Shadows..... CSI LV fanfic. ~SaraCath femslash~

SaraSidle_girl

SaraSidle_girl

Pathologist
Summary:
A case hits close to home for Sara and things get personal. Hidden memories force their way back in to her life and the struggle turns out to be far from over.

Disclaimers:
I don't anything of CSI. The characters, the storylines.. all not mine. I'll leave them where I found them once I'm finished

Pairing:
Stars out to be Sara centric. Will lead to Sara/Catherine later. FEMSLASH! Run if you're not into it!


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The air had been filled with iron. As she carried her kit on to the crime scene, the strong iron scent penetrated her nose.

The screams and the crying. Slowly she turned her head, a tall redhead woman held her by the hand. A girl, twelve, thirteen years old maybe, uncombed brown hair falling down her shoulders, her clothes stained with blood, desperately clinging on to the woman’s hand. Fear standing out in her big brown eyes.

Her cries and screams.. They kept sounding in her ears.

The apartment was a mess. It had been a long time since somebody had cleaned this place. As she slowly walked into the kitchen, the scent of iron was mixed with the familiar smell of alcohol. She turned to the sink. Two empty bottles, from the labels she could tell it was most likely whiskey. A third bottle stood on the kitchen table, still half full.

She walked further into the apartment, passing two police officers. They were talking in a loud tone but she didn’t hear their voices. Carefully she stepped into the living room, it was trashed. Signs of a struggle, a fight. She turned around; the door to one of the bedrooms was open. She slowly walked to the open door and closed her eyes for what she already knew she would find.

The scent of iron grew stronger and slowly, she reopened her eyes. The flashbacks were inevitable.

The walls stained with blood, everywhere she looked there was blood spatter on the walls. She counted three massive blood pools on the floor with another blood pool on the bed.There were blood streaks on the curtains.

She took a deep breath and with three firm steps she reached the bed on which the victim lay on his back, his eyes still open, staring into an empty world covered in blood. COD seemed obvious but she asked anyway.

“What you got, David?”

“Hi Sara. 40 year old male, Dave Johnson, stabbed to death. I count 12 stab wounds in his chest so far” David looked up from the body and shared a smile with her “done deal, right?”

She raised an eyebrow and David quickly explained his statement.

“Cops already arrested the wife. She still held the knife in her hand, covered in blood” he answered and she smirked “but I’ll tell you more about him after the autopsy”

I already know.

She watched how paramedics put the dead body into a body bag, lifted it onto the stretcher and than pushed it out of the room. David greeted her as he passed but she didn’t hear him. She looked around the bedroom. Single bed, closet, computer, the walls, now covered in blood, used to be pink. This was definitely the daughter’s bedroom.

Disturbed in her thoughts, she looked up when a soft hand was placed on her shoulder. She turned around to meet a pair of steel blue eyes. Catherine Willows. For a second she wondered why the hell she was paired up with Catherine tonight. On this of all cases.

“Lots of blood” Catherine stated and looked around the bedroom “why don’t you process the bedroom. I’ll take the rest of the apartment. When you’re finished, you can join me”

Sara nodded and stepped into the bedroom. Catherine walked back to the living room and seconds later, Sara could hear her snapping pictures of the crime scene.

Sara stood in the middle of the girl’s bedroom, feeling small and invisible just like so many years ago. Overwhelmed. Lost.

A chance to fit the pieces together, the final pieces. Her one and only chance to get the answers.
 
I love it write more soon. I what to know what happen next. Catherine should take the bedroom and let Sara do the living room.
 
Here comes chapter 2. The italic part in the middle is Sara's flashback to when she was a child.
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She closed the door of her locker and brushed her hands through her hair, she was glad this never ending shift was finally over. She was tired and longing for a nice warm shower and a few hours of well deserved sleep. As she walked to the door, she could hear Catherine’s voice outside. She was definitly talking to someone.

