Title: Redeeming Qualities
Fandom: CSI/CSI
Characters: Sara Sidle/Tim Speedle
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5,787
Spoilers: Heavy for season five.
Prompt: 26 Teammates
Summary: The new recruit doesn’t seem to have any redeeming qualities, but Sara finds out different.
The first time Sara hears the name Tim Speedle, Greg – doing a couple of shifts in the DNA lab until yet another replacement can be found – is complaining about him. Greg’s normally one of the cheeriest people that she encounters around the lab, so to see him vexed is notable enough, but when she hears him using epithets that are usually reserved for Conrad Ecklie, that’s when she really sits up and takes notice.
“That’s the new guy on swing, right?” she asks, taken aback when Greg shoots her a venomous look and rolls his eyes, as if the mere notion of the man is too much to entertain.
“Yeah… he transferred in from
Sara tilts her head, fights back a smile, because she’s sure that Greg has to be exaggerating – it wouldn’t be the first time. “I’m sure he’s not that bad,” she says, and Greg laughs harshly.
“He’s stubborn, he’s moody, he’s a complete workaholic who has no life outside this place and never takes a day off…” For a moment, Sara wonders if Greg’s forgotten who he’s talking to, because every single charge he’s just levelled at Speedle could be levelled at her too, and has been. She arches an eyebrow as his voice trails off, that thought having obviously just occurred to him. He falters for a moment, but only a moment, then recovers as only Greg Sanders can. “But he’s not like… I mean, you’re… he’s like Grissom, but without the redeeming qualities.”
“And what would they be?”
Sara wouldn’t mind knowing, but it’s not she who asked the question. Rather, Grissom himself has appeared just behind Greg, who’s gone rather pale all of a sudden. Grissom’s face is stern, but his eyes sparkle in amusement, not that Greg can tell that in his panic. Sara, however, just crosses her arms and waits to see how Greg is going to get out of this one.
>*<*>*<
The name Tim Speedle doesn’t cross her
thoughts again until the first shift after Ecklie has split the team up. Catherine,
Warrick and Nick have moved to swing, leaving Grissom in charge of herself and
Greg on night shift. Of course, graveyard can’t survive on three members,
especially when one of them really should be doing the paperwork, so along with
It only takes her half a shift – spent processing a crime scene, a murder in a hotel room, just the two of them – to ascertain that everything Greg told her about Speedle was true, and then some.
Greg smirks at her as she comes back into the lab, heads straight for the break room and a strong cup of coffee. He keeps pace with her, saying nothing, waiting until she’s downed half the cup before he says, “Told you… no redeeming qualities.”
Sara’s going to say something, but then Speedle walks in and heads for the coffee machine, so she just takes another gulp instead.
>*<*>*<
Things don’t improve any in the next number
of cases, and by the time the Devon Malton case lands in Sara’s lap, she’s
given up any hope of ever seeing any humanity from Tim Speedle. Greg’s taken to
calling him Robotman behind his back, and while Sara outwardly chastises him
for it, inwardly, she tends to agree. As far as she can tell, Speedle goes from
case to case without ever taking time off, he works longer hours than even she
does, and he never seems to crack a smile. She and Greg go out for breakfast
after the shift sometimes, and he’s invited along – hell, once they even asked
Then she finds herself in a cold dark storage shed, looking for two missing children. With all she’s seen in her years as a CSI, this is as bad a place as she’s ever walked through, litter everywhere, a stench bad enough to make her stomach roil. Torchlight casts shadows that make the place seem even more dingy and depressing, highlighting the effect of the paint peeling from the walls, and it’s in the middle of all that Brass sees a pair of legs on the floor. He steps away to call an ambulance, and Sara kneels down, checks for a pulse as she silently prays she’ll find one. When her prayers are answered, she shouts over her shoulder, “He’s alive! We need water and blankets!”
A hand on her shoulder makes her jump, and she sees another small boy standing behind her, crying and looking as if he’s not sure if he should run away or collapse into her arms. “Hey there…” she says gently, reaching out to him. “Are you Kevin or Raymond?”
Mention of the two names must convince the boy that she’s to be trusted, because he steps forward then, and Sara, acting purely on instinct, hugs him, tells him it’s going to be all right.
