For the head canon asks- Sara Sidle- :)
-11- hobbies and interests
-12- skills and abilities
-13- ideals or philosophies
-14- goals and intentions
Headcanon ask game: Send a character and a number and I'll tell you a headcanon or perception that I have about this character’s . . .
-11- hobbies and interests
-12- skills and abilities
-13- ideals or philosophies
-14- goals and intentions
Thank you so much for the fun ask! My sincere apologies for being so slow to respond; my mind doesn’t always cooperate with my intentions and desires (or, in other words, executive dysfunction won out over my attempts to do just about anything last year).
The other obstacle I gave myself was deciding I could write a whole Sara Sidle thesis within the answers to these four questions. I love these four questions! But the prospect of writing a whole Sara Sidle thesis is quite daunting—I mean, what if I missed something!—so I really am going to try to restrict myself to *a* headcanon or perception for each of these.
-11- hobbies and interests
I have a headcanon that Sara likes to surf (though maybe not quite as much as JF does). Obviously I took something from the actor’s personal life to fill out the character (in my head, Grissom is necessarily a Cubs fan, as a similar example), but I like how it works here.
According to deuterocanonical sources, Sara was born/grew up in Tomales Bay, California (about an hour and a half north of San Francisco). Of course, Tomales Bay is literally just a bay—a really nice, blue bay, but a bay all the same. There’s no community with that name, as far as I can tell (although there is a Tomales Bay state park on the south shore of the bay and a census-designated place (community) called Tomales about five miles to the north). So I headcanon her parents’ bed and breakfast having been in the unincorporated community of Marshall, right on the water, on the northeast shore of the bay. (There is a real-life bed-and-breakfast situated there. I don’t know how long it’s been a bed-and-breakfast, but I drove past it in fall 2024, and now I very specifically headcanon it being that bed-and-breakfast.)
⬆️ View from the north shore of Tomales Bay, where I stopped to eat oysters in 2024, about a five-minute drive or 3.5 miles east of the bed-and-breakfast.
I don’t think Sara learns to surf as a child, but I do think growing up on the shores of the bay gives her a connection to water and the ocean. (Grissom—born in Santa Monica and raised in Marina del Rey—would also develop a connection to water and the ocean while growing up.)
So then my headcanon (and the way I’ve written it into my fic) is that as a junior CSI she reluctantly agrees to some short surfing excursion that the younger staff at the San Francisco lab arranges, and she finds she quite likes being out on the water by herself (finds it meditative, etc., though she wouldn’t put it in those words).
So when Grissom visits her in San Francisco not long after they’ve met, she takes him down to Big Sur, and she rents a surfboard one day. She surfs when they’re in Central America. She surfs when they’re in Europe. They also go on some boat trips. And there’s just this ongoing connection in their relationship and their love story to the water and the salty sea air and whatnot. So, when they finally go off into the sunset to live life together on a boat, it feels a little more connected to their overall journey.
-12- skills and abilities
No disrespect to any of the other characters intended, but I headcanon Sara being the smartest of the CSIs, from an academic/book smart perspective. For me, it would be between her and Grissom, and, since he will always have the age/experience advantage in matters of science, I like giving her that little edge in this respect.
But also, our girl really is brilliant. She must have skipped a grade in school at some point. She graduates and is her high school valedictorian at the age of 16. She goes off to Harvard on a full scholarship, still at the age of 16 (just weeks before her 17th birthday). She studies physics at Harvard and graduates magna cum laude. She then moves back to the Bay area and obtains her master’s (still in physics) from UC Berkeley.
Of course, @addictedtostorytelling has done the research on this (so thankful always!), and Berkeley doesn’t offer a standalone master’s degree in physics; it only offers that master’s as part of a doctoral program. So, if we assume those real life conditions existed in the CSI universe, she must have been working on her doctorate, and I headcanon that eventually she finds she likes her work at the San Francisco coroner’s officer so much that she leaves her doctoral program following the completion of her master’s degree in physics and goes to work for the San Francisco crime lab.
