Nick/Sara (CSI)
Title: Snickers: More than Just a Candy Bar
Author: songs_of_summer (Astralis)
Spoilers: Basically everything through to season five episode one
I love these two, probably beyond all that is practical, reasonable, or sensible. I love them separately, as individual characters, and with all the potential they have together.
Ever since I started watching CSI a year ago, it's been All About Sara for me. While I adore (almost) the whole cast, there was something about Sara which just hooked me and kept me watching. Being a romantic and a shipper at heart, it was inevitable that I was going to find at least one ship on this show, and that Sara was going to be in it. At first I went the sensible, canonical route of Grissom/Sara, but for me there was something missing. Some spark, something that has nothing to do with what's canon and what's not. It was just luck, coincidence, that I started wondering about Nick and Sara, probably because I got interested in Nick as a character around the same time I was giving up on the Grissom/Sara thing.
And then I had to rationalize it, to figure out why it works in my mind when it doesn't for so many other people, to put it into more words than "But they're both really hot." Which is true, but it's not the only reason I like them together.
As people, both characters are completely emotionally screwed up. Nick (George Eads) seems to have made it his ambition in life to fix everyone who crosses his path. This has included victims and their families, a prostitute by the name of Kristy Hopkins, and Sara. Designated by the writers to be the character who asks the silly questions to provide an explanation for the audience, Nick comes across as being a bit dimmer than he really is. No one who does this job can be dumb, but it explains Nick's portrayal in some fics, and the minds of some fans, as slightly incompetent at work but a suave Romantic Hero, uncomplicated Nice Guy character who can sweep the requisite person off their feet and into a relationship of hearts and roses and fluffy bunnies, be that person Sara, Greg, Catherine, or anyone else. There's a lot more to Nick than is immediately obvious. Like Sara, he really wants Grissom's respect, although Nick's need seems to be diminshing as Sara's increases. I don't know anything about psychology, but it's tempting, and probably logical, to attribute this need for respect from his boss and teacher to the imperfect relationship he had with his father as a child. As Nick has become more comfortable with himself, this need has diminished.
Probably at the core of most of Nick's issues, like the need for respect and the need to rescue everyone else, is what happened when he was nine years old: his sexual abuse by a last-minute babysitter. In the only episode when we hear about the abuse, the season two episode Overload, Nick tells Catherine that he'd never told anyone about it before. It's never come up on the show again, but fans have seized on it as an important factor in Nick's life.
Then there's Sara (Jorja Fox). She's always taken refuge in work, because that's what she's best at. Sara is almost too smart, with a string of academic qualifications: valetudinarian at the age of 16, early admission and a huge scholarship to Harvard, a transfer to UC Berkeley, a Bachelor of Science and then a Master's degree. Raised by ex-hippie parents in a bed and breakfast, Sara always preferred adults to her peers - and now that she's an adult herself, she's alienated, in a lot of ways, from people who should be her equals. Much of this is self-imposed: Sara doesn't really understand people, and most of them don't understand her.
Like Nick, Sara has something in her past that provides most of the keys to who she is now. Unlike Nick, what that is hasn't been specified, but any Sara fan could recite the litany of episodes, cases and victims that she's become emotionally attached to. Sex Lies and Larvae: Kaye Shelton, victim of spousal abuse, shot dead by her husband. Too Tough to Die: Pamela Adler, beaten, raped and left to die - but left severely mentally disabled, rather than dead. Homebodies: Susanna Kirkwood, raped by two men in her own home, then shot dead in the driveway after failing to identify the rapists. These aren't the only cases or the only victims, but what they all have in common is abuse against women. The Kaye Shelton case involved spousal abuse, but all the others are rape cases. Whether Sara herself was raped or abused, or whether someone she loved was, she has an empathy and attachment to these victims that has to be more than intellectual.
I'm not saying that I like Nick and Sara together - that I think they should be together - because they're both victims, or possible victims, of sexual abuse. That's not any sort of grounds for a successful relationship, and it's far too simplistic.
Part of the original reason I liked them together was because of the "emotionally screwed up" thing. I can see a wonderfully angsty dynamic, that I've never managed to write successfully, happening between the two of them, because they're so messed up and she has so many problems trusting, and he just needs to fix everyone and they're hot and...
Oh yeah. Coherent helps.
I can see any relationship between them - which, realistically, is never going to happen in canon, but we have fic - starting from loneliness. Neither of them seem to have much of a life outside the lab - although, as this is CSI and neither of them is called Catherine, for all we know Nick spends his free time at the opera - but the extent to which this was a conscious choice is pretty unclear. I'd be inclined to say Sara chose to go that route, but was helped into it by her need to bury herself in work and separate herself from people; and Nick ended up like that from circumstance, because working the graveyard shift is probably not really conducive to having a social life, even in Las Vegas. I think they're both lonely: Nick was more than willing to sleep with Kristy Hopkins in season one, and he has a ladies' man reputation with no successful relationships; and Sara manages to bypass her barriers for a relationship with EMT Hank Peddigrew, a relationship which "crashed and burned" when she discovered that Hank actually already had a girlfriend. Sara is hung up over Grissom - and I'll confess that I can't for the life of me understand why, unless it's because he's like her: exceptionally smart, but with problems relating to other people.