And then, in the midst of all the horror and insanity, Tim Speedle comes towards her. Her first thought is that he’s the last person who should be here, the last person who will know how to act around these two little boys. So she’s surprised when he squats down beside them, puts a blanket that she hadn’t even noticed he was holding around the little boy’s shoulders. The boy flinches, whimpers, and in a voice more gentle than any she’s ever heard him use, Speedle says, “Hey buddy, it’s ok… just trying to keep you and your brother here warm… let’s get this wrapped around you.”
His voice seems to soothe the little boy, who lets himself be wrapped up, though he’s loath to let go of Sara. Speedle doesn’t miss a beat though, just hands her a bottle of water. “I’m just gonna give our brother a blanket too… he’s gonna be fine, you just need to stay with Sara here, ok?”
To Sara’s everlasting surprise, the boy nods, glancing up at her, then back at Speedle, as if making sure that he really is there to help. They stay there, in silence, until the ambulance arrives, and that’s when Speedle and Sara scoop up one little boy each and carry them into daylight.
Neither speak as the kids are put into the ambulance, and when it leaves, Sara is the first to turn, looking up at her team-mate (realising as she does so that it’s the first time she’s ever thought of him that way) and telling him honestly, “You were really good with those kids.”
Speedle’s still looking at the ambulance, eyes narrowed as if deep in thought. Then, as her words register, he looks over at her, and in a day of surprises, she gets another one when a faint smile turns up the corners of his lips. “So were you.”
It’s the most personal thing he’s ever said to her – indeed, it’s the only personal thing he’s ever said to her – and she’s so nonplussed that she’s not sure how to react. It’s not only the words that knock her off guard, but the look on his face when he says them – open, unguarded, not robotic in the least.
It’s a face that she thinks she could be friends with, but it only lasts for a moment, and then he’s all business again. “Come on,” he says, turning on his heel. “Let’s get this over with.”
He could be reading her mind, and by the time they’ve finished processing the scene, he’s his old self again, and she finds herself wondering if she imagined the whole Speedle-as-a-human-being thing.
>*<*>*<
She finds out that she didn’t when she returns from her suspension. Blowing up at Ecklie had been more than satisfying at the time, and she doesn’t regret doing it for one second. However, when she’s been back in the lab for a couple of hours, she grows very tired of the covert glances and hushed conversations that stop whenever she walks by, finds herself wishing that people would just find someone else to talk about.
She has a mental bet with herself about who the first person to approach her about it is going to be, and when she figures that Greg is a safe bet, she amuses herself by estimating how long it’s going to take him to actually get her alone and come up with the courage to bring the subject up. So she’s surprised when the first person to tackle her about it isn’t Greg, but rather Speedle.
She’s in the garage, setting up Lori Kyman’s car to disprove a suspect’s account when she sees Speedle walking by. He goes past the door, she’s sure he does, so she’s not expecting to hear his voice saying her name, certainly isn’t expecting to look up and see him there, with a look on his face that says he’s not sure whether to stay and speak or run away. He finally seems to decide on the former, pointing towards the car. “That the vic’s?”
Sara nods, not sure why he’s there, but willing to cut him some slack. “Grissom wants me to see how long it takes for the tyre to go flat.” She’s done experiments like this before, is under no illusions about the long wait in front of her. Glancing at him, she purses her lips and tilts her head, trying to imagine that he’s Greg or Nick or Warrick, anybody but the wall of silence that is Tim Speedle. “I sense I’m being punished,” she says, lowering her voice as if in confidence, and damn if the man doesn’t actually chuckle.
“Just make sure Ecklie doesn’t see you,” he says. “Someone might find you under it.”
First a chuckle, then a joke, Sara thinks; will wonders never cease? “You… um… you heard about that?”
“Heard about it?” Speedle raises an eyebrow. “Archie spent two days trying to figure out if any security cameras point near Ecklie’s office. Leah spent as much time trying to convince us that you deserve a medal.” Sara’s jaw drops, and she’s not sure if it’s because of what he’s saying or the light-hearted tone he’s using. “Yeah, I heard about it.”
Sara clears her throat, looks down. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” she says. “It was childish and unprofessional…”
There’s something she’s purposely not saying, but Speedle hears it anyway. “But it felt damn good, right?”
