Author's note: Another long-ish part. Hope you enjoy!


Chapter 12

We head to the morgue in silence, Grissom's eyes hooded with an impenetrable mask. His hand resuming its residence against the base of my spine, a gentle, non-invasive presence. I wonder if he is even conscious of this gesture. With how this simple touch serves to stave off the overwhelming ferocity of the darkness, of my demons. There's a safety, a security, in that palms-worth of contact. I doubt that I'll ever tell him. And I know that he'll never ask. But, words would be extraneous. The understanding lies deeper than verbalization.

Arriving at the swinging doors of Doc Robbins' domain, I come to an abrupt halt, Grissom's hand pressing a little more firmly against my lower back before he becomes conscious of my aborted movement. Through the square-foot of plexiglass window, the body of Dennis Hudson is framed – naked, exposed, splayed. Physically, he bears little resemblance to my father. But my mind will forever link them.

My hyper-acuity of touch from the previous day resurfaces, to encompass all of my senses. I observe a myriad of details, as sensory receptors are flooded with input.

(Touch)

Grissom's hand, as it withdraws from my spine, offering the whisper of a caress, his fingers lingering imperceptibly.

His left hand pressing against the door, before being swallowed by the blue gloom of the autopsy room.

(Sound)

Robbins' voice trickling out, in parsed fractions, as the door rotates pendulously on its hinges – open… closed… open… closed… – before settling back into stasis:

"Hey, Gil… morni… Sara comin…"

"She'll… a minute…"

(Sight)

The abrasive fluorescent lights blanketing the atmosphere in a withered blue cast.

Closing my eyes briefly, then snapping them open immediately. The image of my father lies burned onto the underside of my eyelids.

(Smell)

Taking a deep breath, before entering the morgue, where the scent of death is tangible. An invisible presence that never dissipates, always detectable no matter how much bleach is applied.

(Taste)

The darkness coiling inside me. A serpent of shadow, scaling my throat.

Swallowing back the bitter, black flood of memories.

(Touch, once again)

Pushing against the door, which pliantly yields to my gentle pressure. The last barrier between me and my demons.

(Surrender)

Passing through the doorway. Voluntarily passing into the corridors of my past.


Nodding my hello to Robbins, I approach the occupied autopsy table, the cold metal mattress of death. Examining Dennis Hudson, under the ghostly blue light imbuing the room. Illuminating the crests and valleys of his body, pallid blue shadows traversing the landscape of his frame. Thankfully, the knife, that steel-edged stalagmite, no longer vertically erupts from his chest.

Eerily echoing my thoughts, Robbins begins recounting the autopsy results:

"Cause-of-death is fairly obvious. The knife was lodged in the intercostal space, between the 4th and 5th ribs. Based on the upper-body strength such force would require, I'd say you're almost certainly dealing with a male suspect."

I shift agitatedly, but refrain from contradicting Robbins. But I know. I know that a woman is capable of 'such force.' I witnessed the aftermath firsthand, forever a resident in the dungeons of my mind.

Robbins continues, "Seven stab wounds, all consistent with the knife recovered. Defensive wounds on both hands, but more heavily on the left."

"Indicating the killer is right-handed?" postulates Grissom.

"Handedness is always a subjective determination," Robbins equivocates. "But, based on the angulation of the stab wounds, I'd say yes, there's a high probability that he is not a southpaw."

"Anything else?"

"Yes," gesturing for us to lean over the body. "This bruising around the mouth..."

"It wasn't visible before, at the scene," I observe.

"No, it's definitely peri-mortem, which explains why it's only now surfacing." His open left palm hovering just above the bruise pattern, Robbins states, "The attacker held something over the victim's mouth, likely to muffle any sound."

"Explaining how Mandy wasn't alerted," I murmur.

"Did you find any trace in the mouth or trachea?" Grissom inquires.

"You're not going to like it," Robbins vacillates.

Grissom stares immutably at him.

Easing the lower jaw open, Robbins reaches into the mouth with forceps, extracting a small thread. "White fibers," he identifies, holding it aloft.

"Virtually untraceable," I disconsolately sigh.

Nodding sympathetically, Robbins says, "I sent a sample up to Hodges anyway. To check for any trace chemicals."

"Tox results in?"

"His scan was clean, except for excessively high norepinephrine levels. Which, considering…" Robbins trails off, gesturing vaguely at the stabbed torso.

He glances at me with empathy bleeding through his gaze. I've long suspected that Robbins had guessed my past – well, certain aspects, anyway. His abnormal sensitivity merely serves as confirmation.

Discomforted by the display of pity, my eyes drop from his, landing on the murder weapon, resting on an adjacent table.

