Summary : AU. The effects of decisions made in the past come to light in the present. Life has a way of throwing out unexpected curveballs. G/C
Disclaimer : All characters are from CSI. Not mine.
A/N : This is an old fanfic, written years ago, one of my very first. Definitely my first attempt at anything of this length. CSI was the first fandom I ever wrote for. Just reposting it with minor corrections. Hope it can still be enjoyed even if CSI is very different now.
Chapter 1
"Can you please find my mommy?" asked the little girl with the sweet, innocent blue eyes and light blonde hair tumbling down past her shoulders.
She was wearing pink pyjamas and had her teddy bear tucked under her arm. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she obviously had not changed out of her pyjamas since the night before. She looked lost and scared and confused. But everyone could see that she was trying to be brave, as she watched the people around her do their work.
Warrick's heart broke as the interpreter translated the hand signals to him. The little girl had apparently been abandoned at home. A kindly neighbour, who sometimes babysat her, had come home from work late in the evening and seen the child clutching her teddy bear on the front lawn. The lady had immediately called the authorities and stayed with the child until the police came.
According to the lady, the parents had frequent fights and were noisy enough to wake the entire neighbourhood sometimes. She did not know what the mother worked as, but she worked nights so the little girl had to be left with a sitter.
The neighbour had offered to watch the little girl because she felt sorry for the mother and child. She rarely saw the man of the house, who came and went at odd hours. When questioned, the neighbour said that the mother had obviously gotten the worst of some fights but had denied any abuse.
She didn't think the child was ever hurt. Only the mother was obviously injured from the fights. But no matter what she had said, the mother had refused any sort of help. It seemed that no one dared to interfere with the domestic quarrels. The husband had been very aggressive towards another neighbour, who had once tried to intervene.
"So they simply left it alone," said Warrick softly, disgusted, as he listened to the neighbour's story.
Part of him knew that the only way to get any help for the family was if the mother had filed a report or a complaint. There really was not much that the neighbours could have done. But with the little girl sitting in front of him, with so much pain in her eyes for someone so tiny, Warrick wished that someone had done something sooner.
The house that they had been called to was a complete mess. There had definitely been a struggle inside the house. Things were destroyed and furniture was overturned and broken. There were drops of blood as well. The only room that had been intact in the small house was the little girl's. There were no signs of destruction in the child's pink room.
There were pictures of the family that lived in that house. In the photographs, everyone looked happy and smiled. The mother was beautiful, blonde hair and blue-eyed, evidently having passed on her beauty to her daughter. The man was reasonably handsome as well. A good-looking couple with a beautiful daughter. How deceiving were the joyful photographs on the walls and shelves?
Or were they simply a relic of happier times? Maybe things had been great for a time. Nick fervently hoped so, as he took pictures of the house that had been thrashed. He felt sick when he thought of the little girl that they had found, upon their arrival and the mess when they had looked inside the house. The whole team had breathed a sigh of utter relief when the paramedic had pronounced the little girl unhurt.
Nick had had terrifying visions of what may have happened to the girl when he took a first glance around the house. He suspected that his team members felt the same. That was probably why Sara had opted to process the lawn and the area surrounding the house instead of the house itself.
Sara had carefully processed the little girl for evidence after the paramedics had checked her out. But the girl had been quite clean. She had obviously been in her room and unaffected by whatever had been going on in her home, outside her bedroom. They would wait with her until Social Services came to take charge of her. Then they would have to more thoroughly process her pyjamas at the lab.
However, Sara guessed that there was not much evidence to be found there. It would all be in the house or outside, nowhere near the small girl. For that she was devoutly thankful. At least the parents had spared their child the trauma. Her being deaf had probably also protected her further. She would not have heard most of her parents' fighting and would not really know, unless she saw them going at it.
From the pristine condition of the girl's room, the CSIs were quite sure that the girl had not been caught up in any fights. She did not sport any previous bruising either. The fights had been strictly between the grown-ups. But as time went on, that situation probably would have changed. It was difficult to stop when someone was out of control, especially when the girl would have grown up enough to realize that something was wrong. Deaf or not, she would have found out about her parents' rows sooner or later.