Banner by Kitty

East of the Sun, West of the Moon
By Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: CSI and associated characters do not belong to me.

Author's Note: Poems and lyrics belong to artists so listed. Title and first sentence of the summary are borrowed from a Norwegian fairytale named 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon'. The story will also visit Norway itself. Bring warm clothing. Grissom/Sara and Catherine/Warrick pairings, so you're hereby warned.

Eternal gratitude and much Norwegian chocolate for Allison for beta duties.

Prologue

*****

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes
- Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty

*****

She walks in beauty, like the night.

Grissom did not always consider death beautiful. It was bloody and sometimes reeking, often gruesome. But sometimes, it was beautiful, like a frozen snapshot of human emotion for all to see, a ray of soul across a face.

Sometimes, death walked softly. She looked sleeping, peaceful and face devoid of troubles, blonde hair cascading down her arms. Her lashes were dark against her pale skin and she seemed a Cinderella begging for a kiss. But no kiss could return her to life. And no mild shake would awake her, for all the stewardess had tried.

Anna Caroline Jensen was not to ever see Las Vegas or the father she had come to find. When the plane had landed in Las Vegas, she was already dead.

"She looks almost beautiful," Sara said behind him and he became aware of the world around him again.

"Yes," he replied, looking up at her and Greg, both standing respectfully some feet away. "The stewardess thought her only sleeping."

"Are we sure it's even a murder?" Greg asked. Sara gave him a slight shrug.

Grissom did not answer. He could not explain it, but he could almost sense that it was. It was as if something had clung to the victim, a sense of being wronged. It was not evidence, nothing he could triumphantly hold to the light. But it still felt true. She had died by another's hand.

"We treat it like a crime scene until we know otherwise," he said instead. Sara nodded and slipped on gloves, the snap of plastic loud in the room. Death wore silence. Sounds felt intruding.

The plane had been emptied of passengers before the body had been discovered, though the traces of them were still there. A crumpled cup on the floor, a seat not quite straight. And a body, not yet stiff, but cool, as if winter had touched her, but not frozen her.

"She's not a local," Sara said, leaning over him and carefully freeing the Las Vegas guide book from the seat holster. It gleamed freshly, pages still crisp, never to be bent in use.

"She's Norwegian," Grissom replied, making Greg look up. "Anna Caroline Jensen. Told the stewardess she is here to meet her father."

"Do we know who?" Greg asked. He looked almost excited. But then, he did that quite often. Excitement and interest and a sense of justice, if young still. If he could channel it, he would be a very good CSI.

If. So many ifs and not enough whens. Not like an entomology timeline, crisp and clear and predictable. Not like a murder, laid out like a puzzle before him, pieces still hidden. He would not even know what the puzzle would show him until the pieces became unearthed.

"Not yet," he replied belatedly, realising both Sara and Greg looked at him expectedly.

"Coroner's on his way to pick up the body," she said idly, calm around him, as if he had never seen a glimpse of her soul and her abyss. Perhaps she wanted him to forget her percieved weakness. Perhaps she had at last decided to let him be emotionally unavailable all by himself.

He hoped she was happy. He knew she wasn't. Sara, compassion in her eyes as she looked at the victim, one step away from him.

Always a step away. Always a step too close.

He dared a glance at her, so close he could feel heat radiating from her body as sun on a bright morning. He dared not look at her for too long or she would surely burn him.

She walks in beauty, like death he thought and looked away.



Chapter One

*****

They’re bringing out the dead, now
It’s easy just to look away
They are bringing out the dead, now
It’s been a strange, strange day
- Nick Cave, Messiah Ward

*****

The Vegas sun was relentless, bright and burning, paling even the blueness of sky to an almost-white. The clouds had fled, leaving only the tiniest visps of smoke-like cotton in the sky. Summer had come, embracing all and weaving heat into the wind. Walking outside was to be kissed by flames and many sought the shadows and shade.

Catherine Willows was late and did not have the time. Another argument with Lindsey. Another piece of her life she wanted to scream at. And deep down, a deep fatigue seemed to have settled in her. Too much death. Too much life. Not enough rest.

The doors hissed quietly as she went intside, the cool of air conditioning a blessing against her skin. She smiled at a few familiar faces in passing, but didn't slow down. Not until she saw Grissom, hunched over a table of light, his face a mask of concentration. The light and blue coat made him look almost like a ghost, a haunt rather than a human among the rest. She watched him for the briefest moment, taking in the grey in his hair and the lines on his face.

'We're aging,' she thought and then shoved the thought as far as she could into the shadows of her mind with all the others she didn't feel like facing. They would come out again. They always did.

And sometimes they came back as words in another's mouth, spoken as truth.

"Hey," she said lightly. "Heard you had a dead passanger fly in yesterday."

It felt like a stupid statement the moment she uttered it. It was hard not to hear about the case after all, the way the news had blazed all over it. For a moment, she could almost feel an urge to want the case herself. Maybe even with Gil. For all his little quirks and different ways of solving cases, she did miss his presence nearby. It made unsolved cases feel more like mysteries and less like failures.

Maybe she even missed working with Sara.

Maybe.

Grissom didn't look up, peering intently at a small bottle that seemed empty. "Yes. Body's with the good doc."

"Where's your better half?" she asked casually, but unable to keep a slight edge out of it. It didn't feel like jealousy, but something she did not quite know what was. Perhaps a sense of ownership for all their years working together. Perhaps envy. Perhaps a hint of something territorial. Perhaps a little of everything, she wasn't sure.

"Greg is looking through our victim's luggage," Grissom quipped calmly back. She rolled her eyes, but didn't press him further. Grissom had his own paces. But one of these days he had to realise that largo might be too slow for the dance he and Sara engaged in.

Or perhaps he would not and would grow to be old and remember the one he let get away. She had a sense of what Grissom feared and Sara embodied it all, for good and bad.

Sometimes, she wondered if her own fear of letting the right one go had led her into the arms of too many wrongs. She couldn’t remember anymore if Eddie had ever felt right. Some many others later. And Grissom... No, not Grissom. Grissom was neither right nor wrong for her. He was just was what he was. She had known him so long now he felt tied to her regardless and sometimes she forgot he wasn't hers.

She slipped away without further comment. Grissom wasn't her knot to untangle. She tried not to think too hard about her own knot before the desire to tangle it even more came over her.

'Now who's afraid,' a little voice whispered in her mind, but she ignored it.

She found Warrick with Nick, both clearly waiting for her. She gave an apologetic smile, which both returned. Even so she sensed tension, which made her wonder just what they had discussed before she had entered. These days it felt a strain not to be paranoid.

"CODIS gave us something on the prints from the gun used at the hold-up," Nick said calmly. He leaned back in his chair with a slight air of triumph. "John Allen. Previous offender. Got six years for armed robbery. Got out a few months ago."

"We'll take him in and get his footprints," Warrick continued. His eyes seemed even darker against the blue of his t-shirt as he looked up at her. "But I'm thinking this is our guy."

"We'll make sure before we hand it over to the DA," she commented, though she hardly needed to remind them. "Any progress on the rape case?"

Nick shook his head slightly, Warrick just calmly regarded her. She knew he had seen her slight discomfort with the case. She always tried to steel herself, but when the victim was so young... Sometimes, death felt easier. At least then the victims were not living dead, shadows of their former self still haunting. Some rape victims managed to stack a resemblance of a life back together. Some seem to walk hand in hand with their tragedy until old age and death did them part.

She slipped down onto a chair, feeling the weight of all the cases descend on her with the sounds of the lab all around. She hadn’t realised that supervising would make her feel the cases so much more as her own responsibility. And when cases could not be solved it felt like her failures, her wrongs. Grissom coped in his way with the strains, but she was not Grissom.

She shook the thoughts away as they all chatted briefly about various possible approaches to John Allen and any evidence that might have been missed in the rape case. Catherine had a strong feeling there wouldn’t be. Another unsolved case to be stacked with the others in a quiet little cabinet somewhere, with perhaps a note on a board somewhere where everyone would look away. Easier that way. Not forgotten, but not looked at.

The cell phone shrilly interrupted and she sighed as she answered, hoping it wasn't another Lindsey disaster. She wasn't sure could take another. Some days, it felt more like battlefield commanding than parenting.

But the voice was Brass's and she instantly knew from the graveness of his voice that it could only be another murder. The sun could not chase murders away, or offer a vacation from humans being humans in the worst ways they could. Another murder in the summer of Las Vegas.

"We got a DB," she announced as she hung up. "Vega will meet us there. Kensbook Street 9, Winchester."

"So much for using the day for tanning," Nick replied, standing up.

"You look just fine in paler shades," she assured him, giving his shoulder a pat as she got up. It felt almost like a flirt and almost like a betrayal, but Warrick merely smiled good-naturedly and got up as well.

"So do you," he whispered when he passed her, his breath warm as it brushed her skin. And for a moment she forgot death and work and tangles and closed her eyes to the heat.

It was summer.

****

The scene of death felt strangely like winter. Shades hid the sun, a fan twirled the cool air, the sheets were white. Fresh flowers on the bedside table were hanging their heads. The overhead light was subdued. And the victim was pale, winter pale. It felt like another season, walls and roof shielding summer and life away.

"Boyfriend found her," Vega said, hovering at the doorframe like a shadow. "Next of kin is George James, her father. We're tracking him down."

"Mother?" she asked.

"Dead. The neighbour didn't know of any other family."

She nodded, her gaze returning to the bed and to Nick, kneeling by it.

"She was beautiful to her killer," he remarked, looking up. Catherine felt herself nodding, for all she wanted not to. Fear should not be beautiful to anyone. Death should not be beautiful to anyone. Yet it was.

The blood had been lovingly wiped away, it seemed, for only the wound itself spoke of violence. The eyes had been closed on the victim - before death in fear of what was to come or after by the killer was hard to say. The hair flowed freely across the pillow, a cascade of yellow. She had been young, but not too young. Perhaps in her thirties, Catherine reflected.

It felt like a stage, like it was an image painted with death. The victim was dressed in silver silk clinging to her curves, hair arranged and untangled, almost hiding the shot to the temple. An image of old movie stars it seemed to stir. A beautiful death for Georgina James. It almost spoke of love. Twisted love, but love nevertheless.

And above all there was something familiar with the scene and it sent a cold chill down her spine.

"No sign of forced entry," Warrick said, entering behind them. "Tyre tracks outside, but could be normal traffic."

"Could be," she agreed and hoped it was not. They were here to find closure for victims, for relatives, for the public. Closure. But something had been odd with the picture ever since she entered, a faint sense of deja vu. Hadn't Grissom's victim been blonde too? Perhaps that was the source of her discomfort. Similarities in victims happened. Coincidences of life.

It didn't quite chase the chill away nor the feeling of unease. She looked at the victim again and felt a shudder go through her.

She didn't sense closure. She sensed a beginning.

And outside the summer waited, burning ever and the clouds no shade at all.



Chapter Two

*****
You will never get over me
I'll never got under you
Whenever our voices speak
It's never our minds that meet - A-ha, You'll Never Get Over Me
*****

A wind stirred and died; the sun tore across the sky in the ever illusion that it was the sun that moved and the Earth stood still and watched. Sara was a scientist, she knew it was the opposite. But sometimes, even scientists needed illusions. Sometimes, illusions were all between you and the abyss.

She stood still in Grissom's doorway, watching the emptiness. Strange, but it seemed almost like the office had a stronger presence of Grissom when he was not there. Perhaps he had left so much of himself here that there was less and less of him left in the shell of his body. Or perhaps it had always been so and she had only now started to notice.

It was a morbid thought, but she could not quite shake it. Grissom felt more distant now than when she had been in San Francisco and he here. For every step she had fought herself into his life he seemed to slip away from it himself. It was as if he stalked the peripheries of his own life and now he was grimmer, older, almost darker. Certainly not more emotional available than when she first came. So what good had anything done? She could have stayed by the sea and lived in the illusion that near him, they could have built a life together. Here, the illusion died a little every day.

And yet, she still felt something. She still desired him, still felt that which she dared not name. For all he had stood still and never welcomed her advances, she still wanted to push them on him, still wanted to chase him.

It wasn't that she desired him to save her or sweep her off her feet and make her life a fairytale. It was merely that she wanted to make each night a little less dark sleeping near him. And each day of life a little more alive from his smile.

Grissom had once told her she needed a diversion. And she had quitely thought he could be hers and they could ride roller coasters together.

Sighing, she continued her search, giving Nick a nod as she passed him in the hallway. He looked grim too, but he was still the bright, sunny boy. Summer to Grissom's winter. And she herself was autumn, sometimes as warm as summer and sometimes a wind away from winter. She wondered sometimes if she was becoming Grissom, if that was why he staying away, as if afraid to pull her deeper into his own season.

He would walk on the edge of the human abyss and not fall. She was not sure she could.

'Or perhaps I fell in the abyss long ago,' she thought and felt the chill of memories knocking at the door in her mind she kept them trapped behind. One day they would break through, the logical part of her knew, but it drowned in the fear. One day would not be today, forever not today if she could just stay strong and alive.

She finally found Grissom among the dead, in the quiet of the morgue with the victim. His face was so gentle her heart nearly jumped, and she watched him leaning over their victim with a sense of longing. Sometimes, she almost envied the dead for all the care Grissom showed them. She could almost imagine herself there, pale and cold and naked on steel and his eyes brushing her face lovingly.

She could almost want it.

Belatedly, she noticed Doc Robbins looking up at her, and she slipped out of the doorway and into the room, resisting the urge to step too close to Grissom.

"She died from a fatal dose of lithium carbonate," Robbins announced, more to her than to Grissom, who did not even look up. Clearly, he had already heard. She wondered what he was silently communicating to the victim - his promise to find the killer? Or his sympathy? His understanding?

"That's used in treatment of some mental disorders, isn't it?" she asked, looking at Anna's still face. No sign of despair or a troubled mind. But the harsh light of the morgue chased away any illusions of sleeping. And yet she was still beautiful, even in death.

'Cinderella,' Sara thought and felt a chill.

"Bipolar disorder, among others. I also found traces of Histamine," Robbins went on, and now Grissom did look up, eyes light and a shield of his mind. She never could feel what he was thinking, not even when he looked at her and she felt as if her thoughts and heart lay bare before him that surely he had to see.

"For travel sickness?" he asked, his voice nothing, merely even.

"Yes. My guess is the fatal dose was digested. I found no needle marks on her body," Robbins explained, looking down on the victim. "Gil, this woman has been dying for days. The dose was administered before she got on that plane. There is extensive damage to the liver and the soft tissue. Even if she had sought medical assistance, it may have been too late. "

"That makes our crime scene an ocean away," Grissom said softly, turning to her. For a moment, she thought she might drown in his gaze. Then his attention slipped away, as it always did. "Thanks, doc."

She followed him out, the light of the hallway seeming harsh after the subdued light of the morgue. Brighter still waited the sun outside, a fire of summer. She found herself wondering if she could pull Grissom with her and find somewhere green to sit and be burned together. But she fought back the urge to ask. It was a fantasy, an illusion, a trick of light.

But his hair would still feel soft to braid her fingers through in the heat of summer.

"Our crime scene?" she asked instead. "From what doc Robbins say, she was killed in Norway. That makes it a matter for the Norwegian authorities."

"But her body is here," he replied calmly, but his voice still held what she had come to recognise as Grissom steel. "That makes it a matter for me."

She nodded, more to herself than him. She had known what he would say. It was after all why she had felt drawn to him even across a lecture hall. This was not just a career to him, but a calling. As it had been to her, for a whole different reason.

But justice for Anna, for Kaye, for all the murders they had solved would still not bring justice for a terrified child with a murdered father and a murderer for mother. No silence for the demons. And the memories seemed more than mere recollections. It was refeeling, reseeing, reliving. And the outcome remained the same.

She let out a slow breath and was herself again, adult and safe and devoid of blood. Grissom was looking at her, head titled, as if regarding just another puzzle. Perhaps that was all humans were to him, for all his gentleness.

Perhaps that was unkind. He was 'concerned' for her, and what he had confessed to Dr. Lurie still echoed in her mind at the still of night sometimes. It had not been quite a declaration and not intended for her. But perhaps what he had felt had not been quite love, either.

"So..." she offered, "ehm... I've scanned the various prints we've recovered from the plane, but if it not our crime scene, there may not be much in it."

"Mmm," he said non-committedly, snapping the gloves off as they walked along. He looked almost excited, and she had a feeling something was going on just beyond what she could see. Maybe she could sit on Greg until he told her. Provided Greg did know. Perhaps she should just go for the source and sit on Grissom.

She couldn't avoid smiling slightly at the mental image and Grissom raised an eyebrow slightly before mirroring her smile. For a moment, it felt almost like an echo of a happier past, when she and Grissom still danced lightly on the edges of flirting.

Almost.

The past didn't come erased. Blood didn't come undone. She knew that well enough.

"Brass is looking at the passenger manifest," he said, ripping the mood. "Still no word on the father's identity."

"If there is a father."

"Why else would she come all the way to Las Vegas?"

"See the sights? Gambling? Boyfriend?" she suggested. He made a slight grimace, his footsteps hardly any sound at all as he walked beside her. He seemed to walk awkwardly sometimes and she wondered if he was so lost walking in his mind he did not think much about walking the world.

"This far for a boyfriend?"

"People travel far for the possibility of love."

'I did,' she thought, unable to keep the thought away. Perhaps the same thought occurred to Grissom, for something almost like guilt seemed to flash across his face. A second later it was gone and perhaps she had merely imagined it just as she had imagined a million other expressions, looks, touches, words... An imagined life.

"She must have been brave to come that far for a possible fairytale," he said after a moment, and she looked up sharply. But his face was even and he was looking ahead, not at her.

"Yeah," she replied and felt almost foolish. The victim. But for a moment, it had almost seemed he was speaking of her. If his voice had been unusually soft, it could be for many reasons.

She gave him a sideway glance. You never did know with Grissom. He lived in puzzles and mysteries and made his life puzzles and mysteries. Every time she thought she had found the final piece, she realised another was hidden. She might not ever really know him. Some pieces had to be given, not found, and Grissom was not the sharing kind.

"You need a holiday," he said suddenly, as calmly as bringing up the time line of rigor mortis.

"What?" she asked, halting. Grissom walked on and she stared after him, considering which blunt object to cause massive head trauma with if he dared tell her she needed a life, a diversion or time off.

"I hear Norway is lovely this time of year!" he called after her and smiled, eyes twinkling. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Only Grissom would consider solving a murder a holiday.

Maybe she wouldn't have to sit on him after all, she decided as she chased after him and the Earth moved on, always in the illusion that it didn't. Perhaps the illusion didn't matter and it merely mattered that there was movement.

And smiling lightly at her hurry, he halted. Waiting for her.

Maybe the illusion did matter after all.



Chapter Three

*****
I don't claim to understand
The troubles that you've had
But the dogs you say they fed you to
Lay their muzzles in your lap
And the lions that they led you to
Lie down and take a nap
The ones you fear are wind and air
And I love you without measure
- Nick Cave, Sweetheart Come
*****

Las Vegas lit up, opened up, sounded up, the siren song of dice and cards and roulette wheels quietly humming in the warm summer air. It was time to gamble all you could afford to lose and all you could not. Sometimes, Warrick felt the hum as a wire in his blood, always painful, always promising absolution.

But sometimes, he considered, life was a greater gamble than all the casinos in Las Vegas together. The stakes were your own immortality through your children. And when life's gamble sometimes failed, the loss seemed to stack higher than the horizon and blind all light. A child gone and lost was all the immortality of generations to come.

And the wire in the blood died and was replaced by another pain. Sympathy. Compassion. Understanding. And absolution came in justice. Justice for the dead. Justice for Holly. Justice for Anna.

George James looked an old man, clutched in the chair of his cool, silent house. His hair was still dark and his skin held no wrinkles, but the eyes were ancient and spoke of grief beyond comprehension. The only ones who could understand were those who shared it and that was too high a price to pay for understanding.

"We're sorry for your loss, sir," Catherine said softly, but with a hint of detachment. He didn't blame her. It was the only way to survive in this job and still it went forgotten too often. The balance between needed compassion and burnout was a knife's edge.

George James merely nodded, clutching his knees, eyes clear and frozen. Perhaps there were no more tears left.

"We understand you're the only living relative," Catherine went on. Her fingers burrowed into her palm for a moment, leaving white marks to fade slowly. He fought an urge to caress her palm until marks and pains were all gone.

"Yes," George croaked, then cleared his throat, swallowing several times. "Her mother died in childbirth. That's why I gave her my name. There were only us two left in the world. She was... Who... Who could have done this to her? Why?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Warrick cut in as gently as he could. "When did you last see your daughter?"

"Um... two days ago. I was... We were planning a weekend away and... I, I..."

"Did you know if she had planned to see anyone today?" Vega asked, leaning against the wall, his face a mask. Perhaps he was already sizing up the father as a suspect. Not even grief meant you were innocent. Killers could grieve as surely as humans.

"A friend, a... Michelle. They work together. I... I don't have her number," George James replied, breath heaving and dying, heaving and dying.

"That's all right, sir," Catherine reassured him, placing a hand on his. Detachment fell from her and for a moment, she seemed to absorb his grief through her skin. "I'm sorry."

"She wasn't meant to die," he said brokenly and then there were more tears after all.

Warrick looked away, unable to look at such naked grief. Murder was an invasion, sweeping away all privacy. And it was his job to shift through the debris, watch the ruins until all was ash.

'Ashes to ashes, earth to earth, death to death,' he thought and felt the soft hiss of the air conditioning against his skin, drying tears, but not grief. Only time dried grief, but left the scars.

Catherine shifted slightly next to him, and he met her gaze, seeing his own discomfort mirrored, perhaps even magnified. Catherine had a child to lose. For a moment, he could almost see her in place of George James, tear-streaked pale face as she stared into the nothingness of her own heart, bereft of the last of her family. Bereft of Lindsey as she had been of Eddie.

Her eyes widened and he knew she saw it too.

He closed his eyes and burned the image away, hiding the embers as deep in his mind as he could. The air hissed and he felt a chill, suddenly longing for the heat and summer outside. The sounds died away, as if muted, and he could barely hear the door open and close, probably Vega leaving.

"Warrick..." Catherine said softly, making him open his eyes again. She made a slight gesture towards the door with her head and he nodded. There was nothing they could do here now, in George James's quiet, quiet house. Nothing to do but feel the grief.

"We’ll contact you later, Mr. James," she said, slipping away. The man only nodded helplessly, burrowing his nails painfully into his forehead, perhaps to distract pain with pain. Warrick watched him a moment longer, a part of his mind that he needed, that he resented, already trying to judge if a killer could grieve so for his victim.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," he offered, knowing how weak the words were. But it was all he could give. He could only hope he would also eventually bring a sort of justice.

But justice was for the dead. The living only got answers.

The air was hot as he stepped out, summer living on unperturbed by the dead. A few sprinklers were on in the neighbourhood, hissing as water glittered and caught the light. Little rainbows of light broken.

Vega was still by the driveway and greeted him with a nod. "I'll have an officer stay with him for a while."

"Yeah, good. Thanks," he replied, his eyes already seeking Catherine's form. He found her leaning against the car, eyes on the sky, a look of distance on her face. The sun was falling, but still blinded him as he walked over.

"Hey," he said softly. "You look lost."

She laughed, but without humour. "Maybe I am. This case... I feel it. There's only me and Lindsey in the world, you know?"

"I know."

"I always feared this job would take me from her, maybe one day for good, but to lose her..." She shook her head, staring into something he could not see. He could only see the echoes of it on her face. Nightmares of the future, haunts of the past.

"Go home early today. See Lindsey," he suggested. She groaned slightly and bit her lip, a flash of pain across her features blinding him.

"I swear it was only yesterday I sung her lullabies," she said softly, longingly and closed her eyes. Her lashes were dark against her slightly tanned skin and she was beautiful in her longing for times of innocence - perhaps for herself as much as Lindsey. "I'm growing old."

He leaned against the hood next to her, watching her fingers claw at the paint. There were many things he could have said, but they all seemed like lies and cheap comfort, so he kept silent. She didn't need his words. She needed his presence.

Vega gave a wave before driving away in a cough of smoke and trail of tyre tracks. In the distance, another car honked. But for all the sounds, it felt like only them there in the world. Warrick and Catherine and the dying sun.

"I almost miss Eddie sometimes," she said, eyes still closed. "Not for anything he did, the asshole. But we were young together. And maybe if he was around, Lindsey would have someone else to turn to."

"Or someone else to rebel against," he pointed out. "Come on, Cath. You remember what you did at that age?"

"I made out with handsome guys like you in cars," she said softly. For a moment, all he could hear was his heartbeats, drums vibrating in his blood.

"I wasn't handsome back then," he said lightly. Beat. Beat.

"You are now."

He looked at her dark lashes, her hair falling in the fading sun and her breath curling from her lips. All life was a gamble and he could throw the dice. But the first lesson of Las Vegas was a harsh one - never gamble what you could not afford to lose. And he could ill afford to lose her. She was a friend, a colleague, a confidante and that tease of something more, that hint in her eyes...

But sometimes, even gamblers could win. And the prize... Her and Lindsey and Sunday breakfast, he the cook. A future. A family. A relationship.

She turned her head sideways and looked at him, the last rays of the sun caressing her lips and the faint colour in her cheeks. Her breath smelled of coffee and summer heat and he wondered if he could kiss the scars of age from her features. Her expression softened as she looked at him, fear and pain still haunting her face, but her eyes so bright, bright, bright...

'One day, I'll help you fade the haunts,' he thought and it echoed like a vow in his heart.

She placed a hand on his chest and he was sure she would feel his heartbeats against her palm, beating in sync with hers. And somewhere deep in his heart he knew he had thrown the dice long ago.

Nothing to do but see the bet through.

Her phone was shrill and loud and tore her gaze and hand away. Muttering a foul word under her breath that almost made him smile, she reached for the phone and fumbled it out of her bag.

"Willows. Hey. Yeah. Yeah. What? No, we're..." she hesitated for a breath, biting her lip ever so slightly. "We're heading for the lab. Yeah, see you there."

"Nick?"

"Nick," she confirmed. "Coroner's prelim is in. No DNA under her nails. No bruises on her."

"No sign of struggle," he interpreted.

"Yeah. She may have been drugged. Doc Robbins will probably give us more on that."

"We better get back to the lab."

"Yeah," she breathed and looked up at him for a brief moment, fire in her eyes. "We better."

As they drove away, he caught a glimpse of George James in his window, a rank shadow in the dying sun. The father no more, now that his daughter was dead. Only memories left and memories were mist. Nothing to cling to, yet the strongest haunt of all. No one to fade his haunts.

'What would George James. with nothing left to lose, be willing to gamble?' Warrick thought and wondered.

And around all, the siren song of Las Vegas hummed on. Ever on. Ever promising absolution.



Chapter Four

*****
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly

Soon as she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly
He took her with a sigh
- William Blake
*****

Gil Grissom dreamt.

She was in his dream, beckoning, teasing, haunting. Radiant and dark at once, a dark star in his sky. He was drawn to her and in her embrace he did burn, but the pain was pleasure and he kissed the flames from her lips. In her presence, his defences turned to ashes. Her skin was velvet and marble and shadows played across it, dancing softly to a hidden tune. Her fingers were touches of lace, binding him to her, promising rest. Rest in her, her offered warmth. The sun on a blazing summer day and the shade too. Sara. Sara, Sara, Sara.

'Sara,' he thought and awoke panting, for a moment missing the touch of her skin as if she had really been there, a ghost of his dream made tangible.

Another dream, only.

He untangled himself from the sheets and the slow wind of the air conditioning was for a moment cold, lightly brushing his skin. The floor was cool under his feet, but he stood still for a time, merely breathing. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Each breath one breath further away from the dream and nearer the closed borders of his life until he was safely within. Secure. Safe. Protected.

‘The illusions we do cling to,’ the analytical part of his mind thought dryly and he knew it to be true.

The bathroom was bright as he entered, an onslaught of light against his eyelashes. The mirror was a window and he looked into himself, eyes dark with sleep still. His hair was tinged with grey and his skin felt like leather when he touched it. He let water flow through his fingers and washed it over his face, softening his skin. The grey of his hair he could not hide so easily and his eyes betrayed it all.

He was growing older.

He breathed, feeling his lungs contract and expand, a wonder of biology as always, even old.

He had not dreamt of her for a while. Perhaps he had thought this time the dreams would be gone for good, chased away by life and the resolve of his mind. But the mind was treacherous. It resolved on one thing and desired another. And in the dream, the scientist could not hide from the evidence.

The air conditioning seemed to breathe with him, humming in the quiet. His silent home. His silent life. And Sara, the roar in his blood.

Why had the dream returned now?

"People travel far for the possibility of love," she’d said and he could feel it echo in his mind still. She had travelled to Las Vegas for him. But he... He couldn't even take the few steps into her embrace. He’d made himself unable to, making all the logical reasons not to echo in his mind over and over. They worked together. He was her supervisor. She was younger. He was older. She had issues she needed to resolve. He was detached. She could hurt him. He could hurt her.

She could leave him.

Easier not to act. Easier to stand still and watch her, easier to be the bastard. At least then it would always be his, this attraction never acted on and thus never killed.

The sun could warm him. He didn’t need her flame.

’Liar,’ his treacherous mind whispered, a voice of seduction to echo hers.

He shivered and turned the water off, listening to it gurgle and sweep away. After his surgery, he had spent days merely listening to everything, making himself familiar with a world he’d thought he might lose. He'd listened to the wind in the trees, the hum of heat, the scream of cars, the language of dogs. And he'd listened to her, her world of sounds. And now they haunted his dreams. Her soft sighs, just audible and still loud in his mind. Her slow inhale when thinking, her fast exhales when excited. The tiniest moan when she ate well and the frustrated groans when she saw a piece of evidence didn’t pan out.

He let out a slow breath and padded into the living room, watching the light filter through the blinds. On the table, pictures of Anna Jensen were arranged carefully, just as he had left them before going to sleep. He tilted his head as he regarded them, letting Anna chase Sara from his mind.

In Norway waited a killer, he was sure of it. And he intended to help catch that nameless shadow.

Anna had probably not known who or what had killed her. She must have felt sick; she had taken the Histamine. But she might never have realised she was dying; perhaps not even at the very end when she must have known not all was as it should. Perhaps it was better that way, to go without knowing someone would desire death upon you. And murderer unseen, she would still be able to help him catch her killer. There would be traces in her life, evidence in her death. She still spoke to him.

All he had to do was figure out the words.

And perhaps that would bring some closure to her family and help them keep the haunts away. If anything ever could. Sometimes the presence of the dead was stronger than of the living.

Anna would make a beautiful haunt. Young, pretty, sleeping in her death. The younger the victim, the stronger the haunt, it seemed most of the time. The young always seemed so immortal, so untouched by death. Their life was still all in tomorrows.

Tomorrows became todays became yesterdays and he felt old and cold as Anna smiled up at him from a visa photo.

'I'm sorry you didn't find what you sought,' he thought and realised he wasn't even sure who he thought it of. Sara? Anna? Himself?

Sara had not been what he sought. But she had become what he desired, an allure even in his mind. Desires were dangerous. Desires could kill.

He wondered what had killed Anna. A mistake? A desire? A danger of discovery? Was it perhaps linked to the mysterious father, whom they had found no traces of? Did he even exist?

The evidence would tell. If it could be found and laid bare. Not all evidence could yet be found, even with all the technologies at hand. But every case was a new learning experience. Every case made it easier to solve the next.

At least so he told himself. The convenient illusion. And like the best illusions, always with a hint of truth. He did learn. He did evolve.

But humans also forgot. Sometimes they learned anew. Sometimes... He let the thought die, futile as it was.

He smiled as he lightly touched the book Greg had given him. "The Fellowship of Ghosts: A Journey through the Mountains of Norway" by Paul Watkins. Greg had seemed quite enthralled with the rumours of heading to Norway. Perhaps he was looking forward to being the teacher, knowing things that Grissom didn’t. A chance to shine.

Greg would learn soon enough that you shone all the more when you didn’t try.

And Sara… It would be good for Sara to get away. Perhaps it would return some of that comfortable working relationship between them, which he did desire having back. And yet he feared it. The more comfortable he was around her, the more his heart whispered her name and the mind felt treacherous.

The refrigerator hissed as he opened it, the light blinking on so fast it seemed it had always been on. But Grissom knew it hadn’t. When he was young, it had been one of his first experiments. He had wondered and then planned and finally proved that the light in the fridge did turn off when the door closed.

He still remembered the euphoria of discovery even then.

The puzzles had changed. His methods had sophisticated. But the beautiful simplicities of the solutions were the same and they still thrilled him. And so, here he still was. Another murder, another solution.

The water tasted slightly metallic as he sipped it, sleep still on his tongue. His body was slowly awakening; he could feel the hairs on his arms stand up in the cool air, protesting his rise from the warm bed. Outside, it would be hot, but humans built shelters and set their own temperatures and seasons within.

’The illusions of nests,’ he thought and watched the silence of his house. A nest of solitude he had built.

Or perhaps it was merely a nesting spot, with him trying to attract a mate to it as a human double-crested cormorant, flashing his wings.

’Now who watches too much Discovery,’ he thought wryly and allowed himself a smile. The mating behaviours of birds were easy enough. Humans flashed their wings and made their mating calls too, but they never did follow the same predictable patterns or seasons.

Or perhaps he merely didn’t see it. Patterns could be invisible even as you lived them.

His exhale felt loud, his heartbeats silent. Sometimes, he wondered if he was his own greatest puzzle still unsolved. His patterns sometimes felt unfamiliar to even him. His mind was never merely a tool of biology as a lung. Always, it had a voice not quite of his will.

And he still dreamt of that which he’d resolved not to seek.

The fridge door slipped shut, turning the light off even if unseen. He left the bottle of water on the counter and instead headed to the bedroom to get dressed. Another shift of work beckoned. Another puzzle, another murder, another solution.

Perhaps even Sara beckoned, dark and fair and bright.

But he hid that thought with the memory of the dream where they would be safe, secure, untouched. Forever.

Until the mind whispered.



Chapter Five

****
The forensic requiems ...
For the brutally deceased
Surgical exequies
Dead will never rest in peace
- Heamorrage, The Forensic Requiems
*****

Always it lingered, the silent song for the dead.

The morgue lights hummed slightly, mingling with the sounds of refrigeration units in a hushed requiem for all those whose lullaby was forever. Even with the sounds, there was always a feeling of silence. Eerie silence, as if the dead themselves were hushing, demanding a rest in peace.

Albert Robbins was used to the feeling of the morgue and found it almost peaceful. Where the dead dwelled, the rage of life seemed all the more precious. For all the gruesome scars of life he saw here, there was still peace. The dead suffered no more. The living limped on with their scars and echoes of pain and prosthetics every day.

He hadn’t imagined this the place he would be working when he was young and brash and full of ideas of saving lives and doctor’s heroism. He had stumbled into it and found his feet. For the dead deserved their dignity and the living the answers he could sometimes provide. And thus he had come to find he liked the work, for all its silence and crimes uncovered.

And always, he came home to life he felt all the more privileged to have when working with death every day.

"Hey, Doc," a light voice called from the door, and Catherine slipped in, hair almost white under the harsh lights, a subdued look on her face. She wasn't happy with her current case, he could tell already.

"Catherine," he greeted her with. "Without your younger colleagues today?"

She gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. "Seems so. What do you have on our murdered girl?"

She followed him as he pulled Georgina James out of her cool temporary grave, pale and dead on her bed of steel. He’d shaved the hair partly off, showing the bullet’s ripping journey through her head. It robbed her of some of her beauty, but violent death was pretty only to those lost in it.

But flesh was flesh and he could look upon it coolly, but always, he still felt a moment of stillness before he did. It was flesh that had once lived. He hoped he never forgot.

"Bullet fragmented upon entry," he explained, touching the skin through his latex glove. Catherine leaned forward, looking intently. "I’ve sent the fragments I found to trace, you should check with them. Now, the entry wound... Notice the stippling?"

"Unburned gunpowder. She was shot up close and personal," Catherine remarked, voice so even he could feel the emotion locked in. For all the CSIs tried, they could never quite be beyond human.

Neither could he, he reflected and felt the winter of death touch even through his gloves.

"Yes," he replied, continuing his trek of the body's particular. "She had some light bruising on the knee, but the colour indicates it happened days before. A light fall or a simple bump into a chair, perhaps. Her wrist bone has a healed fracture, years old most likely. Generally, she was in good health when she died."