And she does all this on top of the most unimaginably traumatic childhood. She also must be working while she does all this, because scholarship money is only going so far. Truly she must have insane drive, insane levels of dedication.
And we know she does. Want someone to stay up for three nights straight? Ask Sara! Want someone to jump into a dumpster? Ask Sara. Want someone to climb under a house or a car? Ask Sara! Want someone to put her own life on pause and work tirelessly to make sure you’re not convicted for a crime you didn’t commit? Ask Sara!
-13- ideals or philosophies
I also headcanon Sara as being the most progressive (politically-speaking) of all the CSIs (although we know Grissom is an extremely open-minded individual and occasionally Sara is not). This feels consistent (yes, I did have a typo here!) with her Bay area upbringing and is another place where, in my mind, character and actor kind of converge.
JF has said that one of the first things she knew about Sara was that she came from San Francisco, so I wonder how much of that progressivism was already planned for the character and how much of that was brought in from JF’s own ideals. For example, in season 1, Sara says she wants a steak and a shot, but by mid-season 2 we learn that Sara has stopped eating meat, ever since she and Grissom spent their night watching a dead pig being consumed by insects. (Of course, it’s five episodes after that night with the pig that Sara wants her steak, and she also eats sea bass that episode. But it was the first season. They were still figuring things out.)
Anway, Sara is a vegetarian. She cares deeply about animals. Back in 2004, she is one of the members of the lab who has the sense of how to gender correctly a transgender victim. She is very aware of the way that popular conceptions of beauty (in the form of high heels) may quite literally hurt women. She doesn’t think people should follow traditions (like marriage) without reason. She drives a Prius (hybrid) car all the way back in 2007. She doesn’t hesitate to investigate a police officer’s mistreatment of a deceased homeless man. She fantasizes about going off on the Sea Shepherd to walk in the footsteps of Darwin, and I always presume her to be doing some sort of ecological research when she’s in Costa Rica. (The Sea Shepherd is a marine conservation activism organization that employs direct action tactics to achieve its goals, and I don’t know if that’s what CSI intended when Sara makes that reference back in 2008, but it does have a lot in common with what Grissom is doing in 2015.) She always keeps her own name, despite its negative associations (i.e., that it was bestowed upon her by her violent father).
One thing that is a bit at odds with Sara’s general activism is her attitude towards criminal defence lawyers, but, you know, people have multitudes and often contain contradictory attitudes within themselves. In this case, I think Sara’s attitude to criminal defence lawyers is (1) extremely wrong-headed (criminal defence lawyers protect constitutional rights, like those to a fair trial, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, etc.!) but also (2) consistent with her background and how she came to choose a career in forensics.
Of course, I like to think that, since leaving the lab ten years ago, and the actions of Anson Wix notwithstanding, she has had the opportunity to rethink this attitude a bit (as well as that toward law enforcement). I also think that whatever she and Grissom are working on these days (which, in my mind, includes Sara finally having gotten her PhD, though not in physics) includes marine conservation, so that too is consistent with a progressive agenda.
-14- goals and intentions
I think this answer is going to be part ideals or philosophies and part goals and intentions.
Sara is a roots for the underdog, tries to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves kind of girl. I think that she gets into forensics because she wants to speak for the victims. I know she references Grissom having said, “We're the victim's last voice,” but I think—be it explicit or implicit—that that has to have been her motivator. After the suffering she saw in her own home (“The fights, the yelling, the trips to the hospital”)—along with what she must have seen or at least heard about during her time in the foster care system—this may, given her personality, have been almost inevitable.
(In “Eleven Angry Jurors” (04x11), Nick says, “I'm always getting criticized for empathizing with the victims and their families,” but I think Nick tends to empathize more with the families and the living whereas Sara empathizes more with the victims and those who can no longer speak for themselves, although of course there is overlap in that.)
While camping over the summer, I spent a couple of days contemplating whether I saw Sara as essentially an optimist or essentially a pessimist. And, you know, as with everything else, it’s complicated; we contain multitudes—she contains multitudes.
