Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or CSI or any of that. And I'm not making money.

A/N: Soo, this is another one of those that will be updated sporadically, but I couldn't get it out of my head the entire time I was out of town for the nephew/godson's baptism. :)

Fair warning: This one starts out a little graphic, and I'm toying with the idea of having both Sara and Grissom be rather OOC in this one, because my head been's playing with a myriad of dark concepts with these two... yeah.

I'll give you fair warning if I do tend to lean that way. Chances are, either way, it'll still be OOC and a little dark. Grissom will be manipulative and at least a little cruel, and Sara will be much weaker than she truly is.

Sorry if this upsets you but, as I said, fair warning. :) Let me know what you think, so far.


Chapter One:

It was a triple homicide—all three victims under the age of five—that made me put in for an extended leave of absence. Their mother was an addict of too many drugs to name—uppers, downers, pharmaceuticals, and street drugs, laced with things she was quite probably entirely unaware of—and had left her children in the care of her dealer/boyfriend.

Very little else need be explained.

The eldest was Hunter, a four year old boy found in Spiderman pajamas, bruised and battered. My instinct was that he had taken the runt of the abuse because he had tried to protect his sister, McKaela, the two year old. The drug dealer/boyfriend owed a good deal of money to a drug dealer/pedophile—and the girl made them square.

We found her alive, and for the first day or so they thought she might live… although it was clear within the first hour that she'd never have children. When we found her, she wasn't wearing anything but hand-shaped bruises on her arms and hips and rivers of her own dried blood down her legs.

The baby was three months old—Jeremiah—and had been simply left in his crib after his siblings were left for dead while the dealers made their getaway. We found that bodies two days after the attack, when their mother came down enough to remember that she had children and yet didn't know where they were. She couldn't get ahold of her boyfriend and so she called the police to his apartment.

But two days in an apartment in Vegas in the summertime without food or water—well, it was a miracle the girl made it as long as she did. A miracle or a greater horror. But the infant could not be expected to last as long as the two year old.

The fact that we knew exactly who the men were did nothing for me—they were probably in Mexico by now or existing under a false identity. When a month passes and they hadn't even been sighted and the daily rollercoaster marathon still did nothing to ease my mind and my guilt, I put in a leave of absence and dug through piles of letters I had left unanswered, requesting me to be a guest speaker or teacher for a semester or so, hoping that the distance—both mental and geographic—would allow me to sleep without seeing their faces.

The most promising was Harvard—I had never lived further east than Chicago, but I had loved visiting New England. Besides, Harvard's anthropology department had invited me to be a guest professor for an entire year… and I was fairly certain I would need at least a year away from Vegas. I made some calls—I would be a guest lecturer at the beginning of the fall semester, only a week or so away, and have a nine week class in the second half of the semester. For the spring, I could take on a full class load, if I wanted it.

I rented out my townhouse, hired movers to transfer my worldly possessions to either a storage building in Vegas or a storage building in Boston, and hopped on a place. I found an apartment to rent only days before classes started, and hired another set of movers. I still hardly slept, but something did feel different here, away from the heat and the lights and the constant chiming of slot machines. I breathed easier—deeper—and I felt calm for the first time in a long time.

My first guest lecture was simple—I was speaking to a graduate level class on the uses of entomology in forensics, from timeline regression to applications in toxicology and trace, and everything in between. This was not the most interesting and exciting of lectures, even for me, and I began to wonder whether my hiatus would do half of what I had expected it to do for me. My second guest lecture proved me wrong.

It was an intro level course in forensic anthropology and the lecture hall was not full of bored grad students wondering who the visiting 'bug-man' was—it was full of young, excited freshman, eager and amazed at the entire concept of forensics in general, and that was where I found myself in my element. They had so many questions their professor invited me back the next week so that everyone could make it to their next classes.

As rows and rows of students filed out and I watched them, beaming with pride and a sense of contentment that had long-since eluded me, I caught sight of her. And she changed everything.

She looked… young. Very young.

She was clad in dark blue jeans that were snugger than her father would have let her leave the house in and layered tank tops—black and white—though the layers did nothing to disguise the long lines and delicate curves of her willowy frame. A halo of brown curls fell around her, falling just below her shoulders, and her eyes were soft and gentle… doe's eyes. She smiled at me as she slipped a tan messenger bag over her shoulder and sidled out of the lecture hall, and I was drawn to her by some unknown force as strong and as invisible as gravity.

When I returned the following week, she was in the front row… in the shortest pair of jean shorts I had ever seen—and her long, tanned legs stretched out in front of her forever, a pair of red flip flops on feet accented with red polish perfectly matching her red tank top. I couldn't keep my eyes from her—I was practically salivating.

But I was thirty-two years old and based on how young she appeared and the fact that it was an intro level course, she couldn't be older than eighteen or nineteen at most—even if I wasn't her teacher, I was far too old for her. She wouldn't even be interested.

She and one or two others asked the majority of the questions, and I took the last fifteen minutes to advertise my nine week course to the group—"An Introduction to Applied Psychodynamics in Forensics." We would be looking into analyzing and processing crime scenes and guiding our search for evidence based on what we knew about people and their psychological predispositions.

