Author's Note: This WAS one really long chapter. I split it last minute. The last chapter will be up tomorrow. Read, review, and I'll try and return the favor. :o)

Grissom hung up the phone and stared at the wall for a long time. His phone rang again, startling him out of his stupor and he answered it without seeing who was calling. His voice was as solid as stone. "Grissom."

"Grissom, it's me."

Oh no… Grissom thought, remembering the party at Sara's. "Sofia…"

"Yeah, listen, you got an ETA for me because this thing is winding down, people are tired and going home, and I don't want to be left cleaning up after everyone all by myself, you catch my drift?"

"Sofia…" It occurred to Grissom that in all the chaos, no one had thought to call the party and tell them what had happened. They were all friends of Sara's after all, or at least all friends of Greg's. They'd need to know. "Sofia…"

"Why do you keep saying my name like that? Is something wrong?"

Grissom bit his lip so hard he drew blood. "Sofia, Sara was shot. She… she passed away a few minutes ago."

Silence met his ears for a few seconds before Sofia responded. "I… Oh my… Wow…"

"My thoughts exactly."

"Who… I mean, how…"

"Well…" Grissom looked around at the people running about the lab, business as usual, the swing shift moving along like ants. "Warrick… hit her… on accident. Catherine was… Catherine stabbed her daughter, Lindsey and she died on her way to the hospital."

"Grissom, you're not making any sense. Was Warrick aiming at a crook? Sara got caught in the line of fire?"

Grissom's brow furrowed, trying to figure out how best to explain it for her. "Sort of. Sara was shot in the line of fire, only the crook was… Catherine… because she stabbed… Lindsey…" Even as he said the words, they tasted bitter and alien on his tongue. They didn't belong together like that. Sara, shot, crook, Catherine, stab, Lindsey… No… that just didn't work together. It didn't fit together at all. It was like swallowing a gallon of bile. All Grissom wanted to do was throw it up again, take it back, and maybe he would stop feeling so nauseous.

"Where are you?" Sofia asked.

"At the lab," Grissom answered.

"I'm coming in."

"The party?"

"Forget the party," Sofia replied. "I'm kicking everyone out right now. I'll lock up for Sara, she can… I mean, oh God, she's dead…" She was quiet a minute. "Wow, I can't… I just can't hold onto this, you know?"

"I know," Grissom answered honestly. "Do what you can."

"I will. See you soon."

"Bye." Grissom hung up the phone and walked into a nearby empty conference room, burying his face in his hands as he cried. He couldn't think. He couldn't move. He couldn't do anything but just sit at that table and cry. He stayed there for twenty minutes before he was confident enough to face his colleagues and deliver the news. After making sure his eyes were dry, he rose to his feet and left the room.

The first person that needed telling was the last one he wanted to face. Striding painfully over to Ecklie's office, Grissom grimaced, trying not to think of all the ways Ecklie could make this about the lab. He knocked on the door but it fell open with his knock and he saw Ecklie sitting at his desk just staring at the computer screen blindly. He wasn't typing or scurrying about doing some menial paperwork. He was just staring.

"Conrad?"

"Hm?" Ecklie looked up at him as if just noticing his entrance. He spoke in a soft voice. "Gil. What brings you here?"

"You know that Sara Sidle was shot today," Grissom said slowly.

"Of course I know that," Ecklie snapped, sounding more like his familiar self. Oddly enough this encouraged Grissom more than his quiet tones had. Smiling in spite of the news he had to deliver, Grissom sighed.

"Nick called from the hospital," Grissom said, his voice betraying none of the emotions that raged inside him. "She passed away about half an hour ago."

Ecklie let out a low whistle as he nodded slowly. "Right," he said. "The staff should be alerted."

"Of course," Grissom agreed.

"I expect, as her supervisor, you're the best qualified to break that news to them," Ecklie added. He sounded like he was giving Grissom just another everyday command. He acted completely unaffected by the unfortunate news. But his voice was soft and low again. Not at all like his usual high-strung self.