She pushed the door open and stepped into the corridor. There she found the blond CSI in a heavy discussion with Nick Stokes and Warwick Brown. Now that the door opened the discussion stopped and Catherine turned around. Her eyes widened when she saw Sara.

“Sara... we were just talking about you” Nick smiled and his eyes rested on Catherine for a second.

“I thought I recognised Catherine’s soft voice” Sara answered sarcastically “what’s up?”

“Warrick and I are going out for breakfast, you coming?” Nick asked, ignoring how Catherine’s blue eyes flashed in his direction and gave him a sharp look. The blond CSI then looked back at Sara. Sara stared at her.

“Breakfast” she answered and now looking at Nick “I don’t see what breakfast has to do with Catherine shouting at you?”

“I just told them you had a rough shift and that maybe you wanted to go home and get some sleep” Catherine quickly answered without looking Sara in the eye “but Nick seemed to think that he knew what you wanted.”

“You both did” Sara corrected Catherine and Catherine’s eyes now locked with hers “but just for once guys, Catherine’s right. I am tired and I just wanna go home. Rain check okay?”

The guys nodded and Sara turned around. She felt as if she dragged pounds of lead in her shoes as she walked through the corridors. As she passed by Grissom’s office she wasn’t surprised to see him still sitting behind his desk with a book in front of him, even though shift ended twenty minutes ago. There was just one more person more unlikely to go home than she was, Grissom.

“Sara! Wait!”

She held still when she heard Catherine’s heels behind her. Feeling a bit agitated, she waited until the older woman had caught up with her and then she turned so she could face Catherine. “Yes?”

“I.” Catherine stumbled over her words trying to come up with what she wanted to say. She had sensed Sara was feeling agitated with her, which meant she had to be careful if she didn’t want this to end in another major blow up. “I wanted to apologise. For what just happened. I shouldn’t have done that, you know”

“You’re right, you shouldn’t” Sara answered bitchly and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Now that she was standing up at her full height, Catherine realised that Sara was actually way taller than she always thought. She sighed.

“I deserved that, but we’re ok, now. Right?” she asked carefully and looked at Sara.

Carelessly she brushed a string of blond hair behind her ear, not noticing how Sara observed that gesture. The raising of her hand, the soft stroking of her hair as she pushed it behind her ear, the soft touch to her ear when the string was put in place and how she lowered her hand.

“Sure” Sara answered quickly and wanted to walk on but Catherine took her arm and held her. Sara turned back, this time raising her eyebrows in surprise at Catherine’s touch. For a second she looked at Catherine’s hand still holding her upper arm and quickly Catherine let go of her.

“Are you all right, Sara?” Catherine sounded worried when she asked this “back at the crime scene you seemed.. distracted”

Sara nodded. “I’m fine”

Catherine could feel how Sara retreated in her shell. She could feel the wall Sara had built around her soul.A massive wall, for her own protection and in the blink of an eye she could put up that wall and hide herself behind an iron mask that reflected no emotions whatsoever.

When could she ever tell Sara she already knew what she tried to hide so desperately?

Catherine nodded briefly. “Go home. I’ll see you around”

Sara pushed her hands deeply into the pockets of her jeans, pressed a smile on her lips and then turned around, leaving Catherine standing in the middle of the corridor. As she finally made it to the door leading to the parking lot, Sara felt the heavy burden on her heart,she knew herself well enough.

Next stop liquor store.

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Tightly holding on to her hand. She didn’t know her name. But she just couldn’t let go of her hand. She held it so tightly. Afraid to let go. It was all she had left. Her only place of safety. Though her tears were endlessly streaming down her face and were burning her skin. Though her clothes were stained with blood and her mind filled with all the images. When she closed her eye, the movie would play over and over again. Though she still had the smell in her nose. Though she screams still echoed in her ears. She didn’t let go of that hand.

