A/N: Thanks, everyone for reading this story. Writing these characters is really enjoyable and I can see myself doing a lot of it in the future. Please review and let me know what you think!

VIII. Hospital

When the helicopter lands on the roof of Desert Palms Hospital, everything returns to moving very quickly. The flight to the hospital was a respite and you're glad you had the chance to collect yourself, because now you have to go back to being her strength. You'll be replaying the look in her eyes and the feel of her hand for the next four hours, because you barely have the chance to tell her that you're with her, you're not leaving, you'll be waiting for her, before she is rushed away from you and through foreboding double doors to the emergency ward.

You collapse onto one of the ugly vinyl-covered chairs in the waiting room and hold your head in your hands. No one else is around so you can allow yourself this moment of weakness. It feels like you haven't slept in a week, and that only makes you think of how much worse she must be feeling. You breathe deeply and press your thumbs against your temples, pushing back the migraine you know is just beneath the surface.

One of the nurses walks over to you, stride quick and purposeful. She has paperwork and one of the EMTs told her that you're Sara's supervisor. A supervisor would have to call back to the office and get Lucy to fax over Sara's personnel file. You know its contents by heart.

Under 'allergies', you are able to list off penicillin and under 'medications' you list her birth control pill and the low-dosage anti-depressant which you convinced her to keep taking even after she told you that you are the only drug she needs. You hadn't that much responsibility. You were afraid you'd disappoint her, and quite honestly, you did. Several times. You are just grateful that she is a very patient woman.

The family history section is a little harder to fill out but you know the basics and check off the appropriate boxes. Emergency contacts is the easy section. You write in your name and information and only hesitate under the 'relationship' box. You can't fill in 'husband' and there's no box for 'person who will cease to exist without her'. You scribble in 'partner' because you'll be damned if you just call yourself her friend, and then hurry on to the insurance information.

When Catherine comes rushing into the area, you are at the desk handing over the plastic clipboard and forms. She spots you immediately and hurries over. Her hand on your arm is startling because no one has touched you since this all began. She must sense that your façade isn't quite as close to crumbling now that Sara has been found.

"How is she? Has anyone told you anything yet?"

You tell her that you haven't heard from the doctor's yet. "She opened her eyes," you say, and the words sound much more reverent than you'd intended, and yet they sound right.

"Oh thank God," spills from her mouth ahead of a long breath of relief. You realize that maybe Catherine hadn't just been feeling guilt out in the desert. She and Sara have formed a tentative bond of friendship.

"Where is…"

She cuts you off before you can complete the thought.

"Nick's parking the car and Sofia went back to the lab. Everyone knows that we found her, but they're gonna want details from someone who was there," she explains.

You just nod. Of course they will want details. They're her friends, and you all too often forget that. She has become your whole world, but you have never told her that, and you have never asked exactly where you fit in hers. In your best moments you've imagined that she feels the same as you. She is, after all, the one who never gave up on a relationship no matter how many reasons you gave her to do so. For two intelligent, well-read people, you are remarkably stingy with words. The boy who grew up not needing spoken words, and the girl who learned that they usually just cost her a slap across the face. The letter you never sent contained more emotion than you'd ever expressed to her, and half of those words were not yours.

While you walk back to your seat, you promise yourself that you are going to change.

Nick joins you and Catherine a few minutes later, and he is full of nervous energy. His foot taps on the floor, and he runs his fingers through his short-cropped hair repeatedly as his eyes watch the clock. He and Sara have a special relationship, that much you know. Greg still looks at her with slight wistfulness sometimes, and Warrick slaps her on the back after a job well done, but only Nick communicates with her through his eyes. It's not the same as you, not even close, but there's a sense of sibling camaraderie there. Maybe he reminds her of the brother she has only mentioned to you twice. He is dead now, victim of a drug overdose by his own hand. Sara was still in foster care and didn't even get to attend the funeral.

So much of her life has been marked by tragedy or adversity and now she's lying in the ER with another nightmare to add to her collection. The thought infuriates you and saddens you at the same time. You could have given her so many more happy memories to combat the bad ones, but it always seemed like there would be plenty of time for that.

Catherine volunteers to go get coffee, and Jim arrives just after she returns. Two hours later and you have only half finished the dark bitter liquid but you keep the cup clutched loosely between your hands. The news is reporting on Sara's rescue and the report says that there is no word on her condition. They are words you didn't need to hear, because you are already close to just getting up and barging through those double doors and finding her. She's been out of your sight for much too long.

Nick is pacing the length of the room. He already threatened to do what you are now contemplating doing. You told him to let the doctors work and bit back the fact that if anyone was going to go in search of her, it would be you.

"I didn't thank you, Nick," you say slowly, watching as he stops his repetitive course across the room.