"Sexual abuse?"

He shook his head, for once glad to answer in the negative. “Nothing I could see.”

"Hmmm," Catherine said distantly mind already on possibilities, theories, theses. "Anything else?"

"I found Valium in her system," he replied, straightening and feeling his back protest and reminding him he was old, "not a lethal dose, but enough to knock her out. She had it close to death, it's only been partially digested."

"Explaining no defensive wounds," she said, looking thoughtful as she let her gaze travel across Georgina’s features, a caress of sorts. “Maybe she knew her attacker. Maybe she just had an offered glass of juice and never got to fight back.”

"You’re the ones who make sense of it all," he replied, pushing Georgina back to her silence and cold and sleep. Until it was time for another grave of silence, one that would claim her flesh.

"Sometimes there’s no sense," Catherine commented and grief passed over her face like a shadow, darkening her face. He knew her well enough not to say nothing, letting her vulnerable moment pass silently. He had seen CSIs come and go and pass into shadow. When too many expressions as those crossed their faces, he worried and waited and all too often the burn-out came and another took their place. And another.

'Humans are all too human,' he thought and watched her regain her calm.

"Thanks Doc," she said steadily. He tilted his head and watched her purposely walk out, being greeted by Warrick in the bright hallway. Al could not see what they said to each other, but he could see how brightness became her more than the morgue shade and how she leaned against Warrick for just a moment, as if taking solace in the younger man's nearness.

'The temptations that rests in one who understands,' Al thought and remembered dark eyes smiling at a younger him; knowing him, loving him, understanding him. His wife. Still understanding. Still knowing. Still temptation.

Catherine and Warrick walked away into light and life, and Robbins returned to his silent work. There was never a shortage of bodies to work on. Not all were murders. Sometimes, humans died on their own, bodies giving up, accidents happening, diseases striking. But the years in his work had taught him never to take anything for granted. Each body had a story to tell and sometimes, just sometimes, it was one of a wrong committed.

Every sometimes was one time too often and that thought paved the way to burnout and exhaustion. Easier to focus merely on the biology and let bodies be flesh and the years pass, the dead changing and remaining the same. Easier to grow older when the dead haunted less.

He had long since felt old age crawl up on him. He knew the body, he knew the signs. When he had been young, the years had seemed like eternity, but life taught you all too soon how treacherously fast the years passed. Easy to lose your life somewhere in between.

Unless you had someone to ground you to the moments, kissing you to morning with the taste of coffee on her lips.

'Jennifer,' he thought and smiled, feeling the lingering taste of coffee on his lips still.

He was finishing his notes on Anna Caroline Jensen when he became aware of Grissom's presence, though he hadn't heard the CSI enter. Sometimes, no one could walk in silence like Grissom, wearing the quiet like a shadow.

"Notes on our victim?" Grissom asked, though it was more a statement than a question.

"The family have requested her body to be returned to Norway. I’m just finishing things on my end."

Grissom nodded, folding his arms and looking unusually thoughtful and almost distant. Robbins wondered if he had come to the morgue to talk or just get away from all the sounds. Of all the CSIs, Grissom merged with the morgue the easiest and at times seemed almost more comfortable in the shades of the morgue than engaged in the world outside.

"I hear you’re heading that way yourself."

"Who told you?"

"Young Mr. Sanders."

"Ah," Grissom replied, smiling slightly. "Young Mr. Sanders could be right."

"Something bothering about this case, Grissom?"

"Yes."

Robbins didn't ask for an elaboration. Grissom told what he wanted when he wanted and answered questions with riddles. Easier to let the man pace out his thoughts himself and reveal something every decade or so.

"Why on the plane?" Grissom asked the silence and the dead, eyes in shadow. "The killer could have risked her realising something was wrong and get medical help. Why give her an overdose as she was about to cross an ocean?"

"Assuming it was a murder and assuming the killer knew she was coming here," Robbins pointed out. "Lithium carbonate is an unreliable drug if the intension is to kill. There are better choices. Maybe she did it herself."

"I don't know," Grissom said slowly, shaking his head. "There's no sign of intension of suicide. Why did she leave her country if she wanted to kill herself? And where'd she get the drug? Her doctor in Norway faxed over her medical records. No prescribed lithium carbonate."

"Accident? Mixed-up medicines?"

"No. It doesn't feel right."

"Feel right, Grissom?" Robbins asked, giving him a penetrating glance. "What does the evidence tell you?"

"That I should go to Norway," Grissom replied after a heartbeat, straightening. "Shall I bring you anything?"

"Norwegian coffee?"

"Anything for you, Doc," Grissom gave a slight wink and disappeared as quietly as he had come, leaving Robbins to wonder. Grissom seemed as surely a part of the lab as the walls themselves, as the bodies of the morgue, but at the same time he was never quite there. Like a thought, present but not substantial. Only sometimes, in the gentleness of his eyes as he looked at Sara, did Grissom sometimes seem to take stronger shape.

Temptation.

To seek life when death bordered the days. Few could resist. Grissom had. So far, at least.

'There's always a so far to every part of life. Until you give in,' Al thought and let the silence of the morgue hum to him as he finished his notes, categorising the dead, detecting the wrongs, resting the dead.

Always it lingered, the silent song for the dead. But eventually, he left it to hum and went home to his wife and life's temptation.



Chapter Six

*****
I made this bed
I choose to lie in it
And live with my regrets
I sleep with what I said
Could this be the end
Am I standing on the edge
Of everything I wanted now
- Good Charlotte, Walk Away
*****

Rita Williams seemed almost sleeping, hair of gold in the sun that streamed across her bed. Fresh flowers on the bed stand reached with their petals for the sun, but they too would die soon. White sheets underneath, white silk gown and the victim’s eyes closed to the sun. Blood wiped away, hair covering the proof of violence where the bullet had struck, leaving the illusion of beautiful Cinderella sleeping.

All too familiar a scene.

'Not this, not now,' Catherine thought and felt so very, very cold. Not the start of a signature killer. Not on her watch.

"Sorry I’m late," Warrick announced, entering with muted footsteps. She merely nodded without looking up, snapping shots of death that sounded loud in her ears.

"Déjà vu," Warrick muttered. She could almost hear him shake his head.

"Yeah," she replied, lowering her camera. Beautiful death all over again and in her blood, she could feel it heralding more to come.

"Same MO by the looks of it," Warrick commented, bending down next to her. "Perhaps Grissom could..."

"No!" she snapped, but regretted it almost immediately as Warrick stiffened slightly next to her. "Sorry. He's got his own case. We're on top of this."

He gave her a sideways glance she couldn’t read and wasn’t quite sure she wanted to, either. She wanted to scream at him and have him hold her both and she fought back both desires. It was just another case. It didn’t matter that she was tired. She could deal.

But her body suddenly felt like it was weighed down, as if her blood had turned to lead and all she wanted was to close her eyes and sink to the bottom. Something hurt in her bones and for a moment, it was all she could do to remain still as the world seemed to drift away.

"Hey..." she heard Warrick's voice and the world came into focus again with a painful jerk.

"Yeah," she replied hurriedly and breathed. "I thought Nick would be with you."

"He got caught up with the John Allen case," Warrick said, opening his field kit case. "I'm all you've got."

"I'm sure I can make do with you," she said lightly, knowing it was flirty and inappropriate, but just not caring. It was a little bit of warmth and she wanted to shake the chill of death and ageing and weariness.

Sometimes, she thought she sought men just to remind herself she was still alive. A different kind of gamble to the kind Warrick had been addicted to, but she wondered if it was why he still seemed to understand her better than anyone. Even Grissom, who had been there for much of her life and did know her, didn't understand her to the marrow of her bones and the abysses of her mind.

They worked in silence, she inspecting the body before it was quietly taken away to scalpels and morgue rest, Warrick covering the other rooms and the perimeter. The house felt silent even with cops buzzing outside. It was a world away. Outside, life. Inside, death and its claw marks. And she, always tip-toeing with the beast.

The bed stand held a few fingerprints, but she didn't get her hopes up. Could be the victim's, could be a visiting boyfriend who had since left. With the body taken away, she worked the room as slowly as she had the strength to, picking up a few fibres out of place. Perhaps of significance, perhaps not. When she was younger, every detection of fingerprints and fibres had excited her, but she had soon learned that life left evidence just as well as crimes. A CSI's job was to sort through it all and sometimes recapture the life to see the crime clearer.

And always, the temptation to lose yourself in the victim's life, to be possessed. She had seen it in Grissom at least once, with the murder of Sara's lookalike. Catherine had watched Grissom's reactions and wondered. Was it his attraction to Sara that had driven it, or his fear of being like the killer himself? She hadn't asked and Grissom hadn't told, if he indeed knew himself.

'Sometimes love and possession walks on blurred lines,' she thought and remembered Eddie. Killers too, often sought a possession, but often beyond what any human could give willingly. And so they took it instead, stole it with a death.

What did this one take from Georgina and Rita? Beauty? Innocence? Somehow, it didn't feel to be about sex. The way the victims were arranged and the strange purity and cleaned scenes felt almost like sanctity. But both victims were beautiful, not too young and blonde. It had to mean something.

Provided it was all one case and she wasn't running ahead of the evidence, too tired to go slow.

"I found some shoe prints outside, near the window," Warrick announced, not quite entering and hovering in the doorway instead, his shadow falling over her. "Could be just a gardener. You?"

"Fibres, prints, some unknown substance from under her nails," she replied.

"Any idea what?"

"Smelled like chocolate. From a cake, maybe?" She shrugged. "No signs of struggle. Drugged, possibly. Certainly posed in death."

"Yeah," he said slowly. "What I don't figure... Signature killers often take weeks, months, even years between their kills. Why these two so close together if he's just starting out?"

"Maybe he isn't."

"I was afraid you'd say that. Maybe we should check with the Feds."

"Yeah." The word felt bitter in her mouth and she briefly wondered why. Territorialism? Anger? Fear? "Maybe we just have a killer stopping by in Las Vegas to gamble and deal death."

"Another day in the city of sins," Warrick remarked, shaking his head.

'Yes, another day with sinners and liars and murders to tango with' she thought, and closed her eyes to the shadows and lights.

It was going to be a long, long day.

*****

The long day hurtled along with the sun, evidence being catalogued and examined, a life now gone starting to be pieced together. Rita Williams had a mother and father in Santa Fe and a brother in New York. No links to the first victim at first look, but Catherine took nothing for granted. Perhaps the two victims merely shared hair colour and being beautiful. Perhaps not. Even killers could get lazy and seek a new victim close to the previous one.

It was late when she spotted Nick bouncing through the hallways and she knew what he would say even before he opened his mouth. Satisfaction was radiating from him and for a brief moment, she remembered why she liked this job.

The solutions. Always the solutions and the high they gave you.

"John Allen copped to it," he beamed, looking so bright and cheerful for a moment she almost wished she could wear his skin.

"Good work, Nick," she said lightly. "Good timing, too. I'll need you on this case."

"I heard," he said, and the sun faded somewhat from his face. "Do we have anything?"

"Unknown prints. A shoe print, possibly. The PD will look for any witnesses. I'm heading home."

He nodded. "I'm heading out myself before Grissom asks me to watch his spiders while he's gone."

"You can run, but you can't hide from Grissom!" she called after him and he gave her an amused look as he vanished down the hallway. She walked on, noticing Grissom's office was lit and its inhabitant was there, reading and appearing seemingly lost to the world.

"Shouldn't you be packing?" she asked lightly and leaned against the door frame. "I hear you're leaving us a while."

He merely turned a page, keeping his eyes on the book. "I've discovered that the less I say, the more rumors I start. Bobby Clarke, in case you wondered."

"I've discovered the more you quote, the more right I am. Catherine Willows, in case you wondered."

He finally looked up, a slight twinkle in his eyes and a smile haunting his lips. "Ecklie could barely contain his sadness at me leaving him a while. I'm taking Sara and Greg. The Sheriff thinks it's a high profile case and we should help our Norwegian friends."

"Have fun!" she said brightly. "Send us a postcard?"

"With a lovely fjord pictured," he assured her and dipped back into his book. She watched him a moment longer, wondering if Warrick was right and she should ask Grissom's help on the murders. But her head felt like concrete and the words felt lost to her, locked in a tangle of emotions and buried under fatigue.

It was time to go home.

She found Warrick in the locker room, clearly with the same idea as her, buttoning up a new shirt. The blue became him and she let the sight ease into her mind, driving away fingerprint searches and future phone calls to the FBI. Time to be human a while.

"Long day?" he asked, slamming his locker shut.

"Yeah," she breathed and opened her own locker. "I could kill for a long, hot bath right about now."

She could hear his chuckle and imagine his smile even with her back turned. "Many would kill to share that."

"Mmm," she said slowly and let out a sigh. She didn't realise Warrick had noticed until she felt his gaze on her back, hot and lingering.

"You all right?"

She felt a twinge of anger at his constant concern - though mostly at him for sensing it or mostly at herself for feeling this case more than she should, she wasn't sure.

"You're not my keeper, Warrick," she replied tensely and turned, meeting his gaze. For a moment, the silence seemed deafening.

His eyes were dark as he looked at her. "I don't know what I am of yours, Catherine. "

'You're just you!' she thought and wanted to scream at him.

"I know what this is," he went on and cupped a cheek, a thumb gently stroking. Her skin burned as he touched and for a moment, she felt as a moth hurling into the sun.

"Attraction," she breathed. "I don't know if that's enough."

"Tell me when you figure it out," he replied and withdrew. She was left standing looking after him as he walked away, fading into the shadows and away from her. Beautiful, tall, dark Warrick. Sometimes, she thought he could make her feel more alive than anyone. Sometimes, she thought that was enough.

Sometimes.

She closed her locker and left for Lindsey and home, day dying, dead sleeping and Las Vegas ever living.



Chapter Seven

*****
I don't want to lie in a bed of ashes
I don't want to burn in a midnight sun
I don't want to know if the system crashes
I don't want to go if it's just begun
I don't want to lie in a bed of ashes
I don't want to burn in the midnight sun
in the midnight sun
- July for Kings, Bed of Ashes
*****

It was the sun that first caught her eye. It was late as their plane landed, yet a pale sun hung in the sky. It didn't burn quite like the Nevada sun and she could look at it without shades. The air felt warm, but not hot, as if it was a different shade of summer here. It reminded her slightly of San Francisco, the same smell and presence of the sea lingering over the land. She had forgotten how much she missed the sea.

She had forgotten a lot of things.

Sometimes, she wondered if she'd forgotten how to be happy. Sometimes, she wondered if she had ever truly known it in the first place.

Greg seemed happy, explaining to her how the real, twenty-four hour midnight sun only really occurred above the Arctic circle, but how the sun linger late in the southern parts of Norway as well. She listened to his tone more than his words and borrowed his happiness.

Grissom felt distant, but he smiled at her more than once and she wondered. She could not help but notice the sun became him, the light gentler than the burning of daytime Las Vegas.

The casket housing Anna's body was transported away to be prepared for rest in Norwegian soil. Or perhaps cremation, Sara had forgotten to ask. She felt a twinge of guilt at that, but knew it was irrational. She could not always live the victim's death, for all she wanted.

They were greeted by representatives of 'Ny Kripos', what seemed to be the national murder investigation unit. Greg's stuttered Norwegian broke the ice soon enough, but she felt slightly detached from it all herself. Jet lag, perhaps. A part of her still felt sleeping in Las Vegas. She only half listened to the polite greetings and exchanges of 'honoured to work with you'. A blond officer gave her a bright, bright smile and she returned it, feeling Grissom's eyes on her as she did.

She felt a strange joy at that all the drive into Oslo. Green trees and wooden houses rolled past her, all bathed in the strange midnight sun that seemed almost alien. Greg would sometimes point something out to her and she would nod. Grissom would sometimes look at her and she would close her eyes to the stillness and the heat.

At some point, she leaned against the cool of the car window and the light became dark. A moment later, she felt Grissom's hand on her shoulder and she realised she had fallen asleep.

"We're here," he said gently and she smelt mint of his breath. Groggily, she followed him and Greg into a cool hotel lobby. The hairs on her arm rose in protest to the sudden bereft of warmth and she shivered her feet seemed to move her along without thought. She vaguely felt Grissom's arm around her waist, leading her along. She must have been shown a room, for the next she remembered was bed sheets against her skin and the sun through the almost white curtains.

She closed her eyes and slept in light.

*****

She awoke to a light knock on the door. She could not remember having dreamt and her body still felt heavy, her mind slightly foggy. Stumbling to answer, she opened the door to Grissom.

"Sara, we're..." he paused and she realised she was in white pyjamas. For a moment, he seemed to drink her in and she felt a strange joy at that, too. "We're... Eh, breakfast?"

"I'm coming," she assured him and remembered his look as she dressed. Somewhere in her mind, a devil was stirring and making plans for seduction. She had not heard the devil in months and she wondered what it meant.

Greg was still beaming as she joined them for breakfast and she almost cursed him his energy. But perhaps she would have shared it if it had been her home she had returned to. Of course, she had never truly had a home. She had been born into a war zone and then... Foster home were merely places to stay. She had created a home of sorts in San Francisco, but she had left that.

Norway wasn't Greg's home either, but she wondered if it still felt like it in his blood, the blood of his mothers and fathers far back. The call of the blood was hard to drown out. Her own blood whispered of murder sometimes and she tried to freeze it away.

"Mrs Jensen has asked to see us," Grissom told her as she sipped cool orange juice and listened to his knife scratch against a piece of toast.

"I thought the mother was dead."

"This is the grandmother," Greg said perkily. "Mother never married and kept her maiden name, as did Anna. Very common here in Norway."

"Thank you, Greg," Grissom said dryly. He handed her the buttered toast and her mood seemed to brighten as the day did. She always loved Grissom the most for his little gestures. A smile at a discovery. A light touch of elbow to keep her from a car. His hand taking hers in the darkest hour. The simple things.

'He's seducing me all over again in the quiet moments,' she thought and the toast was warm in her mouth.

"Our vic's apartment will be accessible for us later," Greg went on, smiling at her. She gave him a raised eyebrow and he winked.

"Are you always this cheerful in the morning?" Grissom asked. She bit back a smile.

"No, this is just for your pleasure," Greg shot back and for a moment, they were all smiles and the morning was bright, bright and the smell of coffee filled her senses. For a moment, it was almost happiness. Almost family.

They ate up and left the hotel, giving her the first real glimpse of Oslo awake and not sleepwalking. The streets were smaller, the houses not as tall and a few obviously old buildings gave it a sense of history. She could see doves and ducks and sea gulls and it smelled of sea and trees and heat. The sun was warmer now, but still seemed gentler.

Caroline Jensen, Anna's grandmother, turned out to live in a great house of 'Holmenkollen', a hill area over the city, crowned by what Greg told her was a ski jump. She tried to imagine it in winter, cold and frozen and quiet, but it was hard in the stillness of summer. It seemed a higher class neighbourhood, though she reminded herself that Norwegian living standards differed some from Americans.

It was Caroline Jensen herself who opened the door. Sara knew right away, without words spoken. Grief seemed to radiate from the older woman, even if she held herself proudly and the eyes were dry. Vegard Bjørnvik, their liaison, introduced them, but Mrs Jensen only waved him off impatiently and led them inside.

A clock was ticking somewhere inside, a strangely soothing sound. It felt an old house, with all the black and white photographs on walls and smell of dust on the furniture.

"How did my granddaughter die?" Mrs Jensen asked abruptly as soon as they had been seated, words slow and drawn out and accented. She fixed her glance on Grissom and even Sara could feel the edges in it.

Grissom seemed to choose his words carefully. "We believe she ingested a lethal dose of a drug, Mrs. Jensen, but we don't know how yet. We're very sorry for your loss."

"They all say so. Words are easy, Mr. Grissom. You are here to give me more than words, yes?"

"I hope to. Could you tell us why your granddaughter was going to Las Vegas?"

"Yes. You have to understand, her mother was very... I raised Anna. Cecilie was not a mother. I loved my daughter, but I also knew my daughter."

She halted, lines of suffering drawn on her face. They all waited until she was composed again, sorrow locked behind determination.

"Cecilie had an affair with an American visiting. She did not tell me who. And from the moment I saw Anna, I did not care. She was innocent and I loved her. I raised her. Of course, as she grew, she asked about her father. I used to tell her she would find her father east of the sun, west of the moon. From the fairytale, you understand. I used to read those to her before bed. That was her favourite. The princess who met the prince in the shape of a bear. He would turn human at night, but he told her she could not look, for then she would doom him. Yet she did look. She made the mistake and he had to leave her. But for love... She sought the winds and they helped her find him again, east of the sun, west of the moon. Anna - Anna believed."

"And she thought she had found her father in Las Vegas?" Grissom asked.

"She had. Perhaps Cecilie told her something before passing away last year. I do not know, but a letter came for her. From her father."

"Did you see it?" Sara asked gently.

"No. She would not show me. She only told me so I would understand why she went," Mrs Jensen said quietly and looked out the window at the burning sun. "You want to see her room, yes?"

"Yeah," Grissom confirmed, standing up. "We did not find any letter among your granddaughter's packed belongings. Perhaps she left it here."

Mrs. Jensen merely nodded and led them up wooden stairs to a dark hallway, and finally, a pale blue room, still bearing the marks of someone living there. Some clothes were casually thrown about.

"She had her own flat, but she liked to stay here at weekends," Mrs. Jensen explained to the unasked question.

"Thank you. Could you stay with... Mr. Bjørnvik..." Grissom tripped slightly over the name, but managed to remain composed, "downstairs while we look around?"

"Yes." The older woman gave the room a look, touching the blue wall with a look of intense longing. "Det vi gjør av kjærlighet..."

"I'm sorry?" Grissom leaned forward, brow slightly furrowed.

"Nothing." And with that she slowly walked away, the Norwegian police officer following her. Sara felt the shadow of grief walk with her and felt bile in her throat.

"What did she say, Greg?" Grissom asked and they both looked at Greg, who fidgeted slightly.

"I think... 'What we do out of love'... I could be wrong."

"What we do out of love..." Grissom said thoughtfully and for a moment, Sara felt his gaze burn into her and reduce her to ashes. Then he looked away, his attention on the room and work.

'What we do out of love...' she thought, her heart still burning. Grissom rarely initiated physical contact, but his gaze could be more intimate than any touch of skin on skin and leave her more breathless. Her demon whispered of touches and gazes and kisses under midnight sun, but she pushed it away. Time to work now.

Outside, the eastern wind lifted as a summer breeze and sang to the land and her blood.



Chapter Eight

Author's Note: The conversation remembered and quoted from are from "Random Acts of Violence", season three.

*****
From these wounds I claim redemption
From these wounds I am redeemed
- All That Remains, From These Wounds
*****

He had not known doom could be a child's voice.

He had been sleeping; the dream had been flimsy and unsubstantial and almost faded, like a memory of dream replayed rather than a dream itself. There had been sun and laughing and childhood recollections remade and he had enjoyed the feel of it, even as faint as it had been. At first, he had thought the shrill of phone merely a part, though unwelcome and loud. It had persisted and the dream had died, leaving a tired mind and a fumbled attempt to find the phone. He had already decided on how to murder Greg if it had been him calling from Norway when he answered, but the voice had not been Greg's.

"Warrick? It's... It's Lindsey."

He had not known doom could be a child's voice, tinged with fear.

"Lindsey?" he breathed, suddenly very awake and tossing off the bed covers. "Is something wrong?"

"Mom didn't come home."

He stood up and felt the world fall on him, crushing into his bones, filling his marrow. He couldn't think for a second, merely stood and breathed, listening to Lindsey's breath on the other end.

"Warrick?"

"I'm here. Did she call and say she'd be late, or...?" He trailed off, sucking in a deep breath.

"She called and said she'd be right home and I waited and I tried to call and she didn't answer and I'm alone and..." Lindsey rambled, sounding more a child than ever, yet there was a ghost of Catherine in her voice.

"I'm gonna be right over, okay Lindsey?"

"Okay."

She hung up and he closed his eyes for a brief, brief second, summoning strength and cool. It was probably nothing. Maybe Catherine had come across an accident or something similar. There could be a thousand logical reasons why she was incommunicado. A thousand simple explanations to getting sidetracked.

'Then why are you so worried?' a little voice whispered and he felt a chill down his spin. Even if Lindsey was storming into her teenage years, Catherine wouldn't just leave her child like that.

He tried Catherine's number himself, and every ring was seconds of eternity. No answer.

He didn't remember dressing, but soon he found himself charging out and finding his car. He clutched the phone so hard his hands started hurting, but it took some of his mind away from another pain that was tearing through. Already, an image of Catherine as Holly was haunting his mind. He hadn't been there and Holly had died. He hadn't been there and Catherine was gone. So many ways to die in this town... A thousand simple explanations paled in comparison to that and his heartbeats felt so very, very loud.

Lindsey was standing at the steps as he peeled his car in, a white ghost in his car's headlights more than a girl. No sign of Catherine's car. The neighbourhood was mostly dark and silent, but the lights of Las Vegas glimmered, outshining the moon.

Lindsey didn't approach him, merely stood as a statue of marble as he knelt down and met her gaze. "Lindsey?"

"Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"We don't know that," he replied, and even thought it was a truth, it tasted bitterly of lie on his tongue. "Come on, let's go inside, you'll freeze."

The house felt quiet and dark, as if it too missed Catherine's presence. He knew it was an illusion of his mind, but that didn't make the feeling any less real. Only a few lights were on in the living room, where a TV still flickered its bright visions.

"I was waiting," Lindsey said in ways of explanation, sounding slight defensive, probably for watching TV so late. He merely nodded.

"Did your mom say anything that might indicate where she was when you spoke to her?"

"She said she'd be home soon and that she'd get some pizza for us."

"Is there anywhere she usually gets them from?"

She paused at his question, brow frowned. "There's a place a few blocks down - I don't remember the name."

"Cool. Hey listen, you stay here a while, I'm gonna make some calls, all right?"

She nodded and he could feel her gaze on his as he retreated to the hallway and dialled Nick's number. An answering machine greeted him and he left a short message, outlining the basic events. Brass, on the other hand, replied with a more than a little annoyance in his voice.

"Brass, hey."

"Rick, this is way too late to be calling unless it's important."

"It is," Warrick replied quietly and quickly explained the situation. Brass listened, grumpiness visibly fading from his voice as the tale progressed and he promised to put the word out there to keep an eye out for Catherine's car, unofficially for now, given it hadn't been twenty-four hours and they had no real sign of a crime.

"I'm sure she's okay, Warrick," Brass said after a moment, but Warrick could hear the lie there too. A comforting lie, but still a lie.

"Yeah. I'll call you later."

He hung up and made one more call, after which he returned to the living room, Lindsey watching his return with dark eyes. Some many comforting lies he could give her, but she would know them for what they were.

"You know Archie from the lab, right? He's gonna come over and stay with you. I'm gonna head for that pizza place and see if your mom was there. You'll be okay meanwhile?"

"I'm a grown girl," she snapped and for a moment, there was fire in her eyes. He almost smiled, knowing that fire very well.

"You are. I'm glad you called me. I'll find her," he promised and made it to be a truth for all the empty lie it usually was. He would.

She nodded solemnly, another gesture that reminded him so of Catherine a thousand memories flashes across his eyes. He squeezed her shoulder gently and left, only now feeling the chilly air outside and realising he hadn't brought a jacket. But in the east, the horizon promised the sun's warmth soon enough.

He found the pizza place easily enough, but no one there could confirm having seen Catherine. She could have called in and been by so quick no one had noticed, but still, he felt tension crawl up his neck. He plotted out the most likely route she would have taken from the CSI lab to there and drove it back and forth, to no avail. Next, he started circling out from the pizza place, paying attention to any parked cars.

Nothing.

Nick returned his call and agreed to start a search on his end, too, voice sounding as worried as Warrick felt. He couldn't lose her, couldn't let Lindsey lose her.

And ever, a conversation between him and Grissom replayed itself in his mind.

"I blew it."

"Yeah. But you're not the one who's paying for it."

A piece in the mosaic of his life. A pattern.

He wasn't quite sure why he suddenly found himself driving to Georgina James's crime scene. His tired mind just seemed to run on autopilot and there was where he ended up. It was still taped off, though not under watch, and he wondered. Could Catherine have followed a hunch on her way home or just have wanted to see the scene again?

The crime scene tape had been cut, but the house was empty and silent. Catherine could have been there, but so could others. But still, if she had been there, where could she have driven next? Or had she met someone there and been incapacitated and brought somewhere else? In her car, maybe?

He started circling outwards, driving until the road seemed endless and forever and it hurt to be still awake, but he couldn't imagine sleeping. This was a nightmare as surely dark alive as a dreamt one, anyway.

Light pink had torched the clouds when he finally spotted it, parked in front of a garage at a lone house and for a second, he believed it an illusion from looking too long. But it was still there on second look, the front licence plate visible in the pale light.

"Brass. I found her car!" he barked into the phone the moment it answered and gave the best address estimate he could and hung up without further ado.

The car screeched as he pulled violently over and he jumped out, glad he'd had enough sense to pick up the gun. It felt a comforting weight as he clutched it, looking into the driver's seat and finding it empty. No sign of blood, to his relief. The garage was unlocked and he pushed the garage door up and found another car there, filling up the space. Probably why Catherine's car was outside, though why it hadn't been dumped was a good question. Lack of time, belief she wouldn't be missing yet, lack of opportunity?

Boxes were tossed around, as well as what he assumed was Catherine's field kit. As he slipped carefully further in, he finally saw her, her body dropped on the ground. He hurriedly knelt down next to her, taking in her closed eyes and bruises across her arms. He felt relief so strong it was pain to see her chest rise and fall. She was alive. It was quickly replaced by anger as he took in her bruises and he couldn't help but brush a hand across her cheek. She didn't stir.

He felt the cold of metal against the back of his neck and froze. He knew the feel of a barrel against skin and he supposed he should have expected it.

"You shouldn't be here," a male voice said, sounding almost familiar.

"Neither should she," Warrick replied calmly, not moving a muscle.

"Oh, but she should. She's gonna help me answer some questions."

"Hey, I'm with the crime lab too. Maybe I can answer them."

"Tell me why my daughter is dead," the voice said, shaking and filled with such grief it hurt to listen to.

"Your daughter?" Warrick asked, edging his head slightly away, keeping his eyes on Catherine's face. She made no sign of awareness of her surroundings, but it was a comfort to simply see her breathe.

"My daughter," the voice confirmed, bitter sorrow in it. "I need to know. I need to..."

He trailed off, but Warrick could feel the unspoken words and sentiment.

Redemption. Redemption from the dead, redemption for being alive.

"Who's your daughter?" he asked casually, but only silence answered. Brass would get some officers there pretty soon, surely. Only a matter of time. "Hey man, let's talk."

The gun withdrew for a moment. Then it came crashing down against his head and he fell.

The garage light was bright on his face, but the light seemed to be brighter still inside his head, like pain had become a colour. Darkness seeped into him as he felt Catherine next to him and his last thought was irrational and comforting all the same, a strange thought of redemption.

'At least I'm here.'



Chapter Nine

Author's Note: If you are interested in reading an English version of the fairytale, you can find one online. The address is three times w dot mythfolklore dot net slash adrewland slash 323 dot htm. However, I have translated it myself for the quotes used in this story and words might therefore differ.

*****
Oh, love that lives its life with laughter
Or love that lives its life with tears
Can die -- but love that is never spoken
Goes like a ghost through the winding years. . . .
- Sarah Teasdale, The Ghost
*****

Summer lingered over Norway, sun shining, the land crashing into the sea.

It was a strange country, Grissom reflected, having been shaped by the glaciers and the Atlantic into mountains meeting fjords. Oslo meeting the Oslo fjord below him, the sea brushing up against the city. A still sea now, an inviting blanket of glimmering blue rather than a rage of waves. Boats and sails dotted on it, a larger cruise boat was lying at the harbour. Ever present, the sea, much like the Nevada desert in Las Vegas. Even out of sight you could still sense it.

Here Anna Jensen had grown up. He could almost see her, sitting at the bench he used, watching the city from the heights. Closing her eyes to the sun or perhaps reading as he had been. Perhaps even reading the same story, though probably in Norwegian rather than English.

Young, reading Anna, about to seek the winds to find her father. A father still unknown. No evidence of him brought to life, yet his shadow loomed over Anna's life and death as the mountains over the land.

Grissom let out a sigh. He was starting to obsess over this mysterious father rather than on finding the evidence. Perhaps because in this case the evidence had so far been slight, the death and the murder separated by time and an ocean.

"You know, we did come here to work," an amused voice said and he looked up at Sara Sidle slipping her shades off and looking at him. "Our good Norwegian officer told me you had headed here."

"I am working. I'm thinking," he answered and stood up. She seemed to beam with the summer, light blue cotton of her top matching the sky, her smile more radiant than the sun.

"Thinking? While Greg and I worked the apartment?"

"Find anything?"

"Maybe." Her face clouded slightly. "The Norwegian police had been pretty thorough, but we did find some Histamine, which might confirm that was hers at least. It's being tested to confirm it is what it says it is. Greg headed to the Kripos lab. I think he's pretty excited to see it, actually."

Grissom chuckled slightly.

"What's the book?" she asked, tilting her head slightly to attempt to read the title.

"I'm reading the fairytale Mrs. Jensen mentioned. East of the sun and west of the moon it was, that she knew, 'and there you arrive late or never.' Interesting story."

"I guess in Anna's case it was never."

He nodded, watching a myriad of expressions flicker across her face. Did she think of her own family, her own father, now lost to her?

"Nothing haunts like loving a ghost," she said and he knew she had been. "You do love your parents, even when they are beyond your reach."

"Yes," he agreed and thought of his own father, a fleeting thought before he locked it away again where it should be. "And even beyond reach, we still try to find the impossible."

"East of the sun, west of the moon," she echoed and looked thoughtful.

"Yes," he replied, feeling a slight breeze cool his skin. It smelled slightly of sea and he wondered how far it had travelled. Perhaps it had come all the way across the Atlantic, bringing sea salt with it as it went.

"So why are you reading Norwegian fairytales on the top of a hill?" she asked, looking out over the city sprawled below. "The view?"

"No, the Corkscrew."

"What?" She looked confused and he smiled, unable to keep some amusement from his voice.

"The Corkscrew," he repeated, indicating the area around them. "This downhill is called 'the Corkscrew'. It's a popular destination in winter, I understand. Our vic came here often. She liked to slide down it when it was covered by snow."

Sara gave him an incredulous look. "And you came here to soak in its spirit to better understand the case?"

"Something like that."

"Sometimes Grissom, you're weird even for you."

He smiled at her. "Good."

She shook her head at him, but a smile did haunt her lips and suddenly, he felt strangely happy. The sun was warm, the air smelled of trees and flowers and grass and Sara was smiling at him. And he didn't feel quite like Gil Grissom, as if he had left that skin behind and wore another for the Norwegian sky. Another skin that looked at Sara Sidle in light, not in shadows.

And in light, she was beautiful.

Perhaps that was why his resolve died.

Perhaps that was why he took her hands and watched her lips being caressed by the sun.

Perhaps that was why he caught a strand of her hair and felt it be silky under his fingertips.

Perhaps that was why he kissed her.

She seemed to expect it, for her lips were warm and soft in greeting, if a little hesitant. He didn’t blame her. He felt like a fumbling teenager himself, as if this was his first kiss and innocence had returned.

'New skin,' he thought and she parted her lips and he tasted ice cream mingled with her. Innocence and ice cream and summer, Gil and Sara, a first kiss.

She leaned against him, but he dared not put his arms around her, dared nothing but stand still and gently kiss her. Anything more and he might be lost, as he had always feared he would be in her embrace. Lose yourself in someone and you risked hurt, risked being know, risked life.

It was she who finally broke away, eyes searching his face. He dared touch her cheek then, feeling her skin aflame under his palm. He knew there was a lot she'd want to ask, want to know, perhaps even had a right to.

What did that mean? How do you feel about me? What do you want?

But she didn't ask, she merely watched his face and breathed and he found himself strangely wondering just when she'd had the ice cream and if Greg had shared it. Bright, cheerful Greg, Greg who would probably be better for her, yet...

"I don't get you sometimes, Grissom," she said quietly.

'I don't get myself sometimes,' he thought, but dared not say it. Too close to a glimpse into his mind and he felt vulnerable already.