I don’t think that, whenever she sees supposedly happy homes and supposedly happy families, she generally envies them (although, you know what . . . I think maybe every once in a while, in very special circumstances, she does); instead, she tends to imagine the lies and secrets and violence lurking below the surface. She is familiar with the worst of what humanity has to offer.
Yet she sees purpose in working so tirelessly at an exhausting, often horrifying, pretty thankless job. She sees value in speaking for the victims. I think that must contain an inherent optimism. Moreover, she never gives up on Grissom—she waits years for him, never gets over him even after they divorce—and that too must contain an inherent optimism.
I don’t think she sees the moral arc of the universe as bending naturally towards justice. But she will do whatever she can to help others all the same; she will do whatever she can to help bend that arc. And that attitude contains something inherently both pessimistic and optimistic. There has to be something optimistic about carrying on in those circumstances.
I also don’t think that when she was younger she ever really imagined much of a happy life or a happy ending for herself. She didn’t care a ton about nice things. She planned to work hard, and maybe, if she was lucky, occasionally she would get to experience some pleasant things along the way.
I don’t think she ever planned to grow up and get married and have kids. After everything she’d been through and everything she’d seen, she was a firm no on kids. She entered relationships—for the sex, for the companionship—but this was never real companionship with men with whom she’d be willing to open up; rather, it was very token companionship with men with whom she’d never be prepared to open up. Basically she just wanted a warm body to prove someone could want her (even if she didn’t realize it at the time).
I do think, though, that she had this incredibly latent, incredibly repressed desire to be seen and known and trusted and loved and cherished. But this desire was only activated—only began to become conscious—when she finally met the one man (perhaps the only man) whom she could finally see and know and trust and love and cherish. She must realize, at least on a subconscious level, how rare a connection that would be for the two of them, and, from what we see in canon (twice leaving her job and moving states, if not more, for him, for example), that becomes one of the most significant motivators (if not the most significant motivator) of her life. JF once said that Sara, being a very rational individual, would choose love over a job. One of those things can be relatively easily replaced; one of those things cannot. For people like Sara and Grissom, that kind of connection is once in a lifetime.
(This is a bit more rambling and less cohesive than I would like, but I really am just trying to get some thoughts out of my head this year without being all perfectionist about it. 😭😭😭)
For the hurt/comfort prompts- 12 “You don’t have to be strong all the time” for Finn and Nick :)
She had no reason to believe anything was wrong.
Nick just isn't the type to respond to text while he's working a scene, his work ethic is just too strong.
But she gets concerned when Greg returns to the lab, and Nick doesn’t.
“Where’s Nick?”
“Oh, he, uh. Wasn’t feeling good, went home,” Greg quickly explains, noticeably not meeting her eyes.
He know something she doesn’t know.
“Greg,” she raises her eyebrows with a warning tone in her voice.
“Alright, he’s still there, but I wouldn’t—”
She waves to Russell as she passes his office, and further waves off any attempts to stop her as she marches out of the lab and drives to the scene of the crime; an unfortunate soul who died, got buried, still alive, dug his way out and died again.
She finds him watching over the disturbed patch of earth, resting on his knees, head bowed down. As she makes her way down the hill, her sight hitches though she can tell it’s his body that’s heaving, and she calls out to him before he falls in, himself.
“What’re you doing here?” a thick, nasally voice asks, hiding his face as he wipes away whatever he doesn’t want her to see.
“I could ask you the same thing,” she reaches out a hand to his shoulder, and he rolls it off.
“You first,” Nick insists as Finn crosses her arms, a stubborn anger rising within her.
“I was getting a little worried, you hadn’t texted back about our plans tonight and I know you’re not on the clock.”
“Yeah. Anniversary dinner. I haven’t forgotten, I promise.”
“So what are you doing here in the middle of the desert instead of getting dressed? I even picked out your suit this morning, with my favorite tie to go with your favorite dress.”
“It’s nothing. I’m just being thorough, making sure we didn’t miss anythin’.”
“Where’s your back up? Not supposed to be at a scene without a uniform.”
“I’m not a child, Julie.”
