Research Assistant

One-Shot

Author: Lolly4Holly

Pairings: GSR - Grissom and Sara

Summary: Grissom's research assistant gives him a whole new perspective Another in the series of Sara, Grissom and their daughters, Charlotte and Abigail. For more of this series, read 'Story Time at the Grissoms', 'Home to a Mess', 'No Place Like Home', 'Having a Baby', 'Report Due' and 'Having Another Baby'. You can find these one-shots on my profile.

Enjoy!

Charlotte Grissom could barely feel her fingers. She could see them well enough, swollen red digits poking out the end of her fingerless blue gloves, but she had lost all feeling in them about an hour ago. She tried to stuff her hands into the pockets of her puffy jacket, but the zippers to them were done all the way up and she couldn't pincer grip the zipper end to save her life.

She trudged through the deep snow, feeling her teeth starting to chatter together as she peered over the edge of the river bank. The water had a perfect icy sheet on top, but she could see movement beneath the glassy surface as though it was a window into another world.

Her father was currently studying how adaptive insects were in extreme cold conditions. It was the middle of their winter holidays away from school, so she decided that she wanted to join him, rather than spending the week with her little sister at Grandma Betty's. She thought it sounded really exciting on the flight over, but now that they were here, it had lost all its appeal.

After three days stood out in the freezing cold, she desperately wanted to go home where it was warm and she had full feeling in her fingers and toes again. She licked her dry cracked lips, sniffling back the cold running down her nose as she turned to find her father.

There was a road behind her, a stone brick bridge and the frozen river flowing underneath. She followed the pathway around the field, finding her father at the entrance to the woodland. He had two college students beside him, discussing their findings, before he got back to his own work. He was in charge of eight college students this week. They all called him Professor Grissom. She had no idea exactly what they were working on as she was restricted from entering part of the woods, but they all seemed really excited about it whatever it was.

"There you are, my dear. Come look at this." Her father reached for her hand, sitting her on his knee. He pointed her attention towards the tree branches ahead of them, asking, "Can you see them? Caterpillar eggs. Can you see the tiny little cluster?" He felt her little cold ear against his cheek, adjusting the woollen hat she was wearing on her head to keep her little ears warm. "Do you remember the life cycle of a caterpillar?"

"I'm not a baby, Daddy." The eight year old leant back in his warm embrace, looking at the tiny cluster of eggs surviving in the snow. "Will they die?"

"As soon as it's warm enough, the caterpillars will hatch and start scavenging for food. Then they'll start the next cycle of their life. Cocooning themselves to become beautiful butterflies. Some insects can survive freezing conditions, others just hit the pause button and wait out the winter. Remember the animals we saw? During the winter, some animals go into a hibernation type sleep. Their body temperate and heart rate drop, but they're still alive. They just wait out the winter until it's nice and warm for them again." He clutched her little hands in his own, feeling how cold they were against his skin.

"Professor Grissom," College student, Cindy Rupert called out to him. "We found something you might want to look at."

Grissom lifted his daughter from his lap, telling her to stay put, before he joined them to take a look. He was gone for a few minutes, but he returned with a smile on his face. "Can you pack up the equipment? I'm going to take my daughter home. I'll see you in the morning. Make sure you reset the cameras." He waved to the student, rejoining his daughter. "Let's pack up our kits and head back to the cabin, sweetheart."

"Okay." Charlotte trudged back through the snow towards her backpack, stuffing her teddy bear and drawing supplies inside the open flap. She retrieved her camera off the fence post, hurrying after her father as he collected up his specimen jars. He loaded them into a special case, before he checked over his cameras and equipment that would keep track of the insects activity during the night.

"Did you make any discoveries of your own?" He queried.

"I found a spider on the ice." She thought back to it. "I saw a fish too."

"You stayed away from the river, didn't you?" Grissom had been warned by his wife to keep a close eye on her during this trip, but he had a lot of work to do. He managed to keep a watchful eye on her most of the day, but he had no idea what she was up to while he was busy.

"I stood on the ice over there." Charlotte terrified him, pointing towards the bridge. "It's really thick in the middle, but the edges were melting."

Grissom gave her a slight smile. "We won't tell your mother about that one."