"I know," he said instead. Reluctantly, he stepped away from her, feeling an urge to shove his hands into his pockets. She was still looking at him, but he couldn't read her eyes. So much he could say, but he didn't and he just stood there helplessly.

He didn't realise he'd dropped his book until she reached down and picked it up, brushing grass off it.

"Anna's fairytale," she said, a hint of sadness in her voice. He watched her eyes slip across the words and some of them echoed in his mind.

"Can you tell me the road, so I can look for you; that I may be allowed to?" said she.

Yes, he could; but there was no road there, it lay east of the sun and west of the moon, and there she would never find.

'Yet she did find it in the end,' he thought, 'and took her love home with her.'

"Can I borrow it?"

"Yeah," he replied and burned the sight of her into his mind, to live forever in his memories. Sara Sidle in blue and sunlight, lips dark from his kiss, western wind in her hair. Whatever else he might never do, he would at least know now what it was like kissing her under the sky.

And as much as he could feel a dark fear in his mind scream at him that it was a mistake, he found he didn't regret it. Not this Gil Grissom, watching the sun on the sea glimmering at him, water breaking light. The other Gil Grissom, who would be waiting in Las Vegas, he might.

Humans did sometimes do odd things when abroad and he had been feeling different ever since landing. Jet-lag, the scientist in him considered dryly. Perhaps a part of him merely slept at day and woke at night, still unfamiliar with the patterns of this country.

And when he woke, then what?

They headed downhill in silence and spoke lightly about the case on the way back to the hotel. It was a safe topic for discussion and he suspected she felt at much emotionally cast adrift after the kiss as he did, judging by her slight glances at him.

Traffic in Oslo had increased as they came into the city heart, but even that felt more leisurely than traffic in Las Vegas. Perhaps merely a deception from being smaller, but the feeling was still true.

"Mr. Grissom, you were asked to call Captain Brass as soon as possible," the receptionist called out as they passed into the lobby and out of the sun.

"Thanks," he called back and quickly calculated time difference. It had to be morning in Las Vegas now, another hot day in the Nevada desert starting. A good time to call.

"Maybe he got a break in Las Vegas," Sara said as they walked up. He shrugged. Perhaps it was the elusive father at last. It was odd that the father had not identified himself if he had been expecting his daughter and she hadn't turned up. But perhaps she had been meaning to surprise him and he had simply not heard the news. There could be many reasons, but it still bothered Grissom.

He went into his room and reached for the phone, Sara remaining in the doorway. It took two tries to get all the numbers in the right line, but finally, Las Vegas crackled into his ear.

"Brass."

"You rang?" Grissom replied, watching Sara flicker through his book and lean against the doorway. She gave him a quick smile, but even as he felt his lips curve up to return it, Brass's voice slammed into him and left him cold and breathless.

"Gil, we have a situation here..."



Chapter Ten

*****
Faith has been broken,
Tears must be cried,
Let’s do some living,
After we die

Wild horses,
Couldn’t drag me away,
Wild, wild horses,
We'll ride them someday
- Rolling Stones, Wild Horses
*****

The cradle rocked her gently and she drifted in and out of sleep. No, not a cradle. Not rocking. Moving, the hum of an engine a lullaby. Warmth. Pain. Hurt. Heartbeats and breaths. A song request announced on the radio. One voice muttering - no, two? And slowly, vision returning.

'Not home,' she thought and a blinding series of flashes pounded through her head. Heading home. Stopping for pizza. The sudden thought of perhaps Georgina James being drugged by food delivered to her door. The drive to the crime scene. And then, the sickening smell of chloroform. A shape looming over her. Darkness.

She closed her eyes and tried to summon her mind from its foggy prison. All right, so she'd been knocked out by someone. Her hands felt to have been tied together in front of her, rope gnawing into her skin. And there was something else, something warm against her back.

Her muscles protested wildly as she turned, but that was nothing against the pained recognition in her mind.

"Oh, Warrick," she whispered. His eyes were closed and he had a nasty bruise on the side of his face she flinched at. His hands were tied as well, but she clutched a hand in hers as well she could anyway. What the hell was he doing here?

For that matter, what was she? And where was here?

She closed her eyes again and the darkness turned quiet. It took her a moment to realise she had drifted off again and that the darkness persisted even with eyes open. The movement had stopped, too. But the pressure around her wrists were gone and instead warm hands were rubbing them, easing the ache.

"Warrick?" she asked, half dreading, half hoping she had merely dreamed his presence.

"Catherine!" He sounded relieved and she could vaguely make out the shape of him in the dark. "I managed to get your hands untied, think you can give me a hand?"

"Of course," she muttered, but her hands felt clumsy and it seemed to take forever even with the help of her teeth. And she felt his blood on her hands when she finally tore the last knot and felt the pain of it as surely as it had been her own. "Sorry."

He didn't even acknowledge it, taking her head in his hands and holding her so hard it almost hurt. "Cath, you scared the living hell out of me."

"Didn't mean to," she breathed and felt selfishly glad he was there, for all she would wish him to always be safe and not in danger with her.

"What the hell happened?" he asked, still holding her, as if letting go would mean she slipped away. She didn't fault him that.

She explained as best she could what had happened, getting his tale in return. It didn't surprise her Lindsey had picked Warrick to call, but she wondered if she had any right to feel glad for it. Perhaps a thought better suited for later when she had time to see what it might mean.

She didn't tell him her suspicions their kidnapper was also their serial killer, but if she knew Warrick as well as she thought, he was considering it as well. Why else had the guy been lurking near Georgina James's place of death? Mere coincidence? Possible, but she didn't much believe in coincidences.

"Where are we?" she asked, trying to make out anything in the darkness. It almost felt like a tomb around her and she shuddered. Not her tomb. Not Warrick's. She refused to let it be.

"I don't know. I woke up in the dark, in more ways than one. Cath, did this guy mention anything to you? About his daughter?"

"I never saw him," she replied and winced when Warrick touched her forehead. "Ow."

"Sorry," he said, voice warm in the dark. "I heard a car leave earlier. Maybe he's dumping it or something. Or maybe he's just left us here. I think we're alone for now. How about we find a way of getting out of here?"

"That's getting my vote," she said dryly and stood, trying not to wince at the pain. The black had become darker grey now and she could see there was actually a little light coming from up a corner. "Trapdoor?"

"Yeah. There's something on it, I tried pushing against it earlier."

"Let's just see what we got here," she said speculatively and tried not trip over the stairs up. Some light did stream from a crack in the wood, but the trapdoor didn't budge against her pressing weight. But she could tell the floorboards were also wooden, which gave her an idea.

"Anything in here we can use as a lever?"

"There's a wooden crate with potatoes," he answered from the dark.

"Grab me a piece, will you? Wood, not potato."

"Certainly," came his slightly amused reply and she heard wood creak. He came over with a broken board and she traced the floorboards with her hands to find a good spots. The beams made it trickier, but she finally managed to wedge the piece in.

"All right," she breathed. "Ready?"

"I was born ready."

The floorboard gave a hard fight, but eventually, it gave a mourning creak as it gave in. Warrick's weight soon brought another down and he helped her push through. The wood scraped against her skin like claws, but the light was a blessing and she blinked against it as she helped Warrick pull up. She heard him groan and blood spots dotted his t-shirt. She could see he had more than one bruise as well now and she felt a moment of white-hot anger.

There would be reckoning for this.

"Let's grab what we can use and get the hell out of her," she suggested and he nodded.

It was a small, mostly stripped cabin they were in, only a few rooms and no sign of a phone. No electricity either. The inside yielded little to a hurried search, but some water and crackers and a blanket got tossed in a backpack Warrick carried. Outside, the sun burned over empty dust. No car, but faint tracks of a SUV (she assumed), presumably what they had arrived in. No road. And the desert stretching on and on. No signs of the comforting lights of Las Vegas.

They headed southwards (as best she could guess from the sun) mainly because it offered rocks and thus walking without tracks in case the guy did return and went searching. The landscape was uneven and her shoes hadn't been chosen for walking far the night before. The sun was burning in the sky, but she knew it would sink down soon enough and leave the desert cold and her skin longing for its heat.

She thought she heard a faint car once, but the sound died away or perhaps she had even imagined it. No signs of other humans, as if it was only her and Warrick left in a barren world, trudging ever on and on towards night.

'I'm coming home, Lindsey,' she thought and tried to make it a promise.

Sunlight had lost its brilliance by the time they reached a rocky cliff formation and started to climb. Her body had long since given up protesting loudly and settled for numb. She watched the sunset as they climbed, trying not to think too hard as twilight started filling in.

She stumbled up the last bit to the top, only to see grey desert stretch ahead. She almost wanted to scream. Warrick gave her a look and she could see exhaustion on his face, too.

"Let's rest a while here," he suggested. "We've got a good view behind these rocks and we'll be out of sight."

She nodded and sank down, her feet aching. Warrick sat down next to her, putting the backpack down and she leaned against him, for the shared heat as much as the comfort. He slipped his arms and the blanket around her and she rested her head slightly against his chest.

"When we get back to Las Vegas, I'm demanding a raise," he murmured in her ear. She laughed weakly, not having the energy for much more. Against her will, she found herself wondering if they would return to Las Vegas and Lindsey. And all her life didn't seem long enough and she wanted more, wanted...

She let her fingers trace the dark skin of Warrick's arm, making patterns she didn't know quite what were.

"Catherine?" he asked quietly, voice tentative. She felt a flame fan at the small of her back at his words and his breath was hot against her neck.

"Mmm?"

She turned slightly to face him and suddenly his lips were on hers, kissing her roughly, possessively, almost desperately. She could taste the dust and the dry of the Nevada desert and it was hardly the most romantic kiss she'd ever had. But she didn't care. His skin was warm against hers, his hands cupping her breasts through the tank top and she shivered. The desire burned away her exhaustion and pain and left flames within her skin.

His skin was still warm from the sun that had fallen into the horizon and she pressed herself against him, feeling his heat even through layers of cloth. If she survived this, she vowed, she would tie him to a bed and explore him for days. But all she could feel was need and greed and impatience. She didn't want to have died without knowing how he felt inside her. She didn't want to die without feeling alive one more time.

His jeans felt rough under her hands and she tugged impatiently. Too many clothes. Not enough of him.

'You're rain on the desert,' she thought, 'and I'm still alive.'

She let her head fall back as he moved to press burning kisses against her neck, feeling his teeth scrape against her skin. The sky was dark above, the stars only faint lights in the vastness. Little life in all the death. Little suns in the night. Little warmth in the great cold.

And she closed her eyes and let herself be warm and alive in his touches while the night wrapped itself around the Nevada desert in a quiet embrace.



Chapter Eleven

*****
I’m looking for someone to cling to, yeah...
So what you think about that?
This time, well it all comes down
To loss and strain and butterflies,
And then it comes right down to me.
- Matchbox 20, Loss, Strain And Butterflies
*****

Missing.

Sara felt the word fill her, beat against her heart, drown out her thoughts. Missing. Catherine and Warrick, missing. Her and Catherine had clashed often enough, but Catherine was still a colleague, a part of the lab, a part of her life. And Warrick... Warrick who she'd gotten off on all the wrong feet with and still ended up standing.

Missing. Maybe dead, but she dared not think that. Warrick and Catherine couldn't be dead. She wouldn't allow it.

"Do we know anything?" Greg asked again. His face was drawn and he seemed suddenly very young.

'This too is a CSI's life,' she thought and wanted to cry. 'Sometimes we lose one.'

"Their cars were found near the place Georgina James were found murdered. Catherine's car appeared to have been searched. Warrick apparently spotted it and no one's seen Warrick since," she said dully, repeating Grissom's words as she remembered them. "Brass and Nick are running a search operation."

"Nick'll find them," Greg said confidently, but she wondered if he truly felt it or merely said it to comfort her as much as himself.

"Yeah," she agreed anyway and wondered how Nick was coping. At least he could do something. She was trapped here on the other side of the Atlantic, nothing to do but wait and hope.

And just a while ago it had been a warm, sunny day, sunlight and Grissom kissing her. A little illusion of all she wanted and now she paid for it. She always paid for it.

Greg placed a hand on hers and she let him, a simple little gesture that warmed her, even if it was another hand she suddenly longed for.

'Oh, dad,' she thought distantly, even if the thought felt like a betrayal to her mother. Even if it felt like a betrayal to herself. She shouldn't miss her father's hand, shouldn't miss the lies of innocence he'd never told her. Shouldn't miss a childhood she'd never had, or at least never could remember without the blood anymore. Blood-tinted childhood, blood-tinted life.

She wondered if she would have to see Warrick and Catherine's blood too and the thought tore into her flesh like a bullet. And no father there to lie and tell her pain ended and it would be all fine some day.

"Are we heading back to Las Vegas?" Greg asked and she turned her attention to him again. "I can pack in five minutes."

"No, not right away. By the time we get back, it may all be over, anyway."

'On way or another,' she added in her mind and it sounded like the slam of a coffin's lid being nailed shut. It was hard to keep the morbid thoughts at bay and she sternly reminded herself Catherine and Warrick were capable and after all, Catherine had managed the Logan case very well. They would be all right. If she kept thinking it, kept willing it, maybe, maybe...

Willing it away hadn't made her father's blood go away. Willing it hadn't made Grissom take that risk and be with her.

"Where's Grissom?"

"Making calls," she replied, pressing her nails into her palm. The pain seemed to clear her head of memories. "What did you discover at the lab?"

"Huh?"

"Take our minds off something we can do nothing about for a little while?" she offered and smiled weakly.

"Oh. They're still processing stuff. They're as backlogged and understaffed as we are."

"Seems an universal thing."

"I looked through the interviews with our vic's friends. According to them, she did set off for the US very suddenly."

"Corresponding with what the grandmother said," Sara commented, trying to focus on her words and beat everything else into the abyss of her mind. "She seems distraught."

"She could still have done it."

She met his gaze and saw in it something that was far from young, far from innocent, something she felt in her own mind and that every case strengthened.

'This job makes old cynics of us all,' she thought and there was loss and strength in the thought both.

"She could still have done it," she agreed and remembered her own mother's tears after murdering. It was sometimes easy to forget that not all killers came as demons. Some were just normal human beings that in one moment became something other than themselves, something darker, risen from the abyss of the mind. One moment. A lifetime of guilt and grief to cling to your soul. A grandmother could kill her granddaughter and mourn still.

A daughter could see her mother kill and love her still.

"Nothing ever turns out the why you imagine, does it?" Greg asked suddenly, eyes very open and clear as he looked at her. "I used to to think about what it would be like to be in the field and it was all that, but it wasn't only that. In the lab, DNA is just DNA. Out here, it's a life. Now it might be Catherine and Warrick's lives."

"Nothing ever does," she agreed and leaned blindly against him.

They sat together for what felt ages of silence, but she had no idea of the time. There was still sunlight outside, but it had to be late, for the light was softer, almost faded. Dreamlike. Perhaps this was a bad nightmare after all. Perhaps she would wake to another day in Norway and lure Grissom to the roller-coaster she had researched and found to be nearby. And then she could call Warrick and tell him his suggestion had worked and he would chuckle softly. She could almost hear it.

That was the dream. Sitting here in the faded light and feel her own pained heartbeats and hear Greg's ragged breath, that was reality.

"I will go and see what Grissom's up to," she said softly after a moment and stood up. "Get some sleep, Greg."

"Who can sleep?" he asked miserably and let out a slow breath.

'The dead,' she thought and felt a chill. She gave him another weak smile and walked away, her footsteps on the hard floor like door slamming in her mind. Slam. Warrick. Slam. Catherine. Slam. Dad. Slam. Slam. Slam.

Grissom's door was closed, but she could hear low conversation and slipped in without knocking. Grissom was on the phone, clutching it so hard she could see the white on his knuckles. He looked up briefly as she closed the door, not quite meeting her glance. She found himself wondering what he was thinking. Catherine was one of his oldest friends and Warrick...

Once, she had envied Warrick for his standing with Grissom, trying to carve her own and finding it hard. But she had soon realised what she wanted was not really Warrick's position. It wasn't enough. She wanted Grissom's heart, still wanted it.

He hung up and she knew it wasn't good news from the hanging of his head and she braced herself.

"That was Brass again."

She nodded.

"No news," he went on. "Sam Braun is apparently willing to offer a reward, but it doesn't seem to be about money."

"Do we know..." she swallowed, not wanting to say the word for fear of making it true, "do we know if they're dead?"

Grissom shook his head. His eyes seemed slightly glazed over and the look on his face tore into her heart and added another pain. She sank down to sit on the bed next to him, for a moment feeling dead herself.

Grissom was staring at his clasped hands and she slowly placed her own hand on his. His skin was warm and she stroked a thumb along his knuckles, feeling lines of years passed.

"They’ll be all right, Gil," she said, and his first name felt oddly intimate on her lips. His eyes were dark as he lifted his head and looked up at her; for once he seemed bare before her. She was looking at Gil Grissom and for a moment, she couldn’t even feel her breath.

Hurt and fear and strain, all Grissom's, all hers to see and share.

Then his breath was on hers and he kissed her, lips warm and demanding and comforting too. And somewhere deep down she knew he was seeking solace and perhaps she was too. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he sought it in her.

He braided his fingers into her hair, his fingertips warm against her scalp. His beard scratched her skin, but that too felt like pleasure.

"Sara," he whispered into their kiss, voice raw and needy and warming her to her spine. All seemed white and she could feel the night sun on her face even through closed eyes. She felt strangely beside herself, as if it wasn’t her rested palm against his heartbeats, as if it wasn’t her skin that tingled, as if she was merely watching Gil Grissom push Sara Sidle down on the bed.

"Say stop," he murmured, hand warm on her stomach, pushing up her shirt.

"Don't stop."

She thought she might kill him if he did stop, but he merely kissed her again, pressing her against cool sheets and the weight of him on her like a shield against the world. An illusion of protection. Sometimes, illusions were all between you and the abyss, where all the losses howled and the strain tied you down.

She arched against his touch as his palm cupped her breast, arched against the sunlight and warmth and let herself forget. It was an illusion and she would pay for it, she knew. But that was tomorrow and the sun hadn't set yet, still burning in the eternity of sky.

'Just another illusion that tomorrow never comes,' she thought briefly, feeling Grissom's skin against hers as the midnight sun blazed its agreement at her.

Tomorrow would come.



Chapter Twelve

*****
It may sound absurd, but don't be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed, but won't you conceed
Even Heroes have the right to dream
It's not easy to be me
- Five For Fighting, Superman
*****

There was calm in the centre of the storm. Around him raged and roared fear, stress, clues, but Nick found that somewhere in his mind, everything was as clear and cold as ice. Catherine and Warrick were missing. He had to find them. Everything else was just noise the rest of his mind had gone deaf from listening to.

So much roar. Everyone in the lab buzzing about possibilities, Brass with calm on his face and anger in his voice, worried calls from Greg, from Sara, from Grissom, from the Sheriff... All roar, all silence, whipping around him, touching him and yet not. He could feel the despair and worry and anger, but it was almost as if it didn't belong to him, didn't belong to the part of Nick Stokes that currently was in control.

The dawning sun was colouring the sky and for a moment he watched it, leaning against Brass's car and letting himself feel tired. Over a day they had been missing now. No sign of a ransom note, no sign of bodies. No good news, no bad. A limbo, a calm.

They did have a few things to go on. Hundreds of prints from a house rented out to short-time tenants, a few matches in CODIS that the PD were following up on. Could be nothing, could be what broke the case. The owner, John Keyes, had apparently taken a holiday to Florida and was incommunicado. A possible suspect still. They didn't have that many others yet. Catherine's car had still been in front of the house when the PD had arrived, but had yielded only Catherine's prints and Catherine's blood.

Not enough blood to signify a lethal injury, Nick kept telling himself. But beyond the calm, the blood still seemed to cling to him. She had been injured. Possibly Warrick too, whose car was still missing and had yet to be found.

They had found another set of tyre tracks as well, coming from a Ford Escape Hybrid, a fairly new SUV. Many owners in Las Vegas and each a possible suspect, though it could just as well come from outside the city, maybe even outside the state.

"Mr Coulter does not know how Mr Keyes may be reached," Brass said and Nick looked up to see Brass had finished talking to the gardner. "Not even in the case of a gardening emercency."

The tone was light and slightly sarcastic, but underneath swirled anger and frustration. Nick found himself wondering just how many colleagues Brass had lost during his long career. Too many. But then, even one was too many.

Holly. Lockwood. Catherine. Warrick.

'No,' he thought firmly. They were not lost until he saw their bodies and even then he wouldn't let go.

"John Keyes goes incommunicado the day his house becomes a crime scene," Brass went on, shaking his head slightly. "I don't trust conincidences that work against us."

"Neither do I."

The phone was shrill and for a moment, tore through even the calm and the ice. Brass answered it without hesitation, but the seconds felt like grains of eternity.

'Pleaseletitnotbetheirbodiesfoundpleaseplease,' he thought and the shattered calm tore at his flesh.

"We'll be right there," Brass almost barked and hung up. "Warrick's car. Highway patrol found it off highway 93. Get your kit."

"They're not...?"

"No sign of them."

Not bad news. Still the limbo, still the hope. And more evidence to be found, traces that could help find them.

The drive was silent. Sounds would be speculation would be distracting roar. Neither said how the Nevada desert stretched out from highway 93 nor how it was the perfect place to bury bodies that were intended to be found late or never. The fact still loomed in the air unspoken, dark as the clouds heralding a storm.

The silence filled him and he watched houses slide past his window, little grains of life at display.

Once, long, long ago, he had become a CSI and he'd been young and full of passion and steering and ideas of speaking for the victims, easing the troubled waters for the victim's family and friends. Bringing justice, bringing closure. He knew others saw in him brightness. The sunny Texas boy, smiles and ease and tease. He still knew darkness. Buried in his mind was the memories of a boy abused who hadn't dared speak for himself and with no one else to. And in silence the boy had become a man and set out to speak for those with no voice.

But even the man couldn't save all, solve all, undo the pains. Once you were touched by darkness and trauma, it clung to you. Like blood, you could hide it, cover it, but it was still always there.

Catherine knew. He'd told her that one time, made her understand. He'd felt her pity and even if they had never spoken of it again, he sometimes felt understanding in her gaze. And Warrick... Warrick was his friend, despite disagreements, despite rivalries. And he could lose them both.

The sun played against the window, finally risen fully to flame down on Las Vegas. A beautiful morning, still not too hot, but the cold of the desert night faded, almost as if it had never been. The sky went from pale blue to deep blue and it was so bright he had to avert his eyes.

He wondered if this was how the families of the murdered felt - this desire to look away from beauty and be angry the world could move on.

Las Vegas had pushed itself against the horizon when they arrived at the scene, cop cars framing the bright yellow of crime tape. It was a dusty side road, but the roar of the highway could be heard, if not seen. And there was Warrick's car, carelessly parked to the side, reflecting the sun at him.

The kit felt heavy in his hand and the gloves seemed to snap on very loud. But the calm inside him was already thinking of all the things he had to look for and listing the best order to do it in.

It took him a moment to realise it was Grissom's voice echoing in his head. Grissom, who wasn't here. Grissom, who would expect him to manage.

"You with me, Nicky?" Brass asked, a touch of understanding beneath the strain and anger in his voice.

"Yeah. Yeah, let's do this thing."

The car was empty, as he knew it would be, but it still felt like a relief. No bodies. The relief lasted only until he found the blood. Whose Mia would have to tell him, but he still felt the ice in his stomach turn spiked and cut through him.

Hairs, fingerprints, dust and a few strange fibres. Something to work with. Something to keep him occupied, keep him feeling like he was doing something.

Brass walked over some time later, the sun making the dark circles under his eyes seem even darker.

"Find anything?"

"Maybe. They could both have been transported in this vehicle."

Brass nodded. "The area is being searched."

"There are plenty of tyre tracks going to and fro here. Maybe the perp changed cars."

"Maybe. The highway patrol only found the car this morning, it could have been abandoned yesterday."

"And our guy has a headstart," Nick said absentmindedly and watched the desert. Where would a kidnapper - he dared not think murderer - go from here? Somewhere deserted? Somewhere actually in the desert, trying to avoid being found? Either the guy was fleeing and more concerned where he was going - or he was heading somewhere and had a place in mind.

Had it been planned? Or merely an act of impulse and if so, why? Was it connected to Catherine and Warrick's case at all? After all, Warrick's last lifesign had been the phonecall near Georgina James's place. Too many seemingly coincidences.

"Brass, did anyone connected to Georgina James own land outside of Vegas? Maybe somewhere near highway 93?"

A speculative glint appeared in Brass's eye as he pulled up his phone. "Let's find out."

Nick nodded, but his mind was still racing. The tyre tracks they had found at the first scene indicated a ØFord Escape Hybrid had been there, yet he had not found any of those here. They could be unrelated to this alltogether, but was it possible there were two perps? One who dumped the car perhaps and one driver of a Hybrid taking Warrick and Catherine somewhere? Where and why? Was it about Catherine in particular or CSI in general?

So many questions, but his calm told him the answers might be somewhere in the evidence he had collected. Only way to find out was to do his job as he would any other case. Calm, professional, Grissom.

A part of him hated the calm inside and raged on, more burning than the sun. Ice and fire within him, roar and silence around. Dust, blood and two friends missing. Life and death in the desert.

"The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends, and the other begins?" Grissom had once quoted to him. Poe. Nick had once wondered just why Grissom had quoted it. He didn't anymore.

The dead haunted in life and the living were touched by death. And Catherine and Warrick were missing, lost somewhere in that shadow between life and death. And if they were truly lost, they'd all die a little. Him, Sara, Grissom, Greg, Brass...

'I will find them,' he vowed quietly and the wind rose, lifting dust against the blue, blue sky and he watched it rise, rise, rise... Fall.

It was going to be a beautiful day.



Chapter Thirteen

*****
failure is always the best way to learn
retracing your steps 'til you know
have no fear your wounds will heal

I wish I could travel overground
to where all you hear is water sounds
lush as the wind upon a tree
I wish I could travel overground
to where all you hear is water sounds
to capture and keep inside of me
- Kings of Convenience, Failure
*****

If there was one truth to a cop's life, it was that loss was inevitable. It had to happen, much like a summer would always faded to winter. And Jim had certainly felt winter's cold touch. Lockwood. Holly. A marriage. Ellie, his daughter in all but blood. Jacobs. And Mark, whose blood he still sometimes could smell. For his work, he'd suffered it all. He wasn't sure if he was still here because he still believed all the illusions that had drawn him to the job in the first place or simply because he didn't know how to do anything else anymore.

Perhaps it didn't even matter. History could not be undone. You took your scrapes, learned your lessons and moved on. Or tried to. Sometimes you moved back. He certainly had. Back to homicide, back to the front lines. Back to the losses.

The sun burned in his eyes and the smell of desert seemed to be everywhere, dry and dust and warmth. There were days he found himself thinking back to Jersey, almost missing it. Almost.

The phone gave an angry ring and he picked it up with a sigh, wondering if it was the Sheriff giving him grief or Ecklie.

"Brass. Oh, hi Gil. No, no news. Nick is in the lab. Yeah, I'll call. Yeah." He hung up, feeling the worry in Grissom's voice creep into him. Too long without any news and large desert to hide graves in.

"Captain?" Officer Dixon walked over, dust clinging to his uniform. "We've searched the area. Nothing."

"Thanks," Jim replied. The car had been towed back to the lab and with no bodies found, there was nothing more for him to supervise here. Yet he stood still, gravity pulling him down.

Some days, he felt too tired for this job. Some days, he felt too tired for anything else. But life offered only paths forward, the mind only the paths back, retracing them, reliving them, remembering them.

Failures, mistakes and losses. Same old story, new faces. Warrick, who'd been young and brash and head-butting, but who had become something of a friend. And Catherine, who was Catherine, passionate, flirting and a whirlwind.

He slipped his shades on and headed for the car, the air conditioning and shade not enough to chase away the heat that had seeped into his body. Listless, burning Las Vegas, last stop for so many.

He missed the rain.

The drive was a relief, letting his mind linger on lanes and traffic and driving and leaving everything else by the side of the road for a while. Road and sky and Vegas, forever for a moment that ended too soon.

His colleagues avoided his eyes as he walked into the police station and he wondered if it was for the grief in his eyes or theirs. If they felt grief. He knew to some the CSIs were just the geeks that fiddled around with experiments and only sometimes came face to face with crime. Brass knew better, but he couldn't teach that to young hotshots with guns and illusions of heroic police work and solving it all alone.

They would learn soon enough.

Vega came towards him as he entered, looking grimly satisfied.

"Captain, I was just about to call you. The judge finally gave us the warrant for John Keyes's financial records."

"Get on it," Brass instructed, trying to put more energy into it than he felt. It had been a long, sleepless night and was going to be a long, unforgiving day.

He found Nick peering into a microscope, books and evidence bags spread over the table.

"Got any prints of the car?"

"All the prints are Warrick's," Nick replied, not even looking up.

"So what else have we got?"

"Goat hairs."

"Goat hairs?" Brass echoed.

"Yeah, I found them in the driver's seat. At first I thought maybe from a goat sweater, but the hair wasn't treated, as it would be for wool use. So I looked it up. I even identified the breed. It's from a Boer goat, not native to the US, but several ranches in Nevada have breeding stocks for meat production."

"So someone who drove that car was near goats recently?"

"Yes. I got Archie to find a list of ranches in Nevada to carry that breed."

"I'll get on John Keyes's property list. Maybe he owns one."

Nick nodded, returning his attention to the microscope and Brass left, feeling a new surge of energy. A lead. He'd long since stopped feeling surprised at the little things CSIs would get leads from. Life was in the details. Life was in the chases. And it was time to chase the details to find Warrick and Catherine or if not, Warrick and Catherine's killer.

The coffee was ash in his mouth as he drank it, summoning some strength before getting on the phone to do what he could. Piece together traces of a life - records, rap sheets, listings, information. Deal with the humans while CSI dealt with all the things humans left behind.

Time to work.

Ecklie came by his office, looking suitably concerned and rambling about helping any way he could. Horatio Caine gave a call, promising his lab was on tracking down John Keyes. Grissom called again, sounding worried and tired. Lindsey called, whispering, presumably to hide that she was calling from her babysitter. Too much of a child yet for him to tell her the truth and too much of an adult to keep lying to. He mumbled reassurances as best he could, feeling how empty they were.

The financial records came in and he poured over them, looking for goats. He didn't even feel strange about it anymore. You worked with CSI, you got used to weird.

As he read, a sense of triumph so great it swept away all exhaustion came over him and he bolted up, instructing Vartann to secure a warrant as he found Nick's number on his cell.

"Nick, get your ass in a car. We got a goat call to make."

*****

The desert was burning with the sun, an odd wind stirring dust now and then. The heat wavered across the land, almost like a wave of warmth. Nevada desert, stretching ever towards the horizon, a lone house completing the illusion of isolation.

"This was part of Adam Keyes's Boer goat ranch?" Nick asked, shading his eyes against the sun.

"Yes. His sons inherited it, disagreed on what to do with and most of the goats were sold," Brass explained. "There's a few other buildings left on the property, my officers are checking it out."

"Good place to have privacy," Nick remarked and there was anger in his voice. "This one has recently left tyre tracks by it. Someone was here."

"Captain?" One of officers - Jimmy, was it? - called over from the small cabin cops were swarming over and securing. "We found something in the cellar."

For a moment, a sense of dread so strong he even felt cold in the sunlight overcame Brass, but it faded away as he noticed the officer's face didn't hold the composure of condolences. No dead bodies then. Not Warrick and Catherine to be wheeled away by the coroner. Still hope.

The cellar was cooler than the day outside and dark, torches only chasing away parts of the darkness. Missing boards in the ceiling allowed a beam from above to make patterns on the dusty floor. A few potatoes were scattered about, as was the broken floorboards.

And in a circle of light, some rope circled together.

"There's blood on this rope," Nick said calmly, too calmly. as he peered down. "We should get this back to the lab, it could be Catherine or Warrick's."

"Think he had them here and later moved them?"

"Maybe." Nick paused and lifted his glance to the broken floorboards. "A human could squeeze through there. Maybe they escaped."

"If they're in the area, we'll find them."

"Yeah. I'll process the scene."

Brass left him to it, going outside to the desert dust and the waiting. Always the waiting. Waiting for evidence, waiting for Ellie, waiting for second chances. Las Vegas had offered one, but no second chance came without a price.

Life didn't come without a price. You paid for it in pain, tears and blood.

'Ellie,' he thought and his blood felt dry.

The desert whispered in the wind, almost mournfully, perhaps longing for the rain and the life it would bring. But the sky was empty, only the faintest hints of clouds. Another day of heat and dust only.

The phone ring was loud in his ears and he answered it with a steady hand even as his mind seemed to waver as he listed to the voice on the other end.

The chase was over.

And he could feel nothing, merely stood under the sky and watched it stretch across, bluer than the sea and still no rain.



Chapter Fourteen

Author's Note: Papa Olaf's quote comes from Ivar Aasen's 'Norwegian Proverbs'.

***** From dust to blood
Who wants to live forever?
From blood to dust
Eternity is now or never
- Burn, Marilyn Manson
*****

Home.

The Norwegian sky hung above him, and Greg watched the clouds float across it, perhaps carrying rain. The air seemed heavy, almost looming. He breathed it in slowly, smelling the trees and grass and summer.

'Home,' he thought again and his blood hummed. From this land, his grandparents had come. It was almost as if his DNA felt it had come home. An illusion, probably, brought on by too many stories from Papa Olaf. But still, this was a kind of home.

Another kind of home was Las Vegas. Another kind of family, the lab. A family with two missing members.

He watched the clouds loom and wondered if perhaps he should have stayed in the lab. Perhaps there he could have been of help now, instead of sitting on a bench in Norway, watching people swarm in the main street on a midday summer day. Observing to keep his mind still, to keep the worry at a distance.

It felt an oddly Grissom thing to do.

'Speaking of Grissom,' he thought and saw Sara exit the hotel and spotting him. Dressed in grey and white, she looked pale in the sunlight, almost a ghost.

"Hey," she called, crossing the street and taking a seat next to him. "Wanted some fresh air this morning?"

"Yeah. I knocked on your door, you didn't answer."

"I was probably sleeping still," she said after a moment, but something almost like guilt clung to her. Guilt for sleeping as Warrick and Catherine were in danger? Guilt for not being there, in Las Vegas?

"Trouble falling asleep?" he asked and she let out something much like a snort.

"You could say that."

He gave her a sideways glance. She looked distant and he wondered if that was how she coped. Being CSI had seemed such an adventure, a chance to be Greg the Solver, but he hadn't realised how much there was to cope with. Under a microscope, everything looked more distant. Up close, you realised blood belonged to a life.

"I called Nick," she said and he nodded, having done the same. "They've found Warrick's car."

"I heard. Grissom with you?"

"I think he's still sleeping."

The clouds caught up with the sun and the shadow fell over the day. The leaves rattled slightly in the wind, an almost ominous sound. He wondered if it was heralding doom. In the stories from Norway Papa Olaf had read to him as a boy, the wind often spoke. Perhaps it still did, only people had since forgotten the language.

The hotel door opened again and Grissom came out and Sara tensed, leaving Greg to wonder. Grissom's eyes seemed to seek her out, but she looked away as he walked purposely over.

"Sara, are you..."

Grissom's gaze finally landed on Greg and his face seemed to slam shut, becoming guarded. But for a moment, something almost like boyish insecurity had been there.

"Um..." Grissom started, gaze flickering between Sara and Greg. "I heard from Nick."

"We know," Sara said evenly, her voice betraying nothing and thus far too much.

It didn't take a trained criminalist to see something was in the air between those two. Greg wasn't surprised, even if a small part of him felt faint disappointment. Sara and Grissom and Grissom and Sara, commonly gossiped about among the lab techs. Once, he had perhaps thought about Sara for himself. Perhaps he still did, deep down.

"Anna's boyfriend wants to talk to us," Grissom went on, eyes now firmly on Sara's face. "I thought maybe it would take our minds off... Everything."

Sara nodded, finally meeting Grissom's glance and something unspoken passed between then, not for the first time. They often seemed to speak with glances rather than words. Whatever it was this time, Grissom was the first to look away and at the sky.

The sky opened and the rain fell.

It was still raining when they arrived at the home of Erik Haugli, Anna's boyfriend. He too lived in what seemed a better part of Oslo, windows tall and open to the light. The flat screamed male, a huge television and several posters of a soccer team named 'Vålerenga'. Only a few pictures hinted of a female presence. Anna's ghost.

