Author's Note: I got inspired to write this fic after watching 'Gentle, Gentle' on my brand-spanking-new Season One DVD. I couldn't really help but write it out. Dedicated to bauerfreak for all her help and ideas throughout.

Spoilers: 'Gentle, Gentle'

Disclaimer: Although I currently do not own CSI, I was considering buying a share of CBS stock, so technically I could say I own CSI (or at least a part of it). Wouldn't that be cool?

People often accuse me of being impersonal. It's true, I am antisocial sometimes. Okay, almost always. What people don't know is that I wasn't always like that. I used to love, feel, cry, and laugh. That changed one day, a long time ago. Before I met anybody I know now. Before I became…weird.

I had a wife once. She was a beautiful, outgoing, brilliant woman, so full of potential and vigour. Her name was Claire. I miss her. We got married in Marina Del Rey, California, where I grew up. I was only twenty-two, and she had just turned twenty. I didn't care what the statistics said about people who get married before they're twenty-four or twenty-six, or whatever the number is. I knew that we were meant to be together. I loved nobody more than I loved Claire. It was obvious to both of us.

Claire and I were very different. Claire cared so much about others. She loved being with people, and she was a total natural with everybody she met. I was an only child. I'm not good with people. That's one thing that's stayed the same my whole life; even Claire couldn't change that about me. She was a middle child of five. She was used to mediation and was accustomed to not getting her way all the time. Another thing that had been constant throughout my whole life was my fascination with the truth. I was strictly a facts man. Even though we were so different, we balanced each other out and we matched perfectly.

I remember when I proposed to her. She'd been so excited. The look on her face was enough to let me die a happy man. We got married three months later, and moved to Los Angeles for a while, where I joined the coroner's office. On our first anniversary, Claire gave me the news that she was pregnant.

Yes, I had a child once too. When our daughter Hanna was born, I remember that the first look that Claire had given me had been a look of absolute contentedness. I was the proudest man in the world. I was a daddy. There was no feeling I had ever experience that was greater than this.

Hanna was beautiful. She had the sweetest brown eyes and her mother's blonde hair. I think the only thing she got of mine were my ears. Hanna was identical to her mother in every other way. She was such a good baby. Never cried, always ate her food. The model child.

Her fourth birthday party. I remember that. Hanna had asked for an elephant. Well, her exact words were, "Daddy, I want an Indian elephant, preferably female, but bred in captivity because I don't want to decrease the number of elephants in the wild." I laughed so hard when she said that. Hanna was a brilliant girl. It was the sweetest thing I'd ever seen, my four-year-old princess asking me for an elephant in such a specific manner. To be honest, I think she got Claire's smarts. Claire was brilliant too; I never deserved her. I know that.

One night, when Hanna was five, I woke up to the sound of shattering glass. It came from down the hall, near Hanna's room. My heart nearly stopped when I heard the scream that followed. The instant I got to her room, I saw she was gone. Claire came racing up beside me and screamed when she saw Hanna's empty bed, the yellow covers (Hanna hated pink) tossed aside. I ran out our back screen door and saw a black car drive away, tires screeching. I wasn't thinking clearly enough to look at the license plate. I chased the car down the alley and another two blocks, maybe three. I don't remember. But the car was too fast and I couldn't keep up. I came back home to find Claire sobbing in Hanna's room, clutching the still-warm blankets to her nose.

I called 911, and the police came. They had their scent dogs and notebooks, and I knew they were there to help us find Hanna, but I couldn't help but feel a disdain for them. For three hours, they interviewed us and investigated us. I had seen their tools before. I knew what they were doing. I mean, come on, I was a CSI. I did it too. The police and their dogs searched and searched, but they didn't come up with anything. Claire and I put posters up, took out ad space begging for information, did everything we could to find her. We waited by the phone for months afterward, but we never got a call from anyone who knew anything about Hanna's abduction.

To this day, I don't know what happened to her.

Claire slowly but surely started slipping into her own, withdrawn, hermetic state. She and I rarely talked anymore, and I found out a few months later that she had started using drugs. I tried my best to help her through it, but she didn't want help. Claire was no longer the Claire I had married. Hanna's kidnapping was too hard for us to get through, and we called it quits just under a year after our daughter was abducted. We filed for divorce.

