistress."

"Ronnie..." Greg spoke slowly. "When I said you couldn't make me happy..." He looked up at her to find her eyes were already on him. "What I meant was... You're right, I do have issues. I've had issues since the day she left. Maybe before, I don't really remember. But... no one can fix that. Not even me." He rose to his feet and put his arms around her waist. "But you are the only one who comes closest to it."

She put her hands on his chest, preparing to push him away. "Is that enough to live on? Almost-happy and second best?"

He had nothing to giver there. "What else is there?"

And then, she pushed him away. He had been doing it to her for months, but she found it was the hardest thing she ever had to do. "Tell her how you feel."

He laughed at her. "Ronnie, I want to marry you. Not her."

"Why do you keep lying to yourself?"

"Grissom is dead," Greg growled harshly. "It's not the time. Besides, I don't even know her anymore."

She was giving her false hope, but she ate it up. She took a step forward and he opened his arms to her but she moved past him and knelt down, picking up the ring forgotten on the floor. She turned back to him and played with the ring in her two hands. "Will you vow to be with me for the rest of your life?"

"I will," he said, cupping her chin in his hands. "Babe, of course I will! I love you."

She smiled sadly, but put the ring back on her finger. Her hands rose to cover his. "No, you don't," she said. "But it's nice of you to pretend." She kissed him softly, ignoring the baffled look on his face.

The wind tousled her finely brushed hair. She had taken great care to look good for him today. She even wore a top she hadn't worn in three years simply because she remembered that he had once commented in passing that he liked the way it looked on her.

She knelt down in the grass and set the box down in front of her knees. She had contemplating bringing flowers, but then imagined that he would have appreciated this gesture far more.

"I am so sorry, Gil," she murmured. "If I could take it all back, I would. All of these five years without you in my life. I miss the taste of you, the sound of you, the feel of your hand holding mine. Of your lips pressed against my forehead. I remember how, once shortly before I left, I woke up screaming from a nightmare of Natalie to find myself in your arms. You were holding my tightly and whispering in my hair that nothing would hurt me with you there. Even before I had woken up, you had recognized that I had needed you. You told me that you would never let me go, if you could help it. And then, a few days later, you realized that you had to let me go..." She paused. "I wish now that you hadn't. I wish I could have lied there in that bed with you for days, weeks, years on end. I would have gladly spent these past five years just lying in your arms, not doing anything, not even work. I would trade anything just to see you again."

She took a deep breath then sighed. "I wish I knew why you stopped writing to me, why you stopped returning my calls. But I guess that doesn't really matter. Because if I know you, and I'd like to think that I do, you never stopped loving me. Just as I never stopped loving you. We may have said it less and less, we may even have grown apart, but I never stopped loving you for an instant. Not even now."

Her tongue darted out between her lips to moisten them. The wind rustled the leaves in a dark-trunked tree nearby. The orange and brown foliage shivered in the breeze like a beggar out in the cold. She traced the edges of the box with her forefingers. She was afraid to open it. Because if she opened it, she felt she would be letting go of him for good. Just as he had let her go five years ago. But she needed to grow up. She needed to get over her childhood fears. She needed to let him go.

She heard footsteps behind her and startled, she turned to see who was there. He flinched visibly, his back to her, knowing that he had been caught. "Hello, Greg."

He relaxed and turned to face here. "I should have known you'd be here," he told her. "But still, I didn't think."

"Do you come here often?" she asked.

"Every day before shift," he replied with a sad smile.

"Oh..." She hadn't expected that at all. "Sorry to disturb your schedule..." She looked down at the box and considered leaving with it, holding onto it for just a little while longer.

"No, it's... I mean, it's public prop— I mean, it's not like I own his grave or something, I just..." He flushed and looked away from her. "Wow, I shouldn't say words." He craned his neck to look over her. "Whatchya got there?"

"It's just... a gift. For Gil."

He knelt down beside her to get a better look at it. "What's in it?"

"Everything," she answered.

He smirked. "Can't hardly be everything," he said. "The box is too small."

"Believe me, it's everything," said Sara. "But I don't want to open it. If I open it, it'll all fly away."