Grissom had called Brass on the way over, and the lack of news had left him looking more worried than Greg could remember seeing his supervisor before. Every now and then he would also look at Sara, and something almost soft would cross his face.

"Thank you for coming," Erik said, giving all of them a handshake. Only a faint hint of accent clung to his words, but he looked the stereotype of Scandinavia - blond, tall and blue-eyed.

"We understand you already spoke to the Norwegian police?" Grissom asked, sitting down. Sara took a chair on the other side, leaving Greg to take the middle.

"Yes. I thought maybe you knew more."

"We can't discuss an ongoing investigation." Grissom managed to sound slightly apologetic, giving what could pass for a smile. "I understand you study medicine?"

"Yes. She died from an overdose of something, didn't she? The police kept asking me about access to drugs."

"Do you have access?" Sara asked bluntly, her voice hard. Sometimes, she seemed to address suspects as if she was accusing someone else through them, someone who had hurt her. Greg wondered who it was.

"Only supervised," Erik said calmly. "I didn't call you over for that. I got a card yesterday. From her, sent from New York. The airport, I guess."

He got up and picked something off a bookshelf, holding it out to Grissom.

"Greg, could you...?" Grissom asked and Greg nodded, snapping his gloves on and taking the card. The letters were cursive and flowery, the words Norwegian. He could make out a few words, and the picture showed the Manhattan skyline. A typical card from a tourist, only she may have been dying as she wrote it. He put it into a plastic bag carefully, wondering if she had been happy as she wrote it.

"Thank you," Grissom went on. "Why did you give this to us?"

"You're the experts flown in," Erik said with a shrug. "You always go to the experts if you want results. Have you found her father?"

"She told you about him?"

"Yeah. She was so happy. I kept telling her he probably just wanted a kidney from her or something, but she wouldn't listen."

"Did she tell you who it was?" Greg shot in, peeling his gloves off.

"No. Just that he was well off in Las Vegas. He was going to take her gambling and horse riding." Erik shook his head. "You'd think with the mother she had she'd learned that people could hurt her by now."

"Mrs. Jensen told us Anna had received a letter from her father, but we've been unable to find it. Do you have any idea where she might have stored it?" Grissom asked, but Erik only shook his head again.

"I wish I knew, I would have given that man a piece of my mind."

Hostility, Greg noted. Maybe enough hostility to want to make Anna too sick to meet her father? Giving her an overdose by accident?

'You wouldn't even be considering these things a few years ago,' his mind whispered and he shut it away. Innocence was for the children, laughing in the summer wind.

He tuned back to the conversation as he realised Grissom was thanking Erik and they walked out into the light rain. The trees were glistening with water, occasionally letting go of drops. The air was thick with the smell of wet earth, fresh and distinctive.

"You think the card really is from her?" Sara asked as they headed towards the car, looking firmly at Grissom.

"We'll have to find out. You can drive, Greg. You know the way."

They drove to the Majorstua police station, the day starting to fade all around. Greg knew without even looking at his watch. The lighter shade was evening, the sky become paler as a sign of coming night even if the sun would still be up. It was a gentle sort of light twilight, even the rain soft.

Anna's home, this city, for eternity. Her ashes had come home to rest her, even if her blood could not. He wondered if she had been happy here, even in the rain, even without the father.

A few wrong turns later, he pulled the car up in front of the police station and they went in, being greeted by Detective Bjørnvik, who took the bagged card with a few muttered words about arrogant youth. Greg surmised it hadn't been too popular that Erik had given them the card first rather than handing it over to the local police. Grissom stayed behind for a few minutes to make a few calls, leaving Sara and Greg to stand outside in the rain, neither seeking the shelter of the car.

"How are you doing with not thinking about it?" he asked softly and she gave him a grimace.

"I've tried to keep my mind of it," she said and bit her lip.

"Maybe they just ran off to get married?" he suggested. "Sorry. Bad joke."

She looked at him, rain in her hair, affection in her voice. "Don't ever stop making bad jokes, Greg."

He tried to think of a bad joke to reply with when Grissom came barging out, a sun on his face.

"They have been found. They're all right," he announced, making both stare at him.

"Warrick and Catherine?" Sara asked breathlessly. For a moment, she was the image of beauty and happiness, eyes bright and on Grissom.

"Yes. They apparently managed to escape from a house on the property of a John Keyes, and were found wandering in the desert nearby. No sign of the owner. Brass has an APB out on him."

"Thank God," Greg breathed. They were safe. They were all right.

Sara gave him a hug and Grissom was beaming and the rain fell on, and for one moment, Greg knew how Anna must have felt when a letter from her father had arrived.

One moment of getting what you had desperately wanted, one moment of thinking all was right with the world.

And in the back of his mind, something Papa Olaf had said echoed with the beating of the rain.

'The summer moments always pass quickly.'



Chapter Fifteen

*****
parallel lines, move so fast
toward the same point
infinity is as near as it is far
- Kings of Convenience, Parallel Lines
*****

Alive.

It was all Warrick could feel for a while, everything else seemingly so distant. Prodded and hugged and bandaged, he'd watched himself be at the centre of attention, heard himself call and reassure everyone who had been worried that he was fine, he was found and all would be well.

Only when Brass had driven both Catherine and himself to her house and he'd been greeted by Lindsey's bright eyes, had he felt his mind and body meet again and all the relief and exhaustion and joy had flooded into him.

Catherine was home. The lie he'd told had become a truth.

Lindsey looked at her mother for a moment, then fell into Catherine's arms and even Brass smiled, a smile taking years and pains off his face. Warrick just watched, letting the sight of mother and daughter be the strength that kept him standing.

Life. Still life.

"You want a ride?" Nick asked, but Warrick shook his head, feeling Catherine's eyes on him.

"No, I'm gonna... I'll head home later."

Nick said nothing, but Warrick could feel the question in his friend's mind anyway. Perhaps one day he would answer it, but not today. Not when he didn't know the answer yet.

Finally, Catherine broke the embrace and holding Lindsey's hand, she turned to Brass and Nick.

"Thanks, you guys. We'll manage from here."

"Are you sure about this?" Nick asked. "We could have you put up somewhere for the night."

"The paramedics checked us out, Nick. We're fine," Catherine replied, living him a light pat on the shoulder. "Bumps and scrapes are not deadly. We can manage on our own."

"I'd still feel better if..."

"Nick, you're not my mummy. Nor Warrick's."

"Thank God. Nick breastfeeding the two of you is not an image I need," Brass said seriously, but with a smile in his eyes. "Come on, Nicky boy; let's leave the survivors to sort themselves out. I'll have a few officers keep an eye on the house, just in case. Yours too, Warrick. Get some rest, the both of you."

"Take care," Nick said softly and gave Catherine a quick hug. "Don't you scare us like that again."

"I won't."

Nick straightened up, giving them both a smile. Warrick met his glance for a moment, saying with a look all the things that would sound trite with words, getting a knowing nod in return.

And then the door was closed and it was just him and Catherine and Lindsey. Lindsey, who was looking at him with eyes so much like her mother.

"Thank you," she said seriously and extended her hand. He took it, feeling how light it was in his hand. Not a child and not an adult either and he remembered with a painful breath what he had been like himself, trapped between the two.

"Come Lindsey, let's get you to bed, you've had a longer day than me," Catherine said softly, looking down at her daughter with so much love Warrick had to look away. "Warrick, you wanna..."

"I'll be in the living room," he said and she nodded. He stood for a moment watching them go and hearing their soft voices talking. A family. Catherine and Lindsey and perhaps even him, still standing by the entrance. Perhaps.

The couch was soft and he allowed himself to lean back and close his eyes. He hurt, he was tired and there was so much in his mind to sort through, but he felt bereft of strength to think properly and instead it all seemed to tumble about. He'd been knocked out, bruised, tied-up, freed and walked across Nevada desert under the burning, unforgiving sun. And he'd slept with Catherine. Something he'd desired for a long time, yes, but he hadn't wanted it to be rushed and over before it began. But a few days ago he hadn't realised he could've lost her before they'd started anything.

He let the thought go, heavy as it was in his mind and his mind tired of carrying so much. He was alive. Catherine was alive. Everything else was baggage.

Soft hands on his shoulder startled him and he realised he'd drifted off. Catherine was looking down at him with a slight smile.

"Sorry."

"Don't be," she said, her hand lingering on his shoulder. "Lindsey likes you. You kept your word to her. Eddie broke too many."

There was a slight pain in her voice, masked by her smile.

"I should…" he trailed off, vaguely making a gesture towards the door.

"No," she said softly. "You hit the shower; I'll make us something to eat."

He looked after her as she walked off, wondering if she asked him to stay for her or for him and if it really mattered either way.

The bathroom felt distinctly female and he felt almost like an intruder there, undressing quickly and turning on the shower, smelling dust and heat and sweat on himself. It had been a very long day.

The water was scalding, burning away the last lingering smell of the desert. He leaned his head against the shower wall, just letting the water cascade over his body and tired muscles, not really thinking or feeling.

He heard the door open and close and the turn of a key. He could hear her breathe and move and he could feel her undress even with his back turned. Moments later, he felt her hands on his back, warmer than even the hot water.

"Hey," she whispered. He turned, watching her in the fog of heat. He had felt her body under his touch, but it had been rushed and fast and dark. He hadn't seen her as now, baring herself before him, exposed under his gaze. Her body bore the marks of age, but she was all the more beautiful for it and he drank in the sight of her, head to toe. Her hair was darkening under the water, clinging to her face and shoulders.

"Hey," he whispered back, tucking her hair behind her ear, cupping her head in his hands.

"We made it," she breathed, never taking her eyes off his face.

"We did," he agreed. Her skin was slick with water and he traced the lines of her jawbone, careful where the skin was bruised. Just seeing the dark blue hue of violence done made his head pound and he forced back the anger. Time for that later. She was alive, she was there. Carefully, he leaned down and pressed a kiss against it. She let out a long breath as he continued his trail of kisses over her cheek, her eyelids, her forehead, her nose, her lips.

Her lips curved in a smile against his and she slid her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. He explored the taste of her; coffee, water, heat, and just her, only her. Suddenly, it didn't seem to matter that he was tired, that his muscles ached. And when her hand dipped down, it was almost death in its pleasure.

"Hello there," she teased, breath hot against his ear, her skin burning against his. Too close and not close enough and impatience rose with desire in his blood as he looked at her, the temptress in a shawl of mist.

He lifted her up, letting her straddle him as he pinned her against the wall. He kept his eyes on her face as he touched her, her cheeks aflame. And when her body welcomed him, her sigh was like absolution and he was lost.

It was some time later, hot water gone and mist evaporated, that she insisted on dressing him in one of her silk robes, despite all his protests. He eventually gave up in face of her kisses and instead followed her to the kitchen, grabbing some cold food and taking it with to settle on the living room couch. His skin felt warm still as he ate, feeling her eyes on him.

"It does show off your lovely legs," she commented suddenly, tilting her head as she regarded him.

He chuckled. "Yours are better."

"Matter of opinion."

"Uh uh." He bit into a piece of salami, feeling warm and comfortable and wonderfully tired. "Long day."

"Mmm. Long day. And Nick got to be the hero at the end of it," she remarked lightly, stretching out a leg and placing it in his lap. He let a finger trace her toes and she sighed, sounding tired and content and comfortable, a mirror of his feelings, a mirror of him.

"So shouldn't he be here instead?" The question was half-tease, half-serious. It was a simpler way of asking the real question that burned on his tongue.

’Why me?’ he thought and watched her face. 'Why am I here, of all the men you might've had?'

"We're all heroes, every day," she replied softly, leaning forward. "You, me, Nick, Grissom, Sara, Greg, Brass... We fall down. We get up. We survive. We move on. We live."

He nodded and caressed her knee, watching her eyes on his face, feeling a strange sense of homecoming.

"And you…" she went on, edging ever closer, "you’re here because I wanted you to stay and you did."

"That can’t be all," he said quietly.

"It’s the simple answer."

"You once told me complicated was the whole point."

She smiled, brushing a finger across his cheek. "Yes. But there’s always time for the complications tomorrow."

"Does that mean you want me to stay the night?"

"Yeah," she replied seriously, "that means I want you to spend the night very much, Warrick Brown. Will you?"

"Won't Lindsey mind?"

"Lindsey will understand. She likes you."

"I like her," he said and brushed the hair out of Catherine's face, feeling the water still clinging to it. "I like her mother, too. Yeah, I'll stay."

"Will you sing me a lullaby?" she whispered and he smiled against her lips.

"Maybe."

He kissed her softly and she leaned against him, warm and near and safe. Complications and troubles and pains would come, but she was right. That was tomorrow. Time to rest now.

And the night hummed on, singing its own lullaby to a neversleeping Earth.



Chapter Sixteen

*****
Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it
does not set for months,
Stretch'd in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above
the horizon and sinks again
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
*****

There was a butterfly in his window, flying in the midnight sun. Yellow and green, sun and grass, summer on its wings. The entomologist in him wondered what butterflies dared the north, the man in him was longing to show the beauty to Sara.

Gil Grissom was torn, he had to admit. Within him, it seemed feelings he'd forgotten had come out, reaching for the sun. Desire. Fear. Happiness. Relief. Anger. Dread. Longing.

Longing.

Longing for Las Vegas, for home soil, for home skin, for himself again. Longing for Catherine, to see her smile at him, know she was truly okay. Longing for Warrick's presence, filled with the passion and the drive that would one day run the lab. Longing for his house, his land, his clearly defined borders. Longing for Sara. Her mind, her presence, her skin, her touch.

Sara.

He let out a breath and the butterfly flapped away, chasing the summer night. He'd slept with her. In a moment of weakness and darkness, he'd reached for her. This new Grissom, this daring Grissom he had long since thought age had killed. He'd kissed her, caressed her skin, possessed her body, seen her eyes. Such beauty in her eyes, for they held her spirit and mind.

And now, it wasn't enough. As he had always known it would be, as he'd always feared it would be.

It wasn't enough.

They hadn't had much chance to talk. Perhaps he'd even willed it so, all the words he might say to her muddled in his own mind still. And they had a case to solve. For a moment, he felt a bang of guilt. He should be thinking of Anna, not Sara. But coming to Norway had been nothing as he had imagined and then there had been Catherine and Warrick's disappearance...

Catherine had called earlier in the evening, her voice tired and wonderfully and soft as she spoke of Warrick. He'd just listened to her, feeling warmed by her voice and the knowledge she was safe and he hadn't lost her. But a part of him felt a hint of anger directed at her, for making him be afraid, for casting him adrift, for making him find a harbour in Sara.

The rational part of him knew it was misdirection. The real anger wasn't directed at Catherine, or at Sara for that matter. It was at himself, for resolving not to try a life with her in the first place, for tossing that resolution to the wind when faced with possible loss. And now he had to sort out this new land, redefine borders, redefine Grissom.

The knock on his door was expected and he opened it to see Sara in the hallways, colour in her cheeks. She and Greg had lingered in the bar for celebratory drinks a bit longer, but Greg had evidently finally gone to bed and here she was. As he had known she would be.

"Hey," she said softly.

A part of him that wanted to hurt her almost asked how much she'd have to drink. But he bit it back. She was not a drunk, had never been so and she didn't deserve him cheapening her problems down to that.

"Hey," he echoed instead, wondering why his voice was so soft.

"Wanna go for a walk?" she asked and looked at him. He met her glance and knew what she was asking. If he said no, she would never talk about last night again. It would never have happened. She was tired of chasing him. One last question, making last night real.

"Yes," he replied and parts of his mind screamed at him. Something almost like surprise flashed across her face as well, followed by the faintest lingering smile.

"Let's go, then."

They went.

Oslo was quiet in the night, just hints of distant traffic and a few fellow humans awake. The smell of rain had been burned away, leaving only traces of dark, wet earth as they walked in the light night. The sun was low, almost ready to dip below the horizon for a few hours before returning to shine another day almost through.

"What are you telling me with your silence, Grissom?" she asked after a while.

"That I don't know what to say."

She considered that for a moment, her hair dark as it brushed against green leaves. "No 'this was a great mistake, I didn't mean it' speech?"

"I meant it from the moment I kissed you," he replied honestly and he wasn't sure who was more surprised, she or him. "But..."

"The dreaded 'but'," she muttered and the light in her eyes faded.

"I'm old, I'm your supervisor, I'm... I'm not good with... You," he said haltingly, awkwardly.

"And I was raised in a dysfunctional family, get too emotional and have dated more than one guy that was all wrong for me," she countered. "What else have you got?"

"I'm emotionally unavailable."

"We have established that," she said with a hint of humour in her voice. "Why I went after you, remember?"

He wondered if she was amused by herself or him, or just the trappings of life. After all she had done to be near him - come to Las Vegas, invited him to dinner, stayed despite thinking of leaving - it was in fact Catherine and Warrick and a perp that had brought him to her embrace.

'Perhaps I would have come anyway,' he thought and it was a dangerous thought.

"Not the only reason I went after you, though," she said softly and her honesty almost felt like rain drowning him.

"I didn't ask you to..."

"Fall in love with you? You did, Grissom. With every look."

"You can't love me. You don't know me," he said quickly without really thinking, a reflex from the darkness of his mind.

"And whose fault is that?" she countered angrily, then took a deep breath. "I do know you, Grissom. You just refuse to acknowledge it, as if that would give me some kind of hold over you."

"It would," he said quietly. "You could leave me and I would have nothing."

She halted and stared at him. They had walked down to what Grissom recognised as the city hall and stood at a square leading to the harbour. The water glimmered before him, breaking the last of the sun's rays, exposing what the sun hid in its light. Not secret anymore.

"I heard what you told Dr. Lurie that one time," she said suddenly, eyes now on the sea and the boats slowly rocking in the slight waves. "I was angry with each word you spoke. I realised I didn't mean enough for you to take that risk."

"You meant too much for me to take that risk," he countered, feeling his breath caught in his throat. She had heard. She had known. She had known a part of him, a part of his fear all this time.

"I just want the possibility, Gil. I'm not looking for guarantees or promises or a house with picket fences and a dog and barbecue parties for our neighbours. I'm looking for you," she said simply, her voice even. Not pleading, not excusing, just stating a fact.

'That's what I'm afraid of,' he thought and for a moment, the silence seemed louder than all the roar the sea could ever muster.

"I... I don't know what I can offer you," he started, feeling as if he was taking a wild fly off the ski jump looming over the city.

"You told me once I deserved to have a life," she cut in and past hurt seemed to lace her words. "Did you mean it?"

"Yes."

"And if the life I want is with you, do I deserve that still?"

He bit his lip, but when the word came out, it felt like a burden fell off him. "Yes."

She didn't triumph, didn't beam happily, didn't look at him. She merely let out a slow breath, an exhale of life. The wind caressed her skin and stroked her hair and he wished he was it, always free to be near her.

"The sun's going down," she said distantly. "Almost morning and the sun is setting."

"It'll rise again in a few hours."

She nodded, closing her eyes to the sea and the sky and as he watched her, he almost felt young, almost felt brave.

"You want to have breakfast with me?" he asked. "See what happens?"

She finally turned to look at him, the dying sun in her eyes, his heart for a moment in her hands.

"It's a start," she acknowledged, her voice firm. "Yes. I'd love to have breakfast with you."

She smiled at him as they walked on in silence, the sun at last falling below the horizon. It would rise again, starting a new day, and strangely, he found he longed for it.

'A start,' he thought. New country, new territory. New morning. New Grissom, new Sara. She'd want more than a start, want what he didn't know if he could give. And even what he could give might not be enough.

But maybe it would be. Maybe...

The day was already over. All he could do was walk into the next, Sara next to him, a mere touch away.

A start.



Chapter Seventeen

*****
And we'll never look back, beat a new track
Yes, you're welcome to stay

What is it you live for, do you ever stop to dream?
(Can't compete, I'm afraid, the fear without a name)
Are you busy, too much running?
Life's quicker than it seems
- Palladium, Ocean Lane
*****

Dream faded into awareness faded into dream. The smell of food and a sense of light pushed itself into her mind, but she clung to sleep a while yet, enjoying the comfort of not thinking, not straining, not hurting. All around her was soft and comfortable, almost like a womb. Almost like innocence.

Laughter. It tickled against her skin, drifting through the room and she fought her eyes open.

The room was bright with morning light and for a moment, she let it burn against her skin. Flames of the dawn, stroking her slowly.

It felt like a dawn in more than one way.

She got up and tossed on some clothes, the fabric feeling rough against her sore skin. As she walked through her house, she heard Warrick’s muffled voice drifting from the kitchen, and a moment later, her daughter’s.

Almost like a normal family.

She halted in the kitchen doorway, watching Warrick and Lindsey chatting away, eating slightly-too-burned toast. Warrick was describing footprint lifting, and Catherine had to bite back a smile.

Warrick’s idea of being charming. It had its moments, she had to admit.

As she stood silently watching them, worry seemed to creep into her mind with the morning light.

Warrick couldn’t be just another guy she could seek some comfort and caresses with. He was already in her life and she could not shut him out, even if things went sour. High stakes, but Warrick was an able gambler.

It remained to see if she was.

"Are you going to hover in the doorway all day?"

She met Warrick’s bemused glance, noticing Lindsey’s slightly more guarded look.

"I like to observe," she replied, tilting her head Grissom-esque.

"Should I start looking out for spiders in your office, Mrs. Grissom?" Warrick grinned and Lindsey made a slight ‘ew’ sound.

It surprised her slightly Warrick was so comfortable with her long friendship and bond with Grissom. He’d never asked if there was something between Grissom and her, as if Warrick knew it wasn’t merely by being near them. Eddie had asked. Eddie had assumed.

But then, Warrick knew Grissom better than Eddie had. Perhaps he even knew her better than Eddie had.

It was a strangely seducing, yet scary thought. Was she so like Grissom she too feared someone knowing her to the bones of her flaws?

"If mom gets a spider, I’m moving in with you," Lindsey declared to Warrick, interrupting Catherine’s train of thought.

"Good. You can do all my laundry and cook my meals," he replied, finishing off his toast with an energetic bite.

"Chauvinist."

"Arachnophobe."

"Now, now, children," Catherine broke in. "Be nice to each other. Lindsey, I think it's about time for school."

"Do I have to?" Lindsey asked quietly, something almost like a shadow of fear in her eyes. Fear she'd come home to find no one there? Fear of losing her mother as she had her father?

'I wish I could shield you from fear forever, but you are growing up and leaving innocence,' Catherine thought and her own childhood felt fainter than ever. She was old, her child was growing old. The years passed. And she sometimes wondered if she had lived them at all.

"Yes, you have to."

"Will you drive me?" Lindsey asked Warrick, pointedly not looking at Catherine. A punishment, perhaps even a rebellion.

Warrick gave Catherine a quick look, and she merely nodded, feeling sharp tugs to her heart. Lindsey knew where to hurt, just as Catherine had known where to hurt her mother. Your own sins could come back to haunt in your children and pained all the more.

Lindsey coolly accepted a departing hug, and Warrick gave a slight smile of sympathy. She watched him walk away with her daughter and felt envy. No thorns, no pains. But then, Lindsey didn't need to rebel against him, didn't need to lash out. He had no hold over her, as Catherine had, the hold of shared blood.

Parents and children and blood.

She went into her quiet living room, knowing her mother would want to hear from her again, but shying away from making the call. Not now, when she felt vulnerable and old. Later, when she could be the calm no one could shatter. Sam would probably make contact too. Her father, in blood. Not much of a father in anything else.

Fathers. A father had taken her and Warrick, wanting to know why his daughter was dead. It had to be a case CSIs dealt with. Could it be Georgina or Rita's father? Or had the still undiscovered John Keyes lost a daughter in his life?

She would have to delve into their lives and see. Look into old cases of hers too, see if there were any unsolved cases involving distraught fathers.

There would probably be too many. She had forgotten, for her own sanity. But a parent would have no such choice. The loss would linger, maybe even corrupt. If you had suffered such a loss, why shouldn't others?

She felt a chill even in the sunlight as all her thoughts seemed to slam together. Georgina James and Rita Williams and weeping fathers. Killing father.

'Do you kill because your own loss is unbearable?' she thought and for a moment wondered what she might have done had her daughter died too when Eddie had and with no justice for the killer.

The killer of Georgina and Rita could be a grieving father, perhaps even the grieving father who had taken her and Warrick. And if she could find the father's loss, maybe she could find him, stop him from passing the loss ever on.

She sat in the silence and sunlight for moments of eternity, thinking about parents and loss until the sun had started to cross the sky and she heard a door open. For a moment, she felt a twinge of irrational fear, just as she'd known she would. She forced herself to sit still until she felt soft hands on her shoulders. Confront the fear, not letting it dominate her.

"Hey," Warrick greeted her with.

"Hey," she replied, twisting her head slightly to look up at him. He had changed his clothes, she noticed, probably having stopped by his own place. He was armed too, she noticed and knew he too felt the fear.

"Lindsey pissed at me?"

"Yeah," he replied, not shielding her from the pain with a lie. "It's none of my business, Cath, but it wouldn't have hurt her to stay home today."

"It could have," she said quietly. "I don't want her to start fearing I'll disappear while she's away. Fear grows when you don't confront it. It cripples you."

He considered that, looking down at her with a penetrating glance. "You've learned that?"

"I've learned that."

"So what are you afraid of?"

"My mistakes," she whispered and leaned back against him. He kneaded the tension out of her shoulders and she let him, feeling younger under his touch.

"I want to find this guy, Warrick," she said after a while and wondered why her voice spoke of doom.

"We will."

"I think the same guy who went after us also killed those girls."

"I've considered it," Warrick replied calmly, not interrupting his slow massage.

"He's going to try to kill again."

"Yeah."

"He's looking for a daughter in death," she said distantly, remembering Georgina, remembering Rita.

"We all look for what is lost."

"Yes," she agreed. "I think I still look for a father."

"So do I," he said quietly. "My grandmother was wonderful, but you can't ignore the call of blood. I look for my parents still."

'In Grissom?' she wondered, but didn't ask. Maybe one day she would. Or maybe one day she wouldn't need to.

The sun burned even through the windows and she dared a look at it, her vision turning to white under its onslaught. Unbroken light, even through its long journey through darkness and nothingness, bringing life with it.

"I'd like to stay here for a few days," Warrick said, slight hesitation in his voice. "Just in case. I know it's not exactly following office policies, but the guy could be back."

'All the parts of my life you ease into... How can I ever shut you out again if you hurt me?' she thought, but it was a thought of the future, a fear she'd have to confront one day or it would cripple her.

"I don't much care about office policies right now," she said after a moment's hesitation. "Let Ecklie slam them on me if he wants."

"You do care. You love your job."

She smiled, feeling Warrick come around and kneel down by her, his hands warm as they came to rest on her thigh. "You love yours."

"That's not the only thing I might love."

His voice was soft, a caress leaving her body warm and her mind jumbled.

"I haven't loved anyone in a long time," she replied, feeling Eddie's ghost pressing down on her, heavy and cold.

"I’ve been burned too, Cath," Warrick said casually, but she heard what was buried beneath the calm. She knew it from herself.

Pain and scares and ashes.

His face was almost boyish as she looked at him, a hint of the innocence he'd once held. She wondered what had burned it out of him. The father he'd never had? The lights of Las Vegas? Bullies of his childhood?

"I know," she said quietly.

"I don't want you to be hurt. In any way."

Eddie had promised not to hurt her, promised her the fairytale, but Warrick wouldn't offer that promise, she knew. It would be a promise he'd break. He knew love always brought some hurt, knew that children would hurt their parents, parents would hurt their children, lovers would hurt each other and yet the world would still move on and people would still love.

People would still love.

People would still kill. For love, for love lost, for love desired. And she'd still have a job to do. A murderer to catch.

'Life is pain,' she thought and kissed Warrick gently, knowing the velvet touch of his lips would one day mean barbed wire around her heart, tugging, burrowing, hurting. All love brought pain, but she had always carried her scars and not looked back. So she told herself, repeating it until she believed.

And somewhere, she could almost feel a father, a killer, a mourner awaiting, looking back because he knew no path forward, lost in his loss.

She could almost pity him. Almost. She would still bring him down. As she had to, as she wanted to, as she was driven to. Killers and pain and love and pity. Her life in the morning sun.

And ever there was the lost innocence, haunting just out of view, forever lost to the path already walked.

'Never look back,' she thought.



Chapter Eighteen

***** How can you explain this anxiety inside your veins
and warm this unbearable snatch of fury
a life is betrayed between your hands
dripping and tearing
you feel the abyss attraction
you feel the abyss attraction
- Ann Hell, The Abyss Attraction
*****

'I never got to love you,' he thought. It had to be the millionth time he thought it, and yet it still hurt as much as the first time. Pain was eternal, like a shadow to time, falling over all. Everything was darkened by its presence.

It wasn't fair. She had just been about to come into his life, change everything, make it all good and be a real family with him. Instead, he was left with a darker shadow in his mind than ever before.

The shadow wanted to pretend, to make Anna alive again and he listened and complied, and it did ease the pain, but only for a little while. A little moment of winter in the burning, burning summer. And he was nothing but ashes already. Nothing left to burn, yet it still did.

It wasn't fair.

And everything was falling apart, a house of cards caught in a gale. He hadn't meant to take the CSIs, not at first. But the shadow in his mind had whispered of justice and he had listened, as he always did, as he always wanted. Maybe if he could kill the killer, justice would ease his pain, he had thought and from there it had all spiralled out of control. First the blonde, then the interfering black guy. He'd taken them to the ranch, knowing it to be deserted and silent. There they would tell him who they suspected of killing Anna, even if he had to bleed it out of them. And if they didn't know, he could use them as leverage to push someone who did know. And the blonde... Maybe she could be Anna for him, for a little while. He'd seen it so clearly it almost felt like a memory rather than a plan for the future. But he'd gone to get supplies and found his prisoners gone and the memory had crumbled.

Now they were hunting him, free and armed with knowledge. Trying to make him the prisoner.

A part of him that was still human was almost relieved. Now he needn't battle the urge to kill them. Another part was angry, calling out for blood, blood, blood, to silence the roar of his own.

He would have to find her again today.

The thought chilled him and he felt almost calm and cold, like the winter ice on a frozen lake, with all hidden beneath. Almost. But the ice could never tame the Atlantic and the calm could never tame him. Not anymore. Anna, Anna, she could have tamed him. His beautiful daughter, unafraid of the roaring Atlantic. She must have been. Cecilie had not feared the sea and she would have taught her daughter not to be either, he just knew.

Treacherous, beautiful Cecilie, warm and burning in the Norwegian winter. Why had she never told him she was pregnant? Why had she only told their daughter of his existence on her deathbed? Had she not loved him after all? Had she not known he would leave Las Vegas for her, leave his dominating father and live in her quiet country forever if she had only spoken the words? Together, Anna and Cecilie could have defeated the call of his father in his mind. He believed it, willed it to be true. All she had needed to do was speak the words.

But she never had. And all he could have had, had been torn from him. That wasn't fair, could never be fair.

The pain came back and he stood still, letting it fill him until he was a knife of steel and ice, ready to cut. Ready to bleed. Not his blood, no. He didn't have enough blood for what his mind demanded. But out there, in the wide world, there was endless blood.

He had learned that even as a child. A world of blood, its waves never fading and his shore a hard, rocky ground.

He gathered his things quietly and stepped out into the relentless sunshine that knew no mercy. Life knew no mercy. And he was alive. Anna was not.

But for a little while, with Georgina, with Rita, he had pretended. And then he had killed, as the knife he was. Bleeding their blood to cover Anna's. Easing his pain by giving it back to the world. It was the only way he knew to live anymore.

After he had lived a little, he could think of another way to find who had torn Anna from him, find another way to make it all better again.

He had to believe it.

No one gave him a second glance as he walked around the streets of Las Vegas. No one knew his pain, knew his blood. Maybe the CSIs didn't know all yet and were still searching in the dark. It was hard to make out shadows in the darkness, after all. Maybe he still had time to find someone Anna could live in forever.

He went to a coffee shop he knew of, smiling to the patrons there as he accepted his coffee, watching the parking lot and the people there, waiting for her. She would come. She always came, sooner or later.

The CSIs hadn't come. When he had first heard of Anna's death, he had expected them, waited for them, but no one had come. No one had known, he had realised. Anna hadn't told anyone who her father was or they would have contacted him, if only to offer empty words.

No one knew.

And so he had made Georgina Anna, and sung her the lullabies he should have when she was young, told her all the things a father should tell a daughter, watched her sleep like Cinderella. And then he had killed the body of Georgina and Anna had lived on. For a little while.

It never lasted. It wouldn't this time either, but he could pretend. For a little while.

For a little while, Anna was there. Beautiful Anna, her voice softer than spring, laughing with him on the phone. He couldn't believe she had called him, unafraid, speaking of what an adventure it would be to come see him. No, not adventure. Fairytale. That was the word she had used. A fairytale. Father and daughter, coming together at last.

It would have been a fairytale. He could almost taste it, sweet as spring rain, kissed off Cecilie's lips. Maybe that had been the night they had made Anna, the first warm day of spring in a greening Norway.

He breathed, imagining being there from the start, being there when she was born, kissing her forehead and being a father.

It would have made him happy. It would have been enough. He would not felt this shadow in his mind if he had been allowed to be a father. He knew it, he believed it. He had to. The alternative was a dark abyss and he wouldn't fall there. Not when he could pretend.

Illusions were real if you made them, if only for a little while.

It wasn't fair. He shouldn't have to. He had been a good son, coming back when his father had demanded it, being the shadow of his brother, working, earning money, courting women who didn't know him and he cared nothing for. And all the while knowing something was missing.

He just hadn't know just how much until Anna's letters and Anna's phone calls and Anna's promise of a fairytale.

It should have been he who offered fairytales to her. He should have rebelled, shouldn't have left Cecilie and gone home as his father had demanded. He could have been there then, loving them both and it would have been all he would ever need.

Gentler summers, cold winters, a family and no shadows at all. No Nevada sun and ghosts of his father in the brightness of the day. Peace. He could have had peace.

It wasn't fair.

And for all the blood, he could never make it fair again. Yet he had to keep trying, because he had nothing else.

He wasn't sure how long he had waited when he saw her, for time was a slow crawl over broken glass and he had long since given up on looking ahead.

She was bright in the sun, her hair like a crown of gold, bright and fair and as Anna should have been. She was the one, stepping out of her car with a smile that seemed innocent and knowing all at once. Beautiful as Cecilie had been, young as Anna had been.

'Oh, Anna,' he thought, his heart pounding.

He made a note of her car plates and draining the last of his coffee, he went out into the sun and the burning abyss. Later, he would call one of his friends and find out who the plates belonged to, and know what name he would create Anna in this time.

What should he give her this time? Another cake? Perhaps he would deliver a wine to her, with roses. White roses if he could find them, white as Norwegian snow and Cecilie's smile.

Yes. Roses and wine and lullabies.

Maybe even a fairytale.



Chapter Nineteen

*****
After all the battles and the wars
The scars and loss
I'm still the queen of my domain
And feeling stronger now
The walls are down a little more each day
Since you came, finally, finally things are changing

This land is mine but I'll let you rule
I let you navigate and demand
Just as long as you know this land is mine
- Dido, This Land is Mine
*****

Happily ever after.

Almost all fairytales ended so, so Sara weren't surprised as she read the words and pushed the book aside. Fairytales weren't life, but they spoke volumes about what people wanted from life. Some riches, evil defeated, love found and won. And happily ever after. No one ever wrote tales about that part, though.

The bed was soft under her and she felt strangely conscious of sleeping naked with the sun slipping across her back. Not that she could sleep. She should be exhausted with all that had happened and the little sleep she'd had, but her mind and body wasn't buying that. And so she had stayed awake, reading the book Grissom had lent her.

Fairytales.

And strangely, she could almost feel what Anna must have, suddenly getting what you'd secretly longed for all along. Anna found her father. Sara had found Grissom. Or perhaps Grissom had found her.

He had taken her to breakfast and talked of Norwegian bugs, and she knew it was his way of sharing. He hadn't kissed her again, but he had touched her, even held her hand as they'd witnessed Anna's funeral. A start. It felt equal parts rebuilding and new building, a construct of… Something.

The day she figured out just what was between Grissom and her was the day she was the greatest CSI ever, she mused and the thought brought a twisted smile to her lips. But at least there was something, even if it bore no name for now.

Her eyes fell on the book again and she watched the sunlight engulf it, almost as the sun was reading it too. In Norwegian fairytales, nature had characters and personalities. The sun, the moon, the northern wind, alive as people were, as the land was.