"Of course," Grissom repeated. He lingered in the office as Ecklie stared back at the computer screen, seemingly in deep thought. He seemed to realize Grissom was still there and he turned to him and barked at him again.

"Well? What are you waiting for? It's not going to announce itself, you know, and they have a right to know." Nodding, Grissom turned his back on Ecklie and left. "Grissom…" He stopped and waited. "Close the door, would you?" Grissom obliged. He heard the door click shut and then leaned against it, waiting to hear some sound from Ecklie inside, but he didn't know what to expect. All that met his ears was silence.

Taking a deep breath, he walked over to the front desk where he asked the secretary to page everyone.

Within minutes, they were all assembled, and Grissom realized how small his team was with so many losses. Nick was still at the hospital, Warrick and Catherine were in holding cells, and Sara was…

The assembled, as it turned out however, didn't just include his team, but others as well, from various labs and the swing shift too. Everyone wanted to know the news. Greg and Brass were there of course, each looking nervous in his own right, but so was Wendy, who looked equally anxious, and Archie was there too. He wondered what the two of them were doing working now, but attributed it to the idea that they were pulling doubles. To his great surprise, David Hodges was there, too, his face probably the most inscrutable out of all of them. There were a few faces from the swing shift that he almost recognized from working with them when their shifts overlapped. Everyone wanted to know the fate of the wounded CSI.

Grissom swallowed hard before he spoke. "Nick called about a half hour ago," he said. "I'm sorry, I needed to… I just couldn't get to you sooner. But Sara Sidle passed away just as she got to the hospital."

There were gasps and mutters of disappointment, but none were as loud as the look on Greg's face. He didn't say or do anything, but he turned on his heal and walked quickly down the hall. Each face was different, each dealing with the news in their own personal way. Grissom thought he saw an unshed tear glisten in Wendy's eye as she bit her quivering lip and nodded at him before turning on her heal herself and making her way down the hall. Brass approached Grissom and asked if he was OK, to which Grissom responded that he was, before Brass too left the scene.

As they each left one by, soon the only one left was Hodges, who stared pensively at a point on the wall somewhere beyond Grissom's shoulder. Grissom wasn't sure what to say, but mercifully Hodges saved him the effort as his gaze shifted from the wall to Grissom's eyes.

"Sometimes," Hodges said, sounding philosophical, "your job just really sucks, doesn't it?"

Grissom was mildly surprised by his words, and in any other situation might even have been amused, but he was more amazed at the truth in them than anything else. "Yeah," he said. "Sometimes, it really does."

Satisfied, Hodges nodded, though he was still frowning as he analyzed a speck of dirt on the floor by Grissom's foot. "Yeah, well, I have some evidence swing shift needs processed, so if you need me, remember that I'm busy and bother someone else. See you later." And with that, he spun around and walked off down the hall as if nothing had ever happened.

Grissom sighed as he watched Hodges' retreating back. He tried to muster up the courage to go and tell Warrick and Catherine what had happened, but found that he had drained himself of any mettle he had left just by keeping a stony face in front of Greg and the others.

Greg… He would be devastated… Grissom didn't want to think about how Greg felt right then. He only hoped he wasn't doing anything stupid.

Nick returned to the lab, preferring to be with his friends, his family, rather than going home where he would be alone. He sighed as he opened up his locker and hung up his jacket. His shift would start soon anyway, he might as well get a head start.

He heard cursing and the sound of crashing metal, followed by more cursing. Frowning, he looked around the lockers and saw Greg leaning against them, his head on his arms, one of them bleeding. He looked over at Nick and smiled morosely.

"How was she?" Greg asked, shaking out his bloody hand. Nick concluded from the dent in the locker and the bloody hand that Greg had gotten in a fight with the locker and the locker had won.

Nick stared at the floor before looking in Greg's eyes. "She was scared," he said honestly. "She talked about you."

