Author: Regency

Title: What’s Eating Gilbert Grissom?

Pairing: Sara/Griss a la Geeklove

Summary: Sara thought she was the only one with borderline personality disorders. Years of compartmentalizing his feelings has left Grissom with two selves: Gil for him and Griss for work. What happens when those two persons mesh into a single identity that can’t deal?

Author’s Notes: The team is still together because they belong together. Me, I know nothing about split personality disorder, but it seems murky enough for me to get away with being a little bit wrong. And yes, I know Griss isn’t overtly religious. It takes all things.

~~~

He stepped out of his Tahoe, mind already set for his latest conundrum. The crime scene started nearly from his car door and left him thinking that he should’ve parked further back. There might be evidence beneath his vehicle. He’d have to look into that later.

He went to the back and popped his tailgate open, taking out his kit and deciding where to start. Best to announce his presence before anything else. He saw Brass and set his sights there.

“Jim, what’s up?”

“We’ve got a real dead house here. Mom and Dad shot point blank in an upstairs bedroom. Looks like there was a sleepover happening downstairs; sleeping bags and little girls all over the place.” He followed him into the bustling house of silent corpses.

“What else?” Jim looked at him wryly.

“Not enough for you?”

He only quirks an eyebrow. “It sounds like there’s more.”

“Just for you.” He let a moment pass for the dark humor to fade. “There’s another girl in another upstairs bedroom. She was younger than the rest and alone.”

Something was still hanging in the air. “What else?”

“Everyone,” he sighed sadly, “was deaf. Whoever did this could’ve come in here guns-a blazin’ and they wouldn’t have known until they saw ‘em.”

“Or felt them,” Griss corrected.

“Yeah. Either way, they didn’t get it.” They came to the family room, where Catherine was trying to process the scene despite the obvious toll it was taking. She blinked rapidly to keep away the tears flooding her eyes. There were so many little girls. Ten actually. They each reminded her so much of Lindsey. They were innocent and so vulnerable. They never heard the threat in their sleep and wouldn’t have had they been awake. That added twice the cruelty to the crime. All the little ones slaughtered in their sleep.

Catherine was trying hard not weep for the young lives cut so tragically short, but the tears fell anyway and she did the best she could to wipe them away. She didn’t want to compromise the scene, but it was getting increasingly hard to process and cry at the same time.

“Catherine, I’ll handle it.” She didn’t argue, only haphazardly gathered her kit and disappeared back outside.

“A waste. An entire family.” Griss nodded his agreement. To speak further seemed a terrible course. Out of a mutual respect for the dead, they remained silent as Grissom went about gathering evidence. He did the best he could, knowing that Sara would be along to help before long. The task was just too big for a single CSI. They hadn’t even reached the parents and younger sister yet. This was tugging at his heart; it would kill Sara. He would have chosen someone else for this, but he didn’t trust that anyone else would be this dedicated. She would put her soul into this case. For once, he was sure they’d need it.

It was one child in particular that stopped him. She was a honey-kissed, curly-haired sweetheart. Her eyes were open and they stared up at him green and frightened. His stomach rose to his throat and he blinked back his own tears. Her upturned pixy nose and rose petal lips. She looked like she was someone’s princess. The worst of it was that she had been awake, clearly so. She’d seen her killer coming. The dark stain on her sleeping bag confirmed it. She had been so frightened by what she’d seen that she’d wet her nightgown. Even at this young an age, she knew death when confronted with it. She was their only witness.

With hands quivering, he picked up his camera and took her picture, apologizing softly for recording her shame from every possible angle. He would make sure her parents didn’t know about her accident. Once finished, he gently brushed her eyelids shut. He didn’t regret correcting this. She didn’t need to see anymore.

He hardly heard Sara talking to Brass behind him or coming to stand beside him. She looked down at the same little girl he had.

Without acknowledging her, he said, “Don’t tell her parents about her accident, all right? They don’t need to know she was awake.”

“All right.” If that was all the solace they could provide, it would have to do. “Where do I start?”

“Um…” He turned from the angel in front of him and to the others that had yet to be processed. “When I came in, Cat was with the strawberry blond. I don’t know whether she finished. She had to leave, so you can start there.”

“Okay.” She was subdued notably, but not without reason. She paused at the girl’s face and stroked away a strand of her hair. “You poor baby, what will your parents say?” Of course, she didn’t answer, but Sara continued to speak. “I’m sorry someone took you away from your life. I bet you were a good little girl. Even if no one else in the world cares, I always will.” She took the necessary shots and collected her evidence.

She lingered at each, memorizing their precious faces. She didn’t notice she was crying until Grissom was standing beside her with a handkerchief. His face was sympathetic, even a little blotchy. She saw that it affected him, too. It broke him, too.