He grabbed his kit with one hand, holding his daughter's frozen little hand in the other, leading her back through the field, where his truck was parked on the roadside. He lifted her into the front seat where the best heaters were, wrapping her in a warm blanket for the short drive back to their cabin. He would have loved it if he could have brought all his girls up here for the week as the place was so beautiful, but his wife, Sara had work and his youngest daughter, Abigail didn't like the sound of spending a week in a remote location with snow and bugs.

She had never been keen on bugs. He didn't know why. Sara advised that Abi was just simply more girly than her big sister, but he'd rather that she didn't cringe or scream whenever there was an escaped bug in their house.

Once they arrived back at the cabin, Charlotte jumped straight out of the car, landing knee deep in the snow covering their driveway. She left her father with all the bags, while she struggled to get to the steps of their cabin. Her left boot was completely filled with melting snow once she reached the steps, making her feel even colder.

Her father eventually came up behind her, unlocking the front door. It was just as cold inside the cabin as it was out, so he had to get a fire started to heat up some warm water for them. "Shoes." He stopped his daughter from walking any further than the entrance. She shivered on the spot, waiting for him to do the honours.

He never could get used to being the carer of another person. He married, Sara because he loved her more than anything. He never expected them to have children though. He never expected to ever have a child of his own in his entire life, but she made that possible for him, twice. He loved the two of them more than anything in the world, but he still found it challenging after his previous lifestyle of only having himself to look out for.

He knelt down beside his daughter, untying the tangle of laces caked in snow, before he lifted her foot out of the boot. He did the same with her other foot, helping her with her jacket, hat and gloves, before he suggested she get herself ready for a warm bath.

He just had to start up the fire first.

"Is it warm yet?" He threw another log on the fire, before he hurried through to the bathroom. He smiled as he found his daughter sat on the edge of the bath tub, dressed in his oversized bathrobe, texting her mother with his phone in her hand. "You're supposed to be testing the water." He leant over her to reach for the taps, feeling warm water finally beginning to flow. "Mommy will be at work by now." He pointed out to her, lifting her off the bath tub, so he could get it set up for her.

"Mommy said to text her when we got back." Charlotte held the phone out of his reach, so she could send her message to her mother. He got it back when she climbed in the tub, reading how cold and horrible her day was today and how much she wanted to go home.

He knew she didn't intentionally set out to hurt his feelings, but it still hurt.

"Well she's a child, Gil. What do you expect?" His wife consoled him on the phone. "As fascinating as the study of insects behaviour is in cold conditions for you, your research assistant is still an eight year old child with a short attention span. She can't sit still through an hour long movie, what made you think she'd be able to sit still for seven hours out of the day to watch bugs?" She smiled into the phone at her clueless husband. "She wanted to go because it was important to you. You're her father and she loves you, so she wants to be interested in what you're interested in, but she's still just a child. Think of her as a miniature, Greg. He loved his job, but he got bored easily, so you allowed him to have music in his lab. She loves this stuff because you do, but she still gets bored easily."

"Yeah, I know." He relaxed back against the sofa, listening to the crackle of the fire. "I just... wish you were here, Sara. I never know what to do when you're not around. I don't even know what my own daughter is thinking after eight years. I still feel like a rookie in this fatherhood business." He noticed her back pack set down on the coffee table, seeing a drawing sticking out of the top pocket. He reached for it to take a closer look, smiling to himself as it was clearly a picture of him and his daughter by the frozen river.

"Welcome to the world of parenting." Sara chuckled softly. "Do you think I know what either of them are thinking? They are their own unique person. They have their own thoughts and feelings. It's part of what makes them so special. She's a part of your genetics, so she's bound to be interested, but she still needs something fun to do. How is the study going anyway? Do you think you picked the right students now?"

"Some of them threw a wobbly over the cold and someone threw up when they saw the carcass for the first time, but they're doing alright. I thought we were all doing alright, until my research assistant bailed out on me. Maybe we should just come home..."

"Don't you dare." She stopped him there. "You've been planning this trip for months. Give her something to do. Keep her busy. Don't let her anywhere near that carcass though. She hasn't seen it yet, has she?" She started to worry.

"No, I've kept her away from it. She doesn't even know it's there. The bugs have barely touched it in the cold though. If this were Las Vegas heat, there wouldn't be..."

