A/N: Nope, still not dead. School's starting in a few weeks, and my scedule is loaded, so updates will be as sparse as they have been the past few months. I am not giving up on this story, but it would really help if you guys reviewed me. I update faster when i get a bunch of encouraging little notices in my inbox...

Hope this chapter was worth the wait :)

Chasing Phantoms

Part I: Mad World

Chapter Eleven: The Words You've Lost

1.

"It's been a while, Kimberly Ann."

Kim had been at the opposite end of the hospital floor when she had first seen him standing there, but she had known who it was right then – there was no mistaking the man that stood imperially in front of the glass of Daniel's room, his back to her as he peered into the room through open blinds. She could never forget him: the man that had turned her out the minute she was no longer viable to him; the man who had put her friends and family at risk countless times; the man who had always put the job before anyone he came in contact with. Though she was not privy to his personal life, she usually had a good idea of his motives. Unfortunately, what he was doing in the hospital was a concept completely strange to her.

The man didn't turn towards her when she finally stood beside him, staring at Danny lying quietly on the hospital bed. A few bandages remained on his chest and wrapped around his upper arm, but his face had long healed, but he obstinately maintained a deathly slow and even breathing, and his heart beat evenly and sluggishly. He addressed her without removing his eyes from the hauntingly still boy. His long silver ponytail disappeared from view, though when a moment later he turned his head and he met her emerald gaze with a steely, cold gray one. His thin, angular face showed the wear of fifty or so years, an impeccable Italian three-piece suit was accessorized with a slightly ostentatious Green Bay Packers tie and matching cuff links. Still, there was something off about him that she couldn't pinpoint.

"These five years seem to have taken a toll on you."

Kim looked at him sharply, indignation rising in her chest. What the hell was he playing at? Was he taunting her mistake so many years ago that had cost Kim her job? Still, as she glared at him unwaveringly, she could see exactly what was different about him. His steely gray, unfeeling eyes were a lot less cold that they had been when she'd seen them last – when he had expressionlessly handed her the last performance report she would ever receive, stating, without any hope for care or mercy, in the cold black typeface, that she was no longer qualified for field work because of the severity of her injury.

"You would be a bit worse for wear yourself if you'd seen what I've seen these past few years," she snapped back coldly, no sympathy or remorse in her voice.

"You have no idea, do you? You've always sat in the confines of your office, the safety of an alias and a cover, fighting a supposed 'evil' from afar, never having it graze your skin, never breathing it in, never actually understanding it. You have no idea how much true evil resides in the hearts of man," she hissed angrily under her breath.

For too long she had been angry with him, but she now knew that the work she had done for the CIA, for Vlad Masters, and for her country was soulless and empty, void and without true meaning. It had taken her years of case files, hundreds of tear-streaked faces, and thousands of photographs of the beaten, bludgeoned, stabbed, shot, burned, mangled and dehumanized to realize that.

Strange to her was the softness in his eyes. It was unsettling, and she clenched her jaw adamantly to keep away a niggling feeling deep in the back of her mind. Her former boss never broke her glare, his gaze far from angry.

"Do not be so quick to judge Kimberly Ann," he said quietly, barely above a whisper.

Kim's emerald eyes narrowed perceptively, mixed feelings preventing her from betraying any real range of emotion to his trained eye. Her feelings and thoughts changed too fast for him to accurately gauge. She was not one to admit she was wrong, and the idea of calling Vlad Masters a compassionate and deep human being was a bit hard for her to swallow. Kim was not one to let go of everything that had passed between them years ago for a pair of sad gray eyes.

"Why are you here?" she accused, her gaze hard and unwavering.

"You know very little, Kimberly Ann, don't you?" he said serenely, the full force of his years and the toll of his profession showing through his usually composed and carefully blank face. There was no condescension, no arrogance, no accusation, and no mockery in his voice.

"Why are you here," she asked again, just as adamantly, but with a tone of pleading gentleness soaking through her carefully crafted exterior.

"To see Daniel," Vlad finished, almost defeated.

Before she could even ask why, Vlad continued.

"Daniel Fenton was the son of my two best friends, Madeline and James Fenton. I have not seen any of them in a few years, but I felt like a visit was something I owed him, especially after everything that I put their family through."

"What happened? You said he was their son, not that he is their son…"

"You don't know? I thought everyone had heard of what happened to the Fentons…"

"Obviously not, sir."

