Title: Lighting Candles

Author: Jennie/Jen/Alethia

Rating: PG-13

Summary: In the space of a moment, a child is taken and everything changes.

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness."- Eleanor Roosevelt

AN: While it may not seem like it at the moment, this story will be Greg/Sara. They just have to work their way through some rather large obstacles first.

Chapter 1: Missing Her.

"A wise man once said that tragedy is not what we suffer, but what we miss."- Anonymous

"Look! It's a dead bird!"

The six year-old poked at the carcass with a stick, awing the children gathered around her. With dark curls and a slender figure, she was a pretty child. However, her looks belied her true nature- as her mother well knew, she could become quite the terror.

And her fixation with dead animals didn't help any.

Sighing, her mother got up from the blanket and shook her head in resigned amusement. "Lis, darling, leave the bird alone." Throwing a look down at the two year-old sitting on the blanket by her feet, currently involved in eating crackers, she deigned it safe to venture to her daughter. "Come here, honey."

"Mommy, look!" Lis, short for Rosalind Elisabeth, poked the bird one more time. "How did the bird die?"

Sighing, her mother sent a look towards her son, who was still munching away and faced her daughter. "I don't know. But why don't we leave the bird alone and go play on the swings?"

Lis screwed up her face in thought. She looked quite like her father when she did that, her mother mused. "First I want to know what happened to the bird."

"Rosalind…" Her mother drew out her first name. Lis very rarely went by her true given name and it was a signal that she was about to get in very big trouble if she didn't obey.

"Okay." Tossing the stick down angrily, the small girl stormed towards the swings. Sighing, her mother returned to the blanket, where Eirik, her son, had abandoned the crackers and was now pulling up grass. She'd have to clean up the blanket now…

"Flower?" Eirik held out a clover he had picked and she accepted it, putting it along with a lock of hair behind her ear. Settling down, she dipped into the basket and pulled out a cup of juice.

"Would you like some juice?" Eirik grabbed for it and she glanced at her watch. It was now noon and though she wasn't very hungry at the moment, she knew that her daughter would be getting hungry. Just like her father, she sighed. The man did like his mealtimes. Not that she begrudged her ex-husband his daughter- but the separation and divorce proceedings were still rather new and she was having a hard time adjusting. Taking a larger responsibility for the children had been one change, as well as simply noticing how much her children took after their father. The resemblances that had barely been noticeable while they were still married and living together were now high-lighted during the time she'd rather forget.

As if she ever could.

Pushing the thoughts away from her ex, she pulled out egg salad sandwiches, the one flavor that her picky daughter loved. Handing one to Eirik, who began to chow down immediately- again, something that resembled his father- she stood up and surveyed the equipment. But after a casual glance, she didn't see her.

"Lis? Lis, darling? Lis! Rosalind Elisabeth!" She frantically searched for any sign of her daughter. Lis should have been on the swings, but she wasn't and she wasn't on slide or the jungle gym either. Dressed in blue jeans and a bright orange jacket (her father had dressed her that morning, was all she cared to remark about her daughter's clothing), she shouldn't have been hard to spot.

She wasn't there.

Glancing nervously around, she ran back- how had she ended up by the sand- and grabbed up Eirik before running towards the swings once again. "Lis! Lissy! Rosalind! Where are you? Where are you?" By now she had attracted the attention of other parents watching their children.

Tears running down her face, she screamed for her daughter over and over again. "Elisabeth! Rosalind Elisabeth! Come out!"

"Are-are you all right?" A concerned woman placed a hand on her shoulder and she couldn't help but shudder. "Shall- I think I'll call the police."

"She- she has to be here somewhere!" She practically dropped the boy on the ground, swirling around. "She can't just have disappeared- where's the science in that? My daughter- where is she? Where…is…she…?" Collapsing on the ground, she reached for and pulled at the very grass her son had been tearing up minutes before. Had it been minutes? It seemed like a life time…

As she looked up at the bright blue sky and felt the light breeze, with the scent of her daughter- it hit her. Her daughter was gone. Missing.

She collapsed.

"I just got here myself," Captain Jim Brass was saying as he led the responding CSIs towards the park and purposed scene of the crime. "911 call came in about half an hour ago. Lady calls in that a woman starts screaming for her daughter, can't find her. Officers responded to the scene, did a perimeter search, found no sign of the girl. The mother fainted, but she's been woken up and the son is currently being watched over by an officer."

"Two children?" Gil Grissom asked, frowning. "But only the girl is gone."

"From what witnesses say, the daughter had been 'playing' with a dead bird, mother scolded, daughter went off to play on swings, mother returned to blanket, where boy was sitting. Mother starts to get lunch ready, looks for daughter and then starts yelling." Brass shuffled his papers. "No one has talked to the mother yet- they only just got her up and were waiting for you."

"Who were the witnesses, then?" Nick Stokes asked, adjusting his sun shades.

"Other kids, their parents. They noticed when the girl went on about the dead bird. From what the witnesses said, if the mother hadn't intervened, the girl would have probably tried to autopsy it." Brass shook his head. "And then everyone noticed when the mother started screaming. This is a quiet park, in a quiet neighborhood. And it got real silent after the kidnapping."

"It's been declared a kidnapping, then?" All three heads swiveled towards Greg Sanders. After over seven and a half years as a full CSI, he may not have been a rookie anymore- but that didn't mean the team stopped treating him that way. "I just mean that last time the kid purposefully went and hid in a tree, of all things. Was up there for three hours before he decided the game wasn't fun anymore and came down." Shrugging, he continued. "It could be the same kind of thing."

He really hoped it was.

"Possibly." Grissom replied. "But this is a little girl, not a nine year-old boy with a habit of running off."

"We're almost there, by the way, so I'll finish up the briefing. Mom's unresponsive, but the girl's named Rose or something similar." Brass shook his head as he eyed the youngest CSI of the group. "You going to be all right, Greg?"

Almost immediately, the two other investigators turned to face him. He was the only one of the bunch with children- small children at that- and like Catherine, he sometimes had problems working cases where children were the victims. Not that it wasn't hard for everyone, but being a parent always made it harder.

"I'll be fine." He motioned for the group to move on, but Nick and Brass were still staring at him. "Seriously. Sara's got them for the day. It's just that Rose kind of hit a cord, you know?"

"I can take you off this case if I have to," Grissom finally said. "But if this does turn out to be a full kidnapping, we're going to need everyone on it, which means I'll need you anyway."

"It's all right." Greg stressed. "I'll just call her later."

"Whatever, man." Nick patted him on the shoulder. "How are things going anyway?"

Rolling his eyes, Greg sighed. "Between us? Not brilliant. It's rather…complicated. Lawyers only seem to make things worse. But the kids were looking forwards to seeing their mom today, during daylight."

"I'm surprised Ecklie let her have the day off. Sara working Days…" Nick shook his head.

"It's not like it's a new development, Nick. For the last seven years, we've been on different shifts. Now it's simply her turn for Days, and she seems to like it." Greg and Nick continued on behind Brass and Grissom, who had both gone silent as they neared the scene.

"I know, I know. Just saying. How are you going to split custody?"

Greg groaned. "If only we knew." But he fell silent as they reached the crime scene tape, although their view was blocked by officers. Brass conferred with them as another officer lifted up the tape.

Greg and Nick caught up to Grissom to hear the officer's first hand account.

"…refuses to speak. We have the child's proper name now, though. The mother's in shock is what the medics say."

"An ID on the mother?" But Greg wasn't listening anymore to Grissom's questions. His eyes were on the woman huddled on the bumper of the ambulance, clutching her small son in her arms.

"Sara?"