Disclaimer: I don't own csi
A/N: I don't know where this came from, but it is my feeble attempt at a comprehensive biography of Catherine Willows based on the little given facts and a very healthy dose of speculation. If this turns out well I hope to do one for Warrick and Grissom so any suggestion on how to improve will be appreciated.
Defiance
When Catherine was ten Sam Braun stopped visiting.
Her mother waited two weeks by the phone before it finally sunk in. He wasn't coming back. It took a photo of him with a bimbo on his arm in her favorite tabloid to finally drive the nail through her heart. Forever after she forbade those rags to ever come into her house again.
He never called. He never wrote. He never visited. The only exception was on her birthday when he sent her a card with a hundred dollars in it. Her mother would get so furious that she would throw it all away- both card and money. Later that night Catherine would dig through the garbage can and recover the money. She didn't bother with the card.
While her mother worked late (yet again) she, her sister and several friends would gorge themselves on candy, smoke cigarettes and make general nuisances of themselves. The rest of the money would be hidden under her mattress until she was old enough to run away.
When Catherine was fifteen her parents fighting had escalated over the years. The only time there was peace in the house was when her mother was at work or father was passed out drunk. Otherwise it seemed every night her parents fought. They fought about big things, little things and everything in the between. She would lie in bed, cover her ears and count down the days until she was sixteen and could escape this hell hole.
But try as might she couldn't block out everything.
During those arguments through the years she learned a lot of new words. Some where easy she had heard them on the playground at school- whore, slut for example. Others where harder, not so much the meaning but the reason dad would use them in reference to mom. Words like bastard, love- child, infidelity, affair where tossed around casually in wee hours of the night when he thought no but his wife could hear him. And of course he said the word that all children, no matter what their age, fears the most.
Divorce.
But unlike other families there was no one to tell she was not to blame. No one to give her lame excuses as to why mommy and daddy no longer love each other. So she blamed herself.
When Catherine was sixteen she met a twenty- two year old man at the local diner. He said he was going to Seattle to be a famous rock star. He could have been an axe murderer for all she cared. She just saw in him her ticket to getting out of Montana. She practically begged on hands and knees to take her with him. She tells him she has money and will do anything he wants. He gets a strange look in his eyes when she says 'anything' but she didn't care or more likely was too naive to care.
When Catherine was sixteen years, two months, and three days she dropped out of tenth grade. She packed a duffel bag with her prized possessions and vowed never to return. As she and her new boyfriend Rick left Montana her last act of Defiance was to flip the bird to the damn whole state.
tbc?