Truer words were never spoken, and she finds herself biting back a smile. Only on her lips though, because she can feel her eyes dancing, just like his are, and she can’t remember the last time she felt this normal. “You trying to tell me you’ve got a problem with authority too?” she quips, instantly regretting it when his face slams shut, going from human to robot in the blink of an eye. It’s all the more noticeable – and yeah, she can admit it to herself, hurtful – because for those couple of minutes, he’d been warm and funny and someone she’d really like to know. Now, that’s all gone, and she doesn’t know what she said to cause it, if indeed she said anything at all.
“Not always,” is all he said, before he turns on his heel and walks out of the room.
>*<*>*<
Sara doesn’t know why Adam releases his hold on her neck; she doesn’t really care. Then she sees Nurse McKay, and it registers dimly that she’s the reason. Her CSI instincts kick in for a bare nano-second, then survival instinct takes over. She doesn’t remember deciding to elbow Adam in the chest, but she does and he falls, and then she’s on her feet somehow, and the handle of the door is cool under her hand and then she is in the hall and there’s commotion behind her but all she knows is that she needs to get as far away as she can. So she pushes by everyone, past the panicking Nurse McKay, past the orderly, past a wild-eyed Speedle, and she runs, only stopping when she gets to the end of the hallway, and a window that’s covered by a metal grate. She stops then, because even if the window is covered, she can still see outside, can see the rain drops splashing into the puddles, can hear the faint rumble of thunder.
It was raining the night her father died.
Her legs are shaking so much that she’s afraid she’s going to fall down, and her fingers curl into the grate for support as she dips her head and tries to breathe, tries to push away the memories, the fear that threatens to rise up and choke her.
A touch, feather light and fleeting, on her back makes her start, makes her whirl around, and she finds herself staring at Tim Speedle. Abstractedly, she notes that she’s never seen him look worse; he’s wide-eyed and pale, with a thin sheen of sweat along his temples, and he’s frowning deeply as he stares at her. She expects him to say something, waits for it, but instead he just holds out a tissue to her. She blinks, stares at it transfixed as it vibrates in the air between them, and when he uses his other hand to point to her neck, she notes that it’s shaking too.
She pulls in a deep breath, takes the tissue and presses it to her neck, wincing at the slight sting. That’s enough to bring back another memory, of her pressing a cloth to her mother’s bleeding temple, of her mother telling her that she was fine, that everything was going to be all right. Memory of the lie – one of the many she grew up with – makes her weak, and she slumps against the wall.
Surprise brings her back to reality, because Speedle’s hands shoot out, one closing on her waist, the other on her shoulder, with a gentle strength she’d never known before. He steadies her, drops his hands the second she’s standing again, but he’s on guard, ready to catch her again if need be. He does that without saying a word, and she’s grateful for that, because for the moment, she needs silence.
It seems to take a long time before she feels well enough to speak, though it can only be a matter of minutes. And when she can speak, the first words that come out of her mouth are her mother’s lies. “I’m fine,” she croaks, shocked at how weak her voice is. “Really.”
Speedle says nothing at first, just raises an eyebrow. She looks down, knows she’s not fooling anyone, and his response is so quiet that she thinks she might have imagined it.
“I’m sorry.”
Frowning, she tilts her head, stares at him, and he repeats himself. “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have left you… I should have been there…”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she tells him, because even if she had been able to think clearly, she never would have blamed him. He’d left to find someone who could open the drawers in the nurses’ station, he’d left because he was doing his job. “You couldn’t have known…”
“I should have.” He speaks with surprising vehemence, slaps his hand against the wall. The sudden explosion of violence makes her flinch, and when he sees that, pain sears through his expression. “I shouldn’t have left you alone… damn it.” She thinks he’s going to hit the wall again, but instead he leans against it, looking down at the tiled floor. “If we hadn’t got there in time…”
Gooseflesh breaks out all over Sara’s body as his voice trails off, the grisly likelihood not one she wants to consider. “I’m fine,” she says again, because it’s all she can say, because maybe if she says it often enough, it will magically become true. She wonders for a moment if her mother thought that way too.
“You should go back to the lab,” Speedle says. “I’ll stay… finish up here. You can start processing.”
