Making Beds
By: Manda and Allison
E-mail: cafe_night_owl@yahoo.com, GeckoGal21@lycos.com
Archive: ShipperWorld, The Graveyard, Beautiful Addictions, Working Love Archive, All others please ask.

Summary: There are times when the past is best left alone...and others when even the strongest of individuals has to find the strength to face her past to be able to deal with her future.
Rated: PG-13

Disclaimer: We do not own CSI. All rights to the show and its characters are owned by CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Anthony Zuiker.

A/N: A second attempt at co-authorship for us. We have all the GraveShift Group to thank. You guys are great. WE hope all of you enjoy this fic....

Chapter 1: Ghosts

She stepped off the plane, feeling the dry effects of Nevada air ebb away from her skin as a faint drizzle of Montana rain began to coat her skin. Despite the air conditioning on the plane, she felt a curious glow of warmth from the temperate rain; as if coming home again were triggering a comfort she hadn't felt since childhood.

Rain. It rarely ever rained in Vegas, and she found that she had missed the steady beat of it while she was there. I fact, there were many things she missed about her hometown. The warm fires, and the scent of clean air...the innocence of it all. Innocence was often said to be bliss, and Catherine Willows found herself wishing more than once that she were in possession of this bliss again.

She hadn't been home since Rick had left her for their landlady, Shantara, in all her glory as a former-stripper. To give the woman credit, Catherine knew that she wouldn't have discovered how lucrative exotic dancing really was, if not for the early morning glimpses into Shantara's lifestyle. The older woman had arrived home at all hours of the morning, waving wads of crisp bills as the wide-eyed seventeen year old Catherine hung over the upstairs banister, looking down on a world in which she had no power at all.

The day that Rick had left her, Catherine knew she wanted that power for herself. To hold the lives of men in the palm of her hand night after night. To feel as if she were somehow, if even only in the most twisted sense of the word, needed.

It took but an hour to reach the apartment her parents had rented for themselves, deep within the more 'citified' areas of Bozeman. Her mother had always been one for the city, but the rancher in her father had desired clean air and room to breathe, and they'd lived on the ranch for most of their married lives when Catherine came along. Kicking and screaming, she remember her mother telling her that she'd looked quite a bit like a newborn calf, breaking into the world with the declaration that she wasn't going to take crap from powerful jerks who were used to dishing it out all the time. In that respect, she had been told she was quite a bit like her mother as well.

But Catherine was a daydreamer, something that had not been tolerated by her parents. Something in her that they had tried to repress, wanting her to focus more on the tasks they gave her, the things she needed to do in order for them to survive. More often then not, she was forced to sacrifice her goals for the greater good, as her parents had called it, unable to let the musings of her mind take her where she wanted to be. She'd always resented them for that. Their inability to understand her needs.

And now, with Eddie having left her as well, with a daughter she loved and a habit she didn't...returning home to admit her shortcomings to her parents was the last thing she had wanted. To admit that daydreaming had gotten her into a far larger mess than she had ever imagined...in her mind, it was the greatest sacrifice she could ever make. The sacrifice of her individuality.

Her hand sat poised centimeters from the door, prepared to knock. But before she could, it flew open and she came face to face with her mother. Like looking into a mirror, it was, with the elder woman in the Burke family having shoulder length blond hair, much like Catherine's, her eyes pools of unadulterated blue, holding a lifetime of troubles and trials within the wide irises. At the sight of her daughter, those eyes widened further, and Kay Burke stared into the face of a ghost whom she had made all attempts to erase from her memory.

TBC.