Title: Smart is as Smart Does

Fandom: CSI

Character: Sara Sidle

Rating: PG13

Word Count: 669

Prompt: 86 Choices

Spoilers: After the Show, Nesting Dolls

“Did your father ever tell you you were pretty?”

“I guess.”

“He ever tell you you were smart?”

“Yeah.”

Catherine doesn’t seem to notice how her words discomfort Sara, and for that, Sara is grateful. She lets the older woman continue with her pop psychology before getting back to the evidence, and Sara weighs in with her observations, even helps contribute to the break-through they make.

But she’s glad that Catherine is the one who handles the evidence, holds up the sample of blood to observe how it falls.

If she were doing it, there’s no way that she’d be able to disguise the shake of her hands.

Because her father did tell her that she was pretty. He told her that all the time, usually when he opened her door at night-time when she should have been asleep in her bed. She never could fall asleep though, was forever waiting for the footsteps in the hall, the creak of the hinges, the muted sound of her mother sobbing in the hallway.

The whisper of the bedcovers as her father pulled them back, the whisper of his hand across her skin, the whisper of his voice in her ears, “How’s my pretty girl?”

He used to tell her that she was smart too. Every time she went outside the door, bruises hidden under her clothes – unlike the treatment her mother received, he never hit her where it showed. Every time he thought she might be thinking about telling someone, about rebelling against what he was doing, he told her the same thing.

That she was a smart girl, and that she knew what he’d do if she told anyone.

He’d kill her, and her mother, and while it was tempting to dismiss it as idle threats, she saw the look in his eyes and she knew that he meant it.

She was a smart girl, and she made the smart choices, that’s what he told her. She made the choices that kept herself alive.

She still wonders sometimes if that was what she was doing that day in the kitchen, the day that he came up behind her in the broad daylight, put his arms around her, whispered those words in her ear. “How’s my pretty girl?”

She doesn’t remember making the choice to pick up the knife, doesn’t remember choosing to use it.

She does remember how easily it slid into his stomach, remembers the thud he made as he hit the ground, remembers how she moved away from him as quickly as she could, just in case he came after her.

She remembers standing there, watching the clock, watching him, until she realised he wasn’t going to get up again.

And she remembers the look on her mother’s face when she walked in, saw her husband dead on the floor, her daughter still holding a bloody knife in her hand.

She remembers Laura Sidle didn’t hesitate in making a choice of her own.

She took the knife from Sara’s hand, wiped it clean of prints before gripping it firmly in her own hand. She ordered Sara to wash her hands, take off her bloody shirt so that she, Laura, could wear it instead. And she told her to do it quickly, because they needed to call the police.

“But-”

It had been the only word of protest that Sara could get out before her mother whirled on her, eyes wild, yet strangely determined. “Listen to me… I mightn’t have been able to protect you from him… but you have your whole life in front of you… and I can protect you from this. You were upstairs… you heard us fighting… you heard a scream… and when you came downstairs, you found us like this. Do you understand?”

Mother and daughter had looked at one another for a long moment, and eventually Sara had done what she’d always done.

She’d made the smart choice.

There are days she can even convince herself that it was the right one.