#I'm sorry anon you keep missing the turtle stuff!

[plothooksinc]

SB10? Also Chapter One?

So greedy! :o

SB10 is Snowblind Chapter 10! Back to Rurouni Kenshin, in which a wolf and a hitokiri on opposite sides of a war find themselves begrudgingly working together for the sake of survival in the middle of winter-blizzard conditions with an agreement not to try murdering each other until they reach the edge of civilisation and the winner can feasibly get home without bleeding to death on the way. Things got complicated along the way by the two of them stumbling across a slaughtered family and both of them being honourable enough (on either side of a war) to think that the army deserters responsible should probably die for it. And then I dropped an avalanche on their heads.

And then I didn't update for 13 years and left everyone with that cliffhanger--

Image courtesy of the ever awesome @varethane I totally hung onto this for 16 years hush-- ANYWAY. I finally updated and the last published chapter had Saito pulling Kenshin out of a snowbank and being super pissy about it, not the least of which being that Kenshin just hallucinated him as Kenshin's ex-wife. What is his life, honestly.

SB10 is the aftermath of that and is not very long thus far, but I have made a start on it, because my MO for writing until this year was literally pecking away at things a sentence at a time. So it is coming. It's worth saying that it's one of my favourite fics, because it so full of snark and also, I think, the best fight scene I ever wrote. Nothing like two deadly killers playing cat and mouse in a forest amirite-- Also the fic I sat down and resolved to stretch my writing legs with, so chock full of bleak winter descriptions, survival tricks, and awful grey area politics.

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He surfaced often, to varying degrees of discomfort.  The awful pressure on his chest was gone, but it still hurt to draw in breath, fire stabbing down his sides and the cold air burning his throat.  In the moments when his fragmented thoughts came together long enough to approach lucidity, he wondered if this cold, pain-speared moment would be his last.  

What were fleeting moments of seeing the grey, snow-swirled sky above him became dark warmth, an orange glow that blurred his vision, and the scowl of a man who piled him unceremoniously with blankets that were still very faintly damp - dry enough to not chill him.  None of it made any sense to him.  Even if they weren't enemies, he couldn't fathom why Saito would bother to haul him out of the snowdrift and back to relative safety.  The wolf was pragmatic, surely.  Why not let the snow finish the job?  

He would ask.  If he could piece the words together.  If the scowl stayed sharp enough in his vision for longer than a moment before it slid away in the haze.  If it didn't hurt.  It occurred to him, vaguely, that what Saito's reasons were may well be moot.  He could still die here, wrapped in blankets and fading piece by piece.

It wouldn't be an unwelcome death, but for the fact that he promised.

Kenshin curled his fingers blindly into the wool and resolved to be stubborn.

[...man. Kenshin and Leo have a lot in common right now, lmfao. I really need to stop hurting my blorbos.]

I'll get to Chapter One in another post.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hi AJ! I’m sorry if you’ve been asked this before but I couldn’t find anything like this 😅 as an old GSR fan I’ve always thought their ending in 9.10 was perfect, even if I missed them on the show, it just felt so right. So I was a little upset when Sara returned sans Grissom and I tend to ignore the divorce thing and all that came with it because imo the two of them in Costa Rica after everything they went through just made so much sense to me. So I was wondering what you think would have been their ultimate ending, like if Sara hadn’t returned and they stayed together around the globe until, idk, they both returned for the show’s finale together. Like what would life have been for them then? I know that’s way AU but it’s honestly how I sometimes want to think of them, even if I loved the finale and their return in CSI Vegas. Sorry for the lengthy question 😳 thank you so much for all your writing and meta, I’m a huge fan too! 🤍

hi, anon!

thank you for your kind words! i'm so glad you enjoy my stuff.

re: your question:

i'm very much with you in feeling like the reunion in episode 09x10 "one to go" was the natural conclusion to the gsr canon storyline.

while of course i don't begrudge jorja fox returning to work on the show—her career, her call—from a storytelling perspective, i also, like you, wish grissom and sara could have remained together off-screen for the duration of the show, only returning for the series finale.

there is no part of sara's or gsr's story from episode 09x10 "one to go" on that i would lament the loss of could we swap it out for them getting to keep their happy ending in the rainforest (and never having to go through that godawful, nonsensical divorce).

that said, i will admit: i honestly have never given much thought to imagining what might have happened had sara never returned to the lab in s10.

my personal "ignoring the later seasons of show canon" happy place au actually starts a bit earlier, in s8, based on the premise of "what if sara never left vegas to begin with?" so that's where i spend most of my daydreaming hours.

that so, i'm afraid i don't have a particularly well thought-out or cogent answer to your question.

there are probably lots of ways that scenario could play out satisfactorily.

