Disclaimer: I don't own CSI.
Author's Note: I really liked the "Grave Danger" episode from CSI. I don't remember seeing much follow-up on the show as far as the fire ants are concerned (I might have missed it though).
This is meant as a short follow-up to "Grave Danger".
Grissom allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief when the ordeal was finally over. They had found Nick. He was currently in the hospital, but still alive. Grissom didn't even want to think about what would have happened if he had failed. It had been close - too close.
Grissom headed to his office, still too wound up from all the excitement to sleep. It was a mess, with papers and books strewn everywhere. Well, if he couldn't fall asleep, at least he could use the time to clean up. He carefully put everything back in order.
He paused as he gently placed the last book up onto the shelf. Holldobler and Wilson's The Ants. He thought briefly of the ant he had seen on the screen and identified as Solenopsis invicta: the red imported fire ant. That had been it, the missing piece of the puzzle that allowed them to find Nick. However, the fire ants had caused problems of their own, almost killing Nick with their venomous stings. Grissom had been stung a few times himself when he had jumped into the box, since the CO2 hadn't yet killed all the ants. But without the ants they would have never found Nick in time. In a manner of speaking, Nick's life had been saved by a bug. It was definitely something that Grissom could appreciate.
Grissom felt movement tickle his ankle. He grabbed a pair of forceps and bent down. Maybe one of the ants had hitched a ride, and was just now making her presence known. He gently picked her up between the forceps and stood up. He held the ant up under his desk lamp. Solenopsis invicta. One of the ants that had saved Nick's life. Suddenly Grissom was struck by an idea.
He carefully put the ant into a vial of ethanol. One day, when Nick recovered, Gil would give the preserved ant to him as a souvenir. He wondered how Nick would respond to the fact that the tiny insect had saved his life.
Nick picked up the vial that had been left on his desk. He read the inscription. He held the vial up and looked inside. A feeling of revulsion washed over him as he recognized one of his tiny tormentors from his ordeal a few months ago. Just what I need, Nick thought sarcastically, something else to give me nightmares. The nightmares were not very frequent, but he had them occasionally, reliving the overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia and helplessness that he had experienced. Once in a while he would wake up from one, clawing at his body, convinced that fire ants had been stinging him. He certainly did not need to look at a fire ant floating around in a vial of ethanol on a regular basis. If he tilted the vial at just the right angle, it was if the ant was looking back at him. Nick shuddered as large, unseeing compound eyes gazed back at him from inside the glass vial.
Grissom has a bizarre sense of humor, Nick thought darkly. Nick never really had an interest in keeping dead bugs around, and even if he had, he really didn't want a fire ant, of all things. A butterfly maybe, but not a fire ant. He held the vial out over the wastebasket for a moment and considered throwing it away. But something stopped him. It was from Grissom. Grissom had recklessly risked his own life to save Nick. And the more Nick thought about the stories that he had been told of that day, the more he thought that Grissom might have a valid point. Identifying the ant had been one of the clues that had led to the CSI team finding his location.
So Nick kept the vial, hiding it in a back corner of his desk drawer. At the very least, it would remind him every day of how lucky he was to be alive.