Greg nodded slowly, not tearing his eyes away from Nick's for a moment. "It should have been me in that ambulance with her. Not you."

Nick couldn't hold the eye contact any longer or he would burst into tears. "You're right," he replied. "But I took good care of her, Greg. I promise you that."

"I believe you," Greg told him. He sighed as he sat down on the bench, raking his hands through his hair. "And I'm sorry. For saying that you shouldn't have been there."

Nick took a seat next to him and put a brotherly hand on his shoulder. "Hey, man, don't worry. You're hurting. And I agreed with you."

Greg looked up at him, all the laughter gone from his eyes. My God, Nick thought. He's as dead as Sara is.

"I'm glad it was you," Greg said. "With her, I mean. I'm glad it was you."

"She loved you, Greg," Nick said. "Said so herself. She wanted me to…" He laughed at the memory as he shook his head. "She wanted me to apologize for her. Like she had anything to be sorry about. But she said… She said she was sorry she never had the chance to tell you. Sorry that she'd waited so long to say it."

Greg let out a long low sigh. "She was incredible. Wasn't she?" He looked up at Nick for encouragement.

Nick laughed and nodded. "Yeah," he said. "She really was."

Greg tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. "I don't know what I'm going to do now. You know just hours ago we were in here, fighting about something so… so stupid. And it's her birthday, Nick. Her goddamn birthday. And all I wanted to do was throw her a party, and then she... I just…" He pursed his lips as his eyes watered, his voice trembling as he continued to speak. "I know we just hooked up today, but in my own quiet way I've been falling in love with her for the past seven years. She was everything in me. And now that she's gone, I don't know who I am anymore. I've become this angry and bitter person and I… I don't like him, Nick."

The hand on Greg's shoulder slid across his neck until his arm was on both shoulders. "It's grief, bro. You'll be OK. We all will, eventually."

"Really?" Greg said, the laughter in his tone sounding depressingly hopeless. "Because I feel like I'll never be OK again." Greg stood up, pulling away from Nick's touch, much preferring his own as he rubbed his arms. In the dim light of the locker room, his lonely silhouette against the row of lockers, Greg looked incredibly small. He was gaunt and pale, his hair a messy mop on top of his head and for a moment Nick thought he was talking to a ghost.

Nick was stoic. He had to be, for Greg. "You know I'm here for you, Greg," he said. "I'm always here for you."

"I know." Greg's voice sounded little and far away as he stared at the floor.

Nick got to his feet and pulled Greg into a comforting hug, patting his back. Slowly, Greg let his crossed arms fall down to his sides as he began to cry, eventually hugging Nick back, his hands in fists. A tear or two escaped Nick's eyes as he held his friend for a long time.

"It's OK, Greg," he kept saying. "We're a family."

The problem with murder, Warrick had learned, is that it always ruined everything for everyone involved. Warrick had watched both crooks and victims walk in and out of the doors of the lab. Families could be destroyed with one bullet. He just never thought it would be this family. His bullet.

Somehow, from the moment he saw Sara bleeding in Catherine's arms, he knew she was going to die. And sitting alone in his holding cell with no one coming to visit him, his worst fears were confirmed. If Sara was going to make it, someone would have come to talk to him by now, maybe even almost have forgiven him partially. Of course, he would never be truly forgiven. He couldn't even forgive himself, and he knew better than anyone that it wasn't his fault.

He couldn't help but feel like he should have done something, anything, to keep from pulling that trigger. One shot had killed them all.

He sighed as he buried his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees as he wondered what he was going to do. He couldn't cry, he couldn't think, he was just existing. How could this have all happened? He had been there, he had seen it, but it still didn't make any sense to him.

Hands trembling, Warrick silently prayed that they would give him the death penalty.

Hell, in their shoes, he would have.