Anna's land.

'Did you lie awake like this the night before you left for Las Vegas and your death, Anna?' Sara thought, resting her head against the pillow.

The funeral had been familiar and unfamiliar at once, the rituals slightly different, the grief much the same. Anna had been loved. And for that, Sara felt a strange envy. The only love she had known in her childhood had become tainted, dark, bloody. Love killed.

Perhaps that was why she so often sought in men she knew wouldn't give it to her. A pattern, set already in her childhood. But patterns could be laid anew, as long as there was life.

She closed her eyes and imagined Grissom's touch on her naked back, making new patterns on her skin, chasing all the ghosts away. Caressing her without gloves, without boundaries.

The knock on the door was soft, as was the voice drifting through it, but it still tore her away from the mind's desires.

"Sara?"

"Grissom?" she asked, sitting up. For a moment, she wondered if he was here for her daydream, but she discarded that idea. Not yet, no.

"I didn't wake you?"

"No. It's hard to sleep with this sun."

"Yeah. You should get dressed. There's been a development. Bring your kit."

"I'll be right there," she replied, getting up. The carpet felt soft against her feet as she dressed, wondering what was going on. A confession? Something happening in Las Vegas? Warrick and Catherine had been all right, there couldn't be a new crisis there, could there?

Both Grissom and Greg were waiting in the hallway when she exited and she drew a slight sigh of relief. They both looked serious, but not distraught. It had to be case related, not personal.

She felt a twinge of guilt at her relief and was glad she felt it. The day she stopped feeling it, she would probably make a poorer CSI.

"One of Anna's friends, a Kristin Helsvik, was admitted to hospital. She'd been complaining of stomach craps and pains for a few days. Lithium carbonate overdose. They think she'll make it. The police has asked us to assist since the two cases seem connected. We'll meet Mr. Bjørnvik at the girl's house," Grissom explained, voice calm and detached and all professional.

"They don't think it's a suicide attempt then?"

"Never rule anything out," Greg shot in and Grissom closed his mouth, looking vaguely annoyed for a moment.

"Right, Greg."

She bit back a smile as they walked down. Greg could be such a mini-Grissom sometimes, only younger and brighter. She wasn't sure the Las Vegas lab was quite equipped for dealing with two Grissoms, though. She wasn't even sure she was equipped to deal with one.

Grissom smiled almost seductively at her and she thought maybe, just maybe, she was after all.

*****

Kristin Helsvik had a small house in an Oslo suburb, ivy climbing the outside wall to her window. Growing wild, always upwards, always reaching. A tree was lowering its branches over the roof, and it almost felt like a wall of nature protecting, too, like an illusion of safety.

Vegard Bjørnvik was waiting for them, looking tired, but still flashing her a smile and something flashed across Grissom's face so fast she almost thought she'd imagined it. Jealousy? Possessiveness? Annoyance?

"Drug seems to have been ingested," Vegard said calmly, probably unaware of Grissom's reaction. "My guys are looking through anything that could have been eaten in there."

"Anyone looked at the trash yet?" Sara asked and got a head shake in return. "May I?"

"Knock yourself out," Vegard replied, sounding amused. "Not afraid to get dirty?"

"I never am," she smiled, but the smile was directed to Grissom and the look he gave her back felt so intimate she wondered if the whole land couldn't help but notice. And then it slipped away, as Grissom turned to Greg and she felt strangely bereft for a moment.

"Let us aid our Norwegian colleagues, young Sanders."

"Yes, Master Grissom," Greg replied mockingly and gave her a cheerful wave as he followed Grissom inside. Vegard lingered outside and she realised he was going to watch her work. For legal reasons, perhaps, but it still felt a bit intrusive as she slapped on gloves and approached the bins. Both were steel and without wheels, so clearly Norwegian garbage collection was a different deal then Nevada's. The smell was much the same, though.

And the content wasn't that much different either, she concluded as she bagged whatever might have been eaten or had held food. Plastic, leftover food, containers with foreign names. The other bin was clearly for paper and cardboard, and it didn't take long to realise Kristin was fond of frozen pizza.

"Grand-i-oza," Sara read, wondering if she was documenting the Norwegian equivalent of eating only take-out. "Pepperoni flavour."

"Most eaten food of Norway," Vegard said, giving another small smile.

"And here I thought you all ate fish," she remarked, flipping the box over and noticing the note sticking to it. A yellow Post-It, ink smudged in a few places but still readable. If one read Norwegian.

Vegard seemed to take the hint and leaned forward.

"I had some to spare. Have fun on the outing. Anna," he translated and met her gaze.

"I don't think this was attached to the frozen pizza. Probably stuck to it when the note was thrown in the paper trash," Sara muttered, mostly to herself. Could Kristin have been drugged by the same source as Anna? If so, what had Anna given Kristin? "What would you bring to an outing in Norway?"

"Hot dogs and meat for barbecuing. Salad, maybe. Bread."

"Buns?" she asked, holding up a bagged half-eaten bun.

"Buns," Vegard agreed. "I'll get a priority on it."

She nodded, taking time to file through the rest of what was there, just to make sure she didn't miss something. If you focused on the evidence you had already found while working the scene, you could miss evidence still to be found. Grissom had told her that, a lifetime ago in a seminar room, looking at her with a gaze she had been captured in ever since.

Moments, later, she felt it on her, and turned to see Grissom had joined them outside.

"Possible source: Buns Anna gave her," she declared, holding up the bagged bun and bagged note both.

"Good work, Sara," Grissom replied, but the true compliment was in his voice, sounding satisfied and appreciative without being flirty. Sara, the woman, wanted him, yes, but the CSI in her wanted him to see value in her work equally much. Almost, at least. She was never sure which part of her was the strongest, as it changed every day.

"You find anything?"

He shrugged. "Remains to be seen."

"It always does," she said lightly and Grissom nodded, as if agreeing to something her voice had said, but her words hadn't. Perhaps she had been thinking of more than the case, but it was hard not to. Grissom was Grissom, always and ever, and it was hard to think of work-Grissom differently than the man who had pinned her beneath him and kissed memories away.

She would have to learn how to, if this something was to work at all, but for now, she let herself look at him and see only Grissom, Grissom whose touch was fire and cool both. Grissom, who had let go a little bit and let her in.

New land, new territory, new start, new relationship. It wouldn't be happily ever after or a fairytale, she knew already. It might turn out to be nothing at all. But for a brief, sun-captured moment as she handed Grissom the evidence bags and his hand brushed hers, she felt happy.



Chapter Twenty

*****
Don't you hear that deafening roar?
Again and again in a broken refrain.
We're homeward bound, pulled by the sound
Of history repeating.
- Jump, Little Children
*****

Life was seduction, ever enticing humans into just another day, just another morning. Just another moment of breathing, feeling, being. Life for life's sake.

Life. Warrick had never realised the prospect of losing it would have been such a strange, haunting thought. After all, he worked a profession that wasn't exactly safe, and he'd certainly seen people around him be in danger. He'd had a gun pulled on him. And yet, yet... He hadn't always had time to think before and now there seemed almost too much time.

Perhaps that was why Catherine was racing ahead, insisting they head off to the lab and back to work. No time to think, losing yourself in work so that the thoughts went away and became haunts of nightmares instead.

"I thought we were ordered to take a few days off," he said, watching her drive, shades shielding her eyes from the onslaught of summer sun.

"We can take time off after we catch this guy," she said dismissively.

"You, me and Lindsey on a beach somewhere?"

"I didn't know you liked the beach."

"I don't," he replied. "I like watching you in a swimsuit."

The smile softened her face and he felt glad to be there to see it, to be alive, to have awoken with Catherine's bare back against his chest and sheets tangled away from him. Life's seduction and her demanding touch.

The smile was fading as she pulled into the lab car park, where work, death and traces of justice waited. He couldn't help but wonder slightly how this new dynamic between them would play out at work. She was still his boss here, on these grounds, for all they might be equals outside and he could kiss the taste of summer on her lips.

He slammed the door as he exited the car, trying to summon a Grissom-esque detachment. Just another day at work. It didn't matter that his life had been in danger, that Catherine's had. That could matter after work, slight emotions on a roller coaster ride.

'I'm not much of a Grissom,' he thought and grimaced.

"You okay?" she asked softly, giving him a glance.

"Yeah," he lied and judging by her look, she knew it to be so. But she didn't say anything, merely gave his arm a light squeeze. She knew him, but she didn't need words to remind him of that. He could feel it in every look.

"I'll go have a chat with Ecklie," she said as they headed inside, grimace slightly with disdain.

"I'll find Nick, hear how the search for John Keyes is going."

She nodded and they parted in the hallway. Some of the lab techs gave him a wave as he walked through, letting him know they were glad he was okay. He found it strangely touching. Sometimes, the lab felt like a family house with a lot of mad cousins running about. Perhaps a father, too, and at least one brother.

Of all places he would not have expected Nick to be, Grissom's office was topping the list, just barely beating out Mars. But nevertheless, there Nick was, shifting through papers on the desk and looking almost at home.

"Does Grissom know you're doing this and do you have a life insurance?" Warrick asked casually, leaning against the door frame.

"It's the funny guy who's supposed to be off," Nick countered, standing up. "Should have known you couldn't stay away. For your information, I called Grissom, he vaguely remembered the Keyes family. There was a suspicious death in their family some years back, but no one was charged. The case file hasn't got much, but Griss said he'd kept his notes and they should be here somewhere."

"What are you looking for exactly?"

"Background. You know as well as I do that signature killers don't pop up overnight."

"They evolve," Warrick agreed, remembering past cases. Millander. Syd Goggle. Grissom had been with them then, and the thought felt like a loss. Grissom should be here now. Once, Grissom had told Warrick that when he left, there would be no cake in the break room, he'd just be gone, like the ghost he believed himself to be.

A delusion. Ghosts did not touch people as Grissom had, even through his guarded shell. And Warrick would miss him. They would all miss him, perhaps Sara most of all.

'We never do fall for the uncomplicated ones,' Warrick thought dryly. But then, perhaps that was the whole point.

"Yeah. Catherine know you're not taking your ordered rest?" Nick asked, something not quite natural to his tone.

"Catherine's here too. She's with Ecklie."

Nick gave him a look, looking a bit resigned, if not surprised. "You came with Catherine?"

"What of it?"

"You been staying with her?"

"Yeah, just in case the guy tries again."

"And that's the only reason?"

"If you have something to say, Nick, just say it," Warrick snapped, unable to keep his tone even any longer.

"Fine. Office romances are a bad idea. You know that. And Catherine..."

Warrick bit back an angry reply, instead giving Nick a hard glare that didn't seem to face him much.

"She's our supervisor, man," Nick went on. "What if you two don't work out? What if you do? What are you gonna do if it becomes serious?"

"You haven't exactly had a stellar track record yourself!" Warrick shot back, feeling anger rise to push back the echo of Nick's word in his mind. They sounded all too much like some of his own that he tried to silence.

Nick clenched his jaw for a moment, clearly remembering Kristy Hopkins as Warrick was, then he relaxed. "Yeah, I don't. That's why I'm looking out for you."

Warrick closed his eyes, calming his blood. It wasn't Nick's fault. It was probably his own, for allowing himself to even notice how sunlight looked on Catherine's skin. Maybe it was partly Catherine's for not playing Grissom to his Sara and actually being within his reach. Maybe it was just life's fault for throwing two people together and giving both an attraction for the other.

"Sometimes you can't help but living and she's life," he said simply.

Nick looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. "Dude, you sound like a Hallmark card."

And at that moment, Warrick felt most of the tension drain away and he knew, whatever else might happen, his friendship with Nick would remain.

"You don't have much room for the soul of a poet in there, do you Nick?"

"No," Nick said firmly and they shared a slight smile. "Look Warrick, I'm not okay with this, but ..."

He spread his arms in a slightly dejected gesture, but it was without condemning flair. Nick didn't condemn and sometimes, just sometimes, Warrick envied him. Brightness and care was hard to hold onto in this place, but Nick had.

"I know," he said, feeling the unspoken.

Nick nodded slowly. "Yeah. Let's see if we can find anything in this paper pile Grissom passes off as a desk."

They worked in silence for a moment, shifting through the various stacks while trying not to make too much of a mess. Not wise to piss off a man who was on Latin name basis with creepy crawlies.

"Right, here we go - Johanna Keyes, ruled suicide by the Sheriff, despite some suspicions of foul play. Grissom consulted on it. Wow, old case. Grissom never forgets or throws anything away, does he?"

"You never know when new evidence might come in," Warrick replied, reading over Nick's shoulder. "Two sons, John and Alan. Have we looked into this other son at all?"

"No."

"He could have access to his brother's properties."

"Yeah, I think they jointly owned that ranch. It's worth a look," Nick agreed, looking thoughtful. "John Keyes could just be on holiday with a mistress and hiding from the wife. Coincidences can happen."

"But never trust them, as Grissom would say. How did Grissom seem, by the way?"

Nick shrugged. "Grissom."

Warrick gave a small snort. Really, Nick was right. Sometimes Grissom was just Grissom and there was no other word to describe it short of inventing some. It did remind him he should give Grissom a call. There were days he missed very much working with the guy, even for all the bugs. Grissom had given him a second change, a chance still not repaid.

"Ever miss the old shift?" Nick asked, but there was a slight test in his question, judging by the tone.

"Oh yeah," Warrick said without hesitating. Whatever the test, it seemed to be passed, for Nick smiled and gave his shoulder a light squeeze.

"Hey guys," a familiar voice called from behind, and Warrick turned around smiling, but the smile faded as he saw Catherine in the doorway, looking torn between anger and distress.

"He's killed again, hasn't he?" he asked quietly, feeling death loom over her like a shadow.

"Looks like it. Brass just called. Jocelyn Creer, found dead in her home by her sister. M.O. is the same." Catherine sounded tired and she met his gaze with shadows in her eyes.

'That might have been you,' Warrick thought and it was fire and ice in his blood. No. It would never be her, never be any of them. Not while he could fight against it. Not while killers could be caught. Not while life went on, the wind a caress promising another day behind the horizon.

"Let's go do our job," Nick said quietly and they all walked out, Catherine's hand brushing against Warrick's for a silent, enduring moment.

'Life's seduction in a touch,' he thought distantly and went out to fight death, killers and history repeating.



Chapter Twenty-One

*****
Who tells when joy is over?
The midnight sun's red core
Is me, and I burn the more
To know the clockhands hover
So close to death's forever.
My darling, in this fire
Come move with my desire.
- Pall Olafsson, Saell Var Ég Thá (So Joyous I Was)
*****

The seduction of Sara Sidle.

It was an objective Grissom had never thought his mind would formulate, but now it was there, refusing to go away no matter how hard he scrubbed. Almost like blood and to him, just as deadly.

So he might as well die.

Sara was smiling at him, seeming happy and bright, almost like the summer night around them. Maybe that was what she was, a summer night of sun for him to lose himself in, bury himself in, discover himself in. Sara Sidle, his weakness, desire, pleasure, death.

For all he had run away from her, here he was, watching her in the doorway to his room, her smile a sun in itself.

"Can I come in?" she asked again and he realised he hadn't said aloud what his mind had set as an objective.

"Of course."

She closed the door behind her, still smiling, still happy, still the beauty he didn't deserve. "Greg is busy seducing a young Norwegian lab tech."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Or perhaps she is seducing him, it's hard to say," she amended. "I thought you should know before you went to bed - the Norwegian lab got back to us on the buns. Definite traces of lithium."

"So we have our source."

"Yes. Kristin is set to recover; the hospital said we could see her tomorrow. Maybe she'll tell us who Anna got them from. But..."

"But?" he asked, watching her pace the floor of his hotel room slowly, pensively. "You think you know who it is already?"

"Who bakes for a young woman such as Anna? Not the boyfriend, I think. Friends, maybe, but they would probably just get it from a bakery. The mother is dead, so not her." She paused, looking at him with almost sorrow in her gaze. Sorrow for Anna, sorrow for the killer, he wasn't sure.

"And we're left with the grandmother," he concluded for her and she nodded slowly.

"Why do we kill those we love?" she asked quietly, but it seemed to be as much to the world in general as to him.

"Because humans are possessive, volatile and passionate," he replied, walking towards her. "Because the line between love and hatred is vague and wavering. Because love is pain. Because love is pleasure and pleasure makes fools of even the wise."

"Does it?" she whispered as he leaned against her, feeling her breath as a flash of heat tickling his skin.

"Yes," he whispered and kissed her.

Her lips were as he remembered them, soft and yielding to his one moment, demanding and rough against his the next. He could almost feel the sun on her, that taste of heat on her tongue as he explored her. Midnight sun in a kiss. Mightnight seduction in Norway. She made a sound at the back of her throat that made his body shiver and he pressed her against the wall, supporting himself with a hand. He let the other cup a breast through her shirt and she arched breathlessly into the touch.

"More?" he whispered.

"More."

He fumbled slightly with the buttons of her shirt before he managed to open it, feeling clumsy and with fingers thick as lumber. Her bra was grey underneath, worn to work, not for romance, but that was a seduction too. Sara, so much like him. So much he hadn't dare risk being with her, for she would tear his walls down and leave him bare. He'd kept her out and somehow she'd snuck her way inside anyway.

Her skin was smooth under his fingertips, the little lines across it paths for him to explore. He could feel a scar just above her hip and he lowered his head to kiss it, kiss the pains that had made her Sara. He didn't want her to ever have suffered, but without that suffering, without those scars, she wouldn't be who she was, wouldn't be the one seducing him with a smile, a look, a touch.

He lifted his head up to her exposed breast and she clutched his hair and let out a breath that seemed to burn his heart to smouldering embers. Her skin tasted of the heat he felt and the salt of the nearby sea. No escape from the ocean in this country, its waves ever crashing and forming the land. No escape from her, her waves ever crashing and forming him.

What scared him was that he wasn't even sure he wanted to escape any more.

He wasn't quite sure whom had guided who to the bed, but suddenly he felt the soft mattress greet his back and Sara fell over him. She smiled as her hair fell around his face and she kissed the sides of his face, curling her fingers into his beard. She seemed so happy he just let her and watched, the vision of her almost more erotic than any touch.

'Almost,' he thought and felt his breath catch in his throat as her hands stroked his thigh.

"More?" she teased.

"More."

Her touch was torture, was pleasure, was too much and not enough. He strained against it and then he was bereft of it as she effectively stripped her clothes off, no thought for trying to be seductive. He found it even more so for that reason, fumbling with his own clothes as he watched. Sara didn't need to try to be seductive. She was seduction just living. Her skin was more flattering than any clothes could ever be and he burned it into his memories. Beautiful, passionate, dark, bright Sara. His Sara. His, his, his.

She straddled his lap and when he sank into her, her fingernails tore into the flesh of his back. Pain and pleasure, as it would have to be between them.

"Grissom," she whispered and her eyes were brighter than the sun and burned him even more and he could feel nothing, could feel everything, could feel her, could feel the waves battering him and he was floating and drowning and calling her name, her, her, her...

She rested against him afterwards, her hands against his chest and hair spread across the pillow. He stroked his thumb across her wrist, feeling her veins, her life's blood. A fragile barrier of soft skin protecting her life and it didn't feel like enough under his touch. Too fragile and nothing he could do to protect it but be near. And no guarantees he would always be near, that she would allow him to be near.

'That is why you must let her go before she leaves you,' a darkness whispered in his mind and he clutched her wrist in his hand, feeling her pulse still in rapid gallop. So easy to take a life. So hard to live it.

So dangerous to be human. Humans loved, felt, despaired, killed. Not like insects, merely existing and doing their job, living and dying so others could live and die. Living and mating, seeking symmetry in their mates, and when finding it, following the same rituals. Predictable, simple, beautiful.

Not like evolved humans, complicated and unpredictable, though still beautiful. Still seeking the symmetry, but giving it other names. Comparability, attraction, love.

Love.

He stroked the invisible hairs along her arm and she looked up at him, eyes still clouded.

"What are you thinking, Grissom?"

"Of bugs," he answered truthfully before he could check himself, before he could listen to his inner demons.

"Bugs? I guess this is what I get for bedding an entomologist," she said dryly.

"I'm thinking we're a wing each of the same moth," he went on, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

"That's either very creepy or very sweet."

He chuckled softly, watching her fingers curl one of his chest hairs. For all the dark fears within, he felt at this moment almost content, almost happy. Almost human, the human work had isolated from him. Or perhaps that was merely an excuse. Humans sought excuses all the time, covering their simple answers.

'I wanted to,' he thought. The simple answer. He wanted to be distant and cold and a bug working its purpose in life. He wanted to have relationships he could let go of again easily. Terri. Heather. Johanna, so long ago. Virginia, who had been a ghost like him. And he wanted to have Sara Sidle too, even if she could never be what he had planned in his mind. Even if he would hurt her, had hurt her.

Perhaps he was more human than he had thought.

He kissed her shoulder lazily and listened to her breath slow and become what some might call a snore and he just found another Sara thing about her. Tomorrow she might be confronting another killer, perhaps confronting her own demons through it. Her own mother.

He was still surprised she had told him about that, shared something so revealing even if he had insisted. The words could never be taken back, the insight they offered never closed. But she was not afraid, his Sara. She had braved being known to him. She braved empathy for the victims, even knowing it could burn her out. Perhaps she hoped it would burn her own scars away too. Ashes of a life.

Was that what Anna's grandmother now clung to? Ashes of a life, ashes and memories and guilt? A human could exist on that, he knew. For a little while. But the wind would tap against a window, a grandmother would see her granddaughter and be captured, a daughter would find a father and know what was missing in her life, a woman would smile across a room to her older colleague and seduce him, a kiss would taste of sun and promise a changed tomorrow. Life would burn and beckon and entice.

You could exist on ashes. You could only live in the fire, pleasure and pain both.

'The seduction of being human,' he thought and finally slept.



Chapter Twenty-Two

*****
Cattle die, and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one's self;
One thing now that never dies,
The fame of a dead man's deeds.
- Håvamål
*****

Caroline Jensen was waiting for her doom.

She had arisen early, dressed herself in black as the grieving should and waited. They would probably come today, after the other girl had become sick. They had probably figured it out now, or thought they had.

She was almost glad.

The house was silent but for the passing of time. The clocks, always the clocks, ticking away the seconds Anna had been dead, the seconds until Caroline would join her. The seconds until the police officers would come and arrest her. Tick. Longing. Tick. Guilt. Tick. Grief. Grief. Grief.

The grief was everywhere. In her shaking hands, the faded morning light, the mournful wind, the persistent clock, moving time ever forward. Moving Anna ever away from when she had been alive.

Anna. Anna, who had been the daughter she should have had. For a while. Until...

She breathed, watching her clasped hands burrow into each other with a strength she didn't realise she had. But then, she had never thought herself capable of murder either.

Murder. For all she could wrap it, it was still murder. She had murdered Anna. Simple, heartbreaking, heart-chilling truth.

And she had broken the oath she had sworn to the little babe the first time she held her in her arms.

"I will never hurt you, as your mother will. I will raise you as my own. You will be my legacy to the world. You will be what my daughter is not."

In the old faith of Norway, murders and oath breakers were the lowest, the cast out, the ones the goddess Var punished. As young, she’d found it strangely horrifying. Now, she wondered if perhaps her forefathers knew the truth of it after all. Your body died, but your words and action lived on, clinging to your memory. Oath breaker, murderer, mother. Her legacy. All for love.

Engines roared and died outside and she smiled, but without joy. Yes. They were coming today.

She opened the door even before they rang and saw the stern police officers, shadowed by the Americans. Young Ms. Sidle looked stern, disapproving and almost sad. Mr. Grissom merely looked curious and Mr. Sanders looked almost openly hostile.

"Come in," she said haltingly, longing to speak her own language, but the Americans deserved to know too. They had come a long way. "I know why you have come. I do not wish for legal representation. I wish to talk."

Mr. Grissom did not look surprised, she noted, as the others exchanged surprised glances. He merely tilted his head and regarded her.

They came in, the two younger Americans taking a seat on her couch, Mr. Grissom in the chair of her darling Knut, still alive in her mind. She smiled faintly. The Norwegian detective hovered without taking a seat, not quite looking at her.

"You wonder perhaps at my foolish reasons for the inexcusable?" she asked softly, feeling the judgement in the air. She would face it as doom should be faced, head lifted and back straight.

"Let no one wonder at / another's folly, / it is the lot of many. / All-powerful desire / makes of the sons of men / fools even of the wise," Mr. Grissom quoted slowly, looking above her. "Odin’s words to your people a long time ago, I believe."

"Yes. Håvamål. You have read your history, mister Grissom."

"A land is its history, as is a person." He smiled at her, almost friendly in a strange way.

"Yes. We are what we have done and I killed Anna, as you know. I expect you want to know why?"

"Please," Mr. Grissom said, his tone indicating he meant it.

’Courteous even to a killer? You are a different one,’ she thought, a thought that would have amused her a long time ago, a lifetime ago.

"I lied before," she said calmly. "I knew who Anna’s father was. Cecilie told me about him early on, to shock me, dismay me, hurt me. She often did. I knew she was attracted to the darkness in him. She always liked the dangerous ones. And he had killed, Cecilie told me. I think, when he left, she was deep down relieved. And we never spoke of him again, except once. When Anna said she had found her father, I... I knew he would break my little girl. She is all light... Was all light. He would break her."

"So you killed her?" Mr. Sanders stared at her, disbelieving. She met his glance evenly.

"Yes. She wasn't meant to eat them on the plane. She was meant to eat them here, in Norway. She was meant to stay here."

"You didn't love her enough to let her go," Mr. Grissom said quietly.

"All love is selfish, mister Grissom," she replied, feeling the words drain her, free her, bind her. "You have lived the world. You know this."

For a flicker of a moment, he glanced at Ms. Sidle. "Perhaps. But selfish is not the same as murdering."

"Murder is the ultimate act of selfishness. You kill for your own protection, your own advancement, your own desires, your own revenge. My husband worked as a doctor and a coroner, mister Grissom. I know why men kill."

"Then you know sometimes murder is not always selfish. Sometimes… Sometimes you kill for another."

Caroline didn’t answer, feeling her heartbeats thump through her mind, fast and rushed and afraid.

"Who did you kill for?" He looked at her now, his eyes still not judging, but demanding, beckoning the answer within her.

"Cecilie," she whispered, the word a pain and relief.

Blood. You could not help but love your blood, for all it did wrong, for all it asked of you.

"You loved your daughter. You loved her more than your granddaughter," Mr. Grissom went on.

The pain was hard, spiked, glass and ice cutting in her blood. "Yes. I tried very hard not to, but I failed. Anna was all Cecilie should have been. And still I loved my daughter more. And my daughter… My daughter did not wish Anna to ever know her father. I agreed with her. And then I found out Anna overheard his name as Cecilie and I talked on her deathbed and she had already contacted him, pretending this was the will of Cecilie. Perhaps believing it too, I do not know. I tried to talk her out of it, but she would not listen. I tried… I failed."

Even as she spoke it, she could feel Anna’s ghost in her mind, screaming at the unfairness, the betrayal, the bond of blood.

’I am sorry. Forgive me,’ Caroline thought, but only her mind’s silence answered.

No forgiveness for oath breakers. Only the venom, forever burning.

"Cecilie wanted you to kill her daughter?" Disbelief was all over Mr. Sanders’s face and voice. "That doesn’t make any sense."

"Perhaps it does not, to you. Perhaps you love your family and will one day have a child you love and not a child you fear. I raised Anna because I made Cecilie not have an abortion, made her have a child she feared. She had her for me. What she gave, I returned. Think of me as insane, mister Sanders, if that helps you."

"The father, what is his name?" Mr. Grissom asked, still calm. He had heard her story before, in other names, she realised. Humans echoed their forefathers. Nothing was truly ever new.

She sighed. "I suppose it does not matter now. His name was Alan Keyes. He lives in Las Vegas."

And then Mr. Grissom did look shocked, his mouth opening and his eyes fixating on something beyond her. "You’re sure?"

"Yes."

Both his younger colleagues seemed confused, but the name definitely had meaning to Mr. Grissom. Perhaps Anna’s father was the killer Cecilie had claimed after all.

"I’ll be right back," he said hurriedly, already pulling up a cell phone and punching numbers with fervour.

"Mrs Jensen," Ms. Sidle cut in, her face a mask, unreadable and cool. "The lithium..."

"A Danish doctor who is a friend of mine supplied it when I was visiting. He trusts me, trusted the story I gave as an excuse. I am responsible alone. You will not punish him."

"Why lithium?"

"It is taken for being sad, yes? I thought it appropriate."

"I see. Did you know it is an unreliable drug to kill someone with?"

Caroline bit down on her lip, keeping the words inside.

"You said you thought she would take it while in Norway. You didn’t realise she would save those buns for the flight?"

"No."

"But if she had eaten them here, she may have sought medical help. The drug may not have killed her. She may have lived. Did you want her to live?"

"What does it matter? I killed her."

"It matters," the young woman answered softly, pain in her voice. "It matters."

Caroline closed her eyes and after a while, she heard people get up and leave. Officers probably remained, getting ready to arrest her. The end, at last. Or perhaps the end had been Cecilie’s dying night, clinging to Caroline’s hands, words of desperation, rage and insanity.

"Promise me, mother. Promise me you will keep them apart. She is his child, he will make her as twisted as he. Promise me. Promise my child will not be his, even if you must kill. Promise me!"

"I promise."

It did matter, Ms. Sidle was right. If she had not meant to kill Anna, she would have broken two oaths and not just one. Surely, surely she was not an oath breaker twice over?

Very faintly, she heard her rights being read in her own language as last, but she still kept her eyes closed, letting the grief fill her.

Anna, Anna who she meant to love as a daughter, but couldn’t in the end. Cecilie, who had disappointed her, hurt her, pushed her away, but who she did love as a daughter in the end after all.

Her doom. Oath breaker, murderer, mother. For Cecilie.

For Cecilie.



Chapter Twenty-Three

*****
Stores are painted
In lines of your face
Misunderstandings and little mistakes
A chance to start over
Is all that it takes
- A-ha, White Canvas
*****

The darkness became greyness, a shrill sound intruding and tearing away. Groggily, her mind rose from the depths of a dreamless sleep and she fumbled for the ringing phone, feeling Warrick’s body shift next to her.

"Yes?" she asked, trying to keep her tone from being murderous.

"Catherine."

"Grissom. Didn’t we already establish that there’s a time difference between Las Vegas and Norway?" she muttered, popping herself up on her elbows and staring into the darkness, attempting to make out the time. Way too late or way too early either way.

"I thought maybe you’d be at work still. I’m sorry. This can’t wait," Grissom said and she sighed. It never could.

"What is it?"

"You were looking into the Keyes family?"

"Yeah…"

"I just learned Alan Keyes is Anna Jensen’s father."

"What?!"

She found the light switch on her bedside lamp and blinked against the onslaught as the light bulb flickered on. Warrick turned over, mouthing ‘what’ at her.

"Alan Keyes is Anna’s father," she echoed, mostly for Warrick’s benefit, and his eyes widened. "He killed again yesterday. I was gonna call you. Jocelyn Creer, same M. O as the others. He’s escalating, Grissom."

"I know," Grissom’s voice said, sounding slightly tense. "We’ve found Anna’s killer and she has confessed. It should be wrapped up soon enough. I have the entomology seminar to hold for my Norwegian colleagues, then I’m coming back. We’ll solve this one."

"Yeah," she replied vaguely, wondering why Grissom’s word felt like a comfort and a promise too. "I’ll see you then."

She hung up, staring at the phone for a moment longer, feeling the world shift around her. A father. She had been right.

"Alan Keyes," Warrick muttered, popping himself up too, looking more awake than she felt. "Anna’s father. That explains a great deal."

"If it is him." She held up a hand as he glanced at her. "I know. I think it’s him too. But we have to be sure. I’ll call Brass, see if there’s anything we can dig up on Alan that we didn’t already find when looking for his brother."

"Cool. Want me to make some coffee? Tea? Hot chocolate?" he offered, putting a warm hand on her back.

"Tea is good," she replied and smiled slightly. "Thanks, Warrick."

She took a moment to admire him getting out of bed, before shifting her attention to the phone again. Brass sounded as displeased at being woken as she must have been, but quickly lost most of the grunt in his voice as she relayed her conversation with Grissom. After a few exclamations, more at the situation than her, Brass promised to keep her updated.

As she hung up, she took a moment to rest her head against the pillow, trying to collect her thoughts. Alan Keyes. Her prey, in a way. As she had been his, as Warrick had been. But they had lived. Georgina, Rita and Jocelyn had not.

Perhaps they finally could make sure there weren’t any more victims.

Still, she couldn’t help the feeling that there was something she was missing. A missing piece that would complete the puzzle and reveal what she was looking at.

But humans often kept the pieces to themselves and their actions only told half the story. The how and the when. Not the why. Only the killers could tell the real why and they rarely did.

Perhaps they sometimes didn’t even know themselves.

There was a soft light in the kitchen as she padded in, regarding Warrick in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, making his way around her kitchen like he belonged, finding mugs and tea bags in the right places.

"Hey," she said and he glanced up without stopping what he was doing.

"I could've taken this to you in bed," he said, looking at her with eyes almost blue in the twilight-feel of her kitchen. Almost like the dawning sky.

"I don’t think I could sleep right away anyway," she replied, accepting the mug he held out. "Thanks. Anna's father… I knew those crime scenes felt familiar. They reminded me of Grissom’s case. Sleeping beauty, sleeping death. His victims looked almost sleeping. He was recreating her death, in a sense."

Warrick nodded. "Does explain why he took us. Probably though we were the CSIs working Anna’s case, or at least had insight into it."

"Yes." She felt cold for a moment and hurriedly took a sip of tea. "Grissom’s solved his murder, apparently. He’s coming back."

"Good," Warrick replied, leaning slightly against the counter and looking almost wishful.

"You miss working with Grissom," she said as evenly as she managed, but even she could hear a slight edge to her tone.

He glanced at her, his gaze seeming to see right through her, as it often did. "You heard what I said to Nick."

"Part of it. Are you unhappy working for me?"

"No!" he protested, looking almost hurt at her almost accusation. "I had my conflicts with Grissom as supervisor too, but… We were stronger together as a full team. And you’ve made some bad choices, Cath."

"Like bedding a co-worker?" she asked coolly, feeling his word hammer at her.

"We were two doing that," he said calmly. "What we have has nothing to do with how I feel about you as a boss."

She crossed her arms. "Grissom's a better supervisor than me?"

"Grissom doesn't try, he just loves his work and that love is…" He smiled briefly, mostly to himself. "That love is catching. You love your work, but after Ecklie promoted you…You try too hard and I sometimes feel… That you're unhappy where you are."

"And if I am?"

"I don’t want you to be."

"My life is not yours to fix."

He stared at her, setting his own mug down on the counter before edging closer. "Your life is mine to care about. Happy, unhappy or otherwise."

"Why, because I invited you into my bed?" she asked, wincing at her own tone.

"No. Because I love you!" he shouted back angrily, and the words slammed into her, leaving her breathless and unguarded.

"Warrick..." she started, feeling her heart beat so loudly in her ears it seemed to drown out even her words. "I..."

His lips cut the rest of her speech short, his kiss angry and burning and demanding. His hand was smooth against her neck as he pulled her even closer and she found herself arching against him, against his body, his touch, his kiss.

She could end the kiss now, demand he get out, demand he change shifts. His words had hurt, perhaps more so for the truth a part of her had felt in them. She had made bad choices. She didn’t feel she was living up to Grissom’s example. She did at times feel unhappy with her job. She could punish everyone else for that. She could push Warrick out.

And if she did and he left her life, he would take a piece of her with him and she would carry another scar. And…

'I think I may love you too,' she thought and felt his kiss soften and his touch become gentle, almost reverently caressing her skin.

"I’m sorry," he whispered, brushing his lips across her cheek and cupping her head in his hands.

"No. No sorry. If this is going to work we have to be honest here, between just us," she said softly. "I don’t want to be your boss here."

"I'll let you command me now and then," he teased, then looked seriously at her. "I really want this to work. If I have to change shifts, I’m open to that."

For a moment, she felt a flash of jealousy at the thought of losing Warrick back to Grissom's shift. Nick and Warrick did feel like her team, even if they had all once been Grissom's team.

"We'll see," she said quietly and closed her eyes as he kissed her forehead. "I want this to work too."

