Title: Living Proof

Fandom: CSI

Pairing: Sara Sidle/Cyrus Lockwood

Rating: PG

Word Count: 485

Spoilers: Inside the Box, Face Lift.

Prompt: 35 – Sixth Sense

Notes: An AU to the AU story, A Fool for Lesser Things.

Sara’s always had a calm, rational head on her shoulders, has never been one to lose control easily, has always known that there’s a reasonable explanation behind everything. It’s what drew her to science in the first place, what makes her the damn good CSI that she is. She’s a practical person to the marrow of her bones, and she’s proud of that.

She’s never believed in the paranormal, always scoffed at people who did, and on the few occasions she’s permitted herself to wonder – Spontaneous Human Combustion anyone? – she’s always been disappointed.

She never believed in the existence of a sixth sense.

Not until she became living – thankfully – proof of it.

She didn’t remember what happened at first, which she knew was to be expected. Traumatic amnesia, the doctors had told her: the mind’s way of protecting itself from things it didn’t want to remember. Once, she’d have said that she’d want to remember everything, no matter how painful, that she could handle it.

Then the dreams started.

She knows enough to know that they’re not dreams, has heard Cyrus talking about it when he thinks she’s not listening, has read the evidence reports in the lab, hoping against hope that neither Grissom nor Cyrus will ever find that out. She knows that in her dreams, she and Cyrus are in the First Monument Bank, that they are in the middle of a robbery, that the glass is cold against her hands and she always thinks that they should have stayed in bed that morning.

She hears the commotion, from the corner of her eye sees a woman and her child trying to escape, and she sees Cyrus’s right hand reaching for his hip, and the gun that’s concealed there.

And there’s something else, some flicker of something either in the corner of her eye or the back of her brain, and the next thing she knows, she’s moving, launching herself at Cyrus and flinging herself against him, bringing both of them to the ground.

The force of landing wakes her up, and more often than not, she is screaming.

That’s when Cyrus reaches over, gathers her shaking body into his arms, holds her tight against his chest. She closes her eyes, breathing in his scent, and he whispers words she can barely hear, hardly understand, but she knows that it’s his way of letting her know that he is there, that everything is going to be all right.

It’s times like that, when his fingers roam across the skin of her back, sensation disappearing as they run across the jagged white scar, that she believes in a sixth sense, because there’s no way she could have known that there was a sniper in the building opposite, no way she could have known a shot was coming with Cyrus’s name on it.

There’s no rational explanation, but for once, she can live with that.