He sighed, and she could see from his stance that it was a memory he had relived many times, a story he was very familiar with, and one that had changed him forever. She barely knew the man that stood before her today.

"They were killed in their home for their information on the Ghosts, their house ransacked and equipment stolen. Daniel and his sister, Jasmine, came home for summer vacation to find their parents gone, the house absolutely covered in blood. Technically, there is no evidence to prove they are really dead, since their bodies were never found. Unfortunately, there is no chance of them still being alive. They knew too much about the Ghosts, and the amount of blood on scene was enough to paint the walls of the house. There is no way either one of them survived the blood loss."

Kim swallowed, her eyes wide and shocked, and asked quietly, as if she could not quite find her voice, "How old was Danny?"

"Twenty-two years old; he had just graduated from college with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering."

Part of her want to vomit at the thought, and part of her was comforted by it. He lost his parents, yes, and they were dead, but he had graduated college already and didn't really depend on them, like he would have if he had been younger. It was a small blessing, she surmised, amidst all the pain. Her mind gently toggled and processed the information. He was only twenty five, almost twenty six, and he had been with the FBI for a year now, with five months of training before his official placement under her supervision.

Usually agents so new to the FBI and so young of age didn't work in units as intense as hers. Even she was too young to be the Unit Chief, but she had been the only one left, and was forced into her position at her young age. And, when it came to intensity of work, they were the second to last on the last resort chain. One more ounce of desperation would have handed cases over to the more-than-capable hands of the units at Quantico not far from D.C., such as the Behavioral Analysis Unit and its subunits.

But she had known Danny before he had joined the FBI; she had known him back when he was still only a few years out of college and working Baltimore Homicide. Her train of thought took her right back to where she had begun. Danny had been only out of college, meaning that he immediately forsook a career, and his dream, of being an astronaut for that of a law enforcement officer. Granted, his lifespan hadn't really been statistically shortened, but the unbelievable sacrifice he had made for the sake of his family and everyone he knew was something Kim could only begin to fathom.

"Why," she began to ask, feeling a bit reluctant to bring the topic up, "Why do you owe it to him?"

Vlad looked a bit surprised at her inquiry, but answered her to the best of his ability, despite the pain of all the memories, even if they were four years dead and buried.

"His parents worked for me under contract, and when they died, I looked into their disappearances with the local police department. It was sensitive information of course, and allowing the locals to just throw around confidential information was just beyond me, and I wouldn't have it, even if I legally do not have jurisdiction. I set them up to the job, and never expended my best friends and their children the protection allowed even the lowliest agents. It is, really, my entire fault."

Her phone rang shrilly and suddenly in the pocket of her unorthodox green cargo pants. Kim excused herself from the hall and from Vlad Masters' presence to take her call outside where calls were allowed.

"Special Agent Possible speaking."

"Kim Possible, I trust you are well. I need you to introduce the lovely Miss Monique Simone to our building. You will be here in half an hour, since you are at Suburban Hospital no doubt on your lunch break. Because you know each other, it will be easier to have you give her a tour and help her set up a workspace."

"Of course, Director, I will leave right away."

"You may want to dismiss yourself from Director Masters before you leave. It would be terribly rude for you not to, seeing as he is quite a stickler for propriety."

Director Chronus' words made her shiver a little, always feeling a bit strange when he seemed to know exactly where she was, exactly what she was doing, and exactly who she was with without any information on her part. The man was, well, weird.

"I won't forget. Good day, Director."

She snapped the phone shut and excused herself from Vlad, telling him that she was called back to work, but she couldn't escape the bit of his soul he had exposed – the bit of Danny's soul as well. His gray eyes haunted her.

2.

"God, girl, when are you gonna get a grip on yourself? I haven't seen you like this since Bonnie Rockwaller took your place as cheer captain because you broke your leg saving the world and everything!"

The usually strait-laced, fiery-haired agent groaned audibly despite the loud hum of people around her. Her red hair was fanned around her like a mane as she planted her face on the shiny bar counter, an amber colored drink a tumbler to her right.

"Mmmph mrrr muuughhh murr nuhhdd!"

The woman next to her raised a perfectly sculpted black eyebrow, one elbow casually sitting on the bar counter, a frothy blue drink in her hand. Her dark eyes inspected the scene before her, brow climbing higher with every passing moment. Eventually she raised the drink to her dark red lips and sipped elegantly at it, a smile carving into her face with appreciation at the taste.