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Sara found herself facing the murder weapon in the evidence room. Dried blood, fingerprints,it was all there. She had already lifted the prints, matched the wife. Tested the blood, matched the dead husband. Closed her eyes and relived again.

The door flew open. She reopened her eyes immediately and looked at whoever stood in the doorway. Catherine.

“The daughter’s come in to make a statement. Sofia’s with her, I’m going over there too. You wanna come?” Catherine asked.

Sara sighed and put the evidence back into its box. “Sure, the rest of the evidence is already pointing at mom. I bet the daughter’s statement will too”

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Sara froze when they reached the interrogation room. As she looked through the window she saw Sofia Curtis sitting behind a table. Across her sat the girl, with beside her the same redhead she saw at the crime scene, Social Services.

Did this girl have family, or would she just become one of those thousands of others? Put into foster care and moving from one home to another until she turned 18? With just a garbage bag stuffed with her belongings? Hoping that the next family would love her..

“You go in” she told Catherine with a tiny voice “I’ll observe”

Catherine nodded in understanding and stepped into the interrogation room. Sofia looked up when Catherine came in and they shared a brief smile. Catherine greeted the girl. The girl didn’t answer. Sara crossed her arms and waited for the story she already knew was coming.

“Tessa, I know you already told me what happened last night” Sofia said in a friendly voice and glanced at Catherine for a moment “but could you please tell Catherine what happened?” Tessa looked up and her eyes met Catherine’s. Catherine swallowed.

The same hazel brown eyes.

“My mother killed my father” her voice was remarkably powerful “she got a knife from the kitchen and……. she stabbed him in my bedroom”

“Do you know why she did that?” Catherine asked carefully “were they fighting?”

“They were always fighting and dad was always drunk. When he came home his breath smelled like whiskey, old whiskey, I hated it. It was even worse when he had beer. The smell of beer was the worst. He and mom were always fighting and sometimes...” Tessa stopped.

Catherine shivered, Tessa was amazingly strong. No tears. Her voice was loud and clear.

“Sometimes...” Catherine encouraged Tessa to continue

“Sometimes he hit me, but he hit my mom more. Every day. He was screaming every day too and I was hiding in my room, under my bed or in the closet, hoping he wouldn’t come in this time to hit me too. Hoping he would pass out on the couch, or leave” Tessa answered “he beat mom last night. She was crying. I came out of my room, begged him to stop. He hit me too. I ran back to my room. Mom screamed at him to leave me alone but he came to the door.”

Catherine closed her eyes as she realised the fear this young child must have felt. Every day, living with a man like her father, living with the alcohol abuse and with the mental and physical abuse. Hiding in her room. Crying in her bed.

“He came in” Tessa continued her story “and he pulled my hair. His hand went up and then mom ran in. He turned around to her and suddenly he fell down. Blood sprayed around the room and he fell on my bed and mom stabbed him. And again. And again.. Over and over. And I screamed. Cried.. And than you came..”

Catherine shared a look with Sofia and nodded. Between the time Tessa’s mother had killed her father and the police arriving 20 minutes had passed. Her story matched the events perfectly but she hadn’t expected anything else.

She then looked over her shoulder, to the glass window Sara had been standing behind watching the interview. Something told her, a feeling inside her stomach. Sadness overwhelmed her when she rose up from her chair and walked to the door. When she opened it and looked outside, she sighed.

Sara wasn’t watching anymore. She was gone.
 
Wow. That was great. Not a femslash fan here, but I did like this story. I like how the little girl seems to have been through perhaps similar events Sara did as a child.. But where did she go!! I can't wait for the next chapter :) Great job!
 
Warning: Chapter contains hints to selfinjury! If this makes you feel uncomfortable in any way, please protect yourself and don't read any further!
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How did I ever end up like this?

I had asked myself this question countless times, and yet, I never had an answer. I always ended up blaming the whole world and then I blamed myself.