"Grissom…" he starts to wave you off.

"No," you continue. "If you hadn't found her when you did, she would probably be dead right now." Another man would have trailed off before those last few words left his mouth, but you've always been almost painfully blunt.

Any jealousy that had flashed through your mind in the desert has been replaced with profound gratitude, and you need Nick to know that.

He seems to understand, because his eyes soften and his shoulders relax slightly.

"If I hadn't found her, you would have," he says, and maybe he's right, but you are glad you didn't have to find out.

Catherine has never been prone to emotional reactions; life has made her harder than that; but you hear her sniffle and when you look over, she's concentrating on the bottom of her coffee cup.

A few minutes later you all look up when the doors open and a doctor comes in, obviously looking for you.

"Gil Grissom?"

You stand up and can't understand why now, of all times, your knees feel weak. You spent the day walking through the desert and never tired, but now, imagining everything the doctor could be about to tell you, is what makes you feel close to collapse

"She's been asking for you," he says, and there is a collective sigh of relief from everyone else in the room.

"How is she?" Jim asks before you can get the words out.

"Stable now," he tells you. "Broken left ulna, multiple contusions on the rest of her body, moderate concussion and a scalp wound that required seven stitches. Beyond that it's just heat exhaustion, dehydration and minor scrapes."

You are about to ask why the hell he couldn't have come out to tell you all of that an hour ago, but then he looks at you, only you, and says that it was touch and go for a while there. Her heart rate plummeted just after they brought her in and they were afraid she was going to go into cardiac arrest.

Somehow you are still standing although your vision is swimming at the idea of losing her again so soon after finding her.

"When can I see her?" you ask, your voice stronger than it has any right to be.

"We're settling her in a room now. I'll send a nurse out to you. We'll be keeping her for a few days, just for observation, to make sure all of her levels are back to normal." He looks around at Jim and Catherine and Nick. "You can all go in for a few minutes, but then you'll have to leave and wait for visiting hours tomorrow."

You know that rule doesn't apply to you.

IX. Vigil

Just as the doctor promised, a nurse comes to escort you all to Sara's room. She's on the fourth floor and you hope the room has a decent view of the city. She'll like that. The nurse, you've noticed by the time you arrive that her name is Karen, pushes the door open and repeats that you can only spend fifteen minutes with her. She needs her rest.

You expect Nick and Catherine and Brass to be crowding you at the door, but they are hanging back a few steps and you look over your shoulder with a questioning look on your face. You honestly have no idea what they're waiting for.

"You go ahead," Catherine says, and you can hardly believe it, but her voice sounds a little wavery. "We'll give you a few minutes."

And that's when it occurs to you that all the months – the years – you spent wondering how the rest of the team would take your involvement with Sara, have all been a waste. You swallow against the sudden emotion in your throat. It's an unfamiliar feeling for you and you think you should say something.

"Go on, man, she's waiting for you," Nick says, and you look at the three of them for one more moment before turning and heading into the room.

Only about half of the overhead lights are on, and the sun has almost finished setting, so the feeling in the room is one of peace and calm. You let those feelings wash over you as you look at her lying still beneath crisp white sheets.

There's an IV running into her right arm, and her left is in a proper cast from wrist to mid-bicep. There are butterfly bandages in place of stitches high on her right cheek, and you can see the seven real stitches almost hidden in her hair. The nurses have done a good job cleaning her up, but there is still sand in her hair and beneath her nails. You want to take her home and care for her the way she has cared for you in the past. You think about the night she shaved off your beard.

A few steps and you are beside the bed and she has heard you and blinked open sleepy eyes to look at you.

"Hi," is what she says to you in words, voice scratchy and soft, but her expression is filling in the rest.

You lean over and kiss her gently on the lips, reveling in even that small taste of her, and realizing that you don't think you could have gone on without ever experiencing it again.

"I love you," you say, because you don't want her to have to read your face. You want to give her the words. She deserves them.

The tears that spring to her eyes are completely unexpected and shock must show on your face because she feebly tries to lift her right arm as if to wave them away. The fact that telling her you love her is enough to make her cry, tells you that you should have told her hundreds more times than you did. You capture her hand and kiss her fingertips and then you use your other hand to wipe away the new tears that she doesn't have the energy to contain.

"You're going to be just fine," you say, reverting to simple facts to put her back on less emotional ground.

"So they say," she says with that lopsided little smile of hers. "Did you catch Natalie?" she asks, and at first you think that she's asking out of fear, but then you look in her eyes and know that it's just the ever-present investigator at work.

"Yes, we caught her," you tell her. Maybe in a few days or a few weeks, you'll tell her more

She nods, seemingly content with just that bit of information.