He’s looking at her with an earnest expression that reminds her of Nick or Greg, and she’s so tempted to take him up on the offer. She wants to get out of her, the urge to escape almost overwhelming, but she battles it fiercely, manages to push it aside. If she runs now, it will almost certainly be to a bar, to liquid oblivion, and that would solve nothing. “I appreciate that… I do. But I need to do this.”
She expects a fight; instead he nods. “Get back on the horse?”
It’s a surprising metaphor for a
“OK… but if you change your mind…”
She nods, and he pushes himself up, takes a step towards the nurses’ station. He stops, and she’s not sure why until she realises that she’s just said his name.
And not Speedle.
Tim.
He tilts his head, lifts a quizzical eyebrow, as if he’s just noticed that, knows that it’s the first time she’s ever called him that. “I just… thank you,” she says, feeling like an idiot.
Speedle blinks once, then twice, and then he smiles. A real, honest-to-God, tooth bearing smile that she’s never seen on his face before. “I’ll, um… I’ll give you a minute,” he says, taking backwards steps away from her towards the nurses’ station, where he’s met by an irate Nurse McKay. He deals with her brusquely, and for a moment Sara wonders if she imagined that smile. After all, crazy people do make her feel crazy.
At the moment though, she’s never felt more sane.
By the time she spends ten minutes in the lab however, she’s feeling anything but sane. Word of the incident has spread like wildfire, and it seems like everyone on the night shift has decided to seek her out and see how she is. It’s enough to make her feel distinctly uncomfortable, because she just wants to forget about it, but if she’s uncomfortable with it, that’s nothing to how Speedle seems to be reacting. She can see him trying to stop physically squirming when someone comes in and asks her if she’s all right, can see the line of tension running across his shoulders, as if he’s just waiting for someone to attack him over it.
No-one does though.
Not until Warrick comes into the lab, all furrowed brow and concerned eyes and asks the question. She’s been expecting him, because she knew he’d be worried – a CSI being attacked brings up all the wrong sort of memories for him, and he was going to want to check for himself that she was in one piece. With an ease born of practice, she smiles, tells him what she’s told everyone, that it was a little dicey for a minute there, but that she’s ok, and he nods, relaxes a little.
Then he turns around to Speedle and glares at him with such venom that Sara’s surprised he doesn’t vaporise on the spot. “What the hell were you thinking, man?” he demands, fury radiating from him. “Leaving her alone in a place like that…”
“Warrick!” Sara protests, at the same time as Speedle says, “I was only gone for a minute…”
He doesn’t sound convincing though, and maybe Warrick hears that too. Or maybe he doesn’t, because the words fly out of his mouth – “A minute alone is all it takes at a crime scene… you should know that.”
Speedle opens his mouth, closes it again and swallows hard, as if he’s forcing words back. For a second, Sara’s sure he’s going to throw something, or hit Warrick, but he does neither. Still, the effort it costs him is both considerable and visible, and he walks out of the room without saying a word.
Sara’s eyes follow him as he leaves the room, then turn back to Warrick, narrowing as the look on his face – stricken, almost guilty – registers. “You want to tell me what that was all about?” she demands, because between what Speedle said earlier and what’s just happened here, she knows that there’s something, some subtext she’s missing.
Warrick’s shoulders rise and fall with a
deep breath. “You know Cath and I met Speedle in
“Sure.” Sara crosses her arms over her chest. “What about it?”
“Sara… Speedle’s boss was Horatio Caine.”
He says it like it should mean something to her, like she should recognise the name, but the truth of the matter is, she’s never heard it before. “Who?”
Warrick frowns, then his face clears in
understanding. “That’s right… you were away…” Mention of her enforced leave –
the reasons behind it, surprisingly enough in
Reaching up and touching the long scratch on her neck, Sara finally feels like she’s unravelled the mystery that is Tim Speedle.
She should feel triumphant. Instead, she just feels sad.
>*<*>*<
When the lab gets to be too oppressive, too closed in for her, when she can no longer bear the weight of everyone’s worried stares, Sara does what she always does in that situation. Heading for her locker, she finds her secret stash of cigarettes that she would swear doesn’t exist, conceals the box, half full, lighter nestled inside, in her jacket pocket and goes to the roof of the building. She has a routine there; find a corner where she can’t be seen, lean against the wall and light up, letting the taste of the nicotine relax her, imagine that the thin wisps of smoke vanishing into the sky are her worries.