to offer a few:

they could stay in costa rica, continuing with whatever scientific research work sara was doing there at the time that grissom joined her. could be there for however many years. eventually, they could retire. live on the beach. become that eccentric old american couple with a house full of curios, insects, and animals. grissom could wear hawaiian shirts. sara could learn spanish. they could come back to vegas for the series finale tanned (in grissom's case) and freckled (in sara's), with windswept hair and deep, deep smile lines, grissom spouting off dichos and sara with photos of sea turtles in their "front yard" saved on her phone.

they could essentially do what in canon they do between "immortality" and csi: vegas s1: i.e., globetrotting as they engage in some kind of scientific research. both of them are wired such that they want to make positive contributions to the world they live in, so they could end up having "second careers" in conservation work (whether it were with a "save the bees" initiative or a sea shepherd expedition or something else related to ecology) in order to scratch that itch. maybe they could live on a boat like the ishmael and sail the seas. conversely, maybe they could be more landbound but move around taking part in various projects, like setting up urban apiaries or tracking butterfly migratory routes. when they came back to vegas for the series finale, they could have all sorts of stories about the places they'd been and the work they were doing. invite greg to come and join them the next time they were in the amazon. tell catherine if she ever wanted to catch the whale stopover in baja, she could always crash on their couch.

or, in a slightly different spin on the above idea, maybe they could become wildlife photographers or national geographic explorers.

they could also go on the lecture circuit, traveling around to offer seminars at different criminalistics conferences and law enforcement training programs around the world. after all, between them they have almost forty combined years of experience in the field and share a wealth of knowledge, which they could use to educate the "rising generation" of forensic scientists. they've both always been excellent teachers, too. and it would be a fun little callback to the way they met, right? maybe in the finale, some new lvpd hire could recognize them from a panel they attended in grad school; admit to having a secret crush on sara ("she was just so knowledgeable about everything, up there with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, talking about how you can't always trust your first blush—").

alternatively, they could settle down someplace, whether abroad or back in the states (maybe in california, to be close to grissom's mother?). perhaps grissom could take work at a university, teaching and conducting research, and sara could assist him. she could also pursue some kind of work of her own—maybe with a nonprofit project. (she's so multitalented and highly educated; there are a million and one things she'd be good at!) she could also potentially go back to school to pursue a phd so that she and grissom could eventually be spousal hires at the same institution. rock back to vegas in the finale as "dr. sidle" or "dr. grissom."

they could write books together: on criminalistics, on entomology, on something they had researched. bonus points if some aspect of the case in the series finale touched up on the subject they'd been publishing about.

i've always liked the idea of them maybe trying out the ranch life—living out in the countryside, away from any big cities, having a few horses and chickens and dogs and cats, grissom getting to play out some of his childhood cowboy fantasies, sara maybe doing some equine therapy. they could take up insect farming. (spending so much time in nature and around animals would undoubtedly be something they'd both enjoy. good for them, too!) picture grissom making all sorts of metaphors about roping and riding in the finale. sara just beaming at him ("okay, buckaroo").

they could—maybe after some significant time spent away from the field—return, once they were no longer burnt out on the work, to criminalistics, but at another lab, away from vegas (and all its "ghosts"). maybe the finale could involve some cross-country fugitive case that required their lab to team up with the lvpd.

maybe grissom could take an early retirement and sara could work in some field of her choosing—something to do with animal advocacy or scientific consulting work (putting that ol' physics degree to good use). grissom could develop some obscure hobby, like raising heirloom vegetables or reconstructing ancient roman board games or something. baffle everyone with references to it during the finale.

one thing i think would be true across all of these scenarios is that grissom and sara would get married (probably not long after their jungle reunion).

there could be versions of this story where they have kids, either biological or fostered or adopted.

versions where it's just them and a dog.

i tend to prefer takes where they'd still remain in contact with their old friends as opposed to completely falling off the grid (as seems to be the case post-"immortality" in canon), though they could do so living far away, if needed.

of course, the main thing i would absolutely want to see would just be them together and thriving, with their happy ending intact.

anyway.

sorry i don't have a more well-thought answer for you!

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[tiredalexanderr]

Sometimes you reblog stuff from me and I see it on your page and I'm like "!!!!!!! I've been chosen!!!!!! " Cause you reblog a lot of cool stuff and I just get really starry-eyes when stuff from my page ends up on yours and this is really ramble-y but the moral of the story is that you're awesome and I miss talking to you but panic every time I go to send you a message cause I'm an awkward turtle. I hope you have a great night!!!!!!!

Holy shit??? This is such a kind message, seriously, you're so fricken sweet!! It sounds like we've talked in the past, so I'm sorry we don't keep up as much - I tend have a hard time talking to so many people, I'm super duper sorry. But my blog?? With cool stuff?? I promise you I'm actually a huge dork lmao. you're a real sweetie, thanks anon, I hope you have a lovely night too ❤️❤️