Title: Deus Ex Machina

Fandom: CSI

Pairing: pre-slash with C/S to come later in the series

Author: nailbunny617

Email: nailbunny617@yahoo.com

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing…except my teeny monkey bobblehead doll named Mr Monkey… And this is full of angst and is a precursor to femslash.

A/N: Please note that this is a sequel – you should probably read And Reality Bites Back first… This is only a bridge chapter to what I absolutely promise will be a story full of Cath/Sara goodness (eventually). Plus I cheated and made Sara join AA, too…which, I might add, is something the PEAP counselors would have at *least* strongly suggested to her (no matter how much she told them it was a “me problem”)…thanks for the help figuring out that acronym!

There was always something inside me that despised happy endings in movies. The ones where some trite twist of fate saved the day in the end. The ones where everything turned out better than just okay.

I hated them because, sometimes, they gave me hope. I wanted that last gorgeous smile right before the credits rolled to be mine. I wanted to smile and mean it.

But the world just doesn’t work that way. The endings are never happy because there really aren’t any – until death, that is. Life almost always gives you just one more chance to fuck everything up beyond repair.

When I was eight, I went with my family on a trip to Big Sur, on the coast of California. I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my entire life – soaring cliffs, stunning ocean views, and the salty tang in the air…it was overwhelming. I cried when I saw my first rainbow because it was so beautiful that it hurt.

That’s one of those moments that you completely forget about…until years later you fall in love and fall hard – and all you can think about is the last time you felt both extremes of joy and sorrow so deeply. So purely. The kind of love where your knees end up scraped and raw, bleeding your heart dry. The kind of falling where you start doing something to drown it all out, drown yourself, drown the feelings and sounds and memories. Something you’d have never, ever thought yourself capable of before it happened. Before you woke up, so hung-over you literally couldn’t make your eyes focus correctly. So hung-over that you scratched the shit outta your car trying to get the key in the lock just so you could replenish your stock of booze. So hung-over that you picked up the phone and dialed her number over and over, only to hang up just before she answered.

I never really was a dramatic sort of person. Maybe I’d get worked up for the victims, the ones that I took personally, but never for myself. I was never so vivid until I became an alcoholic.

There, I’d said it. Not out loud, mind you, but Rome wasn’t built in a day damnit. I looked in the mirror and said it. Slowly, each syllable an accusation, condemning me to the world I didn’t want. Tethering me solidly so maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t ever hit rock bottom again.

I’d immediately thrown away the PEAP counselor’s business card that Grissom had given me, saying that until I went I wouldn’t be allowed back to work. His voice was soft, soft but suffused with steel. There was no way he was going to let me out of it.

I had absolutely no intention of calling those people. There was no way I’d talk to a therapist of any kind, all soft eyes and quiet words and gentle insinuations picking at my soul.

Or at least that’s what I told myself until one afternoon I woke up lying in my bathroom, surrounded by blood and the shattered glass of my mirror.

As soon as the nurse brusquely informed me that she’d give me a prescription of Tylenol with Codeine, I shook my head quietly. I couldn’t explain it, then, the terror I felt. What I’d done. What I couldn’t remember. I didn’t know much about those drunken weeks, and it scared me in a way I’d never felt before. I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of painkillers. When I got back from the hospital, my hands trembled with pain and the after-effects of my adrenaline high. I refused to admit that it might be withdrawal.

So I picked up the phone and called the nice people with the quietly supportive voices, softened just enough to avoid scaring off any gun-shy folks like myself. I was lost and scared and alone, trying desperately to make that tremulous first step. There wasn’t anyone I could talk to – having grown apart from my friends in San Francisco and never having grown close to my friends in Las Vegas.

During that first session, my counselor told me that – even though the alcohol seemed to be only a sign of my problems and not the cause – I should attend an AA meeting. It was one of those suggestions that I just nodded and agreed with, too exhausted and desperate to do anything else. Having anticipated that I probably wouldn’t have gone if I’d had time to reconsider, she found one the same afternoon.

I went to the meeting. I sat there, resenting the hell out of every second. I was so occupied with my own bitterness that I didn’t realize that I was hearing my own story from those strangers’ mouths. There were all sorts of variations, but the main plot line never varied.

The only thing that had really been the difference between me and most of the people there was that it wasn’t the alcohol I had a problem with. It was simply an escape. A means to an end. I’d just found another convenient way of running away – I could’ve just as easily been attending NA, even though the idea makes me shudder with dread. So I guess, after all, alcoholic wasn’t the right word. Emotional mess – definitely. Alcohol addict – probably not.

That night I sat and stared at a bottle of Jack Daniels, having long ago thrown out anything less than 80 proof because it didn’t do the job fast enough. I sat there, thinking about how easy it would be to twist off the cap and down it and forget myself for just a little while. It wasn’t the bitter sting of warm alcohol that I wanted so badly – it was the oblivion that would follow. The bottle didn’t have any power over me. I had power over me, damnit. My stitches twitched, and I hurled the glass bottle at the wall as hard as I could. For the second time in as many days, I had to get out my dustpan and carefully try to avoid cutting myself with the shards.

When I looked in the newly-replaced mirror that night, I didn’t recognize the person looking back at me. Her eyes were full of self-hatred, confusion and pain. Her body was painfully slim with ethereally pale skin. Her hands shook from withdrawal and uncertainty. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find my reflection anywhere.

I didn’t sleep much that day. It turned out that I’d been using alcohol as a crutch for so long that I’d forgotten how to do the simplest things – like fall asleep. Laying there in bed, so tired I couldn’t sleep, I promised myself I’d never touch a drink again.

Maybe it wasn’t a realistic goal, but it was what I needed to get through the afternoon.

When I woke up, I looked in the mirror and saw firm resolve. Unlike those ancient tragedies I read for Lit class in college, there wouldn’t be any God swooping out of the scenery to fix it all. I promised myself that day that I’d make my own happy ending, no matter what hardship might be next.

And so I will…because I have to.