Title: Him's

Rating: R, though rating won't kick in until later chapters.

Spoilers: Without A Trace: early season one, nothing specific. CSI: 215 Burden Of Proof

Timeline: pretend that Martin joined the team on WoAT a few months before BoP on CSI.

Summary: They both had their past him's that had left them broken. But the past is gone, and the future is what is at stake.

Danny tucked his cell phone into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket as he propped his feet up on an empty chair at the conference table in the bullpen. "That was Martin," he said to Sara as if she hadn't heart his half of the conversation already. "He and Sam are on their way back from the school."

"Good," Sara said distractedly. She kept running over Elisa Hunter's responses to her questions, trying to figure out what about them seemed so off.

Noticing her pensive expression, Danny frowned. He'd known Sara for only a few hours, and yet her already felt like he'd known her for years, despite the fact that he knew pretty much nothing about her. There was just a connection that he couldn't explain and, to be perfectly honest, he didn't really want to because he felt that some things were best left as a mystery.

However, the cause of her distress was not one of those things. "You okay?" Danny asked, concerned.

"Just trying to put this all into context," Sara said, gesturing to the table in front of them that was covered in the photos she had taken of what little evidence they had. "Any word on that tape from Transit?"

"You ever try getting something from the Manhattan Transit Authority without a ten month wait?" Danny questioned.

Sara obviously didn't see the point in reminding him that she was new to the city so, of course she hadn't tried to deal with the MTA yet. Danny knew that Vegas was somewhat lacking in mass transit, especially compared to New York, because of the way that everything was laid out and how most of the action was within walking distance of tourists hotels—which was what the city was made for, essentially—anyway, but he figured that it was just as hard to get something from the MTA as it was to get something from a casino's private security. "No, but I'm beginning to see that that hope is futile," Sara admitted. She rubbed her eyes and exhaled a cleansing breath. "This sucks."

"Yeah, it does," Danny agreed. In his opinion there was nothing rose than what they were dealing with at that very moment. But he refused to say that aloud lest he somehow defeat Sara's spirit more than it already had been. Even in the few hours that he had known her he could tell that she was breaking, if not already broken, and Danny found himself wanting to pull Sara into his arms and shelter her from the world that was hurting her so badly.

They sat in silence for several minutes before her pager went off. She frowned as she unclipped the piece of plastic from her waistband. "Can I borrow your phone?" she asked, nodding over to Danny's desk.

"Go ahead. Hit 9 for an outside call," Danny said.

"Thanks," Sara said as she rose from her chair.

Danny grinned when he noticed that she had shed her shoes when she sat down and hadn't bothered to put them back on as she crossed the cool linoleum to his desk. She perched herself on the edge of his workstation and hit 9, then several digits in rapid succession. Obviously a number she called often, Danny surmised. He knew he shouldn't have been so curious, but something about Sara Sidle intrigued him and he wanted to learn everything he could about her.

"Hey, Nick. You beeped? Shouldn't you be tucked into bed by now?" Sara said, her voice light and playful. Danny hadn't heard her use that tone yet, not even with Martin. A smile spread across her lips as she listened to the other person, Nick, speaking. "Nicky, you are a god! How the hell did you manage to pull something like this off?" she asked, excitedly. There was another pause, then she let out a little squeal of excitement. "Words can't describe how much I'm loving you right now. You're two-for-two on damsel-in-distress rescue duty today. This is amazing," she said, beaming. There was another pause and her smile faded slightly, but not too much. "No, it's no big deal. Get back to work, Stokes. And try to make sure that all of my underwear ends up in the boxes, please," she said before uttering a quick goodbye and a promise that they would talk again soon.

When she returned to the table she had a smile on her face that lit up the room. Once again Danny found himself feeling despondent because he wasn't the one bringing a gap-toothed smile to her face. "Boyfriend?" Danny asked hoping he didn't sound jealous. He had known her for a mere ten hours and already he was jealous of other men in her life. And Danny wasn't a man prone to jealousy.

"Who? Nick? Hardly. He and I worked together in Vegas," Sara said, still smiling. "He was just calling to let me know that his sister is getting married and is willing to sublet her apartment to me and, since she's already in the process of moving in with her fiancé, I can start moving in at the end of the week. So I get to get out of that horrible hotel room," she said, crinkling up her nose at the thought of her current residence.

"Where are you staying?" Danny asked.

"Four Seasons," Sara said, "but after processing as many hotel rooms as I have… it's kinda hard to forget all the things that people leave behind." She shuddered dramatically causing Danny to smile softly. "Anyway, other than Nick saving me from eternally searching the rental papers for a decent place that I can afford, he also was nice enough to get in touch with his brother who happens to be a big-wig in the New York Transit Authority, and the tapes from this morning are on their way over as we speak," Sara added with a satisfied smile on her face.

"That's great!" Danny smiled. The first real break to come in the case. It would prove—or disprove—the mother's story, once and for all. Finally he could see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Samantha was surprised when she got the call from Danny, but she refused to let Martin know that she had underestimated his friend, let alone that she was surprised by anything anymore. Jaded as she was, there were still a lot of things that shocked, scared, and sickened Samantha Spade.

But she didn't want the world to know that.