"Honey, you've had one Scotch, you cannot possibly be slurring already," the woman with mocha-colored skin and perfect brows said exasperatedly as she tugged gently at Kim's shoulder with her free hand.

"Besides, you'll ruin your makeup, and there's nothing worse than unsightly makeup when you're going out – you'll scare off every available bachelor!"

Eventually the redhead raised her head from the bar, condensation covering the surface where her face had been a moment before.

"I don't want every available bachelor!" she pouted, a frown line forming between her equally perfect brows.

"No, you just want Ron Stoppable," the lady next to her pointed out with finality.

Kim narrowed her eyes for a moment, giving her old friend a long glare. She soon gave up and turned her eyes downward to her drink. Picking it up with purpose, she downed her Scotch in a single gulp.

"That's never going to happen, Monique, and I think that you know that," Kim finished, waving the bartender over.

"Scotch, three fingers, no ice," she called out to the tall, broody man behind the counter.

"…And a Pina Colada!" Monique managed to add, with a wink and a giggle, before he turned away.

"Do you remember when everything was easy? When all we cared about was the latest collection from Club Banana and who Josh Mankey was taking to Homecoming?"

"I feel you, girl. Life just had to bite us in the ass, didn't it, honey? These days I worry if it's gonna be my pretty ass on my autopsy table, with thirteen stab wounds, or eyes gorged out."

"I think what worries me the most is that none of it really touches me anymore," Kim sighed as the bartender came with her Scotch and a frothy white confection that was undoubtedly Monique's Pina Colada, "it's all clinical to me; everyone's a target or a victim, a loved one, an UnSub. They don't have names or family or real experiences to me anymore."

She downed her Scotch again in one sip.

"Am I jaded, Monique?" the young redhead implored of the impeccably dressed African-American woman on her right.

"Yes, you are about as jaded as you can get, honey buns. Now let's get sodding drunk after I tell the bartender to not let us go home with anyone, and call us a cab before two a.m., ok?"

"Aghh! I'm a federally employed law enforcement officer; I can't get wasted off my ass!" Kim all but shouted with a horrified expression on her face.

Monique looked Kim up and down, taking in her deep, emerald green dress; the v-neck that dipped low on her chest; the swinging, knee-length skirt of her dress. Her eyes quickly glanced to the red-head's small bag, and then to her thigh, where she could see the outline of a strap under the light knit jersey fabric. Trust Kim to be packing a gun in a holster around her thigh, plus a backup gun in her bag.

Monique rolled her eyes when she saw Kim's indignation at being so thoroughly looked-over and said, "Sweetie, you carry three guns on a regular basis, and you're packing two on your night out. It's a Saturday, for God's sake, if anyone creepy hits on you or tries to mug you, you have one of your guns to shoot him with."

"That's illegal. I'll get my badge and gun taken away."

Kim frowned and ordered another round of drinks, but Monique interrupted her order of Scotch and instead ordered her a Mojito, to which Kim had really no energy to oppose, since she was a little bit buzzed from her previous two drinks.

"Lighten up, girl. You'll sleep off the hangover tomorrow, and on Monday we get started on the good stuff. I haven't seen a dead body in a week, and I want to get started right away; make a good impression and all on the man upstairs."

"Ira? Oh, he already knows what kind of impression you're going to make, as well as what you'll wear on your first day on the job, and exactly who will like you right away, who will hit on you till the day you die – well, actually everyone knows that'll be Tucker – who will hate you then like you, and who will hate you forever and avoid you as much as possible."

"Oh no, you're not saying my outfits are predictable, are you?"

The redhead laughed throatily and fully for the first time in more than a year. She had missed the easy and carefree company of her best friend since high school, and even if Monique Simone dealt with dead people for a living, she had always been the person Kim could go to escape her job. It was no different now, even if she was reminded a bit of the times she had spent with Ron and Barkin at bars similar to this.

"Never, Monique, never."

"So, Kimmy, aside from what's going on with your practically adopted baby, Danny, and the fact that you're jaded and will never let go of Ron or Barkin, what's the drama?"

Kim choked a little on her Mojito, "Thanks, honey, for being so unobtrusively blunt."

"What are friends for?" Monique quipped in return, "But, you still haven't answered my question."

"It still amazes me that you became a M.E. You flounce around in your four inch Louboutins, and chat me up on the latest fashions out of Paris, and you're doing all that while cutting into a dead guy and playing with his internal organs," Kim replied with another sip of her drink, which she found pleasant and girly. It wasn't Bourbon, but it would have to do.

