If this were truly humorous, it might deserve the designation of 'parody'. But since I couldn't bring the funny if my life depended on it, let's just call it a writer's frustration with the show this season. Huge thanks to Jo for…well, helping me make it a little funny, maybe. It's a pre-episode piece for tonight's 'Still Life', but in case you're worried, it doesn't really spoil anything.

Still Alive?

"Where's—?" Confusion entered Grissom's eyes, making that little space between his eyebrows crinkle.

Catherine, Warrick, Nick, and Greg were sitting around the break room table waiting for this shift's assignments. Any one of them could have noticed Grissom's inner confusions, but it was Catherine who picked up on them because they were such old friends that she often could read his mind. That's why when she spoke, she asked, "Who?" and not 'what?' which would have been an equally fair question since he was pouring himself a cup of coffee, and the sugar was missing.

Grissom's eyes shifted as they often did when someone questioned him, but he tensed his neck muscles and overcame his moment of distress. "Shouldn't there be someone else here?"

Nick's chest puffed up at that moment because he finally got what Grissom was driving at and he felt very proud of himself when he got Grissom. "Yeah, didn't there used to be..." Fingers hidden from the others under the table, he counted. "…Six of us?"

"Right," Warrick voiced and everyone looked expectantly at him, but that was all he had to say.

"It was a girl," Greg, the youngest Sherlock among the group, posited with uncharacteristic calm.

"Yes." There was pride in Grissom's voice at Greg's subdued remark. He remembered a time when the mere mention of a girl would have sent young Greg into a tailspin. His young protégé had come a long way.

Protégé. Grissom's brow crinkled some more until the fine lines between his brows dug into deep craters, then his eyes widened and shot to a space above Catherine's left shoulder.

The group could sense something momentous on their horizon and all stared at their leader with expectant wonder. His mouth dropped open a little as his gaze rested on Catherine. "The name," he almost whispered. "It starts with an 'S' and ends with an 'A'."

"Sofia!" Nick exclaimed and Grissom grimaced, but indulgently.

"No, no, Nicky—"

"Well yes, actually," Sofia said in an accent none of them could place.

Ignoring the puzzled frowns on his colleagues' faces, Grissom forced himself to look at the smiling blonde as she entered the room. "What are you doing here, Sofia?" He didn't have to say her name, but he realized the moment he met her that he enjoyed the sound of her name on his lips. It was so exotic and feminine, like the woman herself. Yet she could kick ass with the best of the other detectives, even take off after suspects mindless of her high-heels. There was something strangely intriguing about that. Why would a cop wear heels on the job?

But there was no time to ponder the question as Sofia was standing much too close to him and he needed all his faculties to school his features in an unreadable mask. He would just have to experiment later to solve that mystery.

"Our new lab director, Carol, sent me with tonight's assignments," she said, handing Grissom a stack of yellow slips.

"That's unusual, isn't it?" Nick asked, smoothing his mustache in puzzlement.

Sofia smiled prettily at him, and all the men tensed. For how cruel a woman could be that when she smiled prettily, men tensed in all their anatomy. Grissom frowned. Where had he read that? But Sofia was speaking again so there was no time to ponder.

"Looks like the power that is doesn't think I spend enough time with you folks," she said in her honeyed tones.

"Well now that you're here, Sofia—" Grissom really did like the sound of her name, "—perhaps you can solve a mystery for us."

Sofia gave him a flirtatious smile. "Well, I was a CSI after being a cop and before becoming a detective."

There really was no cause for her to give him her résumé, which he hoped his next words would convey. "And a woman of your considerable experience and intelligence will always be welcome at our table."

"I appreciate the sentiment, Grissom," Sofia purred, "but I doubt Sara would agree."

"Sara!" the CSIs exclaimed in unison.

For his part, Grissom had a look of mild shock on his face which was quickly replaced by pained confusion. "Sara," he whispered. He used to like the sound of that name on his lips too. How could he have forgotten? "We haven't seen her for a while, have we?" he asked of no one in particular. He then flipped through the night's assignments and threw Sofia a wide-eyed look. "She isn't here." He wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or indifferent. He'd have to wait until the power that is told him how he should feel. But based on experience, he suspected that since Sofia had been sent, he would not be expected to pine away for Sara tonight.

Which was just as well, he mused. Between Catherine, Sara and Sofia, and all the other beautiful women that happened on their scenes night after night and whose charms he was expected to notice, Grissom was getting whiplash.

He stared at Catherine, an understandable impulse since she used to be the one with all the answers to problems such as these. When she only stared back with her big, blue eyes wide open, but not so that it would wrinkle her brow, Grissom remembered that ever since Sofia's incarnation among their little group, they had all become a little less knowledgeable.

Thus, it was a surprise to no one when Sofia shed light on the situation. "Not tonight, Gil." Did her voice soften when she said his name? "Carol thought it would be best."

He recovered quickly. "Best? Why?"

"Look at your case."

Grissom did as she asked because it was so difficult saying no to Sofia. A young boy suspected of kidnapping. Father, an ex-military; suspicious death. Mother, a widow who couldn't let go. It did contain shades of his own childhood. He looked at each of the CSIs in turn, and then his eyes found a final resting place on Sofia. "This is too personal."

"Right," she said, dropping an instinctive 'o' at the last minute. "You will be revealing some personal things about your past tonight, and it wouldn't do for Sara to happen to be the one present when that happens."

"Because?..."

Catherine was shaking her head in frustration. "Are you really that clueless, Gil?"

He started to shake his head, but really he was, so the motion ended up resembling a shake, a nod, and a shrug all at once. Catherine's eyebrows peeked, but her last Botox treatment prevented lines from forming on her forehead.

It was Sofia who explained. "If you reveal your secret to Sara, she might mistake it as an attempt at intimacy."

"Oh. Right." Why hadn't that occurred to him?

With an internal shrug, he realized it was not his concern. This was Carol's department. And why should it bother him anyway? Everyone who mattered would return for the next case on the off chance that Sara showed up.

THE END