A/N: Haha, okay, I like the name fo this chapter:) Random, I know. Hey, thanks to EVERYONE who is reading/reviewing. Refer to previous gushings of how awesome you gys are. Okay, I have a chem test on Friday, so...I guess we'll see when I get time to post again. In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy, and if you see anything wrong technically, let me know...this was posted (not written) a bit rushed. Enjoy!!!

CHAPTER 4: AT WAR WITH THE DRAGON

Suddenly she was afraid to look upon the little body in the bed. She heard faint gurgling coming from Gabriel, who she could not see, but she had to concentrate. All she could seem to hear was the constant beep-beeps of the monitoring equipment if his vitals. However, she walked forward when she heard a little squeal, compelled by an unknown force to comfort the little boy whose life she saved by pure chance.

The echoes of her steps were deafening to her, and it wasn't until she had reached the edge of the little bed that she realized how apprehensive she was. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans, and took a steadying breath as she peered inside.

Though he was still hooked up to the wires, his throat was not pierced by a tube, feeding him nourishing oxygen. It was wrapped in light gauze, and a collar helped to keep his head straight. Gabriel looked up at Sara with deep cerulean eyes that reminded her of Grissom's except for one thing. These eyes showed the vulnerability of a baby boy who had nearly died. He wanted help. He wanted her to hold him. He held up his hand, extending his five small fingers, still with folds of baby fat on them.

Sara pursed her lips, trying to keep her tears at bay. She reached out one of her own fingers towards the baby, who grasped it. Gabriel smiled; he was not able to laugh without it paining, and though he was only a year old, it looked as if he understood that concept after learning it the hard way.

Sara sighed, and bit her lip as she stared at Gabriel. Why was she feeling like this? She had never liked kids. She never thought she would. She thought that, after seeing how her mother handled her kid so well, abandoning her at a young age to kill her abusive husband, she should never look after kids. She was just born without any maternal skill.

Now, looking at the small figure, frail and vulnerable lying in front of her, she wasn't sure.

She wasn't aware of the passing of time, lost in thought as she was. Every time she saw Gabriel, a fire started to burn inside of her, and a familiar rage came back…one she had been told to banish long ago. Seeing the damages in Gabriel that Santosa Perkasa had done, she felt she needed to get revenge. She wanted to get him for all the things he did, especially to Matthew and Gabriel.

However, an hour and a half later, the nurse came in to check on the baby, who had fallen asleep with her finger still gripped, and Sara slowly made her way home, to get some sleep so she could actually be of some help to Matthew and Gabriel.

She didn't know how she could beat the seemingly hopeless odds of besting Santosa Perkasa, but she knew that she would never be able to sleep peacefully again until she had.


Sara shot up, her eyes wide open and gasping for breath. She could feel the cold sweat running down her back, causing her to shiver, and she willed her heart to stop beating so hard, causing harsh pains in her chest. She looked over to her bedside table, where her clock was displaying in large red numbers the time. There was still an hour until her alarm was set to go off, and another two before she was due in to work. The cell phone next to her clock was buzzing repeatedly, nearly popping over the edge on to the floor.

Normally she would have been infuriated that someone had woken her up so early, though in fact it was nearly ten at night. However, she felt like thanking the person on the other line. The dream she had had was just too vivid, and she felt the ripping of her heart even thinking of it. However, that nightmare of watching the identical boys be killed in front of her while she was helpless to stop it only fuelled the fire inside of her.

Sara picked up the phone, and saw G. Sanders appear on the screen. She quickly pressed the talk button and greeted him. "What's up?"

"Sara?" Greg's voice on the other end sounded a bit tired, but it never held the fatigue like Sara's voice did. "How quickly can you get ready?"

Sara was taken back. "Umm…in a few minutes, if I rush…why?"

"Just meet me in front of your apartment." And he hung up on her before she could ask any more questions. Sara stared at the phone as if it would spontaneously give her the answers she wanted, but she didn't have time. She hopped out of bed, and ran full-tilt to her shower.

As she had predicted, in a few minutes she was ready, stuffing an apple into her mouth. She was perfectly ready for the night ahead of her, though her hair was still wet and held back with a hair band, errant pieces hanging out at her ears which she had to continuously flick back. And as Greg had said, his vehicle pulled up not two minutes afterwards. Running down the steps and grabbing her kit along the way, she ran to the passenger side of the vehicle and jumped in. While she caught her breath from the rushing about, Greg pulled out and headed in the direction of their next scene.