I watched my chocolate beauty write down the class name and number and smiled, both hopeful and reluctant to have her in my class.

Of course, she was.

I walked in, almost nervous, on the first day—it was a small class of ten people, and as my coming had been rather unexpected, our classroom was one of the student lounges in the Anthropology building. What this meant was that ten students were seated on couches and arm chairs which lined the walls of a not-so-large room, and I ended up seating myself in the circle with students on either side.

Strange, but sort of nice too. I felt like it would facilitate discussion, at least.

"So… I know the first day can be a drag, but maybe we can make it a little more interesting. Here's the syllabus—if you have your hearts set on it, we can go through it in class but if not, I'd rather get to know all of you since we have such a small class."

I handed a stack of papers to the student beside me and sighed.

"So, I'll tell you all a little about myself, and then everyone can go around and do the same, sound good?" I got a few smiles and nods, but mostly blank stares. I grinned. "Maybe we should make this more interesting than a name and where you're from, so… let's make a list." I stood and turned to the white board on the wall behind me and wrote numbers down vertically.

1. Full Name and why you were named

2. Silliest Nickname

3. Where you're from

Then I turned to my class who all now had amused smiles on their faces. "Any other suggestions?" We ended up with:

4. Biggest Pet Peeve

5. Guilty Pleasure

6. Why forensics?

7. Why not forensics?

8. Favorite book

9. Favorite weekend activity

10. Something we don't know about you from the other questions

They were openly laughing as I took my seat. "Alright, let's see…" I glanced up behind me at the list. "My full name is Gilbert Isaiah Grissom. My grandfather's name was Gilbert, and my mother was quite the devout Catholic, thus the middle name. Oh, and for the record, you can just call me 'Grissom.' Everybody does. …Okay, next question. Silliest nickname—I would have to say "bug-man," although if any of you try to use it, you can expect an F for your final grade."

They chuckled appreciatively at my bad joke—the girl smiling brightly, revealing a slight gap in between her front teeth, her eyes locked on me—and I grinned; I had really missed teaching. "Alright, I'm from Las Vegas, but I grew up in the L.A. area. My biggest pet peeve is probably… people referring to insects as 'bugs,' but that's just the entomologist in me talking. Ah… guilty pleasure, Mmm… chocolate-covered grasshoppers. I get mad at others for using exterminators, and yet I eat insects as candy… it's a little backwards…"

Most of them made faces—my brown-eyed girl did not.

"I chose forensics because it was… well, a calling, almost. Using science—my first love—for good, you know? Real, immediate good, rather than the abstract, sometime-in-the-future good. And… why not forensics? You end up seeing horrors that are better left unseen, and if you're not careful, you stop seeing the science and the justice, and all you do see is the victims you couldn't save and their attackers you couldn't catch…"

The room was very quiet and after a moment, I cleared my throat and smiled, to break the tension. I felt brown eyes piercing me, and for the first time, I disliked it.

"So, uh…" I glanced back at the board, "My favorite book is actually a play—Hamlet—and my favorite weekend activity is probably having enough time off to stay in my sweats all day and take in a few baseball games—the cubs, the twins, or the angels. Sorry if any of you are Red Sox fans. And something you wouldn't know… growing up I always wanted a dog, but my mother was allergic, so I never got to have one."

They were smiling again, and I turned to the boy beside me and he began speaking. I listened to all of them, but the girl—Sara—was the only one I remembered in detail.

She smiled again, shyly. "I'm Sara Myra Sidle. Sara was the name my mother had wanted to name a daughter since she was little, and Myra was my grandmother's name. Um… I guess, the only nickname I've really had was… my older brother used to call me "Sar'-Bear". I'm from Tomales Bay, which is... outside San Francisco. My biggest pet peeve would be... when you see a girl pretending to be an idiot in order to attract a guy…"

She rolled her eyes in irritation at just the thought, and glanced at the list on the board. "My guilty pleasure would be…" She blushed a gorgeous pink shade and her eyes flickered to me and then away, the red in her cheeks deepening. "I guess, uh… trashy romance novels. I know they're so cliché and that it's hardly good literature but… it's like a grown-up's fairy tale, you know? …I think real life should have more happy endings."

She looked at her knees, and then the board again. "I guess I haven't chosen forensics yet, but… I'm considering it as a major because… It's a way I can provide justice by doing what I already know I'm good at. The most socially beneficial application of my skills… why not forensics? I… well, I kind of thought I'd be a physics teachers, maybe. So… I'm torn between the two." She looked up, and caught my eyes again.

"My favorite book is The Grapes of Wrath, my favorite way to spend a weekend is… probably in a bubble bath, with a book. And what you don't know about me from all of this is… I loved the ocean and all ocean-related activities. Surfing, sailing, wind-surfing… all of the above."

She smiled shyly again, her eyes flickering to me, and I felt my heart flutter. I couldn't have her—I knew that I couldn't—but thinking about her reading a trashy romance novel and getting excited by it… in a bubble bath… the idea of letting the phrase "Sar'-Bear" fall from my lips… it sent shivers down my spine.

Sara Sidle was going to be dangerous.