Losing Count
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
Spoilers: Pilot, Cool Change.
Feedback: Makes my day
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site Checkmate , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.
Summary: He was lost until she made him lose count of the cards
Author's Notes: Written for the Live Journal Writer's Choice "Loss" theme.
Counting cards isn't illegal if you do the math in your head.
Just like approaching a judge for a warrant over Brass's head isn't illegal, just unethical.
Just like placing a bet isn't illegal, or unethical, unless you do it in return for a favour.
Nor is it unwise, unless the judge is corrupt and you bet on the wrong team.
There's nothing wrong with leaving your partner alone at a crime scene. Not even if it's to go and place a bet.
Unless the suspect comes back and kills her.
He used to have a list of rules to cover the ethical and moral grey areas that he dealt in every day, and he kept careful count of them, knew just where the lines were. He never thought that there was anything wrong with that, until the day he looked up from counting cards in a dive of a casino on Blue Diamond Road and into Sara's eyes.
He lost count of the cards pretty quickly after that, right around the time that she told him that Holly was dead, and he realised just how lost he'd was, realised that he hardly knew who he was anymore.
Hard on the heels of that realisation came the thought that he might have lost his way, but Holly had lost her life, and that he owed it to her, if not to himself, to get his act together.
He caught his first break later on that day when he didn't lose his job. He'd been all ready to turn in his badge and weapon, but Grissom had given him another chance, something that had driven Sara crazy for a long time. She saw him as an addict, a loose cannon, someone not to be trusted. Which, while he didn't like it, he understood. He'd lost any right he had to be treated any different; all he could do was work hard to earn her trust.
He earned more than her trust.
He earned her friendship.
And somewhere along the line, though he's not sure where, he earned more than that.
Somewhere along the line, he earned her love, and he doesn't want to lose that.
He looks back now at the rules that used to govern his life, and he wonders who that man was, that man who looked like him and used his name, but who bears no resemblance to who he is now. That man was a mess, confused, lost and he didn't even know it.
He's not that man anymore.
He promised Grissom that he wouldn't let him down again, and he hasn't. He told Catherine that the whole incident had made him think about who he was with his partners, and he hopes that he's a better partner in light of it.
He's sure that he's a better man.
He doesn't get lost any more, doesn't go over his supervisor's head, doesn't place any bets. He's never going to lose track of himself that way again, because he knows the price is too high, knows the price that's already been paid was too high.
The only place he gets lost these days is in Sara's arms, in Sara's eyes. And when he's there, he doesn't want to be found.