A/N: Found some time (and a computer) to get this next chapter posted for you. I'll update again as soon as I can :-)

The scene was one of the worst they'd ever processed. Even Mac, who'd handled hundreds of brutal murders, paled distinctly as the six of them stood together in the living room of the house. A man and his pregnant wife lay dead on their bedroom floor, while down the hall their small son had met the same fate in his room. The daughter had miraculously survived, and was on her way to the closest emergency room, but her injuries were severe and no one knew how much longer she would live.

Mac sighed internally. Okay, let's get to work. He turned to Stella and opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

"I want the daughter," she insisted.

Mac merely nodded, having known she would want to be with the living. "Take Flack with you."

The young detective nodded and walked with Stella out to the car, his radio already cued up to find out where the ambulance was headed.

"Lindsay, you and Hawkes take the perimeter," Mac instructed.

Sheldon nodded, too. "You got it." He touched Lindsay's elbow, prompting her to drag her eyes away from the mass quantities of blood splattered on the floor.

"Danny," Mac continued giving out assignments, "why don't you take the son's room. I'll handle Mr. and Mrs. Donovan."

The two men exchanged glances and parted company, taking deep mental breaths, steeling themselves for the horror that they knew was waiting for them.

∞∞∞

The end of the shift found them reconvening at their usual hangout—a bar called Charlie's—in an attempt to unwind from this particularly brutal day. Don sat with four of the CSIs, a beer in one hand, his cell phone in the other. Flipping it closed, he shook his head.

"Aiden doesn't get off work for another hour," he explained. "So she's not coming tonight."

Danny joined the group and plopped down in a chair beside his friend. "Maddie, either. Carrie's bein' all fussy and stubborn, and Shayla's workin' tonight so she can't watch her sister."

Sheldon grinned. "Fussy and stubborn, eh?"

"I wonder where she gets that from," Stella finished with a chuckle.

Danny smiled, but his response was muted. "As long as she's healthy."

The team passed the time as lightly as they could, trying to push away the images of the crime scene and trade them in for visions of family and friends. Unfortunately, the plan didn't work as well as they'd hoped, and soon the group began to disburse.

Mac and Stella were the first ones to leave, glancing at each other and communicating silently their desire to be away from there.

"I think we're going to call it a night," Mac said, speaking their decision to the rest of the table. "Try and get some sleep tonight. We'll get back at it in the morning." He rose with Stella, resting his hand on the small of her back as he led her to the car.

Don followed suit shortly after that, glancing at his watch. "Aiden should be off by now," he said, "and I have this strong need to tell her I love her."

His statement hit Sheldon hard, and the former pathologist stood quickly, too. I wish I could tell Sarah how much I love her. "I'm gonna go home and go for a run," he told his friends instead, "and work off some of this nervous energy."

That left Lindsay and Danny alone at the table.

"What'd'ya think?" Danny asked, turning to her. "You ready to go, too, Montana?"

Lindsay shook her head. "A few more minutes?" she pleaded.

She doesn't have anyone to go home to, Danny realized. I'm all the company she has tonight. Gesturing at the waitress, he smiled at his colleague. "Sure. A few more minutes."

∞∞∞

Rather than going home where it would be quiet and the gravity of the day's work would set in, Mac and Stella drove instead to an old theater on the other side of town. It was a place where only the manager knew them, where no one else would think to look for them. They bought tickets for whatever was showing on the one screen and found seats toward the back of the nearly empty room.

They scanned the previews for movies that had been released ages ago, watched the cartoon soda can and dancing popcorn box tell them to pick up their trash after the movie, and pretended to pay careful attention to the opening scene of the film.

The ruse lasted only fifteen minutes.

Mac noticed a tear slip from his blue eyes and run down his cheek, feeling deep within his soul what the Donovan girl would feel if she regained consciousness and learned that she had lost the people closest to her in the world. He had first hand knowledge of those emotions.

Stella caught sight of the tear and brushed it gently away. Her gesture was meant as a comfort—she recognized the expression on his face—but instead it triggered a series of subsequent tears, spilling from his eyes before he could stop them.

Matching tears sprung to Stella's eyes, knowing, too, what it was like to be all alone in the world, the pain invading her heart like a conquering army. She wrapped her arm around Mac, combing her fingers through his short hair and pulling him to her.

Together, without speaking a word, they sat in the back of the theater, clinging to each other, mourning the little girl's loss.

∞∞∞

Don turned the key in the lock of his apartment, smiling softly as he entered. The smell of greasy cheeseburgers from the diner where Aiden worked wafted through the air, accompanied by the sound of a basketball game on TV.

"Hey handsome," she greeted him, standing on her toes to kiss him hello. "I hope you don't mind me coming over like this."

"Not at all," he replied, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her back. "I was going to call you anyway."