My body was full of marks from the past and each scar told a story. I knew every single one and I remembered every story. Every scar held a memory and no matter how much I drank, or how much I tried to forget, the memories kept coming back. Sometimes causing more scars when I couldn’t take it anymore and again I had another story to add to another scar.

I couldn’t wake from this nightmare. I had gotten tangled up in this fight to hide my past, lost myself in the struggle with the memories. Hiding my scars.

So I drank another bottle, lost count of how many I had tonight lying on my couch. It had been ages since I slept in my bed; usually I passed out here after drinking and cutting myself.

Tonight wouldn’t be any different.

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Sara entered the break room and headed straight for the coffee pot. As she poured herself a cup of the black stuff they called coffee around here she bit her lip as a sting of pain shot through her arm. Quickly, she put the pot back down and rubbed her lower arm. The pain subsided and she sighed.

“Hey Sara” Nick entered the break room too and also headed for the coffee pot.

She smiled briefly. “You seen Catherine?”

Nick shook his head and Sara pulled up her shoulders. With her cup of coffee in her hand, she left the break room to find Catherine. Walking through the glass corridors of the CSI lab she heard the buzzing of machines and vague voices of people talking.

“Sara?! SARA!”

She turned around when the voice finally got through to her and found Catherine staring at her with questioning eyes. She quickly restored herself and looked at Catherine. “Sorry. I was lost in my thoughts. I was just looking for you.”

“Yeah, I was in the break room. Nick told me” Catherine answered and looked at Sara more closely “are you all right, Sar? You have some nasty rings around your eyes.”

Sara nodded. “Didn’t sleep well, did you close that Johnson case?”

“Mother has been arrested for the murder of her husband. She will be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation. The daughter, Tessa, will be placed in foster care. There wasn’t any family that could take her in” Catherine answered sadly and observed Sara’s reaction. There it was, the dark flash of anger in her eyes, for just a second.

“She’ll become the girl whose mother killed her father. Being transferred from one family to another. Wondering what the meaning of home and family is. Questioning herself about what she did wrong” Sara answered blankly “hating herself for not stopping it. Feeling alone, numb”

Catherine closed her eyes at the words Sara spoke. They were filled with pain and sadness. Sara probably didn’t realise she had spoken the words out loud. She slowly reopened her eyes and looked at Sara.

“Come on, I’ll fix those rings around your eyes with some make-up and then we’re gonna head out to Seven Hills” she tried to sound normal and showed a case file “Grissom assigned us to a 419”

Sara allowed Catherine to lead her to the locker room. Catherine took out her make-up and made Sara sit down on the bench. She sat down across her and looked at Sara’s face. Sara was a pretty young woman. She had strong features and beautiful hazel brown eyes. Sad that the lovely brunette didn’t seem to realise it herself.

“Sara, could you please hold your hair back for me?” Catherine asked and Sara pulled her hair back. She waited for Catherine to put the make-up on her skin. Why did she let herself get into this? Why did she allow Catherine to do this in the first place?

A few minutes later, Catherine looked at the result and nodded. “That’s better.”

Her eyes drifted off to the rest of Sara’s body. Her chest, her neck, her arms. Suddenly she frowned. Sara still held her hair back with her left arm. But the sleeve of her shirt had rolled almost halfway back, exposing her lower arm completely. Catherine gasped for air when she realised what she was faced with on Sara’s skin and before she fully understood what she was doing she had taken Sara’s left arm and pulled it towards her.

“Sara, what is this?” she pointed at the scars on Sara’s arm and her eyes met Sara’s “how did you get these? What happened?!”

Sara stood up pulling her arm free from Catherine’s grip and rolled her sleeve back down. She shook her head and broke eye contact with Catherine. “Don’t go there, Catherine. Leave it alone. Forget you ever saw this, ok?”

“Sara, you can’t expect me to just ignore what I saw. You have scars on your arm. Fresh scars. You really want me to believe nothing happened?” Catherine stood up too and hoped Sara would just look at her, but she didn’t “you really expect me to forget what I saw?”

