DISCLAIMER – Not mine. Belong to Anthony Zuiker, et al, CBS and Alliance Atlantis.

A/N – Thanks to everyone who reviewed. As always much appreciated.

Chapter 2

They spent the entire shift working the house, collecting every piece of evidence, by the time they returned to the lab, both Sara and Greg were exhausted and worse still, it'd take them at least three hours to properly catalogue the evidence before they would be able to process it next shift.

At 10am Sara wrote out the last label and stuck it onto the bindle. Clapping Greg on the back, she said, "Wake up Greggo, we're done for the day."

Having dozed off slightly, Greg rubbed his eyes. "Wha…oh, I'm sorry Sar, I didn't mean to pin you with the work."

"Don't worry about it Greg," she said leaving the evidence room.

"C'mon, let me make it up to you. IHOP for breakfast. I'm buying. Anything you want." Greg watched her closely, sure she was going to reject him once again.

He almost fell over backwards when she said, "Sure, sounds good. Let's go."

It took a few moments for the neurons to communicate the answer to his muscles. When they finally moved him into action he looked for all the world like a puppy at the pound, hoping to be picked, goofy brown eyes and all.

"Excellent."

Sara watched him for a few moments before bursting into laughter. "Greggo, calm down, it's breakfast, not sex."

He stopped instantly and fixed her with a stare.

"Figure of speech Greg, get over it."

A short time, and drive later they were seated across from each other, perusing the menu's.

"So, what do you feel like?"

She studied him over the top of her menu. The smile that had formed when she'd accepted his invitation to dinner was still lighting up his face.

He looked up and caught her staring. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing Greg, I was just thinking that this was a really nice idea."

The beam morphed into a shy smile. "No problem, just happy you finally accepted."

"Yeah, guess I've been kind of stand offish. You're really an alright kind of guy. Just a little hard to get used to your particular style."

"And now?" he was curious.

"And now, I've realized that it's just your way, just like it's Grissoms way to be a closed off, single minded, nose so far into his job that he had no idea of the people around him."

"Huh, I thought everything was cool between you."

"Oh yeah, things are cool, cold maybe. Well, freezing would be more precise." She shook off the thoughts, "But that's neither here nor there."

Greg fell into silence, contemplating what Sara had said. He'd only heard rumours of Griss and Sara's relationship, but hearing her talk now, he was pretty certain what ever feelings had been there were fading fast.

Then another thought surfaced. What if she was just settling for second best? Or even just stringing him along til Griss got his head out of his ass? He quickly drowned the thoughts again.

"Hey," he said desperate to change the mood. "What are you going to do today?"

"Probably sleep, considering the six hours overtime."

"Oh, I thought maybe you'd like to go see a movie, or perhaps we could go out to Lake Mead and hire a couple of Jet Skis."

Finishing her stack of syrup covered blueberry pancakes, Sara tried to let the young CSI down easily. "Hey Greg, it's just breakfast okay? Don't go planning the rest of our lives together."

Shocked, but trying to hide it he fished his wallet out and took out enough bills to cover the meal and the tip. "Oh sure, I was just you know,…in case you wanted to get away from it a little, unwind, have some fun."

Putting her arm around his shoulders as they walked out, she tried to cheer him up. "On the other hand, I didn't say I'd NEVER do any of those things with you, but don't rush things alright?"

"So we're cool?"

She gave him a bright smile, "Yeah, we're cool."

He watched her head toward her apartment, while he headed back to the lab, and Dr Robbins in the autopsy bay.

The week ended up being very tiring for Sara. It seemed that every case she was assigned bought back memories of her own childhood.

First there'd been a mother who'd killed both of her children after suffering from post-partum depression, which had been made worse by her abusive boyfriend.

Close on the heels of that one, was a husband who'd beaten his wife to death after she confronted him about an affair he'd been having, but the worst by far was the discovery, just outside the Las Vegas city limits of a thirteen year old child.

She'd spent every minute of the following forty eight hours trying to find out who the girl was, and where she'd come from. She finally discovered that she'd been a foster-home run away. Her history said that she'd been in foster care from the age of five. She'd been bounced from home to home and family to family ever since. Her last case worker had cited developmental problems, drug and alcohol abuse and a number of petty theft charges.

Sara joined Dr Robbins for the autopsy. The catalogue of injuries and other things made her heart hurt. The examination revealed, fractured facial bones, broken arms and legs, sexual abuse, and the evidence of at least one abortion, and she'd only been thirteen.

Leaving work that day, Sara had headed for the bar nearest her place, and sat down to get stinking drunk. She wanted no memories to haunt her, and the only way to do that was to pass out drunk.