Still breathing hard, Sara looked at Greg. "Seems like we can't get a break, can it?"

Greg looked forward, not even attempting to glance in Sara's direction. "Not really." He sighed, and rotated his shoulders. "I haven't been in to work all that long, but some of our evidence has been processed."

Sara was still slightly sleepy, but this piece of information was enough to keep her awake on their trip to wherever. "Really? What did we find?"

"Well, since Nick and I were the first ones to log in our evidence, we were processed first, along with your primary scene's evidence. Well, we found some muddy shoe impressions. Not surprising. Also not very surprising is the fact that there were two impressions. One matched the pair of shoes that you found at your scene. So after further testing, we found some DNA in the sweat in your sneaker and it does match out parking lot DB."

"Well, we were right on our theory so far." Sara said, biting around the edges of the apple core she still held. "There was more than one person at the scene. Anything else?"

Greg nodded, still refusing to meet her gaze. It was starting to concern Sara. "The blood on the knife that you found in the garden has multiple donors. One of those donors, based on common alleles, was very closely related to two others."

"That must be Gabriel, and his parents." Sara said, taking her apple core and putting it in a plastic bag in the back of the vehicle. "There's nothing here that surprises me, Greg."

"There was another donor."

"Oh…" Sara said, leaning back in her seat, giving up on making Greg look at her. "Well, that's good. Does it match Carl Portman, the guy from the parking lot?"

"Now you see that's the interesting part." Greg replied. "It doesn't match any of our current players…yet. I asked Wendy to bump up that sample to top priority, so we should have it today."

"That's awesome." Sara said. She looked towards Greg again. His gaze hadn't wavered. Sara frowned. "Greg," She ventured, still looking at him from the side, "where is our next scene?"

Greg bit his lip, and started drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. She had hit the nail on the head. "Greg, what is up? What are you keeping from me?"

"Uh…umm…" Greg stuttered, still not daring to look into her eyes. "Oh…Sara, umm…please try and keep an open mind about this, and please don't get upset, hear me out before you get any foolish ideas in your head and…" He finally chanced a tiny glance in her direction, and saw a half sceptical, half scared look. "We're headed towards the child services building."

The breath caught in Sara's throat. "W-what's the call?"

"Like I said, open mind." Greg said, turning towards the road again, an unsteady smile on his lips, "They think it's an attempted kidnapping."

Sara didn't know what to feel. Half of her wanted to feel relieved that the crook hadn't gotten their target. The other half knew that Santosa Perkasa was four steps ahead of them, all the time. He had sent more of his goons after Matthew. "Greg, is Matthew Powell okay?" She whispered these words, and she saw Greg tense.

That was why she was surprised, though pleasantly, when he told her that he was fine. Why would he be so cautious when speaking of the subject?

"How was Gabriel, Sara?" Greg tried to change the subject as he made a turn at an intersection. "You did go to see him yesterday?" It was more of a statement than a question.

"Yeah, I did." Sara said, all the foreign feelings returning to her at the memory of his tiny fingers wrapped around hers. "He seems fine. He's alert and doing what babies do. Greg," She added, before he could reply, "I need to do this."

Greg started to pale a bit. "Umm…do what, Sara?" He responded, starting to drum his fingers on the steering wheel again, "What do you mean?"

"I have to get more involved with these kids. You were wrong Greg, Santosa Perkasa can get at these kids. Look at what's happened already. He won't stop. For whatever reason, Greg, he won't stop until he has the heads of those poor boys. He's getting closer. What are you stopping for Greg?" While she had started talking, Greg had slowed the vehicle down, pulling off onto the side of the road. "We're not there yet."

"Sara." Greg's voice was strong. Stronger and more forceful than she had ever heard it. She turned, and he was staring at her, his deep brown eyes keeping her paralyzed. "Listen to me. For your sake, do not get in over your head in this. You know yourself what Santosa Perkasa is capable of. You have evidence of it. He will kill you without so much as a second thought, and then you can do no one any good. Do you promise me you will not do anything?"

Sara looked at him with wide eyes, but she did not say a word. All she could do was to try and break his boring stare by looking away. He promptly took his hand and led her eyes back to face his. "Promise me Sara!"