"Gil, you remember why I became a vegetarian in the first place, right?" Sara stopped him there, not wanting to hear anymore. "Don't let her be any part of that research. I don't want her to see something like that. Just keep her busy with something else. And keep her warm. I don't want you two coming back with colds. She'll be a teenager before we know it, Gil, then she'll want nothing to do with us. Cherish these moments while they last. I've gotta get back to work, I'll call you later. I love you."

Grissom was ready to respond with 'I love you too', but the woman had already hung up on him. He set the phone down beside him, finally removing the jacket he was still wearing now that the place was starting to warm up a bit. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, looking through the rest of his daughter's bag, finding her own version of a field report. She always enjoyed telling stories, but he had never read anything she had written herself before. Her field report read like an adventure script, describing the things they did, what they saw, how the snow felt between her fingers and the window into the other world that she discovered beneath the surface of the ice.

"Daddy!" He heard her calling out to him.

Leaving the report on the sofa, Grissom quickly climbed to his feet, hurrying for the bathroom down the hall. He fetched his daughter one of the warm towels, lifting her free from the bath tub to dry her off. He dressed her in a warm pair of pyjamas, wrapping her snugly in a blanket as he brought her back to the front room to sit with him.

"I think we've got one more day of field studying ahead of us. I'll need your help tomorrow to document our findings." He brushed her wet hair back behind her ear, seeing a miniature version of Sara in her eyes. She may have his brain, but she certainly had her mother's looks. "Unless you want to go home and see your mother. We can pack up early and head home a few days early."

"But you have to finish your research." Charlotte tilted her head back against his chest, looking into his eyes. "Daddy, do you like me?" She suddenly asked him.

"Of course I like you, I love you." He held her little hands in his own, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "You're my daughter. My flesh and blood. I love you more than anything in the world. When you came along, you taught me how to love, unconditionally. It was just me on my own for years, then I met your mother and I didn't know how to deal with my feelings for her. I almost lost her... more times than I can remember." He admitted to her. "But I realised I couldn't live without her. Then we found out about you and I knew that it was meant to be. The love I feel for you, your sister and your mother, it's what I was missing in my life. I'd be lost without you in my life."

Charlotte smiled widely, turning in her father's arms to hug him. She rested her head against his shoulder for a few minutes, before she noticed her field report sat on the sofa beside him. "Did you read it?" She picked it up. "It's not finished, but I drew pictures of the insects I found." She flipped over the page to show him. "Will we be able to see any butterflies tomorrow?"

"Not in this weather. They'll be sleeping until it gets warmer."

"What's a carcass?" She asked him the dreaded question.

"Where did you hear that?" He brushed her hair back from her forehead. He guessed that she overheard it from one of his students, leaving him with no choice but to explain it to her. "A carcass is the dead body of an animal. We're using the remains of a cow in this experiment to see how insects in colder climates react to... a new food source." He kept it simple for her. "We've already done one of these in a warm climate location, remember that week that I was away in the summer?"

Charlotte nodded her head, tilting her head back against his shoulder. "How did the cow die?"

"I don't know." He confessed, holding her head close against his shoulder. "It still has a purpose though. When something dies in the woods, it feeds the earth, the insects and sometimes other animals. Everything has a purpose in nature."

"Can I see it?"

"Oh no." The man shook his head. "Your mother would have my head. I can show you some of the insects that found their way to it though. We'll take a look tomorrow and see if we have any larvae."

"I won't tell Mommy if you let me see it." She sweetly smiled up at him, trying to manipulate him.

"No." Grissom playfully tickled her sides. "Not until you're much older. Your mother's right. You don't need to see something like that just yet. My students need to know all of this for their final exam, but you're still my little girl. It's my job to protect you from that."

"Okay." She sighed softly.

Remembering what Sara had suggested, Grissom decided to get his daughter's opinion on the subject of keeping her entertained. "What do you want to do tomorrow?"

Charlotte tilted her head back to look at him, giving him a slight smile. "Can we build a snowman?"

The man smiled, giving her a nod. "We can. If you know how to make one. I don't think I've ever built a snowman before. I built a jell-o man for a case a few years ago, but never a snowman."

"A jell-o man?" Charlotte gave him a quizzical look. "What was he for?"

"Say it's getting late." Grissom turned his wrist to look at the time, trying to distract her away from the topic. "Let's get you some dinner, so we can get you into bed."

"You never tell me anything." The child sighed softly, climbing off the sofa. "I'll just have to ask Uncle Greg again."

The End

Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you thought.

~ Holly