Sara closed her eyes fighting the burning tears she felt well up. She wasn’t going to cry in front of Catherine. She wasn’t going to cry in front of anyone, ever again. She swallowed her tears and then she looked up to meet Catherine’s eyes.

“I told you to leave it alone, Catherine.” she whispered “just leave it alone.”

Without giving Catherine the chance to ask anything further, she turned around and left the locker-room.

Catherine covered her face with her hands and fell back on the bench. As she closed her eyes, she knew. She had to tell Sara.
 
Warning: still contains hints of selfinjury!
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She had worked her crime scene alone. When she was on her way to the parking lot Grissom had stopped her and told her Sara wasn’t coming. She had requested to stay in the lab and catch up on her paperwork, as she was nearly maxed out on overtime again he told her she could work in the lab and Catherine would go alone.

By the time she returned to the lab, with all the collected evidence safely in her kit, shift was long over. Hopefully she walked around the lab trying to find Sara somewhere but she came to realise that Sara had actually left the minute shift had ended. It was that moment the worried feeling took possession of her and just didn’t leave her alone.

“Grissom?” She stood in the doorway of his office and wasn’t surprised to find him there. She knew he was working a double murder which involved bugs. Both were a good reason to keep him in his office for a very long period of time. He looked up now that she spoke to him.

“Catherine, how can I help you?” he friendly asked and offered a seat to her. She didn’t sit down.

She hesitated before answering his question. “It’s Sara. That crime scene you sent us to a little while ago, the Johnson case? Grissom, that scene was an exact duplicate of the night Sara’s mother was killed! Including a twelve year old girl with brown hair and hazel brown eyes. The only difference is that this girl doesn’t have a gap between her front teeth!”

Grissom slowly took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He remembered a night very much similar like this one. Catherine had burst into his office, complaining about Nick and Warrick. He had been surprised; usually Catherine came to complain about Sara but not that night. When he asked her what happened she told him that Nick had made a bad joke about a child in foster care. Warrick had reacted to it with another bad joke and the next thing she knew, Sara freaked out.

But now Catherine came into his office and it was about Sara. About the crime scene they’d been working on. He sighed. “I know, Catherine. I know. It wasn’t a smart idea sending her out there with you but fact is, there wasn’t anybody else who could! We were all tangled up in our cases. The only CSI not working a field case that day was Ecklie and you know what it’s like when he gets into the field”

“The case would still be open even though it was a slam dunk” Catherine nodded “but Grissom, it’s tearing her apart! Ever since that night.” She paused. “She doesn’t look good. She barely sleeps; she has rings around her eyes and now she went home on time?!”

“Its Sara’s decision to keep working this way. She’s a grown up woman who can make her own choices” Grissom answered slowly and he shook his head “she has to make it through on her own...”

Catherine shook her head determined. “Not if I have something to say about it.”

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Her hand held still just before she knocked on the door. Did she make a good choice by coming here? What if it would only piss Sara off even more? What if she wouldn’t want to let her in? They weren’t exactly friends.

Back at the lab for a second she wanted to tell Grissom about what she saw on Sara’s arms but then she wondered what she actually did see. She saw scars, but maybe there was a perfectly good explanation for how they got there. She had been telling herself that all through the two hours she spent on the computer when she got home. Using Google to find out more.

She took a deep breath and then she knocked.

Seconds passed and turned into a minute, one minute turned into two minutes. She closed her eyes and knocked again and she waited.

Finally, just as she was about to turn around and leave she heard someone on the other side of the door. Slowly it opened and her eyes widened in shock when Sara appeared behind the door. She looked awful! Her hair was sticking to her face and her eyes were red and swollen.

“Catherine” Sara whispered, clearly as shocked to see Catherine as Catherine was to see her “what are you doing here?”

