Title: Just Like That
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters are the property of Jerry Bruckheimer and CBS. No infringement is intended.
Rating: G

Fandom: CSI

Pairing: Catherine/Sara

Words: 452

Spoilers: Up to and including Season 5

Just like that, she was gone. Not drowned or lost in the desert, snatched by a mad woman, not shot or attacked on the job. No, Sara Sidle just up and walked away.

Gil is of course devastated. Not that you would necessarily be able to tell, unless you knew him very well. It’s kinda the way his eyes scrunch, or how he seems a bit lost sometimes and just sad. We all can relate in a way, it’s like that when you lose family.

Two years is a long time to hide their relationship. I’m not sure I could have done it. Resisted touching her when she was upset, or rubbing her shoulders hunched from working so late, wiping a smudge of grease off her cheek after tearing apart a car, or well anytime really. I had a hard enough time and I wasn’t even involved with her that way. Unfortunately.

I found her name tag in the garbage that night and took it with me. It’s tucked up in a box I have in my closet at home. My sad little box of mementos of Sara. A napkin with doodles she’d made the night we went for drinks after she dumped Hank. The mirror she clutched in the desert when we thought we’d lost her. I had all these little things and he had you.

That was almost 6 weeks ago. Life was getting back to almost normal. And then I got her letter.

Dear Catherine,

I’m so sorry, for so many things.

I told Gil that I had been living with ghosts and that I needed to put them away. What I didn’t realize at the time is that you are one of those ghosts too, an intangible that follows me still.

Gil was safe, dependable and like minded and I loved him. But I know now that it wasn’t enough. What keeps me awake at night is the memory of your eyes, glittering with anger as we walked down the halls at work. It’s the thought of the sure touch of your fingers on my back as you lean over me to look at a piece of evidence. The knowing smile as you sashay across the break room in those jeans, tormenting Greg with your seductive movements and silently killing me as well. All these little things and more play across the quiet of my mind now. And I realize now what kept me there was you.

I had to leave home to find myself, to find you. I know I still have demons to work out but I will be back. I only hope you will want to talk.

Sara

And just like that, she changed my world.