She continued after her sip of the fruity drink, "But to answer your question, honey, the only real drama is this case that I have almost no leads on. My best agent has been taken out of action, and I am irrevocably cursed."

Monique sighed and shook her head, her glossy black curls bouncing about her shoulders, "You're not cursed, for God's sake! Let's not talk about work. Your best friend since high school that you haven't seen in three years now has brought you out to a nice, elegant bar in Georgetown to wind down after a long week. As much as I love dead people, we can probably save the murder for Monday, okay?"

Kim put her drink down on the glossy black bar table and her green eyes glinted behind her elegant black liner. She hadn't been out in quite a while now, perhaps more than a year, and she bit her lip gently, thinking about how long overdue this night out was; about how long her favorite shoes had sat in the back of her closet. Her nude colored peep-toed heels now hung off of her toes, blending tastefully with the color of her skin. Her eyes met Monique's and Kim smiled again, for the second time that night.

Kim's phone beeped shrilly from her bag, and she suddenly froze. It was her work phone. Looking at the number, her face drained of the rosy flush she had acquired in the past two hours she had been sitting at the bar with Monique. The hospital was calling her at eleven-thirty in the evening, and she could only begin to fathom why; her thoughts leaned towards the negative options.

"Hello?" she asked tentatively, as Monique watched panic set in on her friend's face.

3.

"I can't believe she's making me consolidate evidence with an eighteen year old! An eighteen year old forensic scientist and computer technician with an IQ and online Tetris score to rival mine!" Tucker complained avidly to his companion across the metal table.

He sat on an old metal chair, crouched over the table between him and Valerie that was strewn with blueprints and mechanical parts. Valerie was intent on her work and fiddled determinately with the parts, indistinguishable to anyone but Tucker and Valerie. Their pet project had taken quite a long time to make, starting from scratch every time the device failed to work properly.

For four months they had tried their best to make the device work, and every time they managed to fix the thing that had gone wrong, something else decided not to work. So they danced around their project for months and months, and now it was the middle of April and they were sitting in an old abandoned lab in the basement of the FBI, where old file cabinets had been cleared away in the transfer from analog to digital ten years ago, and the silver watch on Valerie's wrist said that it was getting close to midnight.

Valerie slurped Ramen noodles from a Styrofoam cup, garnering envious glances from Tucker, who had not eaten in about twenty minutes. He never really held a reputation for patience when it came to food, especially anything that had anything to do with meat.

"Stop complaining, Tucker. You know you like him."

He merely grunted unintelligibly and went back to fiddling with the minute parts of what could have been a cell phone in another life.

"Ugh! God, when are we going to finish this damned project!" he complained loudly to her, "I mean, how on earth are we supposed to make a device that looks like a Blackberry, is equipped with sonar, infrared, and radio waves, not to mention have the ability of a high tech computer to hack into any system remotely and without detection, and on top of that, it actually had to make calls, secure and non-secure alike!"

Valerie giggled a bit at his frustration.

"It'll get done, as long as you stop getting so distracted by everything that comes within sensory distance."

"Are you saying I have a short attention span?" he asked; a teasing frown on his face.

"I'm saying you should stop staring at my boobs and make that infrared detector already."

She giggled even louder when she saw his face; he looked like a child who had gotten his hand caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar. He laughed too, but took her advice and went back to fiddling with the little parts, glancing back to the blueprint that served as a tablecloth to Valerie's late dinner.

"Tucker," Valerie started about half an hour later, placing everything she was doing down on the metal table.

"What?" he said petulantly, barely peering over his glasses to look at her, his entire focus on the device.

"Tucker, when will Danny wake up?" she said quietly, almost sadly, "Imaging missing a birthday because you're in a coma; one day you're this age, and when you wake up, a whole lifetime has passed you by. It's only, what, two days, until his birthday? I would hate for April 30th to come around and have him still…you know…living-challenged…"

He straitened himself and put his work down, looking her square in the face.

"I can't possibly know the answer to that. I really can't Valerie. There is no way of knowing when he'll wake up."

She could hear the pain in his voice, and she knew Danny and Tucker had been well on their way to becoming fast friends. There were just those kinds of people; those people that were just meant for each other and within hours of meeting each other were completely inseparable. She and Kim had never had that happy occurrence; it had taken them years to trust each other, and it was that long uphill battle for friendship that kept them glued together. The things one toils endlessly for are the things one will never give up heedlessly.

"We all miss him, Tucker. Don't be afraid to say it."

