Title: More Than a Week, Less Than a Lifetime
Author: amazonqueenkate
Claim: Jacqui Franco
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Theme: (Set 2; #6, something humans do)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Seven days, several years, one life.
Author's Notes: Not a happy fic.

 Monday

She's born on a Monday, which - if nursery rhymes are to be believed - means she should be fair of face. She's an adorable baby, with too much brown hair and big eyes, blue at birth. Her older sister pokes at her and says, "Mama, she looks like the dog."

Her mother laughs and corrects her older daughter gently. "No, Christine," she says plainly, "she looks like your baby sister."

The baby sister stretches, tossing out her little arms, but Christine still regards her carefully. "What's its name?" she asks.

"Her name," their mother replies, "is Jacqueline."


Tuesday

She's standing on the front doorstep on a Tuesday, smoking a filtered cigarette and hoping against hope that her mother doesn't catch her. She's been marginalized far too long under the guise of "It's Christine's big day," and she's sick of it. Her frizzy hair is unhappy in the humidity, and her bridesmaid's dress, crumpled on her bedroom floor after she changed into jeans and a t-shirt, is a size too small even with control top.

"Reception's in back. I think people are looking for you," someone says, and she doesn't need to turn around.

"Needed a cigarette." She glances over her shoulder. "Want one?"

Christine's groom, a tall man with a hawk's nose, smiles wryly. "The smell of smoke never comes out of a tuxedo." She rolls her eyes - she'd expected him to say no - but then he steps forward. "But it's a risk worth taking."


Wednesday

She's drugged or unconscious for most of Wednesday, but when she wakes up at quarter until midnight, she has a son. He's asleep in the basket, the product of an emergency cesarean. The nameplate says Saul, and his father is nowhere to be found.

She figures she's supposed to stay lying down after such a hard, painful, dangerous birth, but she can't resist the urge to touch her baby. She struggles to her feet and leans over, trailing a finger down his cheek. Saul - not her first choice of name, but she's been asleep - wriggles but does not wake. Her mother always said she was a sleepy baby, too.

He's got a tuft of dark hair, long eyelashes, and the hints of his father's hawk-nose, not to mention all the appropriate body parts: arms, legs, fingers, toes, eyes, ears, lips.

"You shouldn't be up," Dennis says from the doorway, coffee in one hand and a bagel in the other. He's ten years older today, but then, she is too.

"There's a lot of things I shouldn't be," is her first answer. In the basket, Saul wiggles a second time but stays blissfully quiet.


Thursday

She's in her best business suit on Thursday, hair up in a twist as she struggles to understand so much legalese and not enough real language. At the next table, in his best suit, Dennis looks all the shark and none the hawk, even with his ridiculous nose.

"Despite Ms. Franco's claims to the fit nature of her parenting," the judge says after several heavy moments of silence, "my concern remains that Mr. Hawes and his wife can better provide the stable family home that a boy like Saul needs. He is not, Ms. Franco, a single-parent child."

Saul tosses in his chair and complains in a wordless groan, and it takes the efforts of both his Hawes-side grandparents and Dennis' new wife, Cathy, to calm him down.

"I understand," she says when the judge looks away from her struggling son, and rises from her seat, "but he's my child, too."

"He may as well be God's child," the judge says, and his tone suggests something entirely different than his words.


Friday

She's crying on Friday, standing alone on the far side of the casket. It's a gray, overcast Las Vegas day, colder than average, and her dress whips in the sandy wind. The priest rambles on about sin and forgiveness, love and squalor, but all she sees is the smooth, shiny wood of the coffin and the dark void beneath it.

"I'm sorry for your loss" seems the favorite response, and she nods blindly at every face passing in the crowd. Pats on the back and quiet hugs are less than enough but she takes them anyway, clinging to strangers. In the end, she's left nearly alone with the casket, her hands clutching flowers she's supposed to let go of but can't.

Across from her, hands in his pockets, Dennis sighs. "I'm sorry," he says simply.

She wants to look at him, and can't. "Don't be."

"Don't be?" he asks.

She raises her gaze past the lips and nose to his eyes, dark and wrinkle-lined. "If you're sorry, you'll keep thinking you have prayer for me to forgive you," she replies plainly. "Only God can forgive you, now."


Saturday

She's sitting in a big office on Saturday, legs crossed and hands folded as she watches a balding, stocky man in a bad sports jacket review her resume again. They've sat in silence for a full two minutes - she's timed it on the clock behind his head - and while she wants to say something, she's not sure what it should be.

Finally, he sighs and sets down the sheet of paper. "You'd be our first tech with an actual criminal justice degree," he informs her evenly. "Doesn't happen much around here."

"Yeah, I know. I read the posting." She sounds almost flip, but it makes him smile slightly.

"It's new." He sets down the piece of paper and regards her carefully. He's the assistant director of the crime lab, she knows, but he has sharp eyes. She wonders if he's ever been a detective. "You're qualified, though. Let me make a quick call down to HR, and then I'll show you around."

She regards him carefully. "You mean, I'm hired?" she asks, once he's picked up the phone and has started dialing.

"Yeah, you are."


Sunday

She's cradling her head in the locker room on Sunday and the walls are closing in.

She can barely breathe through her nose and mouth in her corner of the room, nearly hyperventilating as the same old images flash through her head. It's partially her own fault; she'd asked curiously why the hell she was printing a boy's sneakers, and Sidle had been honest in telling her the answer: a ten-year-old with Downs Syndrome had been found face-down in the pool, and even though the parents were crying accident, PD smelled a homicide. The end result is this, dry heaves and wet sobs in the corner of the locker room, and she wants it all to go away.

"Jacq?" someone says, and when she doesn't answer, the same voice repeats, "Jacqui, I know you're in there," and she doesn't have to look up or even try to hear the three sets of footfalls or see the three faces peering into her corner of the world. "We brought you a candy bar."

"Oh, lovely, Sanders. ‘We brought you a candy bar. It should heal all wounds. Now tell us everything.'"

"That's not what I meant!"

"Actually, Greg, that's kinda how it sounded."

"I hate you both so much."

She snorts and rolls her eyes. She wants to yell at them, tell them to go away, but she's laughing now, laughing in ragged crescendos that she knows are hysterics, but she can't stop them. She laughs until she's crying again, crying and shaking, a ball of misery in the corner of the floor.

"If you're going to do that," David chides as both Greg and Bobby watch helplessly, "at least do it on your damn feet so we can be appropriately supportive."

She struggles to her feet and lunges forward, clinging to David and burying her face in his shoulder. She feels a hand on her back, probably Bobby's, and smells the chocolate bar Greg promised. She wants to let go, she wants to push them away, but she can't.

"It's not fair," she manages to get out between sniffles.

David snorts. "Life's not fair from the minute we're squeezed out, woman," he returns, but he doesn't let her go, either.