October 21, 1979 was the worst day of my life. Well, that and the day of Hanna's kidnapping. I was at work and I was assigned a DB. I arrived at the scene, a small, rundown apartment building in a seedy neighbourhood, and my heart broke. Claire was the decedent. It took all the strength within me to follow protocol. I wanted to rush over to her body and hug her; I wanted her so desperately not to be dead. I stood in the doorway for what seemed like an eternity, and finally I wordlessly ran out of the house, the brim of my cap pulled down low, making sure nobody saw the tears forming in my eyes. I told my boss that I couldn't do the case, and I simply explained that I knew the decedent, nothing more than that. Of course, further investigation revealed that she had been married to me, and that's when I broke down. I up and quit my job, and ran to Las Vegas. I didn't really care how that looked to anybody. I knew that I was innocent. It was later found out that Claire died of a drug overdose, and I was cleared, but I never moved back to LA.

I didn't move to Vegas to get a new job. I moved there to get away from my old life. I wanted to forget and to block everything out. I found that kind of invincibility in the bottom of a bottle. Slowly but surely, I developed a problem with alcohol. Yes. I, Gilbert Grissom, had a drinking problem. I remember waking up one morning and just staring at the ceiling, and all of a sudden I started wondering where my life had gone. I cleaned myself up, and shortly after my little epiphany, I called the Las Vegas Crime Lab and asked if they had any openings. When I found out they did, I went over for a job interview. They were impressed with my qualifications and I was hired on the spot.

So began my career at the Las Vegas Crime Lab. A few years later, I met Catherine. She was a great source of support to me, although I don't really think she knows it. Eventually, I met Nick and Warrick too, and then Sara at a seminar I taught in San Francisco, and Greg too. They're my family now.

There is one type of case that really bothers me: kids. I think you have to go through what I've gone through to understand completely…not that I'd ever wish something like that on another person. For me, the hardest case I've ever worked was that of Zachary Anderson, the four-month-old baby. I'll admit, I let it get personal. Sara called me on it, and I had a bit of a meltdown. I completely contradicted myself. A few weeks earlier, I had told Sara that no victim was special, and this time I almost showed my cards when I said, "Excuse me, but this victim is special." That was the closest I've ever come to telling anyone I know now about Hanna. We solved the case eventually, and I couldn't help but relate to the mother. I knew how hard it was to lose a child; and worse, to be accused of one's kidnapping. Catherine related to her too, but I think she related out of empathy, not out of experience.

I used to share and care and think and reflect. I don't do that very much anymore. Well, I still think, but in a different way. Now I think about evidence and science, not about life and love. I know that people think I refuse to feel, but that's not quite true. It's not that I won't feel, it's that I can't feel. Nobody ever bothered to ask me exactly why kids get to me. I suppose it's because they all just think that I have no problems, my only life is work, and, as Catherine put it, "alone in my hermetically sealed condo, watching Discovery on the big screen, working genius-level crossword puzzles, but no relationships." I think she put it best, but she's still not quite right. I don't have many relationships outside of work anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't want them, to a degree. To tell you the truth, I'm afraid of getting too close to people. I don't ever want to go through what I went through with Claire and Hanna. I couldn't handle it.

I see others in their relationships and I feel the strongest envy towards them. But it's not the kind of hateful envy where you would do anything to get whatever it is they have, it's the melancholy kind of envy where you see what they have and know that you can never have it. They're the lucky ones; they can love and feel and cry. I live my entire life as a wallflower of sorts; always observing but never taking that risk, that one risk that could change my life. No, I'm not talking about Sara. Don't get me wrong, I care about Sara, but I can never have a romantic relationship with her. We're too similar, both reclusive and absorbed in our work. We'd probably get married and forget we were husband and wife.

There is one person I can see myself with, and only one. Catherine Willows. I've known her for a long time, and I think that maybe, if I took that risk, I might be able to one day love her. She's good with people, both the living and the dead. She's devoted but balanced, loving but firm, and one hell of an amazing woman. If I could ever get around my past, some day, somehow, maybe, just maybe, I might learn to love her. But I know deep down that I never will get away from my past, and I never will take the risk, and I never will learn to love her.

I'm too impersonal.

Author's Note: The last line was meant to be Grissom being all bitter, kind of mocking the people who say he's a robot. Sorry for any confusion there. Please let me know what you think by reviewing!