Hey! Here's chapter ten and I've just this minute finished typing chapter eleven! I'll hopefully be making a start on chapter twelve later today. :D Before I do that I wanted to write a one shot that's been eating at my brain all day, I was starting at my 'Edward Monkton Penguin of Death' as inspiration hit me, but I didn't want to make a start on this till I'd got a little further with Returning.

Thank you to tigpop, EmmaJ1996 and Calliope for the wonderful reviews! You make me a very very happy teenager!

Please read and review, let me know what you think, what needs improving/what's good...

I can't think of anything to write for the disclaimer write now, so I'll be blunt. I don't own Silent Witness, never have done, may do one day if someones ever stupid enough to give me some form of power... :D

Enjoy,
Much love x

Chapter Ten

The roads were packed like a shopping centre on Christmas Eve. Cars were queuing up for miles and the radio was being tight lipped on the cause of the traffic. All around him horns blared as it became necessary for frustrated drivers to vent their anger or risk insanity.

Leo was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, his foot hovering just above the accelerator, ready for when the traffic eventually started to move again – that was if it ever did.

Modern tower blocks towered above him, most of them used as offices for high-powered businesses with plenty of money, inside which busy people were running around fussing over trivial things that at the end of the day didn't even matter to anyone. It seemed so illogical that inside one of those offices someone could be fretting over whether or not they had ordered enough paper towels when the body of his daughter could have been recovered from a near by river.

They had found a teenage girl, roughly about 5ft 4, with long blonde hair and brown eyes. These few basic facts fit Cassie's description, but since they hadn't been able to get hold of Theresa they hadn't been able to formally identify the poor girl. So the task had befallen to Leo. Leo had laid eyes on his little girl for the first time in eight years only yesterday. It was much too soon for her to be taken from him again.

As he shuffled his way up the hill his thoughts wandered to where on earth Theresa could be. Would she have really turned her phone off whilst her daughter was missing? What sort of mother was she? She had not only denied her daughter to right to two parents, but was indifferent to the fact that her daughter could have been kidnapped and could possibly be in a life threatening situation! She should be frantic with worry, just like he was, but all he was getting from her at the moment was that she couldn't care less. Leo tried to reason with himself, maybe there were other things on her mind. Maybe there were things he didn't know about that might explain her current behaviour, because this wasn't the woman he had been madly in love with eight years ago. This wasn't the same Theresa he had married.

Thinking of his family only reminded Leo of his surrogate family. Harry and Nikki. Harry on one hand knew about Cassie, and knew of her disappearance, Nikki, on the other, didn't. Leo could picture her face as she told him about the phone call. The puzzled expression as Cassie's name slipped from her lips. The confusion written in all of her features as he had ran from the lab without a word, without an explanation.

He hadn't managed to speak to Nikki about Cassie. In truth Leo was worried about her reaction. Nikki had become so much like another daughter to him; Leo didn't know how she would handle Cassie's reappearance. Her own father had let her down, he simply used her and discarded her at his own will, he had spent years neglecting her forcing Nikki to come to the conclusion that no one would ever truly care about her.

He hoped that he gone at least some way to changing that silly notion of hers, but he didn't want her to think that with Cassie's return, he was simply going to forget about her, because he wasn't. Nikki was the kind of woman he hoped Cassie would one day turn out to be. Perhaps with a few less one-night stands, and definitely less kidnappings, but over all Nikki was the kind of loving and emotional person that he wanted his daughter to become.

Upon reaching the top of the hill the traffic began to ease and within ten minutes Leo was sat outside the Lyell centres rival pathology unit, unlike his own place of work this mortuary was not set inside a university campus, instead it had been built at the back of one of the many local hospitals. It had a specialist paediatric pathology unit where the majority of infants and children's cases went too. He supposed this made things easier from him and his team, it was rare that a child of any age appeared on one of their slabs unless is was related to one of the cases they'd already taken on, his meant they didn't have to face the emotional turmoil that they undoubtedly all felt when faced with the loss of such innocence. Cases involving children were always the worst.

As he stepped out of the car and into the dreary afternoon weather which currently consisted of a slight wind with the occasional spitting rain. He felt as though a depressing shroud had just been placed over the world, grey concrete, grey tarmac and dusty grey doors – there was no longer any colour in the world.

The atmosphere surrounding the paediatric pathology unit was devoid of emotion. The solemn expressions of those who walked past the doors foreshadowed what lay inside for those who stepped through the battered all door in its wooden frame.

Leo could have sworn that as he got closer to that door it got colder and the rain got heavier. As he stood one hand pressed against the door, the other by his side balled up in a fist, he mentally prepared himself for what possibly lay ahead of him. Part of him wanted to pray to a God he didn't even think he believed in, he was desperate. He would do anything so along as when he entered that room and took a look at the body he could say it wasn't her. It wasn't Cassie.

He pushed the door and entered a forlorn looking waiting room. A young woman was sat behind a desk; she smiled at him as he entered. He tried to return the friendly gesture but his lips wouldn't budge, and in the end his contorted features probably looked more like a grimace than a smile.

"I'm here to identify a body." He said to the woman.

She nodded and made her way into the small office behind her, where she picked up and phone and muttered something before returning to her chair.

"Professor Hayden will be down in a moment, if you'd like to take a seat." Her voice was professional, her speech well rehearsed.

He nodded before heading towards a chair in the furthest corner.

A few moments later a bold man that Leo estimated to be in his mid-sixties came into the waiting room, he scanned the area, noting that there was only Leo there.

"Mr Dalton?" He inquired.

Leo nodded. "Professor Dalton actually."

The man smiled looking intrigued. "Professor of what?" He asked.

"Pathology" Leo couldn't help but smirk at the old mans expression.

The man nodded repeatedly, "Very good. Very good. Very rare I get to meet a fellow pathology professor these days. You're here to identify a body? Follow me, follow me…"

Leo noted that the professor seemed a little startled by the introduction and chose not to answer any of the stuttering mans questions, though they were probably meant rhetorically anyway.

The morgue was very much like the one back at the Lyell centre, though there was a brightly coloured visitors room with a box overflowing with toys that was absent back at the office but could be found here.

At the far end of the lab, still inside a black body bag, was the teenager they had pulled from the river. He took a deep breath and the elderly pathologist asked him if he was ready. He just nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Please God, he said to himself, please don't let this be here. Not my little girl. Please.

Leo wanted to look away as the rip was pulled down revealing the vacant expression on a young girls face. Her blonde hair was plastered across her face, deep purple bruises underneath her eyes and deep angry looking scratches down her neck. Automatically Leo started to make a mental note of the injuries he could see, possible cause of death and an estimated time of death before realising the elderly man were staring at him. He still hadn't said anything.

He forced himself to really focus on the girls face, and as he did so he let out a relived breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. The girl couldn't be more than thirteen years old, and a wave of relief consumed him, and although the emotion made him feel ever so slightly guilty, as this was still someone's daughter, it wasn't his little girl. His little girl was possibly still alive. She was still fighting.

He looked up at the professor, a slightly feeling of sympathy for him. The identity of the teenager still remained unknown, but nothing could erode the elated feeling inside him. It wasn't Cassie.

The old man raised an eyebrow and Leo simple stated, "That's not my daughter."