He was smiling as she pulled away, the light making him for a moment seem almost other-worldly. Beautiful Warrick. Her Warrick. In her house, making a claim for her heart and her family.

"I'll go and check on Lindsey, make sure we didn't wake her," she said, finally setting down her mug. The tea had probably turned cold anyway. "Then I'll join you in bed. We won't catch this guy if we're falling asleep in the lab."

He nodded and she watched him walk away before she headed out of the kitchen herself and found her way to Lindsey's room. The light there was off, but she could still make out the bed and the shape in it as she eased the door open.

'Oh, Lindsey,' she thought gently and slipped into the room. Her daughter looked innocent in her sleep, all the trials of growing up washed from her face. They would return soon enough, mark the years and pain passed on her skin. Time burned away the child in them all.

The room still bore some traces of childhood, even if the posters had changed and the books on the desk were no longer fairytales. Or perhaps they were, but now simply masked as other genres and with other covers.

She threw a quick glance at the desk and felt the blood in her veins freeze, as if touched by winter. A white rose. A white rose like the white roses near Jocelyn Creer’s body. Like the white flowers near Georgina's body.

Like white flowers in a funeral.

'No,' her mind thought, the word seeming to fill her. No. No, it couldn't be.

"Lindsey!" she said urgently, taking hold of her daughter’s shoulder and shaking her awake. Lindsey blinked confused up at her, innocence draining away with whatever dream she'd had.

"Mom? What is it?"

"Where’d you get that flower, honey?"

"A guy gave it to me when I was out with Teena. Said I should have it cause I reminded him of his daughter. What, you're afraid I'm dating someone? I can't get flowers from guys?" Lindsey crossed her arms, looking defiant.

"It's not that," Catherine whispered, still staring at it. Like white flowers to a daughter. No, no. Not Lindsey. He could not have Lindsey. He could not have another daughter.

"Mom? What's wrong? Do you know this guy? Who is he?"

"A father," Catherine said distantly, looking into the night. Fathers and daughters and funerals. Murder for what was lost. Murder for what was desired to be regained. Murder for Anna.

A father's revenge at the world that took from him. Pain for pain. Death for death. Daughter for daughter.

Lindsey for Anna.

No.

Enough now.



Chapter Twenty-Four

*****
Say, say my name
I need a little love to ease the pain
I need a little love to ease the pain
It's easy to remember when it came

'Cause it feels like I've been
I've been here before
You are not my savior
But I still don't go
- Dissolved Girl, Massive Attack
*****

"Why are you here?"

Sara looked at the woman before her and wondered that herself.

Maybe for answers, being a professional CSI, making sure it was all laid out, letting the world move on with the answers.

Maybe for Anna, this young girl she’d felt strangely close to ever since arriving in this country, and Anna would have wanted a confrontation.

Maybe for Sara Sidle, young and scared and with blood in her family.

"I’m here for closure," she finally said and Caroline Jensen looked gently at her from her chair. The cell did not seem to face her much, as if she had been in a mind’s cell for days already and this was merely a shadow of it.

"Closure? That means end, yes? You seek end?"

"I seek an end," she agreed, pausing for a moment to form her thoughts. "I read the fairytale you mentioned the first time we met."

"I suppose our fairytales must seem odd to you, miss Sidle," Mrs. Jensen replied, folding her hands, almost as if in prayer. For forgiveness? For understanding? For closure?

"Yes and no. A lot of them seem to be about the same, just with different words and styles. Why did Anna like that one so much?"

The old woman smiled almost fondly. "I have wondered that myself. Perhaps she liked it because it was about a young woman who found love, but lost it again making a very human mistake. Being curious what her love was truly like, you see. She wanted to know him, but this doomed him. Still, she did not give up. And she saved him. She was the hero."

"Anna wanted to be a hero."

"We all do."

'No,' Sara thought and felt a chill. 'Some of us want to be a villain.'

"How can any mother justify killing for her daughter?" she blurted out, feeling years of memories and blood and guilt tumble loose and fill her mouth with bile.

She had not asked her mother to kill her father. She had not. She had *not*. Had she?

ThescreamingthescreamingohGodpleaseshutupshutupSHUTUP!

Go away. Diediediedieplease. Just silence. Just give me silence. Pleaseohplease.

The memory was cool, like glass cutting through skin and chilling the blood. She blinked against the tears and stumbled to the empty chair, sitting down heavily and feeling like the ground was a hole ever falling before her.

Why now, when Grissom was closer than ever and she was strong, professional, progressing? Why did it always haunt her life as she rebuilt it time and time again? Why did it always come back?

Blood always clung on. Even to memories.

She heard the other woman stand up, and a moment later, she felt a hand on her shoulder, stroking her slowly.

'I’m being comforted by a murder,' she thought absurdly, but the gentle touch felt like that of a grandmother and she didn't shake it off.

Even if it was another hand she might long for.

"I am sorry," Mrs. Jensen said quietly after a moment, her voice filled with honest sympathy and regret. Strange how human a killer could remain. Strange how human her mother had remained.

"I am not the one who can give you forgiveness," she said harshly, but the old woman's answer was only sad, no hostility in it.

"And I am not the one who can give you this closure you seek."

Sara nodded, closing her eyes for a moment, pushing back the bile, the memories, the girl that had once been her. Sometimes, it felt like it kept getting harder to fight back to Sara Sidle, and not remain with the ghost of young Sara.

A new home had not been the exorcist. Work had not been the exorcist. Grissom would not be the exorcist. She wasn't sure any more what could be.

She stood up abruptly, suddenly feeling the cell very much around her, as it would have been closing in her own mother. "I… I better go."

Mrs. Jensen merely nodded, looking distant again, perhaps caught in her own memories once more. A prison harder to escape than this one. Bricks and cement grumbled to dust with time. The mind built much stronger.

Prison and warden and prisoner too, the mind. Fighting itself, ever and ever, surrender not an option. And escape only came with a dark price, paid in maggots and rotting flesh.

Death.

Caroline Jensen would not live long. Perhaps she knew so herself. Perhaps she was even willing it to come. Guilt was a hard burden to fight on with. For killers, for humans, for survivors. For her.

She didn't look back as she walked out.

The sun was bright and warm as she exited, her eyes at once drawn to Grissom, arms crossed and leaning against her car. Shades hid his eyes from view and his face gave away nothing. He was dressed casually, the wind tugging gently at his t-shirt and stroking his hair.

"I thought you had a seminar," she said, walking slowly over and stopping a few feet away.

"I had. I'm done. I decided to solve the mystery of my missing colleague."

"Did you?"

"I followed the evidence," he replied, taking his shades off. "I am not sure I will ever solve her."

"No," she agreed with a smile. "Unless she lets you."

He inclined his head, his gaze warm as he regarded her. His greeting caress in a way, letting her know what other men often said with touches. But Grissom was Grissom. That was the intoxication of him. That was also the problem.

"Why did you see Mrs. Jensen?" he asked softly after a moment, no accusation in his voice, only curiosity.

"Closure."

"I see," he said and she wondered if he truly did. "We've got a flight home tomorrow."

To catch Anna's father, Sara didn't say. Grissom would point out nothing had been proven yet, and perhaps if she did not say it aloud, the ghost of Anna would never know and be able to rest in peace in the earth of Norway.

A child did not need to know their parent was a killer. No one deserved that burden.

'Not even me,' she thought faintly, selfishly.

"Last day here," she said instead, watching the leaves stir slightly and sigh in the wind. Clouds were drifting lazily across the sky, but they were white and soft and didn’t threaten rain. One last day of summer, then, almost perfect, like a parting gift. "Where's Greg?"

"Still with their lab, comparing procedures. We're having dinner with the police chief of Oslo later. We have a little time before that."

"A little time," she repeated and wondered why those words seem to beat in her mind, like a fading drum roll echoing. A little time. "It'll be nice to go home, even if this has been…"

She couldn't think of any good description that seemed to describe it all. Sad, wonderful, seducing, educational, interesting. Beautiful, in its own way, this country, this trip. This relationship.

"You're not sorry you came?"

She glanced at him, seeing the question he didn't ask in his eyes, even if he tried to hide it. "No. I'm not sorry I came. You were right, I needed a holiday."

"A working holiday," he corrected, but with a slight smile.

"Not all work."

"No. Not all work," he agreed, almost beaming at her, making her skin tingle. "And… I thought… Maybe… There's this amusement part outside of the city."

She bit back a smile. She knew there was, as she had looked it up herself, thinking of luring Grissom there. "With a roller coaster?"

"Yes. Two, in fact. I was wondering… Would you ride them with me?" His face was sincere, a little hesitant and a little guarded. Perhaps he still wondered if she wanted him, even with all the evidence uncovered. Or perhaps he was still fighting himself every step. As she was, in another way.

"Will you hold my hand if I scream?" she asked and he reached out and took her hand, letting his thumb brush her skin.

"Yes."

He turned her hand over, following the lines of her palm with a finger, studying the pattern. It was almost painful, almost as if he was looking at her life, reading it from her palm. He wouldn't judge her, not Grissom. But every part of the darkness in her he would see would make it harder to keep a balance. It could not be all her, for all she loved him. He had to share something of his, too.

Perhaps he was trying to, in his own way. The wild rides of ups and downs, ever in speed, ever an illusion of risk. Grissom's diversion.

"Yes. I'll ride them with you," she promised and he kissed her palm, the briefest tease of his tongue against her skin. For a moment, she allowed herself to look, watching the sun burning down on him, exposing the grey in his hair, the slight tan in his skin and the shine in his eyes.

One last summer day in Norway. A little time. A little holiday. A little Grissom.

'A little life,' she thought and let Grissom guide her into what remained of the summer day.



Chapter Twenty-Five

*****
The burdens that you carry now
Are not of your creation
So let's not weep for their evil deeds
but for their lack of imagination
Today's the time for courage, babe
Tomorrow can be for forgiving
And if he touches you again with his stupid hands
His life won't be worth living
- Nick Cave, Sweetheart Come
*****

Warrick Brown was furious. Not just angry, no. Anger you had a change of controlling, even if it was a fire in pit of your stomach.

This was a fire storm.

Not Lindsey. Not Catherine. He wouldn't let anyone harm them, not while his body and blood could shield them. No.

He balled his fists as he leaned against the wall, watching people walk past him, some more purposely than others. Like a second vein of blood, this lab, keeping him alive and his heart beating. And somehow living it, he'd found all the things he'd never truly had before. A family. A purpose. His grandmother had tried as well she could to give him all, but there was limited to what one person could do. But she had tried and he had loved her and perhaps now, he finally did understand.

No matter how much you loved, you couldn't shield someone forever. His grandmother hadn't been able to, Catherine couldn't for Lindsey. He couldn't for Lindsey. No safety from killers. No safety from life.

But Warrick still intended to try his best, and he closed his eyes and listened to the rage within. Rage against life, himself, Alan Keyes, even for a brief moment at his own 'father', the man who had just walked away.

Her heard steps approached and opened his eyes to see Catherine stand before him, worry and fear and a mirror of his own rage in her eyes.

"Lindsey recognised a picture of him we found at the Keyes' family home. It was Alan Keyes who gave her that rose."

He let out a painful breath. "He must have found out she was your daughter and followed her."

"Yes," she said, voice tight. "We're all getting 24-hour police protection."

"Swell."

"I told Lindsey the truth," she went on, biting her lip slightly. "I thought maybe she'd understand."

"Did she?"

"I don't know. I don't know anything any more."

He put a hand on her arm, feeling how cold her skin was. "You know yourself. Let's start from there."

She smiled faintly. "Warrick Brown wisdom?"

"Grandma Brown wisdom," he corrected fondly. "Listen Cath, I was thinking... Police protection is well and good, but maybe it would be good for Lindsey to stay somewhere else for a while?"

She shook her head. "Mom's out of town. I don't wanna worry her and Sam... No way in hell will Sam watch my daughter."

"I was thinking of my grandmother, actually. She's great with kids and this guy's shown a fascination with you, not me."

"Would she mind?"

"Nah. She knows a fair bit about you and your daughter from me already. Besides, I kinda ran it by her a bit earlier on the phone."

"Flattery must run in the family," she said affectionately. "I'll talk to Lindsey. And your grandma. She's still got the same number, right?"

"Yeah," he replied and she gave him a smile as she slipped away again, looking slightly more upbeat than a moment ago. It was something, at least. He could settle for making her life a little better, making her burden a little lighter, knowing he couldn't fix it all or heal all. That too was a lesson of his grandmother. You couldn't carry someone's whole house. But you could be a pillar.

'You'll be tall enough for that, Warrick,' she declared in his mind, he smiled at the echo of days past, remembering. Simpler times back then, if they held their own hurts. Grieving his mother, grieving his father, or rather the father he had wanted. Not the gene donor he'd gotten.

Parents and children. Something that should be so simply so often wasn't. His family hadn't been and neither was his second family in this lab.

"Hey, 'Rick!" Brass called out, striding over and tearing Warrick's attention back to the hallway. "A neighbour reported something smelling from an apartment at Chapman Drive. Turns out the apartment is owned by John Keyes and the smell was a dead body. Nick's already on it."

"No wonder we couldn't find him," Warrick sighed, rubbing his temples absentmindedly and feeling the effects of little sleep. "Brother probably offed him days ago."

"Better not let Grissom hear you supply theories without having even looked at the evidence or he'll send you to work for me," Brass replied dryly. "I hear Grissom's on his way home."

"Yeah."

They lapsed into silence for a moment, Warrick letting his thoughts drift. Alan Keyes. Grissom would probably tell him to look at the evidence to make sure, but Warrick could already feel what the evidence was telling him. Alan Keyes. Alan Keyes had killed three women, maybe his own brother, had hurt Catherine and might have planned to hurt Lindsey.

His rage was screaming of deserved death, but he forced that back with a deep breath. Justice. Justice, not revenge. He'd failed Grissom on that once before, he couldn't again. Justice. No matter how loudly his blood pulsated with the desire for revenge, he could not, would not listen.

Not this time. Justice. Justice.

His nails burrowed into his palm and he had to force himself to unclench his fist and breathe calmly.

"Hey, Warrick?" Brass interrupted, giving him an understanding look. "We'll find him. He's not gonna touch Catherine or Lindsey."

'He already did,' Warrick thought, feeling the thought as a burn across his chest. Lindsey would remember. Catherine was still bruised. They had already been touched and touches lingered in memories even as the traces faded on the skin.

"He's probably still in Vegas," he said instead. "Easier to hide in a crowd. And he's not done here yet. He won't be done until we catch him. Signature killers never are."

"Some days, you sound more and more like Grissom," Brass replied, shaking his head lightly. "Try not to start talking to bugs, though."

"I'll try just for you, Brass."

"Oh, I'm sure."

They both chuckled slightly, as Warrick's phone gave an angry ring. With a sigh, he replied, hoping it wasn't yet more bad news.

"Brown."

"Hey, it's me. I'm at the scene," the familiar voice of Nick said, "we'll have to wait for DNA and prints on the body, but it's definitely male and have been dead a few days at least. Signs of struggle. I found some interesting tyre tracks outside. Same as I found while we were searching for you guys, I think. I'll confirm it at the lab."

"Need a hand?"

"Nah. Besides, you guys are still officially off and you know the Sheriff."

"Yeah. Thanks, man. Talk to you later."

"The wife?" Brass asked as Warrick hung up.

"Yeah, always ordering me about," he replied, watching Catherine emerge and come striding towards them. She looked tired and her step had none of her usual energy. "Hey. Nick called. We may have found our missing John Keyes. Dead body at one of his apartments. Been dead a few days."

"Nick's on it?"

"Yep."

She nodded slowly. "Lindsey is willing to go, your grandma is more than willing to watch her, so I guess we'll let her stay there a few days. Brass, could we maybe get some not so obvious cops keeping their dutiful eye on them? One of your guys is taking a statement from her now."

"Anything for you, Catherine," Brass said, giving her arm a pat. "I'll be right back."

As Brass walked away, Catherine looked up at Warrick and he noticed the dark circles under her eyes and glimmer of tears she was fighting back. He wanted to sweep her up in a hug, but restrained himself. Not here, not in a hallway where anyone might see. There was probably enough gossip in the lab already without him adding yet more to it.

"Hey. You okay?"

"Yeah. Lindsey kicked me out. Guess I was being too anxious or hovering." She bit her lip so hard he was surprised it didn't draw blood. "He asked her to go with him, Warrick. She didn't, but... I could have lost her. I could have lost Lindsey."

"Hey, hey," he broke in. "You didn't. You raised her with enough sense not to go with strangers. He obviously didn't dare take her by force with her friend there and he wasn't been given any more opportunities. He won't have any more opportunities. Who knows, maybe he's just trying to rattle us."

"Maybe," she said unconvincingly and rubbed her eyelids. "I just want to get this guy behind bars and sleep for a week."

"After this, I think you've earned a holiday," he said softly and took a strand of her hair between his fingers, looking at it intently before tucking it behind her ear.

"Didn't you promise me one?"

"I always keep my promises."

"That you do," she whispered and he could feel the heat from her body calling to his and her eyes spoke of another warmth altogether.

"You, me and Lindsey on a beach. You can sleep and tan in the sun and I'll be your boy toy," he murmured, daring a brief touch of her check.

"You can be that," she replied and lifted her eyes to meet his. "But I'd prefer it if you were Warrick, long-time friend and currently my live-in boyfriend."

Something he would call joy if it weren't so peaceful and quiet seemed to fill him and he smiled at her. "I think I can do that too."

"Good," she said and stepped back a little reluctantly, probably noticing they were getting some attention. "Let's catch this guy and get to that holiday, huh?"

"Yeah," he agreed, wishing saying it would make it real, would make it over, would make the guy be jailed already. Life was never that simple, never that wish fulfilling. But Grissom was coming home, Sara and Greg were coming home. Together, the lab could catch this guy. His second family and for a moment, he let himself miss them together, working as one.

Family. Catherine, Lindsey and him. And Nick, Greg, Sara and Grissom. Maybe even Brass, the cranky older uncle.

And his blood was still roaring for revenge to the family's threat, but he didn't listen, wouldn't listen. Not this time.

Not this time.



Chapter Twenty-Six

*****
Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again.
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath;
He knows death to the bone --
Man has created death.
- William Butler Yeats, Death
*****

He had felt the desert even before they landed and now it was filling his sense, as if washing the smell of Norwegian sea from him. The heat was licking at his skin, the sun blazing on his eyelids and a wind was grinding at his shape. Home turf, but still not home feeling. He felt strangely disorientated, as if stuck in the threshold between awake and dream where one never knew quite was what real. A part of his mind felt distant, still in Norway, still on Norwegian time.

Jet lag. The scientific explanation, but the experience of it was something else. And oddly, he felt it stronger now then when he'd travelled the other way. He seemed to recall there was a scientific explanation for that too, but his mind resisted dredging it up. His mind wanted sleep, wanted patterns it was used to.

Sara looked a bit downcast, but perhaps she was merely tired and feeling the same as he was. He resisted the urge to caress the lines on her face and ease them away. He almost felt as if he hadn't earned that familiarity, even if he now knew the lines of her body and the feel of her lashes as she closed her eyes to his worship by touches. She had invited that. He didn't know if she'd invite it now, here and surrounded by others.

Greg looked merrier, smiling and joking, but with an occasional sober look. Perhaps Greg missed the country of 'his people', as he'd declared it once. And perhaps this then was Grissom's country, this desert, this heat. This lab that they had finally come back to, after long plane rides and a little drive.

He stepped in and the air conditioning hissed its welcome, just as Catherine came barrelling from the hall and engulfed him in a hug. For a moment, he felt invaded, bothered, uncomfortable, but her body was soft against his and this was Catherine, as close to a friend as he'd had sometimes.

"Glad you're home, Gil," she whispered, voice thick before she freed herself and gave Sara and Greg enthusiastic hugs as well. Sara looked slightly taken aback at the enthusiasm, or perhaps her body was merely tired and sore after the long trip.

"Hey," Warrick's voice called and Grissom looked up to see both Warrick and Nick come walking over, both smiling. "Our travelling band returns."

"Heard you had a bit of an adventure yourself," Sara replied, and Grissom wondered if he was the only one who noticed her smile was slightly strained. "Gave us a bit of a scare there."

"Not as much as we gave ourselves," Warrick replied, giving Catherine a quick look she returned. It seemed a strangely intimate look and Grissom did wonder. Travellers always expected things to be the same when returning, as if time had been frozen while being gone, but things always changed, whether you were there to observe it or not.

"So this guy has killed three, we think?" he interrupted, trying to think of what was the same rather than what was changed.

"Four," Nick corrected. "The three women we told you about and John Keyes. Found his body while you guys were in the air. We had his identity confirmed today."

"There's something else too," Catherine said hesitantly. "We better discuss it inside."

He just nodded and followed her deeper inside, deeper into his home. He could feel Sara by his side, hear Warrick, Nick and Greg discussing Greg's Norwegian lab tech amore behind him. He had to smile slightly at the familiar sounds, the familiar feels. This was home, and so was Sara.

He gave her a smile and she looked up at him, giving him a slight one back, taking the lines and hurt off her face. He wondered if it was normal to desire so strongly that she could always be so, always just be Sara, smiling at his side.

They entered the layout room and he noticed at once the pictures of the victims. Not violent deaths, but almost like a funeral arrangement. Alike and different, for while the victims might change, he knew the murder did not. Evolving his M.O, yes, but the desire and obsession was the same, and so was the thought that killed.

"They look as peaceful as when we found Anna," he said absentmindedly, thoughts already flying.

"We think that's the point," Warrick said calmly, but it seemed a forced calm, a calm hiding a roar.

"We think John Keyes was killed before any of these women," Nick picked up, flipping up a picture of what had once been a man. Hard to see now, with only ravaged and beaten flesh. "Rage kill. Maybe John got the brunt of Alan's anger over Anna's death."

"While these women got the brunt of his obsession," Grissom said thoughtfully. "He's recreating. The rage is not at them, but at the world. They die relatively painless."

"Yes," Catherine confirmed. "He drugs them first. We think he pretends to deliver food. The last one, we found traces of valium in white wine at the scene. And..."

She hesitated and he glanced at her, seeing discomfort and fear across her features. What would Catherine fear, he idly wondered. She didn't much share her fears with him. Perhaps that was why they had always and ever been friends. He hadn't pushed to know her fears and she had not pushed to share them.

He'd pushed Sara.

"Alan approached Lindsey," Warrick said, obviously noting Catherine's hesitance.

"What?!" Sara broke in, looking stunned and more than a little worried. "She's all right, isn't she?"

"Yeah, she's fine, she didn't go with him," Catherine reassured, giving Sara a faint smile. "He gave her a white rose. We had some tests run on it and it seems to be from the same bouquet as the flowers we found at the scene of the third victim, Jocelyn Creer."

"Do we have anything forensic evidence to tie him to these victims?" Grissom asked, watching the pictures of a sleeping Jocelyn Creer, skin pale and hair almost paler. Almost like Anna, even the head tilted the same way. He felt a faint chill at the thought.

"We got some trace evidence - a few hairs from the first scene and the third," Warrick explained, holding up a tagged plastic bag. "They match. We found strands of hair at the scene of John Keyes' murder as well, and they had been yanked up by the root. Signs of struggle *and* DNA. We ran it against John Keyes' DNA this morning. Not him, but has markers in common. First degree relative."

"And I got epithelials off the rope used during Catherine and Warrick's abduction," Nick went on, looking grimly satisfied. "DNA profile is a match to the hair. Nothing in CODIS, so our guy doesn't have a prior, but once we get him, we got all we need to nail him. We got blood and fingerprints the lab's still working at as well."

"Good work, all of you," Grissom declared. Both Warrick and Nick looked pleased, Catherine uncomfortable. Was there yet more she was hesitant to tell him? "How's Lindsey?"

"Oh, she's fine. We got her staying with Warrick's grandma for the time being," Catherine replied, looking down on the bagged bloodied rope. Was she envisioning it around Lindsey, thinking what could have been? Always deadly, the what ifs, delivering their poison to the mind. What if Catherine had died? What if Warrick had died? What if it had been Sara?

And suddenly he could only see it around Sara, see Sara being touched by a murderer, being killed, her blood seeping into her hair and his mind seemed to go numb. His breath felt like a hiss and his hands like claws, ready to fear into flesh and protect his mate.

'A savage animal, man,' he thought faintly and stared at the pictures of death and obsession.

Alan Keyes. He remembered the Keyes family. Johanna Keyes, found dead out in the desert, her body battered by elements and bugs. He'd been called in for the bugs, determining a time of death. Two weeks, hadn't it been? Two weeks where her family had not reported her missing. He'd always suspected the father had been involved, but no evidence to the contrary and faint traces of pills she could very well had taken herself.

He still wondered who would kill themselves in the desert. But that was not evidence, that was merely a gut feeling. Johanna Keyes had been buried quietly and he had moved on to other cases. The father must have died and now the older brother, leaving the younger. He didn't much remember the two sons. Perhaps they had not been there, or in the background. Or perhaps he was growing old and forgetting.

Mortality crept up on all. Perhaps that was the source of Alan's real anger. No daughter, no immortality for his genes. No living on, only living old. No one to grieve your death. No one to grieve Alan.

No one to grieve Gil Grissom.

He dared a look at Sara, bent over the evidence, back arched. He'd traced that line with his palm, feeling her skin-covered spine, the hardness of her strength. Perhaps she would grieve him. Perhaps they all would. There was odd comfort in that thought, a sense of humanity in its selfishness. Wanting others to hurt because it confirmed they had been loved. Selfish, but a bond between all humans nevertheless.

And Alan had perhaps lost the only one who would. A daughter. Your genes and yet not you. Your own flaws magnified before you and sometimes the same mistakes as well. Perhaps that was why no one could hurt you quite like a child. You still loved them, as Mrs. Jensen had, as Catherine did. As he would, if he ever were to father one.

He tore his gaze away from Sara before the thought had time to root itself and spark desires, longing, obsessions. Another obsession to deal with now. Death and blood and murderers.

Alan.

He stared at the pictures again, feeling the team's eyes on him and he realised they were waiting for him, waiting for him to lead. Even Catherine. His team, his family, his lab. It was a dark, possessive thought, but he was too tired to beat it and part of the savage animal still lived in him. They'd been hurt, could still be hurt and the savage animal knew only one defence.

Time to hunt now.



Chapter Twenty-Seven

*****
You're not alone
Because there has always been heartache and pain
And when it's over you'll breathe again
You'll breathe again
- Savage Garden, Crash and Burn
*****

The day was dawning in a slow fire of the sky, burning the twilight into yellow, orange, pink, red and eventually deep blue as the sun rose and started its slow trek to fall again. Rising and falling, marking the days that passed, marking time. No stopping the sun. No stopping time.

No stopping age.

Catherine could feel it burrow its slow way into her body, leaving marks on her skin, her bones, her mind. Relentless as the sun and a burn just as surely. She could feel the embers of it fill her as she watched the day push forth, another day making her older. Making Lindsey older.

Nothing made you feel as old as watching your kid storm through the years. Nothing... Except perhaps realising how quickly that storm could come to an end. Life was risk, she knew in her blood. But every parent forgot this, had to forget it or be forever worried, despairing, hawking over their child.

And sometimes you were forcefully reminded.

A killer stalking her child. A part of her wanted to scream, another part had simply gone still with cold, freezing rage.

She took a deep breath, feeling the air awaken her body somewhat. They'd been working at the lab all night and she could feel exhaustion all the way to the marrow of her bones. She wasn't young anymore, her body was telling her in painful, large lettering.

At least they had built what would surely be an airtight case against Alan Keyes now. All they had to do was find him.

Unless he skipped state, hid somewhere, changed his identity, leaving her with the fear.

She sighed, rubbing her neck. She should head back into the lab, but her body felt still and cold even in the spreading sunlight. She wanted to sleep. She wanted Lindsey to be her child again, innocent and without the sting of the rebellion that lead to adulthood. She wanted Warrick to lie next to her on a warm beach, stroking her back. She wanted the smell of blood and death to stop lingering in her clothes. She wanted time to freeze for a lifetime, an eternity, for the sun to never set.

'I want,' she thought and stared at the sun.

"Catherine?"

She closed her eyes, fighting an urge to scream. Not this too now.

"Sam."

She turned to face her father with a calm she didn't feel, noticing the slight shake in his hands as he stood before her, his hair white as snow in the daylight.

"You didn't call, you didn't stop by... So I came to you," he said, his voice almost shaking. "You look tired. You work too hard."

"I have reason to," she snapped back. "There's a guy out there preying on women because of some twisted daughter fantasy and it's my job to make sure we find the evidence we need to know who it is and convict him."

"You don't need to worry about convicting him. I could deal with this guy. All you have to do is give me a name. He would never touch you again."

Sam's words were cool, sharp, like an offered knife. And in a way, it was. No trial for Alan Keyes this way. Only judgment and no more nightmares for her. But she would always know, and that would be a different kind of nightmare.

For a moment, she felt the temptation. One word from her would wield that knife. One word.

"No," she said and thought of Lindsey. "No. Leave him to the law, Sam. He hurt me, not you. Don't touch him."

Sam looked at her, and she could feel a strange kind of love in his eyes. "You're wrong, Mugs. He hurts me by hurting you. You are my daughter."

"Genetics, Sam. In the ways that mattered, you weren't a father at all."

"And you're not going to let me change that."

Sam as a father. Rich, hovering, caring in his own way. But a killer. Ruthless, dark, persuasive. Even now, even still.

"No," she said and closed her eyes to the sense of loss filling her. "I took your money for Lindsey, for her future and maybe it damned me, but I will not let you damn her. Let us be, Sam."

"Could you just watch your child live on without trying to make her safe?" he replied softly and she wanted to scream at him.

"I'm not your child!"

"DNA says otherwise, as you informed me. Catherine, when you were missing, I was..." He paused, throwing out his arms. "It was losing Tony all over again."

Against her will, she could feel sympathy well up in her. Not even a murderer should have to lose a child. "You know I'm sorry. But I'm not his replacement. You didn't lose him to win me. You can't make up for what wasn't."

His smile was a strange mix of pride and sadness. "You're as stubborn and determined as me. I'm not going to stop asking."

"I'm not gonna stop saying no."

He nodded, then looked over her shoulder. "I think your colleague is waiting for you."

She turned to see Warrick leaning against a car, far enough away not to listen in and still near enough to step in if he'd wanted. He gave her a tired smile as she met his gaze and she wondered just how long he'd been waiting on the edge of her life, always there, always just out of the corner of her eye.

"Yeah, he is," she said and turned back to Sam, noting a slight disapproval on his face. "What?"

"You could do so much better, Catherine."

Sam's daughter with Sam's money and all the things she might buy for it, for her, for Lindsey. She could make it her world - but nothing came without a price and Sam always got his money's worth. And this time it would be her, what she was molded into what he wanted her to be.

"No," she said firmly. "I could do differently, but not better."

He nodded slowly, but if in acceptance or just vague understanding, she didn't know. It had been a long night and her mind was tired of interpreting, noticing, searching.

"I should let you go," Sam said quietly, still looking at Warrick.

"Yeah, you should," she replied, imagining Lindsey saying the same to her and feeling her heart be shattered with the pain.

"He taking good care of you?"

She blinked, for a moment not even sure what he was talking about, then it dawned on her. "How...?"

"Had a guy keep an eye on you," Sam replied briskly. "You may not want to, but I protect what is mine and I'm not gonna let some murderer kill my daughter while the local cops are out getting a donut."

"Sam!" she protested, throwing up her arms, feeling her life invaded from all angles. A killer, a father, a daughter, a lover. Was there nothing left for just her? "My personal life is none of your business."

Sam was already ignoring her, striding towards Warrick. The morning seemed to get worse and worse and she hadn't even slept yet. As she hurried after, she felt the first faint traces of a wind pick up, shoving the heat ever forward.

Warrick gave her a quick look as she approached, clearly wondering what this was about. She could only give an apologetic smile, watching Sam introduce himself, even if it was clearly unnecessary. She wondered briefly if Warrick was even thinking this could be his father-in-law, then shot the thought down with force and speed. Way, way too early for that and yet... No, no.

"Take care of her for me?" she heard Sam say and she felt an urge to drop a car on him.

Warrick fixed him with an indeterminate glance. "No. She'll take care of herself."

"Yes, I will," she cut in. "Sam, I have to get back to work."

He nodded, looking at her again with what could almost be love, Sam-style. "Call me if you change your mind."

And with that he slipped away, striding into the sunshine and a waiting car. For all the anger, she felt a moment of pity too. It was possible to have all money could buy and still have nothing at all.

"What was that all about?" Warrick asked softly, though she suspected he had a fair idea.

"He wants to be in my life. Be a father, as if he can argue that right now with his DNA," she replied, trying to bite back the bitterness and failing.

"I know."

With anyone else, those words might have been trite, but not with Warrick. He did know. He did have a father by DNA only.

"DNA doesn't make you a father, just as you can be a father without the DNA," he went on. "I don't need DNA to love your daughter as if..."

He paused, perhaps feeling he'd said too much, looking at her with a slight air of hesitation.

'As if she were your own,' she thought and let the thought warm her.

"You don't," she agreed softly. "But one step at a time, right?"

"Right."

Being at work and being in a public place be damned she decided and leaned against him anyway, resting her head against his broad chest and listening to his breath. She had earned a rest. She had earned happiness, dammit, and no father or killer or both was going to change that.

It was a dangerous thought, she knew, since life rarely ever seemed to give what was fair, but she clung on to the thought anyway, feeling Sam's pain burrow into her as her own. And Georgina's father's, all the fathers who had lost their child, all the mothers, all the pain of the world. Even Alan's. And somewhere in the abyss of it was her own, lingering always because it was her, was her life.

No escape from pain and time and she was growing older with every heartbeat, every breath. Time went ever on, healing pain and adding to it all at once, fairly and unfairly, but eventually pain came to all.

And high above her, the sun traveled on, marking time as it went, rising only to fall again.



Chapter Twenty-Eight

*****
Slight hope


It dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption
- Dashboard Confessional, Vindicated
*****

Sara dreamt vaguely of the sea, its waves falling against the land, shaping the land, but never conquering it, always retracting again. The water hummed a lullaby to her, wordless and ancient and familiar and left the feel of it inside her even as she woke up to darkness and a pounding head.

She glanced at the watch, vaguely making out the time. She'd slept over twelve hours, she calculated and her body still demanded more.

"Yay, jetlag," she muttered to herself, fighting herself free from the covers and feeling her body shiver for a moment, adjusting to the air conditioning. Her head felt like a brick and she padded to the bathroom, extracting a bottle of painkillers. Hopefully, it would chase away some of the strain, enough to make her function as a human being for a while. Sleeping too long would most likely make it worse, Grissom had warned her.

Grissom...

She padded into her living room, checking the machine. No messages. No messages on her page. No calls missed. She felt strangely hurt at that. Granted, he had sent her home to sleep, with strict orders not to do anything but, and the boss wouldn't have called, but he wasn't just her boss anymore. She didn't know what he was, but...

This was Grissom, she sternly reminded herself. He did live in a slightly different world to everyone else's and the same things would not occur to him. He didn't mean to hurt her, even in the million little ways he had and probably would.

Perhaps all humans lived in a different world to those around them. Her world was not Grissom's world, was not Alan's world.

Grissom would have called them if there was something new about Alan, she was sure. They had to still be waiting. In some ways, it was the part of the job she hated the most. Sometimes, they had to wait for the killer to make a move. Reacting, not acting. A part of her wanted to act, to run out of there and drive until she'd come across Alan or died from old age, even knowing the police was probably doing all the searching they could and she would not make much of a difference.

Perhaps this case laid to rest would be the one bringing sleep to her own case finally. A little hope. It was all they lived on, all she had lived on when Grissom had pushed her away and all had seemed dust. And when hope had left nothing but the fantasy, then he had come to her.

And hope lived renewed, hope that he would stay.

A part of her wanted the case to never end, as if it would make the light of Norway linger around forever and keep her with Grissom in the bubble of this undefined between them. And when they'd nailed Alan Keyes, what then? She could not go back to what had been, not when she'd felt Grissom's teeth scrape her flesh and his body sleep next to hers. Fantasies could be ignored, but when they'd been made flesh and bone, they couldn't just be dreamed about now and then and all be as before.

Ever forward, then, and solve the murders she could and let those she couldn't haunt her. Even the solved murders would sometimes still haunt. As Anna would, who now almost felt to live on inside her, as if unable to rest yet.