Catherine sat alone in her cell, completely catatonic. She stared blankly at the bars, unseeing. To all who passed or tried to speak to her, she was dead. To her, nothing existed outside of her prison cell. Nothing at all. Because if nothing else existed then there was nothing to lose. Somehow, through the fog of nothingness in her mind, she knew that Sara was dead too. She didn't need anyone to tell her. She knew it just like she knew Lindsey was dead before Brass even said anything.

"Why do you weep, friend?"

She sat next to her on the bench, staring at Catherine as Catherine stared off into space.

"I'm not," Catherine replied, though she wasn't so sure if she had spoken the words aloud or in her mind. Speaking was a foreign task, and thinking wasn't much easier. "I'm not weeping."

"You weep internally," said the woman. "You bleed in your soul. You are wounded. You are broken."

Catherine smiled bitterly, her blue eyes still a cloudy gray like a dead woman's. "Well, you're right about that."

The woman put her hand on Catherine's, which rested on Catherine's knee. "There is no stronger tie then the ones that bind family together. Mother to daughter. Sister to sister. We have to stick together, us broken women."

Catherine nodded, her eyes still hanging her hopes on some invisible star. "Sara's dead, isn't she?"

The woman sighed. "Aye."

Catherine turned to face the woman. She was dressed in black, and no older than sixteen, old before her time yet still too young to know. Catherine still felt confident in calling her a woman. Her red hair was tucked under a black funeral hat that looked like it was fashioned in the 1800s. "Why are you still here, Annabelle?"

The woman smiled a youthful grin. "Because you are," she replied. "I wanted to tell you my story."

"You've told your story," Catherine muttered bitterly, looking away from her again. "And it killed two people that I cared for. That I loved."

"You were family," Annabelle said. "That is why you were chosen."

"You chose us," Catherine said monotonously.

"Yes," Annabelle replied. "We did. Because we related to you. And because you were there when we left the others. You know, when we came here from Ireland, we dreamed of starting all over again in the great American West. Lizzy-Beth and I were little girls when our family came over. We grew up together. Eventually, we both met Daniel and he and Lizbeth got engaged. But all he ever wanted was me. When I became pregnant, I tried to hide it, but Lizbeth knew. Deep inside her, she knew it was his child. She called me a whore. The whole town did. So I planned on killing the thing growing inside of me. I would tell them I miscarried, that it was God's punishment for my adultery, and maybe then they would have pity on me. Only it was so difficult… I loved my child. But I killed it anyway. Because I was selfish. And in his rage, Daniel killed me. In anguish, both he and my sister killed themselves. And we have been paying for our sins ever since. Until we met you."

Catherine closed her eyes. "I'm glad that you have found peace at my expense," she said sardonically.

"I'm not," Annabelle said, making Catherine face her. "Which is why I'm still here."

"What do you mean?" Catherine asked.

"I have come to repay the favor you gave me and my kin," Annabelle replied. "The clock will turn back fifteen hours. No one will remember this day. Naught but you and the dead."

Catherine frowned at her, confused. "I don't understand."

"Then I will show you," Annabelle replied. "And you will wake as if from some horrid nightmare, in your own head and your own mind. You will not be thought of as mad, or ill, or a whore. You will be Catherine Willows again. And you will laugh again."

"My daughter is dead," Catherine said, her voice heavy. "I will never laugh again."

Annabelle grinned and giggled, looking like the young girl she really was. "If I had twice your wisdom when I was this age in life, I would have squawked like a goose and thought it brought rain. You are not understanding me. This day never happened."

"That's impossible," Catherine said. "I lived it, it happened."

Annabelle sighed, still smiling. "Alright, then I have nothing left to do but show you what I mean."

Catherine closed her eyes, ready to tell the woman to go away and let her grieve in peace. But when she opened them again, Annabelle was gone. She probably slipped down the drain along with my mind, Catherine thought to herself as she breathlessly took in her new, yet somehow all too familiar surroundings.

An eerily haunting voice called out to her, sounding far too real, and too longed-for to be true. "Well? Are you going to help me with this or just stare at me all night?"