Tucker sighed and turned his body from her, his entire posture closed off and unwilling. It was clear that he did not want to talk about Danny, and Valerie knew exactly why. There was a good chance he would never wake up. And, although his physical wounds had long healed, she knew that his psychological ones had not, whatever they were. Closing himself off from the world was just his way of trying to heal.

"Tucker," she started again, but he cut her off sharply.

"What!" he demanded of her, meeting her hypnotizing gaze again.

She resisted a gasp at the expression in his eyes, but her face betrayed a millisecond flash of eyebrow – the ingrained micro-expression of surprise that not even the best liar could erase. He was not quite well versed enough in people, let alone poker, to recognize it, though.

In the corner of his eyes, being his thick glasses, were tears glistening.

"I was just going to ask you what you thought of Dr. Simone. I haven't really had the time to talk to her since she started work about a week back because the Director has kept me busy and I just wanted to know if you had gotten the chance to see her and- "

She was abruptly cut off from her rant when Tucker pressed a finger to her lips. Valerie was startled enough by the action alone to cease all of her babbling.

"Shh…" he whispered quietly, obviously listening for something.

He found the source of the noise: his own telephone, buzzing adamantly in his laptop briefcase. Picking it up, he saw Kim's work number on the screen and he flipped it open, confusion plainly written all over his face.

"Tucker Foley speaking, is everything alright, Kim?"

Valerie's face mirrored the confusion on Tucker's, his finger gone from her lips, but she didn't make to speak. It was quite close to midnight – there was no reason for her to call unless there was an emergency.

"Tucker, get to the hospital now! It's Danny!"

She hung up, giving him no other explanation; the urgency in her voice was enough to incite panic in both agents.

Tucker grabbed his jacket, hanging off of the back of the metal chair, and in a second was dragging Valerie out of the door by the hand. Valerie was taken off guard at the momentum and struggled to put her own coat on. April nights were much, much colder than the days that teased of summer. April nights still whispered of winter, if one wasn't prepared.

It took them merely minutes to get to the parking garage, where Tucker found his black, standard issue SUV. Before he even reached the tiny remote that unlocked the car, his keys were snatched out of his hand and Valerie was in the front seat of his car.

"I'll get us there in half the time," she said with finality as he hopped into the seat beside her and buckled up.

Her face was hard, unreadable, as she zoomed out of the parking lot at twice the recommended speed limit. Out on the main street, she turned the sirens on and drove, haphazardly and single-mindedly to the hospital. She silently thanked the CIA training that she usually cursed.

In a record ten minutes, she turned off the ignition and Tucked dialed Kim's phone number as they both ran to the doors of the hospital.

"Kim we're here," he hurriedly said into the phone, and hung up immediately, not leaving her time to answer.

He snapped the phone shut and with Valerie at his side ran up to the floor where Danny was, ignoring the night shift nurses that yelled at them. On the floor with all the coma patients, Tucker and Valerie slowed down instinctively; they feared the worst and felt like walking would give them time to prepare for…whatever faced them.

Valerie put a hand out in front of Tucker as she saw Kim walk out of Danny's room to meet them. The blinds were drawn in his room, and Kim was wearing an emerald green dress and high heels. Her eyes were red and bloodshot, fat tears rolling freely down her cheek as she bit her lip. Valerie could smell the alcohol on her, but Kim looked pretty steady on her feet. She chastised herself, remembering that Kim was Irish back on her mother's side and Russian on her father's. Of course the woman could hold her liquor. She'd seen her drink five glasses of that bourbon she loved so much and walk a straight line, while Ron was off his rocker at two beers.

Both her heart and Tucker's fell to the pit of their stomachs at her tears. Tucker had never seen her cry; she was his illustrious, extremely bad-ass, formerly CIA Special Ops team leader and she was crying, of all things. They just stood there, and while Tucker just looked more and more like a kicked puppy, Valerie's CIA training was working up a storm in her head.

She didn't want to delude herself too early into thinking that the news was good, and not bad as Kim was making it seem, but there was a bit of hope in her chest that was just fueled by the tiny micro-expressions on Kim's face. After a moment of carefully watching the older woman's face, Valerie crossed her arms definitively.

"I'm going to kill you woman," she said, her gaze cold, heartless.

Murder was clearly in her eyes, but after a moment it dissolved and she broke past Kim into Danny's room. Tucker stood dumb in front of Kim, but she quickly cleared her throat and stepped aside to let Tucker walk into the room.