Grasping the sealed evidence bag, I announce, "I'm gonna take the knife up to layout. See if there's any recoverable trace under the handle."

As I depart the morgue, Grissom's voice filters through the air, "Anything else, Doc?"

"No. Nothing pertinent. All indications are that he was in excellent health. Until someone turned him into a human pin-cushion…"


I bring the knife into the layout room, where the crimson-stained bedsheets are splayed out on the light-table, a red-and-white canvas of terror. Photographs of the cast-off patterns adorning the walls.

A mock-up of the scene. A mock-up of my memories.

A mockery of my memories.

Suddenly, the overpowering smell of copper assaults me, and I flee. I end up behind the lab, in the loading dock area. Surrounded by a chain-link fence. Damn. I can't escape the cages, the prisons, anywhere.

I breathe deeply of the night air. Brisk. Biting. Its chill teeth penetrating my lungs, grounding me in reality, in the present. Wrapping my arms around myself, in a gesture simultaneously to ward off the cold temperature and of protection, of self-defense.

Lowering myself to the ground, I lean back against the concrete bulwark, resting my head on the slightly gritty surface, forearms placed on bent knees, hands dangling limply in front of me. Looking up at the sky, I see only blackness. Closing my eyes, hoping to find only blackness there, and not the endless replay of memories that have been haunting my eyelids since I first glimpsed Mandy Hudson.

The inky blackness of the night sky becomes a dark vortex, inducing a sense of reverse-vertigo, pulling me inexorably upward into its shadowed depths.

Time trickles on in silence, before an incongruous scent penetrates my consciousness. And, on the tail of the aroma, comes an awareness of another person.

Coffee.

And Grissom.

My eyes descend from the black heavens, to meet his, a steaming styrofoam cup proffered in one hand. I gratefully accept the offering, wrapping both hands around its fluid heat, as Grissom eases himself next to me. Not touching. The fabric of his jacket barely brushing the cotton of my shirt. We've perfected the art of proximity without contact, always carefully maintaining the smallest measurable distance between us. I wonder if Grissom is aware that the hair's-breadth of space only serves to heighten the awareness of his presence. Leaving my nerve-endings alert, in suspense, awaiting the touch that never arrives.

Sipping cautiously from the cup, almost welcoming the scorching burn on the surface of my tongue. The silence continues unbroken. Blanketing us with its warm texture. Cocooning us from the harsh realities of the world, the dark specters of the past. This silence is more than comforting – it's safe.

Somehow, in Grissom's presence, it always is. Always has been.

Growing up, in a house where words were yelled, not spoken; where touches were audible, not gentle caresses; the distinctive slap of skin-on-skin – Sound carried with it the potential of violence. Silence was safe.

We sit there, heads tilted, studying the Vegas night sky, complacently sipping coffee. Surrounded by silence. And then, the words begin flowing, from some unknown wellspring in my soul:

"Growing up, my family would take these crazy, impromptu roadtrips. In the middle of the night. My father would come into our rooms, wake me and my brother up at one, two in the morning. Tell us to grab our shoes and a jacket."

Speaking mutedly, not wanting to fracture the harmonious chrysalis enveloping us, the gravelly timbre of my voice an audible embodiment of the coarse texture of the concrete beneath me.

"We'd all pile into our old station wagon and just drive. For an hour. Two hours. To… wherever. A random spot on a random beach. Or a mountain. Or an old abandoned warehouse. It never seemed to matter where.

"We'd all get out and lay on our backs. And just stare at the sky. My father would tell stories about the stars and the ocean and lost ships and found treasure. Inventing them on the spot. Spinning spider-webs of fantasy from the fabric of our imagination.

"And my mother would drag out whatever strange assortment of food we had grabbed in our sleepy haste. We had feasts, those nights – buffets of pickle-and-mustard sandwiches and ice cream floats made with orange juice."

Nudging me playfully with his shoulder, Grissom teases, "And thus was born your predilection for pureed beets and peanut butter?"

Chuckling briefly in recollection of my unfortunate shopping expedition of the day before, my grin quickly fades.

"We'd lay there, appetites sated, and just watch the sunrise. Those moments were magic…"

The silence begins to reformulate around us, but before it can rebuild its protective cocoon, I shred it apart, with a softly spoken brutality:

"Those moments were magic," I repeat. "And then, in a split second, the magic would end. The fighting would begin. There'd be an argument. About getting home in time for work. Or not having enough gas in the car. Or there were too many mosquitoes. It didn't matter why. It never mattered why.

"The nights, the adventures, always began so perfectly. But, like some cruel corruption of Cinderella, the fairytale always came to an end. Dawn was my midnight.

"Dawn was when my mother…"

The words become lodged in my throat.

"…when I entered my parents' bedroom..."