“You don’t have to work in here anymore. I’ll handle it. You can process the upstairs. It’s not much better; a younger girl and the parents.”

“Why didn’t anyone run?”

“They were all deaf, Sara. The little girls, the parents. All unsuspecting of their fates. They never heard it coming. Only her,” he stated turning back to his dark angel. In a way, she reminded him of Warrick. The eyes, he thought, it had to be the eyes.

“I don’t understand this kind of evil.”

“I don’t understand people. I don’t get people who kill kids. I don’t get people who break into houses and don’t steal anything, but trash everything they can get their hands on. I just don’t get people.” This was certainly a testament to that.

“No, you get people. You just don’t get criminals.” She broke his stare before he could see any deeper into her. “I don’t think any one of us can…And when we do we’ve lost all objectivity.”

“Sounds like something I’d say.”

“It does.” She gave him a watery smile, calling a truce to whatever was between them. Just until this hellish case was solved. Just until the bitch or bastard who’d perpetrated such a horrendous crime was caught and screwed all to hell.

“I’m gonna get back to…” he indicated the dank atmosphere of the living room.

“Yeah, I’m gonna handle upstairs. Cath’ll do the perimeter?”

“Yeah.” Then, they went their separate ways to do their hardest of jobs. It would be the cops that would do what was only marginally easier. They would call the parents and tell them that the little girls that they had entrusted into this home had been stolen, not from this home, but from this existence. They were in whatever heaven you believed in now.

Sara went upstairs to the second bedroom on the right and was inundated immediately in a Brothers Grimm Fairytale. On one side, the room remained untouched, and pristine in its royal prettiness. Pink and white polka-dotted wallpaper, a dollhouse up against the wall, a small vanity perfect for daddy’s little girl. On the other side was the terror.

There was a tiny table, set up with a miniature porcelain tea set. In each of the chairs, was a doll or stuffed animal with the small russet-haired girl seated at the end closest to the bed. What a peaceful scene marred by such terrible violence. Blood was splattered over all of the guests to the tea party, and the table, and the lace window curtains and pink carpet. Her death had been the most brutal. Her throat, if Sara had to guess, had been slit from behind as she poured her shaggy bunny cool tea. The kettle had fallen from her startled fingers and cracked against the edge of the polygonal table before hitting the floor and coming to rest near her feet. The tea had spilled from the spout and mixed with the blood that dripped from that table and from the extraneous stab wound inflicted to her narrow stomach. The first was a kill wound; the second was revenge. She couldn’t begin to conceive what this angel could’ve done to anyone.

Still, she was fine as long as she was behind her, but she eventually had to cross her path. When she did, her chest constricted painfully. Her face held an expression. A beautiful, but disturbing expression. It was a cross between childish glee and fleeting confusion. She’d been playing peacefully, and then she felt pain, and suddenly couldn’t breathe. It was a wonder whether children knew death without forewarning. She obviously didn’t. Without a name, she was only ‘the little girl.’ There were far too many slain girls lying around for Jane Doe. She didn’t even know she was dying.

In answer to Sara’s unasked question, the moonlight glinted off of gold pendant hanging from her neck. It read ‘Claudia.’ She reached out and touched her tainted cheek. “Hello, Claudia. I’m Sara.” In the more convoluted portion of her mind, she heard Claudia answer back.

The pictures came quick, but the processing was slow. She bagged the toys, but was left with the chairs and the body. Despite having come to terms with Claudia, she avoided her. One chair, then another, and another. The table, the tea set, and the carpet. There were no disturbances beyond that immediate area.

Left with no other choice, she went to the body. She started from behind her, collecting scattered navy blue threads and errant blonde hairs. She wasn’t blond, so that could be something. She went around to her front and swabbed her lips and the puckered skin of her throat. Some odd brown specks had caught her attention. Paint perhaps. Maybe rust.

Her eyes flickered up to Claudia’s open ones. Olive green they’d be best described as. Though sharing the color, they shone in a way that pimentos didn’t dare. There was a brilliance there; a hapless flame that death itself could not extinguish. The world would never again know that flame. With an unperceived gesture, Sara closed the girl’s eyes. She didn’t need to see anymore. She had surely seen enough. She had seen her own death.

After that, it was easier to gather what little trace evidence there was. A few more navy threads on her lace-ruffled sleeves and more blonde hair in her collar.

With only a single backwards glance, she departed the girl’s tarnished palace. She was somebody’s darling. Sadly, that somebody was in the next room. This had been a massacre.