“Well, Nick,” Finn matches the condescending tone in his voice. “Then I guess I’ll be your back up. Walk me through the scene.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean? If it doesn’t matter, then what are you doing here?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did something happen? Are you hurt?”
Finn unfolds her arms, running a lap around Nick and keeping him rooted in place with a grip on each shoulder. Not a scratch on him, just some dried tears on his face and dirt under his fingernails.
“N-no,” Nick shakes his head. He bites down on a quivering lower lip, shrugging his way out of her grasp again. “This is just...a bit personal, alright? I need to be alone to sort myself out. I’m sorry. Go get ready, I’ll meet you in a bit.”
Finn doesn’t buy it.
“You don’t have to be strong all the time, Nicky,” Finn once again steps in front of him, in front of the hole, and wipes his cheeks with her thumbs. She presses a soft kiss on his forehead. “But if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. I’m here for you, no matter what.”
“Thanks, hun,” Nick returns a gentle kiss, cradling her head in his hands, embracing her as he watches the hole become deeper, and deeper, infested—an army of red ants pouring out of the depths, threatening to overtake both of them—but as their weight fills out of the hole, he hears beeping, a long tone that hasn’t faded from erupted ears, he holds her even closer, fearing that as he explodes out of this green-lit flashback, she’ll walk away from him, too. Just as everyone else did that night, leaving him to be buried twice.
To die twice.
He lets go of her, backing away with a loud gasp, rasping out for air that he suddenly feels robbed of.
“Nick? Nick, what’s wrong?”
He grips his chest, hand over a heart pulsing faster than an intensely beating drum.
“Nothing! Fine. Fuh—!” he screams, pushing Finn out of the way, he falls to his knees, his hands fall into the pit, his hands sink into the loosened dirt.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no...” he cries, unable to hide it anymore. “Please. Pl-please...”
Finn crouches down, lifts his hands out of the dirt, and wraps herself around him, squeezing him as tightly as she can to contain his trembling body.
“It’s okay, I got you. I got you...” Finn whispers, her own eyes shining with tears, and her heart is melting into the tear-splattered dirt beneath them, piecing together what may have happened, and yet she’s somehow still certain that the reality is far worse than anything she could come up with.
“Okay...okay...okay...” Nick hyperventilates, tilting his head to the side where a gentle breeze is wafting against his cheek.
“Tell me...what...what triggered you just now?” Finn tentatively asks once his heartbeat returns to normal under the palm of her hand.
“I’ll tell ya about it someday, but...just not today, alright?” Nick once again buries his face in his hands, wiping away any semblance of weakness.
“Only when you’re ready to,” Finn affirms.
He nods, hands on his hips as he takes a few steps away from the grave.
His grave? Finn wonders. She vaguely remembers him referencing an abduction once...
He turns around to face her again, a tight frown but a certain kind of sadness in his eyes, he has to control his breathing before he speaks again, and his voice sounds so...decimated, yet his words are so down to the earth that he seems to be so afraid of that she truly believes him when he says:
Can we all please work together to make sure blogs like this below stops reposting giftsets? As a gif creator myself, nothing is more disheartening than when your hard work is reposted, just as quick and a right click and save!
ORIGINAL GIF SET HERE - you will need this link when you report it!
Hey, just wanted to say I discovered your blog today and I love it! I’m also a huge NCIS and Sloan fan and Criminal Minds and Emily Prentiss fan as well. :)
Ayy! Welcome aha😊 Well done on your impeccable taste😄 (and thank you! especially of all the reblogging of my gifs!)
Do you mind if I share that Julie Finlay art on Twitter? I have a few friends on there who would love to see it. I’ll tag your blog and link to the post so they know who made it.
Favorite fics of yours that I adore- Last Breath, Agony, First Flight, anything with Parker and Madison, and all of the Finn and Nick prompts you’ve written for me over the years 🥰
always love to see agony, one of my favorite fic-children included a;sldjkfas;ldkj I really hope you enjoy what I’ll be doing with Nick and Finn in First Flight :) (might take a while to get there and will be angsty AF but it’ll hopefully hurt good lmao)