"…I can't do that, Greg." Sara whimpered, tearing her face away again and looking down. "I cannot make that promise to you. I'm sorry. I don't know, I've just gotten too attached to them. I made a vow Greg, and I can't make myself just forget it. I have to help these kids." A burst of fire entered her voice. "I will do whatever it takes to save these kids from that man."

She looked at Greg's frustrated face, and wondered what he would say next. He seemed adamantly concerned for her, afraid that she would do something foolish. His suspicions were not farfetched. He growled in dissatisfaction, but turned his head. "If you can't make me that promise, Sara, then at least promise me this. You will not, under any circumstances, do anything foolhardy without telling me or Nick. If we can't stop you from going after him, then I guess we're going to have to help you."

Sara grinned from ear to ear, and reached over to hug Greg. "Thank you." She spoke into his neck.

"No problem." Greg said, though he could feel the thick lie leave his lips as he leaned back and started to head for the crime scene again. He had temporarily gotten Sara out of treacherous water, but he had signed Nick and himself up to a whole lot of trouble that was only going to get worse from then on. Now they were at war with the dragon.


Nearly six hours later, Sara was dragging Greg up the familiar white hallway of Desert Palm's hospital. Greg was crestfallen at the once again lack of evidence of the crime scene, even though once again Perkasa's men had made a mistake. His men had done everything right. They had dismantled the cameras, shut down the alarm system, broken the lock perfectly. But somehow, one of them had made enough noise to awaken one of the many babies, which set off a cascade of wailings and screaming. It was enough to scare the men away. Amusing, in a way, that all it took to scare off two men were the tears of a baby. However, how close the men had come to stealing away Matthew was disturbing to both him and Sara.

Poor Sara. Greg's soft heart broke seeing how saddened she was that she wasn't able to even see Matthew at the place. With all the precautions, no one was allowed near him. She could only gaze at his soft blonde hair, silvery white in the moonlight, and small arms wrapped around one of the child services advocates. As soon as they had processed the scene, they drove their evidence (which didn't even take up the backseat), logged it in, and stood in the locker room until Sara had had enough. She took Greg's hand, brought him to his car, and drove him to the hospital.

He knew where she was taking him, but he said nothing to her. She was on a mission. He could not tell why, but he knew that nothing could dissuade her. And he had made a pact with her now, to help her protect these kids.

He could never back out on a promise to Sara Sidle, even if he was playing with fire.

In his mind Greg though that maybe if they could keep the twins out of Perkasa's hands until their aunt, Rachel Powell came from England to get them and bring them away, they would be safe. He knew he was kidding himself. Perkasa would have them in his clutches by then. He would find a way. It was another week and a half until Rachel came.

Finally, Sara let go of Greg's hand, and walked silently into the darkened room. From the doorjamb, Greg could hear soft frightened whimpers coming from the bed where Sara was headed. Greg walked in too. The only light in the room came from the monitors lining the room, and from the blinds which were half shut, letting in the pale blue light of the moon and the yellow lights of the city. It wasn't a lot of light, but it was enough to cause shadows to dance across the ceiling and walls. Any one-year-old would be frightened, alone in this room with no one to save him from the nightmares.

He heard a soft cooing sound coming from his right side, and he turned. His eyes, adjusting to the darkness could make out Sara leaning on the bed, with her hand stretched into the bed, stroking the infants arm in a soothing gesture, gliding her finger up and down tickling it. He saw the infant's face, his eyes dark in the semi-light drooping with fatigue, but smiling up at Sara with a little-boy grin. However, he made no sound. He too, listened as Greg did.

The cooing, like that of a dove, was coming from Sara. Greg could see her move her lips, forming syllables of words that he could not make out because he did not want to make them out. He just listened to Sara's voice, the wonderful voice that she only used when something was special to her. Very special. And suddenly Greg knew that it was unfair to ask her to not get involved. Seeing how maternal she was acting, seeing how special this little boy was to her, Greg felt his heart give a tug. These kids were something special to them both.

Sara was willing to do whatever it took to save these kids from those that hunted them. And Greg knew that Sara was in so deep she would give her life to make sure these kids made it. And Greg would always give his life for Sara. That unbreakable bond was about to make Greg do the most dangerous thing he had ever done in his life. And looking at Sara, it was one of the easiest choices he had ever made.