“No matter what you said back in the locker room, I am not gonna let this pass over” Catherine answered and tried to sound steady and secure “I know what I saw and I know what it is that you’re doing to yourself, Sara”

Sara narrowed her eyes in that so familiar way. It wouldn’t be long until that look appeared in her eyes. The ‘if-looks-could-kill-you’d-be-dead-right-now’ look. “You don’t know anything at all”

Catherine took a step closer to the door. Sara refused to step aside to let her come in. They were practically standing body to body, only separated by the wooden door. Slowly Catherine shook her head and reached out her hand. Sara was hiding behind the door. Catherine couldn’t see more of her than her head, her neck and one shoulder

As she reached out, Sara backed away immediately and she used this chance to push the door open further and step into the apartment. She turned around to look at Sara and her mouth fell open in shock. In her chest she could feel the sting of pain in her heart when she saw that Sara wore a black tank top, exposing both her arms and they were covered with scars.

“Sara.”

“Please leave, Catherine” Sara fought against her tears and looked at the blond CSI woman standing in her apartment “you don’t know anything”

Catherine shook her head, she wasn’t planning on leaving. “I know a lot more than you think, Sara. A hell of a lot more”

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Catherine looked around the living room as she sat on Sara’s couch. The brunette sat in a chair across from her, her legs pulled up underneath her body. She had wrapped her arms around her upper body, clearly exposing her scars.

“How did you find out?” Sara carefully asked and finally she looked up to meet Catherine’s eyes.

For minutes they had been sitting like this. Sara all cuddled up in her chair, Catherine uncomfortable on the couch, trying not to stare at Sara’s arms. As she had tried not to stare she had looked around the living room numerous times. As her eyes had drifted to the kitchen, she noticed the garbage can was open. On top of the garbage lay a few empty beer bottles. It was all she needed to know.

“By accident” Catherine answered softly “that night Nick and Warrick made the joke about children in foster care you freaked out. I... I wanted to know what was going on so I went to Grissom to complain about Nick and Warrick. But I just couldn’t let it go and the next night we were working together and we met this young boy, who was a foster child. You took him into the next room and talked to him. And...”

“I told him I had been a foster child too and then he asked me what happened to my parents and I told him” Sara whispered as silent tears were rolling down her face “just like that, I told him. It took me years to finally tell Grissom but this innocent child I told right away. But how..?”

“I wanted to ask you something. Just as I wanted to come in to the room, you were talking about your family” Catherine sadly answered “the door was open. Had it been closed I wouldn’t have heard a thing and you would have noticed me, but the door was open and you didn’t see me standing there. I wanted to walk away but I couldn’t”

It broke her heart to see Sara so broken, so devastated. She had lost herself somewhere in this battle. A battle against the haunting memories of her past, the struggle of her job as a CSI in which she was faced with the gruesome horrors people do to each other every day and eventually she also ended up fighting herself. Hurting herself to deal with all she was feeling inside but couldn’t get under control. The wall around her heart and soul were a protection from everything that happened now but it couldn’t protect her from what had happened in the past. It could protect her against others but not from herself.

“Sara” Catherine rose from the couch and walked to the chair Sara was sitting in. The brunette had hidden her head under her arms and her shoulders were shaking heavily. She knew Sara didn’t want her to see her cry. She wanted to hold on to her wall so badly but she was slipping away further and further.

Carefully she put a hand on Sara’s shoulder. A gesture that slowly turned into an arm that wrapped around her shoulder. Her other arm also went around Sara and carefully she took the crying woman in her arms and started rocking her slowly, softly stroking her hair as she did so. Finally, the unbreakable Sara Sidle broke to pieces, crying in her arms.
 
I love this story! I just found it and I really like the way you are protraying both Sara and Catherine. You are dealing with the self-injury issue very well, not doing one of those stupid things were the only reason people cut is to try and kill themselves. Those stories bug me.

I don't know if you are still planning on continuing this story but I would love it if you did.

You are a great writer!
 
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