"Hi, Tucker," Danny said tentatively from his hospital bed, a wide grin plastered on his face.

4.

The greenish lights flickered ominously in the back stairwell, the cold black metal grooved and bearing the signs of age. Every few minutes the hanging light bulbs on each landing would go out completely, every time followed by claps of thunder a few moments later. She knew the lights went out with each stroke of lightning, but in the windowless emergency stairwell, she only knew the lightning struck because it was always followed by a deafening clap of thunder, claps that shook her bones.

She was alone, undisturbed, in the stairwell of her apartment building in the Upper West Side, and though she usually liked it that way, she couldn't help but feel the ghost of loneliness settling over her more and more often these days. In grade school, the tough kids would always brag about how they weren't afraid of anything; how they were never lonely and never dependant. Sam was one of those kids, bragging, boasting, and pushing people around. She had always been like that, and she couldn't help but think that if maybe her parents had told her that they loved her just a little bit more, things would have been different. Looking back as adults look back upon their childhoods with new perspectives, she saw that the kids she knew were not brave because they were insecure or needed to prove something; they were loved, and comforted, their fears kissed away by a mother, father, or a kind, loving nanny.

She never had anyone to hold her when it stormed, which is why she now was curled up on the landing of the back stairwell, on the same floor her apartment was on, shivering despite the sweltering heat and electricity in the June air. The air was suffocating, yet she didn't even think to escape to the cool calm of her air-conditioned apartment. For the eighth time that day she pulled a letter out of her pocket and opened it, intending to read it over another time. The paper was well worn and creased form being opened over and over again, folded into many tiny squares, and sitting in the back pocket of her jeans.

Idly scanning the paper again, Sam barely knew what to feel, or how to feel. She knew in her heart that what she was accepting was what was right for her; right for the world as a whole. She needed to get out of New York, having been born and raised there; away from the pollution and the electricity flowing through the city; away from the disapproving eyes of her parents and politics. She had to get away. But, what the letter before her proposed was not just a change in scenery, it was a change in energy; a complete change in the way she had been living for the past twenty-five years.

However, there was that nagging in the back of her brain that told her that she would be up against something that terrified her. A cushy research job that she had also been offered was something that would require many less sleepless nights and less heartache on her part.

Earlier that month, Professor Lancer had told her that there was a position available in research at Stanford University. She would be able to design her own project if she wanted, or participate in one that was already created. Either way, she would have hefty grant money awarded her that would pay for not only her research, but living expenses. Of course that wouldn't have really been necessary, since her hefty trust fund already allowed her an apartment in New York City and full coverage of tuition at an Ivy League university. Living in California would not be much more expensive, perhaps even less expensive. Back in January she would have readily accepted the offer. Lab work required minimal human contact, and what she had thought that she always wanted to do – figure things out about people from afar, influence them from afar, without ever having to delve into their minds, their pain, and their nightmares.

But, as she thought more and more about that day in the hospital, the same day she had seen for the first time the demons in the souls of man, the more she thought about Daniel, and how close he had been to death that day, the more she knew that her chosen path was the right one. The bitter taste of hell that she had seen that day would never go away, even if she ran as far as California. So, Sam chose to fight it. Running had never really been her style anyways.

She was running headlong into the middle of it all; all of the death, horror, and persecution the world had to offer, and she was going to do it all on a government salary. Again, Daniel's beaten and bloody face resurfaced in her mind; it was an image that had been ingrained so thoroughly in her mind that she could trace the outlines of the gashes on his face; she could pinpoint within a millimeter where the first stab wound had been.

As with all memories, the image of Daniel molded into the scene of the crime; the image of the black body bag carrying the dead woman into a truck; blood splattered shamelessly on the inside of the store window – blood that was undoubtedly Daniel's.

Her new job put her in a small clinic that gave free trauma counseling to victims of violent crimes in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Thirty minutes from D.C., it was an area that was not graced with privilege and opportunity. Again, the logical, cold, cut off part of her mind told her that she was a fool. She was passing up research at Stanford of all places, a campus that could be mistaken for a resort, for a slummy area of the suburbs. The irrational part of her brain won out every time she had this argument with herself, because all she ever saw when she closed her eyes, was the world of suffering in Daniel's. Her tiny green frog croaked rhythmically against her chest.

"God, what did I get myself into?" Sam groaned quietly.

...to be continued...

A/N: REVIEW. They encourage me to write better, longer chapters.

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