Still suffering from hiatus-induced withdrawals and neuroses. This website is my Dr. Joe, basically! Thanks to all of you out there writing and reading, you're all wonderful.

So after swearing up and down that I was done with multi-chapters, I managed to stay away for, what, a month? Less, probably. I present to you the results of my utter lack of restraint...

A Tangled Web (1)

"Sorry about the early wake-up call, Captain."

Sitting up in her bed, Sharon reached for the lamp on the nightstand. The first light of dawn was just streaming in through the window. "Go ahead, Lieutenant. Did we catch a murder?"

"…not exactly." Provenza's doubtful hum made her frown, but before she could ask for clarifications he continued: "We caught something, alright. But I'd say it's … premature… to call it murder."

Sharon sighed. She hated the cryptic banter at this early hour. "Is there a victim?"

"Well – there's a dead guy, yes," confirmed Provenza, again with the same dubious tone, "he's on his way to Morales as we speak. Except I'm not sure that he's a victim. He jumped off the Sixth Street bridge around midnight," he explained in the end, and Sharon's irritation turned to surprise.

"A suicide?" She was starting to get a headache. "Is there any evidence of foul play?"

"Not a shred. In fact, there are several people who saw our jumper take the leap all by himself."

Sharon shook her head; it felt like she was missing something, here. "Lieutenant – if there's no murder, and there's no victim, why did Major Crimes get the call?" It better not have been because the dead man was connected to the Mayor or whatever other high-placed political figure. Pope and Taylor may have scrapped the unfortunately titled 'priority homicide' a long time ago, but Sharon thought that the attitude behind that was still very much in place.

" – the magic words, the guards at the facility heard 'bomb' and 'everyone' and called in the troops."

Caught up in her private condemnation of the preferential dispensation of justice, she'd missed part of his explanation, and had to pause to process what she had heard. "Are you saying that this man was involved in some sort of wide-scale bomb threat?"

"Oh there's no evidence of that," she could hear Provenza's dry annoyance through the phone. "The guy just said so. Right before he jumped off a hundred-foot-high bridge… which you'd think might raise some mild concerns about his sanity."

Sharon agreed wholeheartedly. "Alright, so what about this case makes it a major crime, exactly?" She felt that she was using the word 'case' loosely. Now, Sharon wasn't one to turn down a chance to bring any criminal to justice, only in this situation there was hardly a criminal to speak of, and if they had to follow up on the ravings of every nutcase who ingested, injected or inhaled a little too much on a Saturday night…

"Bad luck," the man deadpanned, and Sharon rolled her eyes.

"Lieutenant…"

"Captain, let me spare you the effort," said Provenza. "All the objections you can think of, I've already made to Taylor. Given how I'm still standing here next to a puddle of human entrails, and calling you at six a.m. on a Sunday, you can guess that I've been overruled."

Sharon sighed, letting her chin drop to her chest. "I'll be there in forty-five minutes."

"We can meet you at the station," the lieutenant offered. "There's not much left to do here anyway."

Sharon let out another sigh as she walked down the hallway to Rusty's room. He wouldn't like being woken up this early, but she didn't want to leave without letting him know, either. Halfway to his room, she changed her mind: she could shower first, then let him know just before she left.

After a shower so quick that it was barely enough to wake her up, she got dressed in a hurry, tempted to just slip on a pair of jeans before she eventually decided on a more business-like pant suit. It was more appropriate, sure, but damn it, she hated donning office armor on a Sunday.

The morning routine out of the way, there was no choice but to walk over and bother Rusty. She needed to leave in less than ten minutes, and it wouldn't have surprised Sharon if it took that long just to get him aware enough to process what she was saying.

His room was dark, the curtains drawn, as usual: Rusty was not exactly a morning person, not that many teenagers were. Sharon smiled at the sight of his shirt thrown inside out over the back of a chair, and the comic book peeking from under the backpack on the floor. He was never going to be the tidiest boy, that much was certain, but she knew that by now the mess was no longer meant as a challenge to her. Having his things lying about simply confirmed the room as his own space... and since coming back home after the week spent at Provenza's house, he'd been hoarding and settling in all over again with a vengeance. It was as though he wanted his things to be scattered and visible in every corner, just to make sure…

Sharon had been letting him get away with some of it, for that reason.

They still had weekly matches on the subject of cleaning up, of course.

She leaned over the bump in the comforter that she recognized as his head, even though only a tuft of blond hair was peeking out. She couldn't help passing her fingers through his hair, then her hand settled somewhere in the general region of his shoulders, and she squeezed slightly.

"Rusty." Her whisper was calm: he'd been jumpy lately, understandably so, and after the first time he'd startled awake with a frightened jump and a panicked look on his face, she'd toned down the wake-up calls. "Rusty..."

Except he'd been slowly relaxing back into a more tranquil state, and with that came the same old resistance to being roused in the mornings. The blond mop moved slightly as she stroked it again, but its owner gave no indication of actually waking up and listening.

"Rusty," Sharon spoke a little louder, though still calm and soothing. "It's me. Wake up for a minute… I've been called out on a case."

He shifted slightly this time, though the rest of his head still didn't emerge from underneath the comforter, and there was a muffled sound: "No."

Sharon smiled, although she wasn't sure whether he was saying 'no' to the idea of waking up, or to her being called out on a case, or just a generic 'no' because that was what one did at six a.m. on a Sunday. "Rusty. I'm going to have to leave for the station, okay? You can go right back to sleep, but I wanted to let you know. Alright?"

Another muffled groan, and his head shifted again.