She passed a deputy stationed upstairs on her way to the master bedroom where the parents would be found. The door was ajar. She used the tip of her boot to nudge it open. From a distance, you wouldn’t know that anything was amiss. Two uniform lumps beneath high-count covers. The dark masked the contained carnage. She knocked the light switch with her gloved knuckles. Nothing, like she’d heard. She switched it back off, took out her flashlight, and donned her goggles. She went over the area with the accuracy of only someone as good at this as she was. It felt as though she was prying in someone’s home as they slept.

That is, until she came to the head of the bed. Florescent green blared in front of her in the shapes of shoulders, heads, and pillows. She took out a material swab from her pocket and gathered samples of the various areas. The blood stopped marginally where the sheet covered their extremities. He had his arms wrapped around his wife as they slept. There was a neat hole in each of their temples. The heavy mantle of slumber had yet to rise from their faces. That was a mercy if nothing was. They’d never know the fate those children had met. Their hearing aids were thankfully switched off. Not that it mattered, for Death was a silent and eerie predator.

She made quick efficient work of that scene and headed back downstairs to help Grissom out. She’d have to get used to the difficulties of this case if she was gonna be apart of it. She passed another deputy as she made her way back. After so many incidents of an unguarded crime scene leading to the injury of CSI’s, they didn’t take any chances. A house this size was attended to on every floor and at every entrance or exit.

Grissom was kneeling on the carpet, holding his head in his hands and massaging his temples. His shoulders were hunched towards the floor as though he were trying to bear some enormous burden. Atlas -- the Greek god that carried Earth on his back -- came to mind. His lips moved as he spoke without sound. He seemed to be praying for guidance, for wisdom, for strength perhaps. She could relate. She never thought he prayed.

Her silver kit cracked against the arching entryway and jerked Griss from his spiritual meanderings. His back straightened and a brick wall rose like Noah’s Ark in his eyes. Two blocks at a time. She was used to his introverted behavior. What she wasn’t used to was seeing him so affected at a crime scene. It was usually later, when it was all said and done. She supposed this was an exception. Look at battlefield. It hadn’t been a fair fight if it could be called a fight at all. A one-sided slaughtering of children was a more accurate depiction.

How many of these girls could’ve gone on the be the next, if not the first, female President of the United States? Which of them would have sired the next Bill Gates -- if not, been the next one herself? Or would’ve been the next Elizabeth Taylor or Marishka Hargitay? One of them might’ve cured cancer or AIDS someday. Certainly, they all would’ve made the world a better place. Certainly.

“Are you done?”

He rubbed the back of his aching neck and rose with a stifled groan. “Damn, my back.” Automatically she moved closer but stopped short of any contact. Years of working with him had taught her that touching him was a no-no. She withdrew to the door, but kept a watchful eye on him.

“Griss, you done?”

He stood defensively in the quorum of broken diamonds, as though he were awaiting some type of judgment from her. He’d done the best he could alone, but he just couldn’t do it all. It was full twilight outside, the stars twinkled gorgeously in proud defiance of the depraved scarlet that would mar this homestead forevermore.

“I didn’t finish.” His breath stuttered and he crossed his arms across his chest. He pursed his lips, pretending to be deep in thought. He wasn’t thinking, he was keeping his emotions under strict dominion. The last thing she wanted was for him to believe she was critiquing him. She wasn’t; it wasn’t her place.

“That’s all right. How many have been processed?”

He exhaled in relief. “Catherine did the first three; you did four; and I did two. There’s one more.” He gestured to the girl farthest from the foyer, nearest to the window. She was cocooned in a Scooby-Doo throw blanket and little feet poked out of the bottom to show her petite pink toenails. He shook his head thoughtfully. “I can’t do anymore. I know you’ve done four already, but I really can’t do anymore.” He shifted from one bowed-leg to the other, a testament to his discomfort at asking for her assistance.

He had rarely if ever asked her for a favor. She could make a note of this and think of it later, or she could let this be one more thing she chalked up to her feelings for him going deeper than they should. Seeing him so downtrodden led her to her inevitable decision.

“I’ll do it.”

“Thank you.” In an uncharacteristic move, he took her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, I want to repay you. You deserve it.” She tilted her head as if seeing him from another angle would make him recognizable. It didn’t. He was not only acting differently; he looked a little bit different. She couldn’t quite pinpoint how though.

“Thank you…I guess.” He smiled grimly, seeming to transform back into the Grissom she knew before her very eyes.

“Yeah. I’ll be outside looking for possible witnesses among the onlookers. Come out when you’re done. We can head back to the lab together.”

“Um, I came with Warrick.”

He looked back at her, slightly amused. “I don’t think he’ll mind. Do you?” She shook her head and watched him go. He’d never ceased to confound her before, so why did she bother to be surprised now?

She wasn’t sure of her motivation, but something wasn’t right. She could feel it. And her feelings weren’t usually wrong.

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