That’s her routine, but when she arrives there today, she finds that someone else has beaten her to it.
Much to her surprise, Tim Speedle is standing in her usual hidey-hole, and judging by the several cigarette butts littering the area around him, he’s been there for quite some time.
She considers saying something, but words are hard to come by, in the first place because it’s Speedle, and secondly because no-one in the lab seems to know what to say to one another at the moment. They’re all so worried about Nick, so fixated on that damn video feed that using any modicum of energy on not concentrating on getting him back seems almost treasonous. People are just moving restlessly from one lead to another, when they have a lead, and when they don’t, they’re trying to avoid the television coverage, or the television cameras outside the lab, or Nick’s parents in Grissom’s office, or the damn AV lab and that damn video feed.
Sara is exhausted; everyone is exhausted, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.
Drawing in a deep breath, she goes over to him, sits down beside him without a word. She’s not expecting him to get up and walk away, or even to talk to her – neither is Speedle’s style. So when he speaks to her before she’s even taken the first drag of her cigarette, she nearly drops the thing, all the more so at his words.
“You holding up ok?”
Her fingers clench around the cigarette, and she brings it to her lips, hoping that he can’t see the tremor of her hand. He actually sounds concerned, which is dangerous for her. Indifference, she can handle. Confrontation, bring it on. But sympathy and concern could easily breach her defences right now, and she doesn’t want that to happen, not here, not now, not when she’s already as close to needing a drink as she’s been in quite some time.
“Sure,” she says, but even to her own ears, she doesn’t sound it. “You?”
Speedle takes a long draw on his own cigarette, sends a plume of grey smoke into the air as he exhales in a humourless chuckle. “Just dandy,” he drawls, the sarcasm like a third person beside them. It irks Sara, makes her hackles rise, and she’s just about to say something sharp when he lets his breath out again, this time in a sigh, and shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be out here,” he tells her, and she turns her head towards him, glad he’s not watching to see the surprise stamped all over her face. “People have a habit of getting hurt when I’m around.”
“You’re threatening me now?” From the look on his face, the sound of his voice, it’s the furthest thing from his mind, but that’s what the words sound like, and wonder of wonders, she gets that rare thing, a Speedle smile. It’s a bitter smile, to be sure, but she’s not inclined to quibble. Then, insight suddenly dawning, she takes the bull by the horns. “I know what you’re thinking… and it’s not the same thing.”
Now it’s his turn to look sharply at her,
eyes narrowing like lasers, the pain there burning her to the core. “Warrick
told me…” she tells him. “About what happened, why you left
“Did Warrick tell you that Horatio called me that morning?” Speedle demands, anger, real anger in his voice. “That I was supposed to be working that case with him? But I was just back from vacation, I was tired, I still had another day left… and I said I’d see him the next day. Except the next day, he was dead.”
He’s angry, and Sara knows it, but if he thinks she’s going to back down, then he doesn’t know her. “And you think you could have changed that? You can’t think like that… you’ll drive yourself crazy.”
“You think I don’t know that?” His harsh laugh sends chills up Sara’s spine. “I know that… my friends told me that. The department shrink told me that. Total strangers have told me that, and you know what? It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. I’m still here, and he’s not… you have no clue what that’s like to live with.”
A few weeks ago, standing in a room with Warrick and a Speedle-shaped hole, Sara had thought that she’d unravelled the mystery that was Tim Speedle.
Now she realises that she hadn’t even come close.
She’d thought that his coolness and reserve was just part of his personality, that he was one of those disagreeable people who thrived on conflict – another Ecklie. Now she knows just how wrong she was – he does care, cares too much, feels too much, and as far as he’s concerned, no-one else can know what he’s going through.
He happens to be wrong, because she knows all too well.
“When I was thirteen,” she tells him, “My mother killed my father.”
He’s only the second person in
“My family…” she continues quietly, shaking her head, “Were not the Cleavers. Not even close. My dad… well, abusive doesn’t quite cover it. And my mom always took the brunt of it, always. We knew when to stay quiet and when to hide and what to do and what to say… and we knew when to run. Apart from one night… when I didn’t run fast enough.” She shudders, because she doesn’t like to think about That Night, the screams, the pain, the horrible noise of steel puncturing flesh, the slap of a grown man hitting the floor…
She starts, opens her eyes (when had she closed them?) when she feels Speedle’s hand on her back. Her gaze meets his, and he drops his hand quickly, as if he’s afraid she’s going to freak out on him.