"I'm going to take that as a yes." She lightly caressed his shoulder again, and she could feel him moving a little, so maybe he was at least partly awake. "Okay, honey. There's plenty of breakfast food in the fridge, and I'll call you a little later when you're awake."

With one last squeeze of his shoulder, she got up, and was about to turn and leave when there was another shift in the lump underneath the comforter, and the tip of his nose peered out on one side.

"…mmtime is it…?" he mumbled, and Sharon's lips curled affectionately.

"Just past six a.m. Go back to sleep."

"Sharon…" Her name came out as a grumbling sigh.

Sharon smiled a little wistfully at the child-like tone, and on an impulse she took a step back toward the bed, and leaned over to kiss the top of his head. "Go back to sleep, Rusty. I'll call you later."

It wasn't a gesture that she would've normally indulged in, but there was something so heartbreakingly endearing about him that she couldn't help it. The last few weeks had been difficult, the two of them swinging all over the place from closeness and reassurances to fits of anxiety and lashing out. But then there were moments like this, when her chest just tightened with emotion and she wanted nothing more than to fix everything and keep the world from ever doing another ounce of harm to him.

As she straightened again, Rusty ducked his nose back under the blanket, squirming slightly, and he might've murmured something but it was so faint that she couldn't make out the words.

Sharon backed out of the room and closed the door, before walking back into the kitchen to finish the last of her coffee. She then slipped on her shoes and grabbed her bag, and when she left she made double sure to lock the apartment properly. The security detail outside the door was gone, of course… but when she knew that Rusty would be home alone like this, she privately wished that she could've kept them.

And that was just one of the reasons that their life hadn't been all roses after the letters nightmare had ended...

"No ID and no hits so far in the prints database." Lt. Tao pushed his chair back from his desk to get a better view of the rest of the team. "Dr. Morales will try to work on dental records or maybe a facial reconstruction after he performs the autopsy…"

"Until then," Flynn put in, "our best hope is that the crime scene techs find his wallet when they search the extended perimeter." He looked every bit as grumpy as the rest of them, dark circles under his eyes and his hair sticking out a little more than usual. Seven-thirty a.m. was far too early to be already in the swing of things at work. And on a Sunday no less.

Sharon looked at the murder board, which held a couple of grainy pictures of their victim – Provenza had added quotation marks around the word "victim". "Let's also notify local shelters and psychiatric facilities… see if they're missing anyone. Who witnessed the jump?"

Sanchez checked the file in front of him. "Two of the night guards at the storage facility nearby, and a handful of employees from a film crew. The area is used to shoot a lot of stock footage of the city," he explained, "and these guys needed some night-time sequences, so they were there until late tonight."

"Any chance they caught anything on camera?" asked Sharon.

"They caught everything on camera," Tao replied, tapping his monitor. "And the facility has surveillance as well – we've got this from a few different angles. I've been looking at the footage and I can't see anyone else in the frame with our guy."

The Captain nodded. "Let's take a look."

While Tao and Buzz set up a larger screen for everyone to see the footage, she exchanged a glance with Flynn; the lieutenant shook his head and rolled his eyes:

"Saturday night jumpers… this is the kind of thing we had to deal with when I first went out on patrol."

"This man made threats about bombing a public site, before he jumped," she pointed out. "That makes him a special interest case."

"Yeah, probably 'cause he was high. Doesn't make it a major crime."

Sharon's only answer was a noncommittal hum. She couldn't truly disagree, but it wasn't good form to be complaining, either. After all, if she wasn't on board with taking the case seriously, how could she ask her team to be? So she'd have to keep her opinion to herself… but just for the record, yes, the only major crime there was rousing six elite LAPD officers at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to investigate the rantings of a man in a most likely altered state of mind.

"It's that damn meeting on Friday," Flynn continued. "I knew something like this would happen… Mayor meets all the higher-ups in local law enforcement, they spend half a day talking, and we get double the workload as a consequence."

Sykes turned her head to eye him curiously. "What meeting?"

"Someone hasn't been paying attention in class," Provenza drawled. "'Threat prevention agenda', latest buzzwords on everyone's little black books."

"One of the local news agencies recently put out a five-year report showing an increase in violence sprees in public areas," Sanchez provided.

"Right before local elections," added Provenza, "shockingly."

Julio shrugged his agreement. "The Mayor feels that our city isn't doing a great job training its law enforcement in how to handle large-scale crises," he told Sykes. "That's what the Friday meeting was about. Increased awareness, proactive measures and so on."

"Oh. I guess it makes sense that they'd want us to look into this guy, then." Noticing everyone's looks of disagreement, Amy cleared her throat. "I mean – if they're worried about an attack on the public…"

Flynn rolled his eyes again. "This guy's probably just a lunatic, not important enough for the FBI or any of the anti-terrorism units to bother."

"But," Tao put in, "they don't want to be seen ignoring this so soon after Friday's meeting …"

" …so they're passing him on to us while they get to enjoy their Sunday brunches," finished Provenza.

"Bastards," Andy grumbled, and no one raised their voice to disagree.

This story will contain an actual case, with all the associated mystery and speculation and suspect-chasing, and feature the whole team fairly heavily. Of course there will be healthy doses of Sharon/Rusty drama because I can't help myself. Other elements you'd like to see, let me know as we move along through the chapters. (in the interest of full disclosure, this story will *most likely* not be going in any blatantly romantic directions for any of the characters, but you know I'm a great fan of reading between the lines, so there might be *some* wish fulfillment on that front.)

Thank you for reading!