"Half of the LVPD was out looking for you," you tell her then, because you need her to know how important she is, not just to you but to everyone who knows her. You know she hasn't had that much validation in her life.

"If I'd known that, maybe I wouldn't have worked so hard to save myself," she jokes lightly and then coughs, the sudden movement causing her pain.

After assuring you that the doctors have already pumped her full of painkillers, you relax again and return to stroking the back of her hand.

"You did save yourself," you say, not wanting her to think that any of her effort was in vain. "The whole area around the car was flooded." You don't tell her about the hiker's body.

"Yeah," she says wryly, "I had a feeling that was gonna happen," she says and you know that eventually she'll tell you the whole story, but not tonight.

"There are a few people out in the hall who want to see you. Are you up for that?"

She nods yes, and then asks, "Why didn't they come in with you?"

You tell her that they wanted to give the two of you a few minutes alone first. Her eyes go wide and you don't have to tell her anything else, because it's obvious that she knows already.

When you stand up to go and get the others, she tightens her grip around your hand.

"Gil?"

Your eyes tell her to go on.

"I love you too," she whispers. "I never gave up."

The knot in your throat is back and you lean over and kiss her again. "Neither did I, Sara."

At first, your coworkers keep their distance from Sara, crowding around the bed but not touching it or her. They say encouraging things and tell her how they knew she was too tough to give up. It's after Jim grasps her good wrist firmly in his thick fingers, that some sort of spell seems to break and Catherine and Nick take each take a step closer. Catherine pats her leg, and Nick brushes a light kiss against her cheek. They stay for just a few more minutes before the nurse comes around and says that visiting hours are already over and everyone needs to leave.

Sara's energy seems to be at an end and her eyes are heavy-lidded as she says goodbye to Catherine who says that the rest of the team will be by in the morning, and Nick, who promises to bring some decent food, and Jim, who just squeezes her hand and calls her a tough cookie. The door swings shut behind them and Sara looks up at you.

"You're exhausted," she says, voice weary and slightly slurred from the drugs. "See you in the morning?"

The shake of your head confuses her and a tiny crease forms across her forehead.

"I'm not leaving, honey," you tell her.

She attempts to argue with you. "You need your sleep."

"I need something more than sleep," you say. "I need to be with you."

Considering all of the times that you have left her alone, those words could easily sound like the world's worst joke, but she accepts them at face value. Her hand moves toward you and you slide your chair closer so that you can touch her.

"I'm glad you're staying," she says, "'Cause I kinda feel like I need to be with you right now too."

You gently run your fingers up and down her arm while looking into her face. She has her eyes fixed on yours and you tell her to sleep and that you will be with her the whole time. A sigh that sounds like it carries the weight of the ages with it comes from between her parted lips.

"Thank you," she whispers, as her eyes slide closed.

She's asleep almost instantly and can't hear you murmuring the same thing back to her. Thank you for fighting. Thank you for surviving. Thank you for not leaving me.

X. Home

The doctors release her from the hospital three days after her rescue. It is two days late as far as she is concerned. You're amazed at how you have gone to somewhere close to despair, to somewhere approaching euphoria over the course of seventy-two hours. With every sign of her healing, you have felt lighter, certain in the fact that whatever else happens, at least you will face it together.

The first thing she wants to do when you get home is take a shower. She hasn't had a proper one since before her kidnapping, and she's very insistent. There is no way you're letting her risk slipping and hurting herself, especially with only one working arm, so after encasing her cast in a garbage bag, you strip off your clothes and step under the streaming water before offering your hand to help her into the tub. She shakes her head and laughs at this overprotective side of you, but you don't think she really minds, especially when your strong fingers are massaging shampoo into her hair. A little sigh escapes her and she lolls against you. The feeling of her body pressed to yours is like a benediction.

Later you fix her a vegetarian stir-fry with pad-thai noodles and her favorite tea. She eats as if she hasn't had food in a week, her eyes smiling at you above the rim of her teacup. You eat without tasting much because you're much more interested in just watching her.

After eating, you fall into your normal routine. You stretch out on the bed together, her with a book, you with a magazine, the television on the history channel. If your hand strays to her arm more often than it used to, she doesn't say anything. In fact, she moves closer to you and rests her head against your shoulder. Before long, despite all her talk about being perfectly healthy, her eyelids start drooping and she reaches over to turn out her light. Although you aren't tired yet, you turn out your light as well. You lie in bed beside her, body curled around hers as much as possible without aggravating any of her injuries, and as you feel her relax in your arms, and you hear her breathing even out until she is sleeping, a quote floats through your mind and you don't stop it.

This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts
Make of so noble individual parts
One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.[3

Notes:
1. Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson
2. Heinrich Heine
3. John Donne, Ecologue on the Marriage of the Earl of Somerset