Disclaimer: I don't own CSI or Extreme Makeover:Home Edition.
This is dedicated to the people over at YTDAW who dared me to write this. shotinthedark, Sprogy, chayito19, Dragon86, CarefullyAskingGrace, morladupin and most of all CSIFreak who set this thing in motion, this is all of yalls fault. : PChapter one should be up tomorrow, but this is all you get for now.
Prologue
Somebody up there really did not like her.
Sara kicked through the debris that was once her living room. It figured that only a month after she bought her first house, all of it would be destroyed. True the firefighters had gotten there in time to save most of the quaint ranch style home, but she couldn't live here now, not like this. No kitchen, bathroom, air conditioning. All that was left was the master bedroom, the garage, and the support beams.
She knelt and picked up a picture frame, or what was left of it. She rubbed away the soot with her jacket sleeve. It was a picture of her parents in a more peaceful moment. Breakfast '77 was the inscription on the back, she remembered. Funny how normal they looked; her father eating cereal, her mother clipping coupons.
She sighed in defeat and walked out the sliding glass doors to the backyard. There in a pile were the remnants of her belongings. They never stood a chance; they'd all been in neat little stacks waiting to be unpacked. She swore she'd get around to it, but work had consumed her.
Work.
She cursed under her breath. The way news traveled she wouldn't be surprised if the whole lab knew about it by now. Then the calls would start. She could already hear the voices weighted down with pity.
Gritting her teeth, she set her mind on sorting out the odds and ends of her life. There would be order again. She had fallen in love with this house, but it was gone. She could let go of it. She'd find a new home, one she loved even more. And she would do it alone as she always had.
Grissom took a long draw of orange juice and stared blankly at his big screen TV. His mind wasn't on the mating habits of migratory birds, though. Sara hadn't come in last night. She told him she had some things to take care of. Greg had told him about the fire.
He couldn't be entirely sure on the details, gossip could rarely be trusted, but Warrick and Nick had both been singing the same tune. Why hadn't she told him?
He could see her alone, trying to make sense of all that chaos. He wanted to help her, but somehow he felt his presence wouldn't be a welcome one at the moment. That thought left him agitated and the pompous, overbearing accent of the documentary narrator wasn't helping.
He angrily pushed the buttons on his remote until he came to some decorating show. Grissom was about to continue when something caught his attention. A well-built man with a tuft of chin hair was talking about his special project for a young blind boy.
An hour later, Grissom was right there with the family as there new home and life was revealed. It was enough to make even his eyes water. And as the family's delight and thankfulness grew, the wheels in Grissom's head began to turn. When the credits rolled He hopped on his computer and learned all he could about Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
If he couldn't give Sara himself he could give her the next best thing: a home.