Title: Confusion
Author: gij
Pairing: Catherine/Sara & Sara/Gil
Dedications: Call me stupid, but for Yael.
Note: Part Two of Emergence.

Something changes, and as before, you’re aware of it in the air before anything ever happens. You walk into the break room like you do every day, and you have a sudden feeling of déjà vu, a bizarre prescience that you understand as soon as you see Nick gesturing to you again.

You ignore his requests and walk back into the hall. You stand outside the door and just wait.

Sure enough, she walks past the end of the corridor within seconds. She stands at the T-junction of hallways and looks straight at you.

You stare back boldly, and you know you’re right. She looks down and keeps walking.

 

 

 

 

You end up being assigned to a case with Nicky, and you work the first half of your night shift at a crime scene, then come back to CSI. You drop by Grissom’s office and unintentionally walk into an ice competition.

She’s sitting in the chair across from his desk, and they’re so intent upon each other, they don’t even notice you at the door.

He looks confused, unhappy, trying to understand. He never quite manages to understand other people and this is another example of it. You hoped for it in a way, and you did expect it.

She looks both frustrated and hurt. You could have warned her that this would happen, that you can never expect a relationship to work between two people so closed off to the real world, but you’d have been wasting your time. And you’d have seemed bitter.

You must make some noise, because abruptly Sara breaks their staring competition and walks out, barely brushing past you on her way through.

 

 

 

 

They won’t work together after that, or maybe it’s he won’t work with her and she’s in no position or frame of mind to argue. They work around each other and don’t talk, and she’s sad but you’re glad in a way.

You watch as she sneaks into his office at the end of the shift and drops her paperwork on his desk before he has a chance to get back and they have to talk without the buffer of someone else on the team.

She walks out off his office and straight down the hall towards the car park. Her back is straight and her steps resolute, and things would seem normal if you didn’t know better.

 

 

 

 

But you see her at other times, and it’s more than obvious nothing is normal. You damn the multitudes of glass walls in the building, if there weren’t such a multitude, you reason, you wouldn’t be an unwilling witness to so many scenes.

You see them in his office one time, and you can’t hear them through the glass, but you feel the vibes as they argue. He’s impassive and she’s furious, and the more calm he stays, the angrier she gets.

Finally she looks down for a second, and he moves closer before she notices. Even when she does look up she doesn’t stop him, and you see him move closer and place a gentle hand on her hip.

You hate the implications of the intimacy, and you almost applaud when she immediately steps away, shaking her head at him in disgust or fury, and walks out.

Her defiance isn’t without cost, however, and you see her later in the break room, head down, with tears tracing her cheeks. You watch through glass walls as water traces the lines of her face, glimmers at the edge of her mouth. You’d like to touch her there.

 

 

 

Everything seems to settle after that last scene, and you at least don’t see them fight again. Things are tense at CSI headquarters, but you can’t imagine circumstances under which they would not be.

She starts smiling again, but they still work separately. You get to work with her more and more, and you try to arrange things so you’ll be partnered together.

Despite everything, you have an overwhelming tendency to want to mother her, to take care of her – to clean scraped knees and dry tears. You find it hard not to smile at that image.

She needs it, though. You both know it.

 

 

"Acceptance" is waiting in the wings of my brain. I hope to bring it to you all soon.