Title: Potential
Fandom: CSI
Rating: PG
Word Count: 347
Prompt: 34 Not Enough
Spoilers: Burden of Proof post ep.
Sara sits on the couch in her apartment, staring at the two objects on the coffee table.
The first is a cardboard box, holding the contents of her lab locker. Not much is inside; some blouses and t-shirts, kept as changes of clothes for emergency; a Forensic Journal of Science that she’s meant to throw out, but never quite got around to; some deodorant and a hairbrush, a few hair grips; a baseball cap to keep the sun out of her eyes at a scene. Her ID card, her own face smiling out from it.
Not much to show for two years of her life.
Beside it, there is a plant. Green and verdant, there are also copious buds visible, with one or two showing signs of bursting forth, tiny hints of red showing through the green. So much potential, and she thinks that it’s a shame that it’s here, in her apartment – she never did have much of a green thumb.
In her hand, there is a card, the card that came with the plant. In handwriting she doesn’t recognise, there is a sentiment she does – “From Grissom.”
Two words. Sparse, utilitarian, like the man himself.
He’s never had much of a way with words, Sara reflects. “The lab needs you.”
Two years ago, in a dead of night phone call, it had been “I need you.”
She’d got on the next plane.
Funny how things can change in two years.
Because the phone is in her hand again now,
and she is dialling the number of the airline, booking a flight back to
She knows that Grissom is going to be surprised, that he will have thought that the plant, that the potential therein, was enough to make her stay.
Once upon a time, it would have been, but not any more. Now, she knows that it’s more than she could ever have expected, but still, it’s not enough.