She wondered why she let Anna haunt her still. The unfairness of her death, the betrayal of her grandmother, the darkness of her father killing for her? Perhaps that was why. Perhaps Anna could not rest in her mind until her father killed no more.

Anna... There had been something troubling her about Anna and Alan's victims ever since she came back, but it seemed encased in the brick that was her mind and she couldn't quite make out the shape of it. She only knew it was there, the knowledge of knowledge of something slightly amiss.

She sighed and headed for the shower. Perhaps it would reveal itself to her as jet lag cleared and she felt more herself and less as if she was carrying Anna and Caroline and her own mother inside her, all bleeding in their own way. Perhaps it was easier to carry theirs than her own.

The hot water was a blessing against her skin, almost scolding her clean. She let it burn away the traces of sleep and dream from her body, if not from her mind. She tried not to think, tried not to rehearse speeches for when she saw Grissom again. It had been a strange, wonderful last day in Norway, out of time and place, just her and him, laughing at the falls of a roller coaster, eating ice cream under the sun. It was almost the sort of thing normal couples would do and therein lay the terrible, terrible lure.

She had not grown up normal. The fighting, the violence, the blood... You could never be normal again. She had fought her way to something like a life, an existance, but she still felt the temptation of creating a normality she'd never experienced.

Normal was an illusion. Normal was what you made it. Normal could be her and Grissom, life with the trenches of human cruelty all around. Their job to walk there, gathering the evidence from what people could do to each other. Murder, torture, scams, violence. Killing other daughters for the loss of his own.

Alan...

The sense of something amiss came back now and she frowned, trying to claw it down.

"She wanted to know him."

Caroline's words echoed in her, triggering a lurch in her brain. How had Alan known Anna, or more specifically Anna's murder to recreate? He could have gotten some details from the media, but she remembered the sense she'd had when looking at the pictures. They weren't detailed copies of Anna's death, which would have made all of them suspicious, but there was something...

It slipped away from her again and she groaned in frustration, feeling the water turn cold on her as well. She hurried out, wrapping herself in a towel almost automatically. Almost... She could almost feel the shape of it, if she just pushed on that thought for a moment... Caroline speaking of Anna.... Anna's fairytale...

Fairytales.

Cinderella.

Anna had looked almost like Cinderella, she remembered having thought. And so had these murders. Fairytales, sleeping beauties, princesses, princes, fairy godmothers, dreams came true. Almost as if... He was still waiting for Anna to awake? But could he have known she had looked to be so soundly asleep that the CSIs had referred to her as Cinderella and have attempt to recreate the image?

Could he have an inside source?

The thought was cold and chilling and she let it breathe inside her, the implications spreading out before her. Not someone very close to them, or he would have known Anna's murder was being investigated in Norway and thus wouldn't have gone after Catherine and Warrick for who the killer was. Perhaps someone with access to the coroner's findings or the crime scene photos. Or a friend of a friend of a lab tech. Or a friend of a friend of a CSI of a different shift even. So many possibilities and the chilling thought that remained. He could know they were looking for him. Perhaps inside information was how he had known to find Lindsey, too.

She dressed hurriedly, not much thinking of what she put on, her mind now racing when finally clear. If Alan had a source in law enforcement, he could hide more easily. Perhaps even get some help. Just one guy transporting both Catherine and Warrick would have been hard. Two... Two would be easier. A reluctant helper, maybe, who hadn't wanted to help out more than superficially.

A spectrum of possibilities, all speculation, no evidence. She needed evidence. Nick (and probably Warrick and Catherine too, even if they hadn't been officially there) had already looked over the Keyes' family home, but maybe if she went back there, she could find something. Evidence often only made sense when in context. Grissom had taught her that.

She considered calling him for a moment, then thought against it. She could talk to him if she found something, making sure she didn't lead him on some wild goosechase, perhaps making him suspect she was even doing it to spend time with him. No. Better to have something more than a random theory mostly triggered by word association. He wouldn't scoff at her, not Grissom, but still...

The evening sky was dark as she stepped out, the night chilly against her skin. It felt strange for a moment to have dark evenings again, her mind used to the Norwegian sun. The desert was cold nights, even in summer. No sound of the sea either.

It suddenly hit her that a part of her missed San Francisco still. It had been a younger time and sometimes, she felt as old as the hills above the city, washed by winds and rains and centuries. Time added years to her mind, but blood and death and victims' eyes added decades. She wasn't growing old, she was growing ancient.

The car roared to life as she started it, almost like an angry beast charging. Perhaps that was what she was now, the beast of justice, of victims, of Anna. The beast on Alan's trail, until he was chained, until her own demons were chained, until all killers were chained away and there was nothing but sleep and silence and Grissom's gentle touch.

'Normality,' she thought and knew it was a fantasy. But all life was living fantasies in their own ways, and it was time to bring Alan's fantasy to an end. For Anna, for victims past and victims future. For her, for her own fantasy.

And the beast charged into the Nevada night, darkness softly swallowing her.



Chapter Twenty-Nine

*****
I'm only human, what a lousy excuse
but we're playing a game now, I'm meant to lose
consider me dangerous, consider us a crime
when I fall asleep now, I can't close my eyes
- Briskeby, Wide Awake
*****

"Earth to Warrick? Heeeeello? Warrick?"

"Hmmm?"

Blinking, Warrick adjusted from darkness to Greg's hazy face, only slowly coming into sharper focus. "Greg."

"It's a good thing Ecklie didn't see you sleeping on the job," Greg joked, sounding so cheerful Warrick had to fight back an urge to pour coffee over him. Lifting his head from the desk, he could feel a sharp pain in his neck. Punishment for falling asleep, it seemed.

"I was running a few prints through CODIS," he muttered, trying very hard not to yawn. "Didn't you all go home to get some sleep?"

"Already been and have since returned," Greg replied. "Grissom's looking for you. You haven't seen Sara, have you?"

"Yes, Greg, I saw a vision of her in my dream as I slept soundly."

"Just asking."

"Just teasing. Nah, haven't seen her, man." Groaning, Warrick stood up, feeling his muscles protest at all this mistreatment. He wasn't even sure when he'd fallen asleep and the computer screen seemed to blink displeasingly at him for his lack of attention. Had to be a few hours at least.

"I tried calling her, but she didn't answer," Greg went on, now looking slightly concerned. "I thought maybe she was working, like you."

"Not as far as I know. She's probably sleeping in a soft, soft bed, as I should be doing."

"Yeah, maybe." Greg didn't sound convinced, but didn't push it.

"You seen Catherine or Nick?" Warrick asked, rubbing his eyelids slightly. His eyes hurt and were heavily protesting all the light and sights they were forced to take in. He could feel a headache from exhaustion coming on, but another part of him was energized, sprinting ahead, hunting.

"Catherine's with Grissom in his office. Nick's stealing all my coffee in the break room."

"Smack him from me. I'll go see what Grissom wants."

"I'll tell Nick you said that!" Greg called after him, and Warrick gave him a mock glare before finding his way to Grissom's office. Catherine was indeed there, leaning back in a chair and looking exhausted. Grissom looked... Grissom. Calm and determined and overworked, as always.

"You looking for me?"

"I was," Grissom said, tone serious. "Catherine's been telling me about your encounter with our suspect."

Catherine looked straight ahead and, for a moment, Warrick wondered just what she'd said. Surely she hadn't... No, she wouldn't share that with Grissom, except perhaps at gunpoint or promised torture by tarantella.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here," Grissom went on, Catherine remaining silent and seemingly deferring to Grissom, which made Warrick wonder just what he'd missed. "You two handled it well."

"Thanks..." Warrick said hesitantly. It was rarely a good sign if Grissom started a conversation with an open compliment. It was almost enough to make a man start looking into unemployment benefits.

"The Sheriff wants me to oversee this case, given Catherine's personal involvement. You two shouldn't really be here."

"Oh, come on, Griss!" Warrick protested, feeling an urge to smack a gauntlet down on the desk. No way in hell was Grissom taking him off the case. "I'm not gonna sit at home and wait for the day someone tracks this guy down! I'm not."

"I know. I'm not asking you to," Grissom said reassuringly. "That's what the Sheriff wants, not what I want. In this case, you two are evidence. You've had contact with the guy. Maybe that can help us find him. The PD has searched every piece of property the Keyes' brothers owned. Nothing. He's obviously gone into hiding, perhaps considering leaving the state."

"If he does that, we may never catch him," Catherine said evenly, but Warrick knew her well enough to sense what was underneath. No rest if he did. Always looking over the shoulder, always worrying. Always fearing for Lindsey, perhaps for all of them.

"Nick found some fingerprints in the dumped car that didn't match the other prints we've got," Grissom said, shooting Catherine a quick glance. "Is it possible he has an accomplice?"

"I think maybe I heard two voices when we were being transported," Catherine replied, clutching the armrest for a moment, looking ahead, but into her own memories most of all and Warrick could feel them faintly echo in his own mind. "Could've been the radio, I was pretty out of it."

"I only remember one guy. The father, wanting to know who killed his daughter," Warrick injected, remembering the voice. Such grief, dark and despairing and enraged. The kind of grief that could lead to a certain madness. The madness he'd almost felt at the thought of losing Catherine.

You could live a life in that madness, knowing nothing else and he could feel it tug at him, demanding vengeance, silence and death.

"Alan Keyes," Grissom said softly, the name like death spoken in his voice.

"If he has an accomplice, where should we start to look?" Warrick wondered aloud.

"In the past," Catherine replied, standing up. "This guy's life is in the past. He's living his past, his daughter through these murders."

"Yes," Grissom agreed, looking thoughtful. "You two feel like a little digging?"

Catherine groaned slightly, but gave a tight nod. "We'll dive into Alan's past, but if my back hurts more at the end of it than now, you're paying for a massage for me."

Grissom looked amused for a moment, something affectionate passing between the pair of them and Warrick felt a moment of jealousy. Not at Grissom really, but rather the years the two had known each other, the years he hadn't known Catherine. Strange and somewhat frightening was the realisation that he would want to spend all the years with her, grow old and wrinkled and still sleep next to her.

A certain kind of madness to that too.

"I'm going back to the Keyes' place, see what we might find on second look," Grissom said, getting up as well. "I'll take Sara and Nick, Greg can give you guys a hand. Talk to Brass."

"Sara's not in yet. Greg tried calling her with no luck," Warrick replied and for a moment, something flickered over Grissom's face. Worry, concern, guilt, a mix of them seemingly all at once. It passed so quickly it could have just been his imagination and he was tired, yet... He wondered. It wouldn't be the first time he'd noticed something pass through Grissom where Sara was concerned, yet as the years had passed, he'd never had any real evidence. Still, a gambler always looked at the subtle signs and the subtle signs were screaming a story.

"I'll call her. Thanks, Warrick," Grissom said composedly, giving nothing more away.

"Good to have you back."

A faint smile was Grissom's only reply and Warrick followed Catherine out, noting that the usual swing in her step was gone. She was probably feeling the lack of sleep and more importantly, the lack of rest. Sleep was easy enough. But when nightmares stalked it, it was hardly rest.

"Where the hell are we supposed to start with this?" he muttered darkly as they walked along, feeling a great desire to hurl himself at walls just to see the dents he could make.

"Before he went to Norway, perhaps?" Catherine suggested. "From what Grissom said, Anna's grandmother was apparently convinced Alan had committed murder before he came to Norway. Maybe this possible accomplice would be connected to that."

"As good a theory as any," he replied. "Hey, if you want to get a few hours on a couch somewhere, I can boss Greg around."

She turned her head to smile at him for a moment. "Thanks, but if I go to bed now, I'll sleep for a year. Besides, I'd miss your snoring."

"I do not snore."

"Do you want me to bring a tape in for audio analysis?"

"That'll never hold up in court."

"Depends who the judge is and this judge rules that you snore."

"No chance of appeal?"

"I'll have to take that under advisement," she replied, giving him a look that almost invited ravishing. He shook his head at her and she gave him a teasing smile, tinged with exhaustion, but genuine nevertheless.

'Maybe we're going to be fine,' he thought daringly, a strange optimism, all things considered.

"Hey Greg, you're with us!" Catherine called into the break room, where Nick and Greg were sitting in animated conversation, the former with a silly plastic horned helmet before him. Presumably a gift from Greg. Warrick was almost afraid to ask if the younger man had brought something for the rest of them as well. They'd probably find out soon enough, anyway.

"Where are we going?" Greg asked, giving Nick a merry wave as he got up and followed them through the halls.

"Backwards," Warrick replied before Catherine could say anything. Backwards, if it would do any good. A man could hide for a long time in this city, this state, this country. They could be forced to chase him forever, always hunting. And always being hunted too.

"Ah. Good. Here I was thinking I would miss Grissom, but I see you've mastered the art of replying like him," Greg said and Warrick had to smile. He knew Grissom had in some ways mentored him as a possible replacement for the day Grissom himself might move on, but perhaps he had been taught a thing too many.

A peculiar thought, that this lab might one day be his of sorts, perhaps Catherine supervising days. The two of them and Lindsey, a family, a life, a possibility. Life in following death, life in the lab. It could be a future.

But the future was merely the tomorrows always on the other side of a sunrise and the present always the threat of the last sunrise of all. No guarantees, all gambles and they were all addicted to it in their own way.

He smiled faintly at the thought, feeling exhausted, anger, fear and determination all cancel each other out for a moment of utter calm and stillness.

Alan Keyes might have the best hand now. But there was always another deal waiting beyond the fallen sun.



Chapter Thirty

*****
It is -last stage of all -
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.
Matthew Arnold, Growing Old
*****

Fear was a claw, cutting blood and flesh and bone, leaving traces of pain as it tore. Fear was the weakness of every human and never had Gil Grissom felt as human as he did now.

She had gone to a crime scene alone. She had gone alone when Alan Keyes was out there somewhere, with a will to kill. She had gone alone and could have robbed him of her forever more. She had given him this fear.

And then she had merely called him to tell him where she was and that they should come, as she had found something. Nothing more, nothing less. Professional, sounding so much like him he'd wanted to throw the phone at something. She should not be like him, wandering into a Syd Goggle just to talk.

No Catherine there for her save as he'd had and the drive felt like every moment was a thorned eternity.

"She didn't say what she'd found?" Nick asked again, eyes on the road, hands relaxed on the wheel.

"No," Grissom said shortly. The scientist in him should be wondering about that, speculating, but all he could feel was the claw.

'This is why you stayed away from her embrace,' a part of him thought. Fear of losing Sara, his co-worker, was darkness and despair. Fear of losing Sara, his lover, was insanity and obsession.

He breathed, watching the houses stream by, little hives, each with a different hierarchy, a different pattern. You could not study one human and understand the rest, not fully. He could not study Dr. Lurie and understand himself, understand his pattern with Sara. He could not study other women in his life and understand her. She was no Catherine. Catherine had lingered by him, always a step away, but never demanding him, the Grissom away from all his roles. Sara... Of all the men she might have had, she demanded him.

He still did not understand why. And as long as he did not understand, there was always the fear that she might leave him. Another claw, another pain.

The Keyes' residence hovered ahead, speaking of riches and prosperity, though not overwhelming fortune. A good living, with land owned to make money from. What hive had the Keyes' house been, he wondered. Violent? Normal? Detached? Abusive?

Only one member of the family left to tell now.

Sara was already waiting for them, leaning against her car, almost beaming as they pulled over.

"Just in time, guys!" she called. Nick looked amused. Grissom could hardly breathe, the claw becoming anger, filling him, grounding him to humanity.

"Just in time for what?" Nick asked, exiting the car and slamming the door behind him. "You look way too happy and rested. I hate you."

"Thrill of discovery, Nick. You should try it some time," she teased, and somewhere in the dark corner of his mind, Grissom noticed again how she almost seemed happier with other people and he wondered once more why she had demanded him, pushed him, pursued him.

"Ow!" Nick exclaimed, feigning hurt to her remark.

"Hey Grissom," she said, now turning to him, the smile still hovering on her lips.

"What are we here for?" he asked, keeping his voice even. She narrowed her eyes slightly at his tone, but didn't lose her happy smile.

"I kept thinking maybe we'd missed something," she said, beckoning them inside. "Alan Keyes seemed to be echoing Anna's murder just a tad too much with his victims. So I thought maybe he had a way of knowing how to recreate it."

"An accomplice," Grissom said slowly, remembering his own speculation.

"Or a source," she replied, the stairs creaking under her as she strode up them confidently, looking almost at home in a murderer's home. But then, perhaps that had been all the home she had known, growing up. "I went through his room again and I found something."

"We combed through every room here," Nick protested, looking slightly alarmed at the thought of having missed something.

"True. But sometimes, context is everything," she smiled, looking at Grissom with eyes so bright he nearly lost his breath. "I found this."

"A book?" Nick asked, looking at the bedside table she indicated and reading the title. "Norwegian fairytales?"

"Yes," she said empathically and Grissom stared at her, for a moment lost in the discovery.

"Anna's fairytale?"

"Huh?" Nick looked confused, gaze flickering between the book and Grissom.

"When we were in Norway, Anna's grandmother told us of a particular fairytale Anna was very fond of," Sara explained, lifting the book carefully with a gloved hand. "Context. So I opened it and stuck between the pages I found Anna's letter to her father."

She held the sheets of paper out to him, and Grissom slapped on his gloves and took them carefully, feeling how light Anna's death sentence felt between his hands. The start of all this, flowery letters spelling out words that would doom so many.

"I glanced at it," Sara went on, sorrow laced with her words. "She mentions her upbringing and fairytales being read to her. I guess Alan bought the book so he could read to her too, do what he'd missed."

"A sentimental killer," Nick muttered, shaking his head.

"A sentimental father," Grissom corrected. "He killed when he wasn't a father anymore."

"I also found this," Sara said as she held out a slightly faded snapshot. Young Alan Keyes and a blonde, beaming at each other, hands clasped. A normal, happy couple in a snapshot of life.

"Anna's mother," Grissom guessed, noticing a passing similarity with Anna. So this was Cecilie, the ghost of the tale, never present, but always haunting.

"Yes," Sara replied again. "Notice the building in the background? That's the Royal Castle. Grissom and I walked past it a few times while there."

He remembered. Sun in her hair, smile on her lips, his hands on her skin. If anyone had taken a picture then, they too would have seemed a happy couple in a snapshot of time.

Memories froze the moments. Time teared them down.

"There's a public park there," Sara explained to Nick, who nodded. "And then I looked at Alan's t-shirt."

Nick tilted his head. "Yeah, it's got writing on it. Las Vegas... PD?! What?"

"What?" Grissom echoed, almost yanking the photo out of Sara's hand and looking for himself. "Las Vegas PD."

"But wait a minute... Alan Keyes was never in law enforcement according to anything we found," Nick objected, looking at Grissom. "Right?"

"Right," Sara agreed before Grissom could say anything. "But maybe a friend was. A friend who would lend it to young Alan so he could impress Norwegian girls, maybe?"

"A possible source," Grissom muttered, mostly to himself. An accomplice, a source, a friend? Two to hunt rather than one?

"Yes. And if we find Alan's friend, maybe we'll find Alan," Sara said, sounding grimly satisfied.

"Good work, Sara," Nick complimented, smiling at her with affection and Grissom felt another sharp claw in his flesh.

"Nick, bag this stuff, see if there's anything else. Sara, a moment please?" he asked and she nodded, following him to a large library of dust and silence. "What are you doing?"

"What?" She looked confused at him. "I looked for evidence. My job, remember?"

"You went alone in a case with a killer who's already shown an affinity for going after CSIs! Sara, you could have..." he trailed off, refusing to say, refusing to acknowledge what might have happened. "Catherine went alone and that damn near cost her her life and Warrick's!"

"Give me some credit, Grissom. There was an officer here," she said calmly, crossing her arms.

"The officer could have left. You should have called me, or Nick or Warrick or Catherine. Dammit Sara, your life on the line is not going to make the dead living again or their voices heard louder!"

"Our lives are on the line ever day. It's called living," she replied, still in her calm voice. "Why are you giving me this speech? This case of all cases is personal to all of us and I haven't stepped more out of line than anyone else."

'Anyone else isn't you. Anyone else wouldn't kill me by dying,' he thought and stared helplessly at her.

"Right," she said after a moment of silence and turned to leave. He grabbed her arm, feeling everything in him like a raw wound, bleeding as he pulled her close and kissed her hard. It was more a punishment than a caress, but her lips were soft and yelding against his anyway and he knew he didn't deserve her, had never deserved her, and yet, he wanted to claim her, have her, be with her.

"What did I do wrong?" she whispered against his lips, taking his head in her hands.

'You scared me,' he thought, but didn't say, merely kissed her again, desiring to rest in her until beasts and claws had been eroded by time and their bones would turn to earth together.

She slipped out of his grasp, looking at him with affection and sadness and a hint of anger. "You have to talk to me sometimes, Grissom. That is not negotiable."

He looked at her as she walked out, leaving him with the books and silence in Alan's fading hive. Here a murderer had been shaped and only the traces of the process remained for them to pick through. All humans were shaped by their hives, their purpose, their hierarchy. But it was always possible to find a new hive and be shaped anew, for those who dared.

Perhaps Alan had not.

Perhaps Grissom did not.

He walked out, the footsteps slowly fading and leaving only the dust.



Chapter Thirty-One

*****
Follow the dreamer, the fool and the sage
Back to the days of the innocent age
Storybook endings never appear
They're just someone's way of leading us here
Waiting for wisdom to open the cage
We forged in the fires of the innocent age
- Dan Fogelberg, Innocent Age
*****

The words were swimming, becoming blots of black and grey, making no sense and not registering in her mind. Catherine knew she should sleep, but it was almost as if she were too exhausted for that as well, too exhausted for anything but stare at the words. A limbo between awake and asleep almost, or perhaps a purgatory. She just wasn't sure what was hell anymore.

"You look like you could use a bed."

She looked up from her computer to see Sara leaning against the doorframe, smiling faintly, giving no clues as to how long she'd been there. Catherine just hoped she hadn't done anything too disgraceful, like drooling on the keyboard.

"You look like you had one."

"Touché. What are you doing?"

"Gil wants me to dig into Alan Keyes' past," Catherine declared, trying to keep annoyance out of her voice. "The good Sheriff think I'm too personally involved to be supervising on this one."

Sara shrugged, looking suprisingly apologetic. "You could take the opportunity to get some sleep."

"Last time I went to bed, I woke up to finding out my daughter had been approached by a killer."

Alan and Lindsey talking. Alan touching her child with hands that had killed. Alan wanting... She wanted to scream at the images of it all, but they had carved their way into her mind with a knife of fear and weren't going away.

Perhaps they never would, not even after he'd been caught and the case was history. The mind clung on to fear out of survival, for feeling safe was often to walk into death. Yet another price for life.

Sara nodded in understanding, closing the door behind her as she walked in. "I went to the Keyes' little mansion. Think I may have found a link between Alan and a possible source in the PD."

"The mysterious accomplice Grissom talked about," Catherine breathed, rubbing her temples. More complications, more troubles. Nothing was simple anymore, it seemed. Not getting along with Lindsey, not relationships, not family, not life... But perhaps simplicity was innocence and age made innocence seem more and more an illusion, one you wrapped your children in and hoped they didn't break when it came undone.

"Maybe," Sara acknowledged, then paused as she sat down and got a good view of the desk. "Is that a mug with moose making love?"

"Gift from Greg."

"Of course."

They shared a smile and Catherine found herself wondering again just what to classify her relationship with Sara as. Colleagues, sure, but not just that. Friends? They'd shared moments of that and moments that would probably have Greg eating popcorn in a corner while calling for mud. Sisters, they had never been. Perhaps... Soldiers in the same war, trodding the same trenches and that was a bond that didn't break, disagreements or no disagreements.

"Sounds like you had an eventful trip," she said after a moment, holding up the mug. "Do moose actually do this? In these positions?"

"I didn't see any," Sara chuckled. "Maybe they were getting frisky up in the hills. Yeah, the trip was..."

A moment's hesitation, making even Catherine's exhausted brain leap to attention.

"... Interesting."

"Interesting," Catherine repeated, taking in Sara's face, frustration and hurt obvious now that she looked.

'Okay. Now what did Grissom do?' she thought and wondered if she should hide all the sharp objects in the lab.

"You've known Grissom a long time," Sara said hesitantly, looking torn between bolting and writing a "Dear Catherine" letter.

"You could say that."

"Does he open up to you at all?"

"In some ways. But I'm no risk to him," Catherine replied carefully, weighing her words. "Grissom and I... We're a bit like a marriage without sex. It's not..."

'It's not Warrick and me,' she thought. Or perhaps she and Grissom had not been Sara and Grissom and she felt a moment of envy for that. Not that she had wanted to claim Grissom, but she still felt loss for something she'd never had, had never wanted and envy for Sara, the one who might have it. Strange.

Perhaps he felt almost like hers for all the time they had spent together, for all the time she had spent in this lab before Sara came and changed the dynamics.

"It's not romantic," she amended. "It's just two people getting very used to each other, and thus sometimes, sharing by default."

"I know that, I know that," Sara muttered, closing her eyes for a moment. "I just..."

She groaned, looking up at the ceiling and silence settled for a moment. Catherine fought the urge to put her head down on her desk and rest for just a moment. If she rested now, she would be comatose and dribble all over her lovely desk for a week.

"How do you talk to him?" Sara went on, looking genuinely stumped.

"Grissom, you mean?"

"Yeah."

Catherine let out a slow breath, hoping it would bring some presence to her mind. This was not a good day to be asked to deliver a report on her field studies of Grissom in the wild. And Sara had to be really frustrated to ask her of all people.

"Well..." The loud, way-too-happy sound of her beeper interrupted her and she glanced at it. "Speaking of the reclusive entomologist... Grissom wants to see us. Come on, I can advise torture methods best suited for making the man speak on the way. And we never had this conversation."

Sara managed to mostly smile on the way over, even adding a few creative suggestions herself to the list Catherine presented. It was an oddly comfortable chat, all past history considered. But perhaps even history yielded to the present sometimes and the need for a little friendliness.

The hallways were quiet as they passed through, the silence only interrupted by the sound of Hodges humming and people telling him to shut up. It was almost enough to put a smile on her face despite everything. The lab was the lab was the lab, changing always, but remaining a home, a vein of life to her, to Grissom, to Warrick, to Sara...

They eventually found Nick and Grissom in the Questioned Documents lab, Grissom not even looking up as they entered.

"Grissom, you wanted us?" Catherine asked, trying to tilt his head and see what he was looking at.

"Yeah. Brass got us a warrant for yet another Keyes property. Gilmary Avenue, number 15. Head over there, see if you find anything. Both of you."

The last was clearly directed at Sara, whose lips thinned in anger. Even Nick seemed to sense something in the air, mouthing 'what the hell?' at Catherine. She only shrugged, slightly at a loss herself.

"Anything else, boss?" Sara shot back, giving Grissom a death glare. He met it evenly.

"Be careful," he said after a moment, voice soft. Sara just stared at him for a moment longer, then quietly slipped out. Catherine followed, shaking her head slightly. It seemed like the rack would be in order for Grissom, if Sara had her way.

As they headed through the halls, she spied Warrick getting changed in the locker room and stopped abruptly, making Sara spin around and look at her.

"Just a second," she declared brighty. Exhaustion be damned, this was too good an opportunity not to take advantage of and she was too tired to care much what people would say. She kicked the door closed as she marched into the locker room, making sure no one else was there with a quick glance. Warrick looked up at the slam of the door, looking slightly confused and even more so when she pushed him against a locker and pulled his head down to kiss him like there was no tomorrow. It took a second before he let his hands come to linger on her hips and kiss her back with equal force, the shirt he was about to put on falling to the floor.

"What was that for?" he murmured, kissing her neck as she closed her eyes.

"For being you. For not being Grissom. For not making me get the rack."

"You're welcome...?" he replied, still looking confused.

She smiled at him, gave him one more quick kiss and wandered out again, meeting Sara's questioning gaze.

"I forgot something."

"On Warrick's naked chest?" Sara asked, looking just a tad bemused. Catherine just gave her a mock glare. Exhaustion was definitely messing with her. Her mind seemed to have gone straight past wanting sleep and into making her act as if in a dream.

"If I start giggling, shoot me," she declared to Sara, who nodded solemnly.

"Count on it."

They set out.

Las Vegas was bathed in the light of morning to come, a faint yellow hue caressing all it could find. The sky was still passing from black to blue, showing all the shades inbetween. The nocturnal were going to bed, the day walkers had not yet arisen, and only the twilight shadows were seen here and there. She almost felt like one of them, not in sunlight, not in darkness. Not awake, not asleep. Not young, not ancient. Life was always stuck in the inbetweens of something, but she felt it more strongly now.

A neautral cop car was parked outside the house Grissom had directed them too, but the cop was nowhere in sight. He could be inside, but she still felt something icy at the back of her neck. She felt an urge to hold the comfortable steel of her gun, but let her hand linger near her hip instead.

Maybe exhaustion had finally tipped her into paranoia, with insanity to merrily follow.

"This feels... Off," Sara muttered, perhaps sensing the same unease.

"Yeah," Catherine agreed. "Let's keep an eye out."

There was no signs of violence as they entered the house quietly, the door swinging open with a soft hiss. The lights were off, only the morning light streaming through blinds at the windows offering some illumination. It gave an altogether eerie feel, and the track of dusty foot prints didn't help.

"I don't like this," Sara said darkly. "Let's call..."

"Let's call who?" a male voice said and Alan Keyes stepped out of the shadows, gun firmly in hand and eyes brighter than the dawning sun.



Chapter Thirty-Two

*****
Catch that light
It falls in suble patterns
It crawls in and tells them when their time is up
And now it's over
Where have you gone?
You're still a part of me
- Toadies, Doll Skin
*****

No more hiding. No more being the prey. No more lack of control. He would do it right this time, live it right. His time now.

Alan stepped into the light, feeling a moment of triumph as the CSIs took him in. Neither of them seemed surprised was the first thing he noticed. Catherine just stared at him, hate in her eyes and he bit back a desire to erase it, burn it away. He had to be composed, had to do this right. They would understand. They would.

The brunette was eyeing him with calm and he could not read her eyes. He never could read Cecilie's eyes. Bright and dark and enticing him, but never telling him anything, never revealing.

"Don't try to shoot me," he warned. "I have my friend with me, he will shoot you both in the back if you try anything and he's sent away your little officer. Now, ease your guns down on the floor and kick them here."

They both slowly looked over their shoulder, probably making out the shape of Frank before doing as Alan had asked, and he was glad neither tried anything. He didn't want to kill. Not yet, not before they understood.

"Now, we're going to go into the living room," he went on, kneeling carefully to pocket both guns without losing the grip on his. "You're both going to sit down and then we're going to talk."

The two exchanged a glance before doing as he said, taking a seat on the sunken couch he indicated. He tried not to beam or look gleeful. It had worked. It was all going to work, everything he had planned. Life would be as he'd dreamed it.

"What are we going to talk about, Alan?" the brunette asked, meeting his gaze. "Anna?"

He stared at her, sensing the familiarity of how she pronounced the name, a name most tripped over slightly. "Who are you?"

"I'm Sara Sidle. I investigated your daughter's murder. It's me you want, not Catherine."

"Sara!" Catherine looked sharply at her, clearly not pleased. "I would never leave you with..."

"You have Lindsey," Sara said simply and something passed between them that he couldn't quite make out and it angered him. He was in control. His game, not theirs.

"Anna," he corrected and they both stared at him. "She's gonna be Anna."

All over again, his life and this time as it should be, Anna at his side, listening to him read under an open sky, laughing with him, loving him, being his daughter. He would watch her grow up, grow old, give him grandchildren.

"I'm not giving you my daughter just because you lost yours," Catherine said empathically, holding up her hands. "Kill me, I don't care. You're not having her."

He just smiled patiently. Did they not understand yet? "I'll find her. I always do. I looked for you and found her."

He'd thought he could have Anna's rebirth in Catherine, but then he had seen her daughter and known. Anna, young still and his to shape.

"You've been trying to find her for a long time, haven't you?" Sara said softly. "Even before you knew she existed. Looking for that one to love you without restraint, without fear. The only thing you ever wanted."

Maybe one of them did understand after all. "Yes. My daughter could have saved me. But she died, was taken from me. Killed."

"So you kill?"

"I live. I kill, I live. All humans have a right to fight for their life. I'm fighting for mine, fighting for her."

He would win this time, for all the times he had lost owed him that. It was only fair.

"You want to punish her killer," Sara went on, smiling sadly at something. "You can't."

Rage was hot and warm and hit her before he could think, the sound almost like a gunshot. He pulled away immediately before Catherine could even think about pouncing on him, and she was close to, judging by her murderous glare. Flexing his fingers, he could feel pain sting his knuckles. It always came back to this after all. Fists and control. He'd been taught that early on.

He thought he'd let that go.

"This is what Cecilie was afraid of," Sara said quietly, lifting her head again to look at him, her nose bleeding. "Your anger."

He shook his head wildly. "No. No. Cecilie was not afraid of me. No."

She hadn't been. She'd loved him, as Anna would have loved him, as Anna would love him.

"Right," Catherine muttered, wiping away the blood from Sara's face with her shirt. He clenched his jaw, then unclenched it. Calm. Calm. Control.

"I never hit her," he said softly. "I'm sorry, I... I shouldn't have hit you. I'm sorry."

"Anna's killer is already being punished more than you can imagine, Alan," Sara replied. She looked straight at him, no lies in her eyes or face. "Living with the kill... That's hard."

The blood, always the blood. The smell, burrowing into his bones and lingering with him always. The sight, repeating itself over and over in his mind. Hard to sleep. Guilt and pain and darkness. But then...

"Only the first," he said, nodding to himself. "And then blood covered blood and it became life."

'And I became death,' he thought, and it was a chilling, seducing thought, filling his mind, driving his mind.

"And your friend, he's okay with all this?" Catherine asked, lifting her eyes to the door where Frank stood, gun pointed at her, looking more than a little uncomfortable. "Okay with being an accomplice to several murders, facing a possible death penalty?"

"He's got enough money to live happily in a country of his choice for the rest of his life. Haven't you, Frank?"

"You're an asshole, Alan," Frank replied, leaning against the doorway, shaking his head. Never happy, aging Frank, but blood was a bond not broken and they both knew it.

"I know you," Catherine said, giving him a look that almost killed. "You've worked with Brass sometimes. Oh, he's gonna come after you so hard you'll actually wish for the death penalty."

Frank looked pained for a moment, then just sighed. "I'm leaving now. Whatever the hell you want to do, Alan, you're on your own. Enough of roping me into your madness. I don't owe you this. I've given you back enough."

"No, not yet," Alan replied calmly and shot.

Frank paused, staring in disbelief at the blood soaking his shirt where the bullet had impacted. For a moment, he just stood there, a frozen moment of life leaving. Then he slumped down, body just skin and bones and no direction any more. It was always strange, that pass between life and just life's abandoned shell. One moment, something was within, the next only the shell remained, soon to rot.

Farewell to Frank. Once a friend, then a reluctant accomplice, then a burden, then a corpse.

Only Alan now.

"There, I gave him the death penalty for you," he said calmly, smiling at Catherine. She just looked at him, as if he were insane, a beast, something less than human. As if she would not kill for her child, would not tear through flesh and bones to make her daughter live again.

"You're not the judge and executioner, Alan," Sara interrupted. Her nose had turned red and he winced at the sight. He hadn't meant to hit her, hadn't meant to hurt her, only to kill her.

"All humans are," he said simply. His father. His brother. His mother. Cecilie. Him.

"Anna wouldn't want this judge for a father," Sara pressed on, pushing him and he had to fight the urge to hit her again. Control. Calm. No rage. She was not speaking for Anna. She was not.

"Anna would want to live," he protested. All humans did, even at the edge of despair. He had wanted to live even when he'd desired death.

"Not like this. She wouldn't want to have a killer for a parent. No child does."

He shook his head. "You wouldn't know."

"Actually, I would," she replied and he stared at her, her dark hair slightly unkempt, slight traces of blood on her face. For a moment, he saw Anna mirrored within her eyes and he wanted to scream, to rage, to kill, to live.

"Anna," he whispered. All he ever wanted. A little love and a little life. He was owed that. He was.

"Put the gun down," Sara urged, pity in her eyes, herself again, the moment passed. Gone again. Dead again.

He screamed, a soundless roar from his bones, burrowing his fingers into Sara's flesh, shaking her. "Come back to me! Come back!"