As much as Sara trusts anyone, I think she trusts Nick. They seem to have been allied quite a lot during season four, most notably in After the Show when Catherine takes over their high-profile case and works it with Greg. In After the Show, and the earlier season four episode Invisible Evidence, it's Nick to whom Sara offloads her problems and anger. Personally, I love the scene between them in Invisible Evidence after Sara has been temporarily taken off her own homicide case in order to help with a rush case of Warrick's:
SARA: You know what pisses me off?
NICK: Lots of things.
SARA: Victims aren't equal. High profile cases get priority.
Maybe it's my being a Nick/Sara shipper, but I can't picture her saying that to anyone else. She doesn't have that sort of relationship with Catherine, Warrick and Greg, and she's still searching for something from Grissom, something that would make it unlikely for her to be able to speak to him like that. What she says to Nick is personal, it's about her own opinions and there's no posturing or pretending. Yes, she's angry and not entirely rational (not that Sara is often rational) but she has some form of trust in him. There's nothing standing between her and Nick; nothing like the harsh words from Catherine after Sara failed to discover who had killed her ex-husband, Eddie, and risked the life of her daughter Lindsey; or like the fact that there's no denying she was brought to Las Vegas to investigate Warrick, and did so twice, on Grissom's orders; and nothing like the mass of pain and miscommunication between her and Grissom.
I think it's probably clear that I don't see the brother/sister vibe some see between Nick and Sara. I can see how others would see it, but to me it's like the Grissom/Sara or Grissom/Catherine things - I don't see much of a romantic vibe between them, personally, but I can see how other people feel it. It's a strange thing, all this shipping business. I see something between Nick and Sara that could develop into love. Maybe it would be a dangerous sort of love, two lonely people becoming over dependent on each other, but maybe it would be the sort of love that could weather almost anything. They're both intensely loyal to things and people they care about, and I can see that translating easily into a romantic relationship, loyalty holding them when feelings of love (as opposed to the more intangible, undefinible love between two committed people) might disppear for a while for whatever reason. They're also passionate, Nick about others; Sara about anything to which she puts her mind, ranging from vegetarianism to solving a particular case to, at times, Grissom. They know what it means to be hurt, to be lonely, to be desperate. He possesses the tact and communication skills she lacks, and that could be enough to get them through the rough beginning times until Sara finds her feet and the ability to speak honestly, to have complete trust, even when she isn't angry.
They've been known to get into relationships lightly: Hank Peddigrew and Kristy Hopkins, for example. What we haven't seen is what those relationships could have become, if it wasn't for Hank being a liar and cheater, and Kristy being dead, and if it wasn't for the fact that maybe they weren't really suited, especially Sara and Hank. I could see them entering a relationship together from loneliness and desperation, needing just to be with someone, and then falling in love. I don't see them as going the traditional happily-ever-route of dating, engagement, marriage, a white picket fence, a dog, and 2.5 children. Nick probably wanted that once, and maybe he still does, but Sara's not one to do things the traditional way, and actually getting married could maybe be far too much committment, even if she planned to spend the rest of her life with Man X. Then again, maybe it would be important to her to make that sign of committment to the rest of the world, and to herself. The scenarios are interesting to play with, and no one can really say conclusively what she would or wouldn't do, unless she says it herself. I haven't seen season five episode one (Viva Las Vegas) because of being in New Zealand and us not having season five yet, but from what I know of that episode even though a number of people suggest she and Nick get married in their tacky wedding chapels (not my idea of romantic, really, but the thought is still unreasonably warming to a shipper's heart) Sara doesn't have anything to say about marriage or weddings. It could be an illogical connection, but in Friends and Lovers from season one, Sara doesn't hesitate to tell an undertaker she's investigating that she'll never end up in a coffin, she's going to be cremated: "Dust in the wind." Not having anything much to say about marriage - and not having an opinion is definitely unusual for Sara - suggests to me that she hasn't thought about, probably because she can't see anyone ever wanting to marry her - unlike death, which happens to everyone, as she knows all too well.
I don't have any illusions that they're actually in love with each other. How Nick feels about Sara is hard to tell; he certainly cares about her. But then, of course, Nick cares about almost everyone. Sara's so hung up over Grissom that she's not really noticing any men who aren't obsessed with cockroaches. Yes, this fact doesn't bode well for a Nick/Sara relationship.
But I can keep dreaming.
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If you're looking for Nick/Sara fics, try these authors: Anushka forensicsfan Jacinda Saskia Mitchell SistaSouljah snowyplains