“I still dream about it,” she tells him, her voice surprisingly calm. “Cast off on the walls, this rookie cop puking everywhere… my mother just sitting there on the couch, as if she was waiting for tea with the Queen. This social worker came and took me away, and I couldn’t let go of her hand…” Another shake of her head, the better to banish the memories. “For a long time, I thought it was my fault… that if I’d been quieter, or smarter or better… he wouldn’t have hit me… and my mom wouldn’t have done it.”
“She was protecting you,” Speedle says. “A mother’s instinct… it would have happened no matter what you did.”
Sara smiles, drops her cigarette on the ground, grinds the butt under her heel. “I know that,” she says simply. “Everyone told me that. Complete strangers even. But it took me a long time to believe it.”
Speedle raises an eyebrow. “You trying to give me hope or depress me?”
She laughs at that, feels suddenly that there’s a bond between them that wasn’t there before. “Your friend didn’t die because of you… just like Nick wasn’t taken because you were here, and my parents didn’t self destruct because of me. It’s just life… that’s all.”
“Yeah, well…” One last drag of his cigarette and it joins Sara’s in the dirt. “It sucks.”
Sara reaches into her pocket, pulls out her box of cigarettes and flicks it open, offering it to him. “It often does.”
He accepts, offers her his lighter in return and they sit in silence, watching the sun move across the sky as clouds of grey threaten to obscure it.
>*<*>*<
Grey has long since swallowed up the sky, but all Sara can see is colour.
The yellow beam of searchlights as they searched for where Nick was buried.
Brown soil erupting everywhere as the bomb exploded, white panic rushing through her as Grissom and Nick flew threw the air.
The flashing blue lights of the ambulance as its white door closed on the worried faces of Warrick and Catherine, bringing them to the hospital to sit with Nick.
Greg’s pale face, smudged with earth and tiredness, stamped with the same combination of relief and fatigue she was feeling herself.
“Should we go to the hospital?” Greg asks her, and she considers it for a moment before shaking her head.
“Warrick and Cath are already there… and his parents are on their way…”
“You’re right…” Greg’s agreeing with her, but she knows from the look on his face, knows from the way that his eyes linger on the space where the ambulance was, that he’d discard her argument in a minute.
Maybe he’s right, she considers. Maybe the hospital is the best place for them to be. God knows, her other two options are her bed or a bar, and the latter is very close to winning.
She’s about to suggest it when a third voice joins their conversation. “Hey,” says Speedle. “You guys ok?”
He sounds tired, but friendlier than Sara’s ever heard him when it’s not just the two of them, and Greg must think the same, because he’s blinking at Speedle, staring at him as if he’s never seen him before. So she takes the initiative, nods at Speedle, even though the action makes her feel like her head might just fall off.
“Yeah Tim… we’re fine.” Greg looks sharply at her, and she realises that it’s the first time she’s ever used his first name in front of anyone else. For that matter, Speedle looks surprised himself, but the very edges of his lips turn up in the barest hint of a smile. “Just relieved it’s all over.”
Speedle tilts his head, she thinks in
acknowledgement. “I hear that…” His gaze moves away from them then, in the same
direction that Greg’s been glancing, and when he turns back, he’s the Speedle
that everyone’s come to know since he arrived from
Sara looks at Greg with a raised eyebrow; he looks at her in consternation. “Actually,” she tells him, “We were thinking that it might be pretty crowded over there… we thought we’d make a second wave later.”
Greg nods. “I think I’ll just head home… shower… try to sleep…”
“I won’t sleep.” The words are out of Sara’s mouth before she can stop them; never a good sleeper at the best of times, the adrenaline is still pumping far too hard at the moment.
“Me neither.” Speedle tilts his head again, and this time, the quirk of his lips is a little wider, a little more noticeable. “Maybe we could all go get breakfast somewhere?”
In all the time Speedle’s been in
But that’s not why she smiles.
And the novelty of the moment isn’t why she says, “Yeah… I’d like that.”
It’s because when he said those words, his eyes met hers, and once again, all she can see is colour; this time, a warm shade of brown.
She likes it.