She whimpered slightly in pain, fighting to get out of his grasp, but he held on. He'd let go of Cecilie and lost her. He'd let go of his dream for a little while and never regained his hold. He'd let go of Lindsey's hand and she'd vanished from him again. No more.

His heartbeats seemed to fill him, every beat a lifeline to life itself. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on and all would be as it should, as he'd dreamed it, as he'd earned, as was fair. Love and life and his daughter.

Hold on.



Chapter Thirty-Three

*****
This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be?
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose

Don’t close your eyes
- Switchfoot, This Is Your Life
*****

The sun was speaking loudly of day, but Warrick's mind was whispering of night time even so, talking of sleep and beds and darkness and he had to fight so as to not listen. No rest for the wicked or those who chased the wicked and so, he stayed faithfully stayed up and tried not to walk into walls or get too juicy a daydream.

That wasn't as easy as it sounded. Catherine's kiss was still burning on his lips as he stopped by the AV lab and collected the magnifications he'd asked for and went to find Grissom. Mind on work, not colleagues, that should help.

"Hey Grissom!" he called, poking his head into the QD room and wincing at his own loud tone. "Where was Catherine off to?"

"She and Sara are checking out another Keyes' property," Grissom said indifferently, almost too indifferently. Warrick wasn't fooled, but he only nodded.

"What are we looking at?"

"Anna's letter to her father," Grissom replied. "She apparently researched as much about her father as she could. There are references to his life, his family, Las Vegas..."

He shook his head, if in puzzlement or a sense of sadness for what never was, Warrick wasn't sure.

"I got the magnifications of the photo you wanted," Warrick said after a moment, handing over the envelope. "Definitely Las Vegas PD. Seventies, early eighties style. We're thinking he borrowed it?"

"Yeah," Grissom confirmed. "But from who?"

"Any way we can know if this friend went with him to Norway?" Warrick asked. "I mean, Alan must have been fairly young then and being a rich American boy, maybe he took some old high school friends on a trip to Europe."

"I sent Nick and Brass to track down his class list for possible older friends already," Grissom replied. "Though perhaps... Come, Warrick, let's chase a wild hunch."

"Cool."

He followed Grissom into his office, taking a quick glance at the fish. No Alan Keyes up there yet and with luck and skill, there never would be. The office had changed over the years, but it remained very Grissom, almost more than the man himself. Strange, that.

The man himself was already on the phone, apparently talking to a Norwegian police officer. Warrick only half listened, expecting Grissom to draw his attention when it was important. His mind was already taking the opportunity to half sleep, sinking into the darker corners and curling up, by the feel of it.

"Mrs. Jensen," Grissom said loudly, and Warrick snapped to. "I realise it is late there, and I apologise, but as I assured the warden this is important. Gil Grissom, Las Vegas crime lab. Yes. Yes, of course you remember. We are looking into a matter concerning Alan Keyes. Yes. Yes. I was wondering if you remembered why he was in Norway. Friends, you say? You don't happen to... Ah. Jacob, Frank and Christopher..."

Warrick made a quick note as Grissom spoke, circling each name. A possibility, a lead, a clue. An end-

"Thank you, Mrs. Jensen," Grissom went on. "You have been helpful. I will make sure the Norwegian authorities know of your co-operation. Yes... Yes, I will send your best wishes to Miss Sidle. Goodbye."

He hung up, giving Warrick a satisfied looked. "Anna's grandmother remembers it being four American boys. Alan, Jacob, Frank and Christopher. Now let's find Nick and see if he's got that class list."

Warrick trailed after him again, envying Grissom his energy and longing for a deep, soft bed with Catherine next to him. For now, he'd have to look for another cup of coffee.

Nick and Brass were both in Brass's office, Brass on the phone and Nick flipping through papers.

"Class lists?" Grissom asked. "Got any Jacob, Frank or Chris?"

"Start with high school graduating class," Warrick injected. "I still get drunk with some of my friends from my graduating class."

"That Leonard guy?" Nick asked as he skimmed the list, smiling faintly. "That guy should not be allowed near tequila or vodka."

"Tell that to him."

"I would, if I didn't think he'd kick my ass for it. Ah, here's a Frank Brinning. And a Chris Freeman. No Jacob."

"That's a start," Grissom replied, Warrick dutifully adding last names to the circled names on his pad. "Nick, see if any of the other lists has those names as well."

At that moment, Brass hung up, rolling his eyes at the sky. "Spare me from departmental hiccups. I send my officers to watch the scene, they get sent away by some asshole in the drug squad, who promises to let the CSIs know, but doesn't tell me. I'd like to let him know a few things."

Grissom looked up sharply. "They got sent away from the scene I sent Catherine and Sara to?"

"What's this asshole's name?" Warrick cut in, already seeing the end of Grissom's mind travel and feeling a sharp pain awaken his mind.

"Brinning," Brass replied and for a moment, time seemed frozen with a thousand bloody scenarios settling in the room all at once.

"Get some officers there now!" Grissom commanded sharply, already halfway out of the room. Warrick sprinted after, hardly feeling his heart or his body, only the scream in his mind. Alan's friend and Catherine, Catherine who Alan had gone after, Catherine who had to live or... Or. Ororororor.

"Hey Warrick!" Nick called after him, but he didn't listen, merely kept up with Grissom, feeling time as a noose around his neck. They could already be at the scene. They could already be dead.

His hands had found his gun without thinking, feeling the comfortable shape of steel that could avenge, blood for blood, death for death.

'Fight, dammit,' he thought, as if that thought could reach Catherine and fill her. She had to fight. She had to live. Both of them, Catherine and Sara. Fight. Fight.

Grissom had found his car and started it with a roar, Warrick barely getting in before it skid off. Grissom looked so intent it hurt to look at him, hands gripping the wheel like claws, but even more deadly. Warrick didn't think he'd ever seen Grissom in such a state and he wondered if he'd ever felt that way himself.

"I shouldn't have sent her," Grissom muttered, shaking his head.

'Sent them!' Warrick's mind screamed, but he said nothing, merely watched the road as they dived ahead of cars, the road seemingly endless. If ever he did sleep, the road would be all he could see and never get off. Endless, never-ending road, the pain driving. All there was.

They finally did skid to a halt, the house silent, a car already there, but no officers. Warrick didn't even suggest waiting, his gun already firm in his hand. Grissom yanked out his own, looking white. The door was open ahead of them, and sounds spoke of some life and fighting. Warrick didn't much think, only bolted in, nearly tripping over a body, fearing, dreading, hoping, feeling nothing.

A male, he registered, then looked up. Catherine stood upright, was the first thing he saw. Alive. There was blood in her hair and down her shirt and in her shaking hands, she held a gun. Sara was fighting a male that could only be Alan Keyes, who was clutching his own gun, trying to keep it aimed at Sara.

All three in the room paused for a moment as they registered the new arrivals. Catherine looked relieved, Sara seemed to only have eyes for Grissom, meeting his gaze. Grissom seemed frozen, gun not even up, only staring.

"Give it up, Alan," Warrick said, feeling a part of him jump in and take charge as Grissom hesitated. "It's over now."

"You again," Alan muttered.

"Me again. Let her go and drop your gun or I will kill you here and now."

"Warrick..." Catherine said softly. "Don't..."

"If I don't kill him, he's always gonna haunt you," he said tightly, gun still raised.

"If you kill him, he's always gonna haunt you," she replied, and for a moment, he felt her gaze fade the anger.

"I got nothing to live for," Alan cut in, still clutching a now still Sara.

"You still want to live, don't you? You can live and dream of all the things you want. Anna. Your family. You die, you don't even have the dreams anymore. Let her go," Warrick urged. "Let her go."

For a moment, Alan looked distant and Sara took the moment to kick low. Whimpering, Alan let go just long enough and she wriggled free, leaping out of his reach. She breathed hard, still staring at Grissom, who was staring back. Alan seemed to fall apart, sinking down, gun falling from his grasp, sorrow radiating from him.

"Anna..."

And in the distance, a siren gave a long, mournful cry.

*****

The sun felt fainter, somehow, as Warrick stood still and let it warm him. Behind him, he could hear Sara give her statement in a cool, detached voice, Grissom hovering nearby, still not speaking, almost as if he were afraid that would open a torrent and drowning everything.

Warrick couldn't say he blamed him. He could feel a violent river of emotions within himself, but at the moment he was too tired to be swept away.

Over now. And yet not. Aftermath remained.

He found Catherine sitting at the back of the open ambulance, clothes changed. Nick had probably collected them. Yet more evidence against Alan, as if they needed it. But there was still blood on her hands and in her hair and she would need a shower before she could see Lindsey.

"Hey," he said, sitting down next to her, watching the car taking Alan Keyes away. For a moment, Warrick almost felt pity. Distantly, he thought about fathers. His own, a ghost. Catherine's, a ghost materialised, a killer. Lindsey's, a sometime asshole, but missed in death nevertheless. Anna's, a killer, but a suffering human too. And maybe himself one of these days, perhaps adopted, perhaps for real. A father.

"I managed to get that cop's gun," Catherine said after a moment, interrupting his thoughts. "When his attention was on Sara."

"You did well," he assured her. She just shook her head.

"I made a mistake. I knew something was wrong. We shouldn't have gone in there."

He could lie and tell her she didn't and maybe she would even believe him. But he could feel his own mistakes piling in the back of his mind, echoes of the past that lived on in the present. Deny them and they gained hold of you, perhaps even becoming dreams and obsessions instead. Remember them and you were stronger, as long as you didn't let them haunt you. Always the balance to find.

"I know," he said instead. "It doesn't matter. We're all human. We all make mistakes. We all move on."

'Always the aftermath,' he thought, lingering ahead, ready to be grasped, fought, sorted, but for now, just another thing waiting.

A breath and she leaned against him, her hair unkempt, make-up smeared, dark circles under her eyes, blood in her hair and yet she'd never been more beautiful. He could feel her heartbeats echo with his own, a rhythm of life, each beat making the present forever. No tomorrow. Just today, struggling free from the grasp of yesterday, beating steadfastly on against a horizon that never was.



Chapter Thirty-Four

*****
Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another's guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.
- Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
*****

In the madness that was his mind he clung on to the sound of Sara's voice. As long as she was speaking, she was alive, he was alive, time went on. A little bruised, a little battered, but she was alive.

It was the only lifeline he had any more.

He watched Warrick quietly take care of Catherine, the latter seeming still in shock as Warrick held her, cleaned away the blood, waved away nurses and finally drove her away. Grissom could only feel envy. He wanted to do the same for Sara, kiss her hands which had touched him only hours earlier, hold ice to her bruises and hold her as in a safe womb, protected from everything outside. But all he could do was hover, feeling awkward and helpless and old.

He'd almost lost her. And he felt guilty for almost wishing he hadn't sent her there, as if it would have been better if only Catherine had been. Guilty for only being able to stand there when they'd burst in and confronted Alan, Warrick having done all the talking, leading. Guilty for loving her too much, guilty for not loving her enough. Guilt, guilt, guilt, until it seemed to be in his blood, bones, mind.

He shouldn't have sent her. He shouldn't love her. He shouldn't have smiled at her across a seminar room, even then feeling a strange kinship to her. They were the same, her and she, for all their differences, darkness and brightness in different places, a symmetry of souls.

It felt like a pathetic thought, a claim on her when the only claim that could be laid was one she'd allow. And then she would have one on him and he could never walk away.

Never be his father.

He clenched his fists, feeling his fingers against his palm. For a moment, he felt like Alan, ready to tear into flesh for the hurt against what he perceived as his. Just a moment in a murder's skin, a moment of Alan, of Dr. Lurie, of Grissom.

"Grissom?"

He looked up to see Sara stand up, her eyes dark and tired as she watched him, scrapes and bruises on her skin that he could not erase.

"Could you take me home?"

"Yes," he agreed, fighting the word out. "Yes, of course."

She smiled softly at him, a smile he hadn't deserved. "Thank you."

She leaned against him for a moment as they walked to his car, the coroner just driving off. Grissom found himself wondering for a moment if Frank Brinning would have a father to miss him too, someone to weep at his passing. It seemed important that it was so, somehow. If humans could be killers then killers could be human and their passing should be grieved.

Perhaps even Alan's would when the day came.

Sara closed her eyes in the passenger seat as he drove, her eyelids fluttering now and then. He wondered if she was reliving what had happened already, or if her mind was elsewhere, deeper into blood and memory. Sometimes, he wondered why she had chosen this work, knowing what he did now about her past. Here, she would never be free of the ghost of her mother and father.

Perhaps that was the point.

"What are you thinking of, Grissom?" she asked in a low voice, eyes still closed.

"About the legacy of murder."

"How scientific," she muttered, slight sarcasm in her voice.

'I'm thinking about the legacy on you,' he thought and watched the road, cars passing, lives touching each other for a moment, then gone. Like bug's lives were short to a human, a human's life was short to the earth, the hills, the sky. But the traces remained. Humans to bugs to earth to the sun's swallowing to the sun's death to the universe returned. Always traces.

Her fingerprints on his skin leaving traces in his mind.

"I'm sorry," he finally dared and she opened her eyes, staring at him.

"What?"

"I'm sorry. I panicked," he said quietly. "I've never... Not like that. All I could think about was losing you and I almost did."

She frowned. "Catherine or Warrick would have shot him if it came to that."

"They might not be there next time."

"Next time? Why must there be a next time? You think I fling myself into danger every chance I get?" She stared at him. "You do, don't you?"

"You have been..."

"Reckless? Driven? Look in the mirror, Grissom!" she snapped and he winced.

"I know," he admitted after a moment, pulling up in front of her house."Do you need... I mean, you didn't need to go to the hospital?"

"Just a few bruises. They'll heal."

On her, they would. He wasn't so sure about himself any more. Perhaps they never had, he only got better at hiding them, hiding in them.

"Want me to come in?" he asked, feeling torn between daring and retreating to where he might find some sense in it all.

Her face softened just slightly. "Yeah."

Her flat was much the same as last he'd been there, but the last time he hadn't been her lover, hadn't been Gil to her Sara and the air of it felt different. Or perhaps it was merely who he had changed and breathed differently. A faint layer of dust was around, and her fridge displayed a few Viking magnets. He smiled faintly, remembering when they'd been out buying souvenirs, mainly at Greg's insistence.

"I'm just gonna change," she said and he nodded, sitting down at the edge of a chair. The fading daylight was filling the room, exposing the slowly twirling dust that would eventually come to a rest. A suitcase was still in the living room, an empty glass was still on the table. A lived in home, her home.

She'd come to Las Vegas for him, but she'd made a home on her own.

"You look deep in thought," she said softly and he looked up to see her dressed simply in jeans and a t-shirt, the t-shirt reading 'Land of the Midnight Sun'. Another souvenir, another trace of the time they'd spent together.

"I didn't see you buy that," he said, standing up.

She smiled slightly. "Maybe I wanted to model it for you."

She walked towards him and leaned her face against his chest carefully, the bruised side out. He touched the swelling carefully, pushing her hair away.

"He hurt you."

"Doesn't matter," she whispered, closing her eyes.

But it did, Grissom wanted to scream. She was hurt and Grissom the CSI had become Grissom the human, filled with fear and rage and winter. He'd failed her by loving her, exposed himself by loving her.

"You should get some rest," he said after a heartbeat, withdrawing slightly.

"You're leaving?" Her tone held hurt, accusation, resignation and he could feel it almost mirror within himself, as if she had come inside him and he could feel what she did.

"Yeah," he said evenly, feeling the betrayal in his own words. "I think we need some time to... Sort everything out. Get back on our feet."

She stared at him, crossing her arms. "I'm standing. I've been standing a long time. I didn't fall when my mother killed, when my home was lost, when I made mistakes. I'm not going to fall now because a killer touched me."

'You cannot promise me that,' he thought and caressed her arm. And he couldn't promise her he wouldn't fall. No guarantees, no promises, no control. Only demons and the fight every breath of life.

"Why do you look at me as if I am your world and then refuse to let me into it?" she asked, taking his hand, as if the lines on his palm would tell her.

"Because I look with my heart and act with my mind," he replied before he could think of a guarded reply and winced at how cheesy it sounded.

She nodded slowly, as if expecting or agreeing with it. "The two can be the same, you know. If you let them speak to each other."

He stared, and her lips curved into a smile.

"We're talking like characters in a romance novel, aren't we?"

He nodded and she laughed, the laughter slowly becoming muted sobs and she leaned against him again, her breath ragged and uneven. He wondered if she cried for Anna, for herself, for him, for Alan - or perhaps for everything and nothing, tired and frustrated and battling away the fear. He remembered all too well what Syd Goggle had left with him and said nothing, just held her.

All touches left traces.

And soft as hers was, it could still break the barriers he'd so carefully constructed. No control, no Grissom. And he felt too old to build anew that which might crumble to dust. And if it did not work, he would always know it couldn't have worked. No illusion to cling onto, no illusion to look back on when he was ancient and take comfort in.

Could he risk it? For her, for this? Work and himself too?

He didn't know and so he just held her, watching the dust twirl, twirl, twirl... And fall.



Chapter Thirty-Five

*****
Why does it always seem
To bring me back to this
Searching for home
In someone else's gentle kiss
Searching for home in places
Home just don't exist
- A Girl Called Eddy, Little Bird
*****

Morning awoke to a Sara Sidle determined, composed, decided. It was time.

Her sleep had been poor, filled with nightmares, but she knew them for the ghosts of her mind they were. Life would fade them, bring new ones, eventually kill them as it killed her. She would endure them as she endured life, endured herself.

And yet, she had longed for Grissom's touch, his warm body next to her to rest against in the darkness of night when her nightmares bore winter's touch. Longed for him and found him not there yet again. And so she had decided.

It was time. One last question or no more. She couldn't live her maddening dance with Grissom until old age made her bones unable to bear it any more.

She knew where she'd find him as surely as she knew herself and she drove to the lab in the bright, bright sun, Vegas seeming sunnier now with Alan Keyes behind bars. Less fear to darken people's vision now. For a little while, until the next human madness beset someone. So very human to want what seemed fair. A life, a family, a daughter. A lover, a commitment, a warm body sharing the same bed.

But the universe was atoms and rocks and gas and not human at all. It gave life, not fairness.

Fairness she would have to find for herself.

Warrick was in the locker room, taking a few things out of his locker and putting them into a bag. She watched him for a moment, leaning against the doorway. He hadn't been a friend when she had arrived and she didn't think either of them had forgotten that, but something like friendship had grown between them anyway.

"If you start coming into the lab this often, people will start mistaking you for Grissom," she remarked lightly.

"I could say the same thing about you," he replied, looking up. "Catherine and Lindsey are out on a wild shopping spree. Figured I could come in and do some paperwork, save Cath some."

She nodded, taking in the soft look on his face as he spoke and drawing her own conclusions. "Good luck with that, huh?"

"Good luck with your own," he volleyed back, going back to his task. She slipped out, feeling his words in her back. Luck. Perhaps it was time she had a little luck.

Grissom was in his office, as she had anticipated and she regarded him in silence for a few seconds, seeing the shadows across his face, the air of the concentration around him, the light across his skin. Grissom, her Grissom, the man she did love.

Love wasn't always enough. As Anna had found out, as Caroline had known, as Sara would determine.

It was time.

"Hey," she said softly and he looked up, his gaze finding her as always. "If you tell me I shouldn't be here I'm gonna have to tell Ecklie about your highly unreglemented spider food."

He looked guilty, then awarded her a smile, almost chasing the shadows off his face. "You feel better?"

"I will," she said and it was a promise as much to herself as him. Bruises healed and nightmares faded. That was life.

"I've scheduled some leave for you, if you want," he said carefully, obviously trying not to insult her with insinuating she needed some.

"And will you be spending this leave with me?"

He hesitated, a myriad of emotions flickering across her face. "Maybe a few days. If you want."

"I want ," she said firmly, then took a deep breath and went for it. "But it comes with a price, Gil. I'm not going to be with you unless you are with me."

"I am," he replied, sounding confused. "I would never see someone else behind your back."

She bit back the first reply that came to her. In some ways, he had. She had heard the whispers around the lab, knew she wasn't the only dark-haired woman he'd gazed at during the last few years. But perhaps that felt like a betrayal only to her and she had after all let another man gaze at her. And Hank had betrayed her in all meanings of the word.

"No. You're half with me, keeping the rest away," she said instead. "Sometimes, I really don't know you. I don't want to own you, but I can't keep sleeping with a stranger half the time."

"Is this about me leaving yesterday?" he asked, still looking intently at her, clearly trying to make sense of her words.

"Yes and no. I understand why you couldn't talk to me the night after. But you still can't talk to me. You talked about needing time... How much time, Grissom? A lifetime? I need to know."

"I... I don't know."

"I can't do it like this, Grissom."

"Sara..."

"No! I can't give to you until there is nothing left of me. You have to give back, Grissom, or this can't be."

"I don't know if I can," he replied and she closed her eyes. It was the reply she had expected and it still hurt, still seemed to hollow her out and leave only her skin laced with thorns.

Love wasn't always enough after all.

"Hey, Griss!" Warrick's voice called in and she looked up to see that Grissom had moved toward her, but had frozen at the sound of Warrick's voice and now looked helplessly at her. "The Sheriff's looking for you."

"Thanks, Warrick," Grissom muttered. "We'll talk later, Sara."

"Yeah," she lied and watched Grissom walk away, not looking back. Even as her mind screamed at him to turn and look at her, just one more time, he slipped around the corner and was gone.

"You okay?" Warrick asked, moving closer and giving her a look. She felt tears sting her eyes and tried to blink them away.

"No," she answered honestly. "I'm leaving, Warrick."

For a moment, he only stared at her, then nodded slowly.

"I suspect I'm not the one who can talk you out of it," he said, a hand finding hers. She merely nodded, a lump in her throat. "Where will you go?"

"I'll go to San Francisco to start with. I have some friends I can stay with a while. There might be an opening at the lab there. If not, I'll find one somewhere else."

"I see," he replied. His hand was warm on hers and for a moment, she thought Catherine a very lucky woman. "I'm gonna miss you, Sara Sidle. You've been a pain in my ass more than once, but..."

"I know."

"Yeah." He let out a deep breath, shaking his head slightly. His dark eyes seemed to pierce her skin. "Will you tell the others?"

"Nick and Greg, yeah. You can tell Catherine. She'll... She'll understand."

"Not Grissom?"

The lump was a hard rock now. But this was right, this was what was needed. "No."

"I see," he said again and she knew he did.

"Don't tell Grissom?"

"I won't."

She slipped easily into his embrace and rested her head against his chest, smelling a faint trace of Catherine on him. "Thanks, Warrick."

"Thanks yourself," he said softly. "For almost everything."

She chuckled, freeing herself gently and giving him one last look before slipping away. One goodbye - no, two - done and her heart was already broken. But sometimes you had to leave or become a ghost.

'Or a killer,' she thought and remembered her mother, remembered the blood and her father's lifeless gaze.

She would handle the paperwork with Ecklie later, she decided. Away from here, somewhere where she could write the words and not have them break her. Goodbyes were enough today and she still had a few to do.

Nick was in Brass' office, the two of them sharing a toast, looking infinitely pleased with themselves. She let their enthusiasm wash over her for a moment, wishing she could have done something as simple as falling for one of them. Well, perhaps not Brass.

"Hey guys," she said, hurrying on before they could say anything that would make her want to stay. "I'm... I'm leaving. The lab, I mean."

They stared at her for a moment, expressions frozen. No taking back the words now.

"For good?" Nick asked, sounding disbelieving. "Sara..."

"No. It's not up for discussion. Sometimes... Sometimes you gotta leave."

"Yeah," Brass said quietly and his eyes met hers in understanding. She blinked away tears, feeling Nick's arms around her a moment later.

"Be well, okay? And come visit," he whispered. "I'll kill Grissom for you if you need."

She laughed, couldn't help it. "Thanks, Nick. I'll call you."

"You better."

Nick's arms were replaced with Brass', feeling almost like a father's embrace and she closed her eyes to the illusion for a moment. Everyone longed for a father's embrace sometimes, and she could almost feel the ghost of Anna within her nod at the sentiment.

"I'll give Nick an alibi," she heard Brass say and she just nodded against his shoulder. She wanted to say something about what they'd both meant to her, but words seemed ill-suited for it and she let silence speak instead.

"Thanks," she muttered and pulled away. Almost like a family this had been and one last family member to let go of.

She found Greg outside, just about to hurry in and his face lit up at seeing her. She felt a moment of guilt for being who she was, being Sara who would pursue Grissom. It could have been easy to love Greg, but her life was all hardship and thorns.

"Sara! You look horrible."

"Thank you, Greg," she said dryly, imagining her bruise was quite a sight in the morning sun.

"Grissom won’t be happy seeing you here," Greg replied, still cheerfully. "Should I get a lab coat to help smuggle you in?"

"No, I'm leaving."

"Too bad, you look cute in those coats."

"I'm leaving for good," she corrected, and the smile faded from Greg's lips. "I'm going to San Francisco."

"What? Why?" He stared at her, for a moment the darker, more serious Greg she had always known he had somewhere between his smile and sunshine.

"A million reasons."

"A million reasons being the many moods of Gil Grissom?" he asked. "I'm not blind, Sara. I know what I saw in Norway."

"Yeah. Let's just say we couldn't stay there forever," she replied, biting her lip.

"Do you have to leave?"

"Yes."

"I wish..."

"I know," she whispered, "I wish too."

He hugged her hard and she closed her eyes to the scent of him, feeling how warm and soft he was. Perhaps she could have grown to love him, but not in the ashes of Grissom, not when one gaze might make her lose herself again.

She kissed him once, softly, as she pulled away. "Thank you, Greg. For everything."

She slipped out of his grasp, taking one more look at his downcast face before walking away. Greg would do fine. They would all do fine. Warrick, Catherine, Nick, Greg, Grissom... And she, she would do fine. Someday.

She didn't look back.



Chapter Thirty-Six

*****
Sometimes it's wise to lay down your gloves
And just give in

Come in, come in
Come in, come in
To this wonderful life
- Nick Cave, Wonderful Life
*****

The dream was disjointed, confused, a long parade of images of life and fantasy, neither holding her for long. She floated through them, sleeping until she felt her senses start to report to her again - sunlight pressing against her eyelids, mattress soft against her back, the distant rumbles of passing cars. Morning.

She remained between sleep and awake a while longer, feeling a strange sort of freedom there. No past, no future, the present only awareness and comfort and life, as if in a womb returned.

But it wasn't possible to linger between the two forever, and slowly she felt herself awaken and her body seek what it had grown used to and not finding it.

Warrick wasn't there.

She opened her eyes to the morning light and found the room empty, as it should not be. Warrick had fallen asleep with her, muttering more than a few indecent things in her ear. And he was hardly a morning person, though perhaps he'd decided to get up and make breakfast.

She tossed on a robe and stalked out into the kitchen, finding it silent and empty as well. Lindsey was still in her bed and the bathroom was empty. She almost started to wonder if she'd dreamt his presence there at all last night when she heard the door open and be closed again silently. She leaned against the wall as Warrick turned the corner and walked into the room. He halted as he noticed her and she gave him a mock angry glare.

"Should I be worried about another woman?"

"No way," he replied after a moment's surprise, composing himself. "You would kill me and her."

"Smart man."

"You know it."

"So would this smart man like to tell me where he's been?"

He sighed and she got a sense of not particulary good news. "I was gonna wait till later, but... I drove Sara to the airport. She's left for San Francisco."

"What?" The word was automatic, but she felt strangely unsurprised. Perhaps she had always known it would come to this one day, knowing Grissom, knowing Sara.

"Yeah. I guess she picked me because I was the least likely to convince her to stay."

"I think I would have been more unlikely," she said dryly, but wondered if it was true. Perhaps once it had been, but... She would miss Sara, fights and glares and sometimes friendship for all she had felt her family invaded when Sara had first arrived.

"You would have told Grissom and he would have tried to stop her. That's not enough for Sara."

"And what is?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"This, hopefully," he replied and gave her a handwritten note. She could see an address scribbled on it and looked up at him again, wondering if it was supposed to hold some meaning for her.

"What's this?"

"A debt," he said solemnly, looking at something beyond her, something within himself.

"A debt?" she echoed. "What has this got to do with Sara?"

His attention returned to her again, from wherever he had gone. "I know where she's gone. Sara told me not to tell Grissom. But I can tell you."

"And I can tell Grissom," she finished. "Did anyone ever tell you you're a sneaky bastard, Warrick Brown?"

A smile tugged at his lips. "You did."

"And after I tell Grissom, then what?"

"Then he has his second chance, as he once gave me. You don’t always win your first gamble."

He took her hand and kissed her palm and she thought of Eddie and the heart he had claimed of her. She thought of Chris and Mark and all those she had sought solace and company and comfort in but had ended up burning her. And she thought of Warrick, warm and gentle and life.

"Yes," she agreed. "Did I ever tell you I love you, Warrick Brown?"

His eyes widened for a moment and his smile was a sunrise. "Now you did."

"Yeah," she agreed and felt content. Not radiantly happy, because she knew trouble would come from it all. Ecklie would not be happy, Grissom would not be happy, work would be complicated and so would the relationship. But she did love him. She had loved Eddie and that hadn't been enough. But maybe, just maybe, this time it would.

Life was lived on hope, after all.

"Lindsey up yet?" he asked, leaning in, the look in his eyes unmistakable.

"A teenager? Voluntarily? At this hour? Are you kidding?"

"Mmm," he breathed against her lips, pressing her against the wall as he tucked her hair behind her ear. "Guess you're right."

"I bought a new swimsuit yesterday," she whispered, brushing her hand against his chest, feeling heartbeats and life against her palm.

"Yeah? Will I get to see it?"

"Count on it," she said and kissed him in the morning light of her house, feeling the day awaken all around. Maybe it wouldn't work. But maybe it would, just for today, tomorrow never coming.

*****

It was stifling hot and day almost dawned when she finally made her way to the lab, leaving Warrick and Lindsey to pour over brochures and decide where they'd all go. A little family, a little family holiday. She wondered if Warrick knew that for all his smooth moves, it was how he was around her daughter that seemed most seductive of all. He loved Lindsey simply for being her daughter.

She smiled softly at the thought of it and decided she wouldn't tell him. Might give him ideas and she did quite like his moves too.

The lab was quiet as she entered, even with the air conditioning cranked up full. She closed her eyes to the cool air of it, thinking of summer winds and autumn that would come. The heat wouldn't last, it never did, but it always came back again too. Summer always moved on, the never-ending cycle of seasons and life, aging all.

Aging her. Sometimes, she almost desired the rest and silence of the womb the earth offered all dead. Almost. For all her years, all her ghosts, she did still want to live. Strange to have come so far to realise such a small truth.

Now to find out if Grissom did, or if he was content to merely pass the days.

She didn't find Grissom in his office, but in the Ballistics lab, bent over a microscope. He looked intent, not greeting her, either because he didn't notice or didn't want to interrupt his concentration. It could be hard to tell sometimes.

"Hey," she said, leaning against the doorway. "Working?"

"Yeah. Matching the bullet recovered from Frank Brinning to the bullets from the other cases."

"They match?"

"They match. Alan Keyes is going away for a long time."

'But he'll still be there,' she thought. A haunt. Not quite there, not quite a threat, except in the darkness of sleep where fears were born. But that was not a thought for this warm summer day and she forced it back.

"Why are you here? Missing me?"

She smiled. "Yeah, Grissom. I miss you every day. Actually, I came to tell you Ecklie has, in his generosity and appreciation of good PR for the lab, decided I may have a little time off."

"Yeah, I saw him on the news," Grissom replied. "He looked pleased."

"He did," she agreed, then took a deep breath. Time to throw the gauntlet. "Warrick's coming with me."

He sighed. "Cath..."

"No. That part of my life is not open to negotiation and you know damn well why," she said forcefully and saw him wince slightly. As well he should. "We'll sort something out about the shifts when I come back."

"Anything else?"

"Yes," she said and slammed a note down on the table. "This."

He picked it up carefully, staring at the address. "What's this?"

"Warrick's second chance, returned," she said, slightly softer. "That's Sara's address, where she went after you managed to screw things up."

"She left?" He sounded torn between disbelief and hurt and she wanted to smack him.

"Yes, she left. You did notice she was gone?"

"I thought she'd taken some time to think, get... Get to terms with everything," he muttered, looking for a moment like he almost wanted to bang his head against the table. She bit back an urge to want to help him. Hard.

"What did you expect? For her to stay and play the game your way?"

"Probably," he admitted, looking at the note again, face so carefully frozen she could feel his hurt and confusion like a cold wind across her mind.

"Well, you are an idiot sometimes," she said forcefully, but softening even as she said it. "Fortunately, so am I and I've taken pity on you. Go to her, Gil. Live."

She left him like that, feeling his puzzled stare on her back. She could push him to what she felt he should do, but his life was his to untangle and she'd given him the best pair of scissors she had. The rest was up to him.

The heat greeted her as she walked out again, and she slipped on her shades, protecting her from the sun's onslaught. It was going to be a hot summer a while longer, burning all who lived. Only the dead escaped it, a sleep of cold and ashes and bugs, Grissom's constant friends. And it was her job to make the dead remain sleeping, bring peace of mind to the living, offer the cold comfort of a sense of justice.

But not today.

It was going to be a lovely summer day and her family was waiting for her. Time to go home and live a little.



Epilogue

*****
But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.
- Reconciliation, William Butler Yeats
*****

There had been a moment where he had decided to let her go. Easier that way, no danger, safe, secure, distanced. Dying so slowly he would think he still lived.

But when he had woken up from his third dream of her in a week, he had realised there was no letting go.

And so he left, seeking her with the winds in his back, insecurity in his bones. She might refuse to see him again.

She might not.

He clung to that thought, that lifeline and let it drive him. He had failed her. But as in fairytales, even life might offer a chance to make up for mistakes, even if it took a long, long trip beyond the horizon. He found her at last by the sea on a San Francisco beach near the address Catherine had given him. She was standing still, northern wind in her hair, water in the wind. Hands stuffed in her pockets, she looked out on the illusion of sea and sky meeting on a blue, blue horizon. The waves broke near her feet, reaching and retreating endlessly.

'Like me,' he thought and it was a calm thought, still and true in his mind. But even the sea had a tide and a high point as it swept across the land and maybe, just maybe she was the dam that might hold him back.

She looked up and saw him and her face froze. No anger, no joy, merely a frozen look of recognition.

"Grissom," she breathed, his name swept by the wind out to sea.

"Hello Sara," he said lightly.

"How did you know where to find me?" she asked.

"Warrick."

"The traitor," she said mildly. "I expect he told Catherine and Catherine told you?"

He nodded, wondering if she realised they were her family too, and the lab was as much her home to claim as his.

"How are they all?" she asked, eyes sliding out to sea and the sky. The pale glimmer of faint moon and the roaring fire of strong sun lit her face and she was as always beautiful because he loved her and he loved her for all her beauty in mind and body.

"Good. They're all good. There might be some shift restructuring. They all miss you, especially Greg."

She nodded, her scarf tossed by the wind and he fought an urge to still it, to still her hair, to taste the salt of the ocean of her lips.

"He told me you'd gone to Norway and was hiding in the bluest mountain," he went on and she smiled for a moment, a far away look in her eyes.

"Perhaps I did, after a fashion," she replied casually.

"Speaking of Norway... Mrs. Jensen was found dead in her cell. Seems to just have slept into death."

Sara closed her eyes for a moment, something almost like sorrow crossing her face. He wanted to chase it from her life, but when he took a step closer, she looked up sharply and he was caught in her gaze, caught by the force of her hurt.

"Why did you leave?" he asked softly.

Her gaze fell on the horizon, and her face seemed to harden. "Do I really have to tell you, Grissom?"

"No." A beat, a wave crashed against the beach. "I know."

"Why are you here?" she finally asked, the question that had been lingering between them since she had spotted him.

'I came for love,' he thought. 'And here we are. East of the sun, west of the moon where I must win you back.'

"Chasing the fairytale," he said and she stared at him, waves by her feet, wind in her hair. Sea and sky, Sara and Grissom meeting. "I've come to bring you home."

*****
Where I’m going
I’ll get there soon
East of the sun
And west of the moon
- Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (A-ha), East of the Sun
*****

FIN

Disclaimer: All complaints with the ambiguous ending go to AL

Author's Final Note: Much love and gratitude to AL and Anais for beta-work. Kiss-kiss, darlings. You kick ass. Also thanks to all who reviews, especially the ever-faithful ones. You've all made my day. Have some chocolate.