She broke away and brushed a hand over the back of his neck, concern filling her eyes. "You just sounded so…like you had a rough day today, so I got the super to let me in."

"Well remind me to get you a key." He kissed her briefly again and walked with her into the living room, dropping onto the couch and pulling her down beside him. He let out a long, slow breath. "Yeah. Today was a tough one."

Aiden curled up next to him, draping his arm around her shoulders and resting her head against his chest. For a long while they sat in silence, neither knowing what to say to the other. It had been so long since she'd been in his position she'd almost forgotten what it was like. And he was in no hurry to remind her.

Finally, she broke the ice. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," he shook his head. "I don't want to involve you in this."

"Don, it's okay," she said, rising to her knees to look him square in the eye. "I saw it on the news—this was a bad one, and you need to talk about it before it eats you up inside."

He stroked her hair lovingly, knowing she was speaking from experience. "I don't want to hurt you, or put you back in the place you were before you went to Virginia. I-I think I'm trying to protect you, Aid. This was a bad one—a really bad one."

"You don't have to protect me," she reassured him. "I can handle it." He raised a questioning eyebrow at her and she nodded. "I'm sure. I've worked out a lot of things since I left. And I want you to feel comfortable talking to me about anything…that was part of our deal, remember? We tell each other everything."

Don pressed his lips together and frowned. She's right. "Okay, but if you start feeling overwhelmed…"

"…I'll let you know," she promised.

She settled down beside him again, listening to his halting words. His arm tightened around her and she tried to impart comfort through her touch, supporting him the way he had always supported her.

∞∞∞

Danny, too, inserted the key into the lock of his apartment and turned it, having dropped Lindsay off on his way home. But instead of cheeseburgers and basketball, he was greeted by darkness and silence. All the lights in the apartment were off except for the small bulb over the kitchen sink. He smiled a little when he saw it—that had always been Maddie's welcome home signal.

He clicked the light off and moved quietly through the apartment, peeking his head inside the girls' bedroom to find both his daughters sleeping soundly. Carrie lay on her back in her crib, the fuzzy purple elephant Don had given her held tightly in her fist. On the other side of the room, Shayla was curled up in her own bed, her work uniform in a heap on the floor next to her. He grinned, kissing them each on the forehead before making his way to the master bedroom.

Maddie sat up in bed, the dim lamp on her nightstand lighting the room just enough for her to see the pages of the book she was reading. Or was trying to read, Danny noticed. Her eyes moved back and forth over the page, but they were vacant and uncomprehending.

"Hey babe," he called softly.

The emptiness in her eyes was swallowed up by love and relief at the sound of his voice. "Danny," she smiled. "You're home."

He pulled off his shirt and shoes and climbed on top of the covers, leaning in to kiss his wife as he lay down beside her. "I'm home."

She touched his cheek tenderly, kissing him again and drawing strength from him as he drew it from her. "I hear you had a bad one today," she told him when their lips parted.

"Family murdered in their own home," he confirmed, sighing tiredly. "I heard you had a pretty rotten one today, too."

Maddie nodded in reply, placing her book on the nightstand and laying down. "Knife fight in the parking lot after school."

Danny shifted positions on the bed and slid his arms around her, her hand coming to rest on his chest in response. He felt the gentle rhythm of her breathing as she lay in his arms, finding solace there when he could find it in no other place. The steady beating of his heart under her fingertips, in turn, reassured her that they would deal with this day, too, as they had all the others—together.

∞∞∞

Despite leaving the bar before Danny and Lindsay, Sheldon was the last to arrive home. He had traveled slowly on purpose, partly out of the anger and grief that had filled him at the crime scene, but also out of avoidance. He knew that Mac and Stella would deal together with the horrors they had witnessed, that Don would go home to Aiden, that Danny had Maddie and their daughters. He knew that Lindsay would probably pick up the phone as soon as she walked in her door and wake up someone who cared about her in Montana, someone who would sympathize with her and soothe her.

But Sheldon's best consolation had come from a source no long available to him. Sarah had always been there for him, no matter the time or what kind of day she'd had herself. If he had worked a particularly bad crime scene, her first priority would become his welfare.

But I didn't do that for her in return, and now she's gone.

He stood outside the door of his apartment, knowing Sarah was not there waiting for him. He couldn't call her, he couldn't go to her, couldn't even bring himself to say her name aloud anymore. It had been so long since she'd left, but still the pain lingered, intensified by the need for her this day had brought.

Frowning, he forced himself to open the door and enter the apartment, dropping his bag listlessly in the entryway and heading for the bedroom. Very mechanically, and with little conscious thought, he changed into sweats and sneakers and fled from the building. Perhaps if he ran hard enough, the hurt from the case—from his life—would go away.