The blackness of the night sky somehow not as black, not as sinister, as the blackness of my demons, of the darkened corridors of my soul.

"…when I found my father…"

Black memories swirling inside me, an amorphous mass of darkness. Without name, face, or identity.

Rising. Swelling.

Teeming. Suffocating.

"The magic always disappeared at dawn."

The silence reinstates itself. Tainted with memories, tinged with sorrow. Tinted with bleak melancholy.

With black melancholy.

"Ya know, it's strange," I continue, the words once again erupting unbidden from some buried source. "I have an eidetic recollection of that night. Can mentally picture so many minute details – the book on his nightstand. The closet door half-ajar. The crooked lilt to the curtains. Every time I close my eyes, I can effortlessly replay the entire scene.

"But… there's an absence of sound. Like watching a silent film. In vibrant color. On an endless loop.

"Silence was a rare occurrence in our house – there were always raised voices, frustrated shouts, the unmistakable sound of slaps and punches. Silence was… safe. There was no violence without sound. But that night, it offered no security. Silence stole it away…"

And the words stop abruptly, as if the hidden source had dried up, had been exhausted.

The silence of that night bleeding into the silence of this one.

And then, into the still night air, Grissom utters, "My childhood was filled with silence."

I sit, in mute astonishment, at this revelation. Grissom? Voluntarily parceling out a secret of his past?

Now, I hoard artifacts of Grissom's life, like some kind of obsessed packrat, burrowing them in my memory. Storing them. Rotating, rearranging, reassembling the fragments, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, attempting to decipher the enigma that is Gil Grissom.

But it's a damnably difficult task, when the object of my excavation so protectively secretes the clues.

I'm like a house of cards with my demons, with the dirty secrets of my past – one little poke from Grissom's finger, and I collapse in a rubbled heap, revealing my entire hand.

But Grissom? Grissom is fucking Fort Knox.

I know that his mother is deaf. I'm not a forensic scientist for nothing. And, thanks to Catherine, I know that his father died when he was young. But, these were discoveries on my part, not voluntary disclosures on his. 'Open' and 'Grissom' have never been synonymous. So, this is big. Monumental.

I suppress the urge to raise my head from its berth on the concrete bulwark, to make eye contact with him. Talking isn't exactly a forte in our relationship, and discomforting Grissom on the heels of this revelation would be severely counterproductive, instigating one of his trademark emotional retreats. Instead, I allow the silence to resume its fluid course, bathing us in its gentle current.

A few soundless moments pass by, before Grissom once again speaks:

"'There is not only an art, but an eloquence in silence.'"

"Cicero?" I tentatively identify, sensing rather than seeing his affirming nod.

And I understand.

It's not just words. It's the silence between them.

It makes sense, losing his father at a young age, growing up with a deaf mother – that silence would become a means of communication. And that his eyes can be so damned verbal. His whole face, his entire expression, really. But the eyes exponentially moreso. They just… speak. Volumes. With an absence of sound.

Silence as a mode of communication, talking in the silence between words.

Before the quietude descends into awkwardness, or before I induce awkwardness by opening my mouth and over-talking, the trill of my pager blares into our consciousness, dispelling the silent connection, the wordless bond.

"Reception," I read.

Grissom levers himself to his feet, as I allow myself one final examination of the night sky, one last exploration of childhood memories, of magic both gained and lost. In preparation to stand, I place my palms flush against the coarse surface of the asphalt, to push upward, when Grissom's hand appears in front of me, palm up, fingers slightly curled. An unconscious mirror of Dennis Hudson's hand, as it lay outstretched, a final gesture of pleading, of grasping. A pale plea of desperation.

And an echo of another hand, one vastly more familiar to me, in its gentleness and its cruelty…

An involuntary shudder afflicts me, before I consciously shake my head, to disengage the demons' talons of dark memories. Placing my hand, with only a mild hesitancy, into Grissom's, irrationally fearing, anticipating the cool, clammy texture of death; instead discovering a warm and solid anchor, offering leverage. Offering security.

Looking up at Grissom, his expression carefully rearranged to reveal nothing and conceal everything. But, before releasing my hand, maintaining the contact a half-moment longer than necessary, his thumb caresses the ridges of my knuckles, in a gesture I would have imagined, had I not been staring at our joined hands.

We re-enter the lab, in silence once more.


A/N: Kinda happy with this chapter and how it turned out, but not entirely so. I kept adding and subtracting 'til I felt like I was just spinning in circles. I began this chapter with a clear concept, but then things just sorta… evolved, of their own accord. So, it turned out very differently than I'd anticipated. But, I think it works…. Maybe… Ah, I dunno. Like I said, mostly happy. Comments would be greatly welcomed, as a sanity check, if nothing else. ;)