"Looks like we're buying the new girl a steak," Samantha said as she met up with Martin at the car. She had finished with Anytia earlier and had started talking to the kids in the class to help Martin out. After they spoke to everyone and gave out all the cards they carried with them, Martin went to talk to the principal again while Samantha went out to the car to warm it up.

"Why?" Martin asked as he sank into the passenger seat reluctantly. Samantha bit back a smile at that. She knew he hated her driving.

"Apparently she's got a friend somewhere who's related to someone at NYTA and they've called in a favour and managed to put a rush on the tapes. They should be there when we get back to the office," Samantha said. She hated that she sounded bitter but something about Sara Sidle rubbed her the wrong way. She knew it had something to do with Martin and the strange and new feelings she had for him, but she really didn't want to admit that she was jealous. She'd rather just be a bitch and apologize later if she had to.

"You ever going to treat Sara like she deserves to be treated?" Martin asked, surprising himself as much as Samantha.

Samantha frowned. She wasn't used to Martin calling her on the carpet for her actions. He usually let her get away with her mood swings and issues and hung back if he felt she was nearing her boiling point. "What do you mean? I've hardly said two words to her."

"But you act like her being here is some huge burden on you," Martin said. "Is it because her first case with the Bureau is with Missing Persons? That she skipped all the scut work that we had to go through to get here?"

"I doubt you ever did scut work, Martin," Sam said.

"What's it going to take to convince you that I didn't get to where I am today by trading in on my father's name?" Martin asked.

"I am convinced. I admit at first I was sceptical—you were with white collar and then suddenly you're with us—but you've proven that you got to where you are today by working hard, maybe even hard than most because you want to prove yourself and make sure no one thinks you're trading on your father's name," Samantha said. And that was true. She still didn't think he did scut work, though. Playing driver to more experienced agents in obscure field stations around the continent, working cases that were borderline Federal jurisdiction, working alongside the agents that the FBI wanted to phase out by sticking them with rookies until they quit out of frustration. Samantha had put in her time, worked her ass off, and managed to get to a place where she was happy most of the time. She doubted that anyone would make a Fitzgerald do things like that, even if Martin wasn't the type to complain. They would all be too scared that it might, somehow, get back to Mr. Fitzgerald. "We all know that you aren't like that, Martin," she said, referring to the team. "And I'm sorry that we rushed to judgement when you first joined us."

Martin didn't say anything. Samantha knew why, too. His career wasn't the point of his anger with her. The fact that he was upset with her had nothing to do with him at all. And, while she had decided to play the bitch in general, Samantha couldn't take Martin being mad at her, no matter what. So she jumped to the apology portion of her plan ahead of time.

"And I don't dislike Sara. I'm sure she's put in her time and is good at her job. But I don't know her and I don't trust her."

Once again she left the 'especially with you' unspoken; only this time Martin didn't hear it reverberating in his head and heart.

The tapes had arrived just as Jack returned from his expedition to the Hunter's apartment—a trip that Danny knew Sara had been insulted that she had been left out of. Jack came back with a stack of children's artwork in his hands. Pencil sketches, felt drawings, and paintings, all showing a natural skill that indicated that Sylvia Hunter was a budding artist.

Danny remembered being told once that young children are so guileless that their true feelings come through in their artwork; much like a teenaged girl would keep her innermost secrets in a diary. Art is universal, he muses, remembering his own 'artistic endeavours' as a child that usually ended up leaving the paper and heading for the walls or the floor or, a few times, the neighbours annoying cat, Congo, who liked to slip into their apartment through the broken kitchen window and scratch up the furniture and send his foster-mom into allergic fits of sneezing that only served to aggravate her already angry back. There are no language barriers in art. No rules, either, which makes it a perfect outlet for tortured souls who can't find the words, no matter what language, to articulate their pain to the world.

Never a big fan of art, Danny learned at a young age that he appreciated the psychology behind the picture much more than the picture itself. He remembers going on field trips to one of the many art galleries in New York and, while his classmates oohed and ahhed at the bright colours or soothing lines, Danny found himself wondering if the dirt road in the background leading out of the frame was the artist making sure there was an escape route, even in the field of wildflowers that made up the majority of the painting. None of his friends understood this about him. Danny wasn't even sure he had understood it back then, either. But now, doing what he does every day, Danny is thankful that he spent his formative years wondering about the truth behind the pretty finished product, because that is what life is. The truth behind the pretty lies.

"Damn, this kid was not happy," Danny said, able to tell that much from just a quick glance at the morbid artwork.

"Which doesn't track with the tale the mom's telling," Jack said as he put the pictures down on the table.

Danny watched as Sara looked at the child's art carefully. The look of recognition on her face worried him, but, before he could ask her about it, she answered his question on her own. "These are all part of the same story. Like a pictorial timeline," Sara said. She started arranging the artwork in a line. Danny stood and moved to stand behind her, leaning over Sara's shoulder as she made the pattern become clear. He never would have caught that, especially not as quickly as Sara had. "Sylvia Hunter has seen a lot of pain… witnessed things that she couldn't talk about because she didn't understand what she had seen, what she had heard…"

"What she had experienced," Jack finished sadly.

"Shit," Danny hissed when he realized what Sara and Jack had caught right away.

The case had just reached a new level of evil.

I'm not getting a lot of reviews for this. Is that because no one is reading it, or are people just not responding?