He took her hand. "Well then, maybe you just need to let it fly."

She looked up at him then and saw no bitterness in his eyes, only unconditional support. And no one had ever held her hand so securely like that since...

Since...

She pulled her hand out of his grip and looked sharply away from him. She rubbed her hands together, pretending that they were cold, although his hands had felt so much colder than her own.

He sighed. "I'm sorry," he told her. "For yesterday."

"You were upset and you had a right to be," she said. "I walked out of your life five years ago and now I just expect to be able to walk right on back into it. I'd be angry too."

"But... that's just it," he muttered. "I always hoped you would walk right back into my life, Sara. But it's just... the timing is all wrong. If you had come six months earlier, hell, even a month earlier, maybe—"

"I would be able to see him again," she finished for him.

He paused, and his shoulders slumped. "Yeah, maybe you could have."

She blinked, then looked up at him. "Do you hate yourself Greg?"

He was baffled. "What? No! Why? I mean, what gives you that impression?"

"You do," she stated frankly. "Yesterday, when I asked you about Ronnie's fiancé—"

"Oh, that," he murmured flatly. "Look, that wasn't anything, I was tired..." He remembered something that Ronnie had said to him. "Sara... Now that Grissom is gone, do you feel like... Like everything else is just so much duller? Like... Like no one else will make you as happy as he did?"

She looked at him peculiarly before she answered. "I don't know what the future holds, Greg. I think it's a little close-minded of me to assume that no one else can make me happy. No one can make me happy the same way he could, but... I don't think I'd like them too much if they could. That happiness, that feeling, is reserved for Grissom and Grissom alone." She paused. "I think it's important to find someone who loves you, and with whom you can find... a different sort of happiness with."

His lip trembled. "But what it... But what if you both know that it's only second best?"

"There's no such thing as better or worse when it comes to love, Greg, only different." She blinked. "Do you love her?"

He sighed. "I don't... I don't know anymore."

"Well, what do you know?"

He looked up at her for a long time. She waited patiently until he spoke. "I know that there's someone who I can never be with, and I know that I will love her completely until there isn't anything else left in me. And I know that it isn't Ronnie."

Sara smiled fondly at Greg. "Does it hurt?"

"Does what hurt?"

"This complete love that you feel," she clarified. "Does it hurt?"

"Every damn day," he confessed.

"And Ronnie, does she make you hurt?"

"Only when she—" He broke off. Something suddenly occurred to him. "Only when she's... sad."

Sara put a kind hand on his cheek. She leaned in slowly and kissed him delicately, barely touching him, but enough to make his heart race. "Sometimes..." Sara said to him quietly. "We all need to grow up and let go of our childhood dreams and fears." She pushed the box over to him. "But it's not a sad thing... This love is an anchor weighing you down. If I learned one thing from Grissom, it's that love should float, not sink. So... Open the box, Greg."

He looked stunned. "What? But these are... These are your dreams, your fears, your everything— not mine!"

She took his hand in hers. "You need to let me go, Greg."

His heart was still beating rapidly as he looked down at the box. He slowly and carefully lifted the lid, unsure exactly of what he would find.

A dozen white butterflies fluttered happily out of the open box and into the clear blue sky. They scattered in every direction and Sara and Greg watched them hover and dance over Grissom's grave until they spread out, farther and father off into the distance, and then they were gone.

Those you've known and lost still walk behind you
All alone, their song still seems to find you
They call you as if you knew their longing
They whistle through the lonely wind, the long blue shadows falling

All alone, but still I hear their yearning
Through the dark, the moon, alone there, burning
The stars too, they tell of spring returning
And summer with another wind that no one yet has known

They call me, through all things
Night's falling, but somehow I go on

You watch me, just watch me
I'm calling, from longing

Still you know there's so much more to find
Another dream, another love you'll hold
Still you know to trust your own true mind
On your way, I'm not alone

Now they'll walk on my arm through the distant night
And I won't let them stray from my heart
Through the wind, through the dark, through the winter light
I will read all their dreams to the stars
I'll walk now with them
I'll call on their names
And I'll see their thoughts are known...
Not gone.
Not gone...