I went to hear some music at a coffee house tonight. It was a Friday at the end of a long week, and the music was a swooning melancholy … but this is the image that came to mind. It's not much, but just a simple moment in time.

These characters are not mine but I enjoy them.

The day had been long and dreary. Smog and rain left the world bleak throughout the day. The case had turned sour when it had turned out to be the mother.

And the pieces had fallen together while she had returned with Sheldon and Flack to the house where the vic had lived. It had been partly to return some of the evidence and partly ask a few more questions about the brother, or uncle depended on the witness. Then they'd known—and the mother had known that they knew. She'd been the killer. She'd been the one to set it all up … in trying to escape, she'd implicated herself, drawn their attention to the ripped photos in the garbage … all in front of her teenage daughter.

It had all made sense then. The charges on the credit cards, the accusations post mortem.

As Flack dealt with the mother, the teenager had turned on Lindsay, her words, her voice a haunting melody.

Someone had taken her away. Sheldon had taken her away and left Lindsay alone in the room, with the words reverberating.

You wanted her to be the one. You just want her to be the one.

But it wasn't so much the words, but the young face, that mirrored the guilt and the feelings from long ago. From her friends that visited her from their graves, entering into her dreams with dark, accusing words.

You lived. You didn't save us.

She wanted Danny.

She sighed a little and curled up in the back booth and watched through the people and the haze, watching nothing at all. It was Wednesday at Cozy's and somewhere up on stage Mac was playing. The soft jazz music flowed over her, as she hid in the deep shadows of the back of the room.

She didn't want to go home. Not alone. Not yet.

They'd been busy lately, pulled into two different directions as cases overlapped and kept them in other places, on different schedules and even on opposite sides of the lab. She'd tried to reach him as she was leaving, but she'd only received his voicemail.

Danny walked into Cozy's. He stripped his gloves from his hands and stopped, looked around. He didn't see Lindsay at first, was sure he'd missed her again. It seemed to be more often lately.

Then he spotted her. She was in the back looking tired and just a little lost.

He shrugged out of his jacket as he wove his way through the crowd, his eyes on her. When she saw him, she pushed up a little straighter and made room in the booth. She smiled, but it didn't push back the ghosts.

He slid into the booth beside her and tucked her into his side. Her head rested on his shoulder as he ran a hand up and down her arm. From inside himself he felt the tension from the long day---the long week even---slowly relax.

He didn't have to talk. He didn't have to find words.

For a moment, they could just drift in the music.

Together.