At some point, when her crying had died to shaky breathing and some sniffling, her stomach growled, the noise embarrassingly loud in the silence.

"When did you last eat?" Grissom asked gently.

She took a deep breath, managed to control the hitch in her voice. "Late last night...I think."

"Go wash your face and blow your nose," he said, letting go of her hand and getting to his feet. "If you'll let me rummage through your kitchen, I'll fix you something." When she just stared up at him blankly, he said firmly, "You have to eat, Sara."

Numbly, she nodded and headed for her bathroom. Halfway to the door, she turned. "You don't have to take care of me."

He'd moved to the kitchen, and his back was to her as he peered into the cupboards, but she still heard him quietly reply, "Yes, I do."

She blew her nose, splashed cold water on her face, and yanked the elastic out of her hair and brushed it out, less for vanity's sake than for the hope that if she tilted her head the right way, it would hide her face.

If he couldn't see her swollen eyes and red nose, maybe he'd forget the whole thing had happened.

Yeah, right. And that was a pig flying by the bathroom window.

As she slumped in one of the stools at her breakfast bar, elbows resting on the counter, she willed herself to acknowledge the surreal quality of the situation. Grissom was standing in her kitchen, grating a block of cheese she was pretty sure was at least a couple days past its expiration date.

Grissom. Kitchen. Cheese.

She gave up after a few minutes. She was too drained to care.

"You don't have to take care of me," she repeated dully.

He'd begun cracking eggs into a bowl. "Do you remember why I asked you to come to Vegas?" he asked calmly.

Seven years, she thought, forgetting to hide her face as she looked up in confusion. Seven years, and she was still thrown by his conversational left turns. "I think you said something about Internal Affairs being incompetent and biased, and needing someone you...trusted." She forced the last word through a slight catch in her throat.

Grissom nodded, dumping the eggshells into the trash. "What else?"

Too tired to argue, Sara picked through her sluggish memory. "You said you needed a friend." She'd been so happy, she remembered, watching him get out a whisk from a drawer she hadn't opened in about two months. Worried for him, and sad about the circumstances, but so happy that he'd seen her as both a friend and someone he could trust, professionally.

"Yes." He was whisking the eggs together. "I needed a friend. I needed you. And you came, and you stayed, because I asked you to. We were good friends, once. And maybe if I'd remembered that instead of letting...a lot of things get in the way, I would have wondered why domestic violence cases were your triggers. Why you got so upset about them. Maybe I would have...noticed more."

Sara was mildly hypnotized by the way he stirred the eggs in the frying pan, added cheese, stirred some more. "It's not your job to fix me, you know," she said absently.

Grissom grabbed the bread she hadn't realized was there out of the toaster, scooped scrambled eggs onto two plates, and set one in front of her. "As your boss, it's my job to know what cases are hard for you and factor that into your assignments." He chewed a bite of toast and egg. "As your friend, it's my job to know when you're upset and why. I think...with you...I've done very badly at both jobs."

She took a bite of cheesy egg.

They actually tasted pretty good.

"It wasn't all your fault," she acknowledged quietly, looking him in the eye for the first time that day. They held one another's gaze silently for a minute, and then she jerked her head towards the second stool. "You can sit, if you want."

He sat.

Eventually, she waved a forkful of egg at him. "Good," she managed, with her mouth full. She swallowed. "I wouldn't have pegged you for the cheesy eggs type."

He smiled slightly. "My mother used to make them for me, when I was sick or had a bad day. Comfort food," he explained. "That, and there's not much in your fridge."

Sara nodded, poking at the eggs with her fork. "She died last year, didn't she?" she asked after a moment. "Your mom."

"Yes." He was studying the bite marks he'd left in his toast. The smile had gone.

She was studying him, out of the corner of her eye. "Did I tell you I was sorry, or was I too busy being mad?"

The corner of his mouth turned back up. "You did offer your condolences. Very nicely and sincerely, in fact."

"Good."

They ate quietly. When he'd finished, Grissom took his plate to her sink. "Kaye Shelton," he said suddenly, looking at her over his shoulder.

"That's an old one." When he simply looked at her, she sighed. "We're all trained to analyze those types of x-rays, Grissom." He kept looking at her.

She sighed again. "I hate those things. My mom used to freak out if they made her leave me in the waiting room, or with a nurse, so they'd let me sit with her while they went over the x-rays. I knew the names of all the bones in the face by the time I was eight. Her films looked a lot like Kaye Shelton's."

He finished rinsing his plate and turned back to her, drying his hands slowly on a dish towel, hesitating. "And yours?" he asked finally.

She ate the last of her toast and carried her plate to the sink. Some of her control was back, along with some of her ability to distance herself from it, to stay calm, detached. "Not as bad. I learned to stay out of the way young." She leaned her hip against the counter, facing him, crossing her arms over her chest. "I have a couple of fingers that healed a little crooked, because I hated wearing the casts. My collarbone, too, but you can't see it. There's a little bump." There were others she didn't mention. Other broken bones that had healed perfectly, other scars. Some that didn't show up on skin or x-rays, that only she could see.

Almost involuntarily, it seemed, he reached out as if to feel the badly healed bone for himself. Surprised, she flinched.

Immediately, he pulled his hand away. "I'm sorry," he said, stepping back, giving her space.

Too careful with her, she realized. Like everyone who found out about her family.

She shook her head. "It's not that." He didn't look like he believed her. "You just startled me, is all." She reached out. "Give me your hand."

When he hesitated, her heart clenched a little. "Please don't treat me like I'm broken," she said quietly.

Something shifted in his expression, and he let her take his hand and place his fingers over the small flaw in her collarbone.

Slowly, gently, he ran his thumb back and forth over the spot.

"You're not broken, Sara." There was a note in his voice she'd never heard before. "You've never been broken."

For a long time after he left, she could still feel the touch of his fingers on her skin.

FIN