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Tentative

Chapter Three

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            "You have how many brothers and sisters?" Lindsay asks me, kneeling on the break room couch. Catherine's sister dropped her off around midnight because of a medical emergency.

            Of course, a call came in five minutes later and I was forced to become babysitter.  A job I normally am quite happy with…except looking at her sweet little face right now, it makes me think of Kia when we were little.

            "I have six brothers and two sisters." I tell her, noting the yawn she tries to stifle.

            "Wow!" She exclaims straight into a second expression of sleep, "I don't even have one!"

            I laugh at her innocent comment, "Well, you're lucky to have your mommy all to yourself.  I had to share everything.  My room, my clothes, my toys.  There were so many of us that for a while we had to have a schedule to take a shower.  And we didn't have a computer until I was nineteen."

            Her eyes widen, "You didn't have a computer?"

            "Nope.  We never had the money for it." I shovel a bit of my dinner into my mouth, and offer her some of the Thai Pad Noodles, "Careful.  It's hot."

            But she still takes some and slurps as she eats.  Smacks her lips, "That's good!"

            "It's okay." I shrug, "I like Russian food better.  My mommy and daddy make great kulich." I knowingly use that word so she'll ask about food and nothing more about my family.

            "Kul…kuli…" She works on repeating the word.

            "Kulich.  It's a bread we make during Easter.  With raisins and almonds.  It's very good."

            She eyes me, trying to judge if I'm lying.  Probably because the last time she heard that Catherine was shoving some sort of health food at her.

            I smile, "I promise it's good.  I'll have to bring you to a holiday dinner.  Then you can try everything." I sip the broth, pause for a second to think of something else she might like and speak again, "You might like paskha boyarskaya and kutya.  Although my grandmother would be a little scared if I were giving you kutya."

            "Why?" The team's returned; Cath's wandering in.

            I blush a little, "It's a food that symbolizes fertility.  It's something we all eat, even my six-year old sister, but…"

            "Ah.  Old fashioned woman." She smirks, brushing a few hairs from the little girl's brazen eyes, "I think we might want to keep that from her until she's married." The blonde leans so she's nose to nose with her daughter, "Why don't you go hang out with Archie?  I heard he got a new computer game today."
            "Okay!" Off without a second thought, nary a look back to me.

            "I thought your family was Norwegian." The woman asks, while everyone settles into various pieces of furniture.

            "One quarter.  My grandfather was a Russian immigrant.  After they got tossed from the country they went back to Russia and raised my mother in this tiny town in Siberia.  Mama met Papa one day returning from the market nearby, the fell in love, got married and moved to California a week before Kia and I were born." I summarize, "I speak Norwegian, but I know very little about the country.  I'm too much a child of the Rodina to really care anyway."

            "Rodina?"

            Grissom cuts in, "It's what people call the land.  Holy Mother Russia." He explains, not quite hitting the nail on the head.  It's close enough for me, so I nod.

            "Pretty much." I start to leave the room, start to flow back to my part of the lab to finish running the tests I got handed a half hour ago plus what ever had to have shown up when they re-entered CSI.

            "Greg.  Wait." Nick starts, "We'd like to talk to you if it's alright.  Ya' know maybe we can tell you about our families."

            They're curious.  I'll humor them for now, drop them a few crumbs so they will leave me alone for a while, "Alright.  What do you want to know?" I collapse to the floor and lay my back against the counter.

            "Why'd you change your name?" Sara prods, looks at me guiltily, "You said your middle name was Luka, but I remember you got mail here a couple of times that was addressed to Luka Petrov-Sanders."

            Snort, "My grandparents…they think this is all a phase that I'll outgrow.  But when I left, I cast off my ties and took Nanek's name." I see the confusion in their eyes, "My grandmother.  Her last name was Sanders before she married Tatek." I pause, "So I took off from Cali to come here and figured I'd start over on my own."

            "But you kept in touch with your family…"

            "Well, my plan had been to leave and change my name but I had a picture of my three youngest siblings and I couldn't imagine never hearing their voices again." I sigh, let my head lull against the white cabinets, "I spent far too much time with them to just give them up like they meant nothing at all to me."

            "Which three?" Willows asks, shifting slightly forward and watching me with intent eyes.

            "Nikolai, Aleksey and Tassie." I respond.  There's a crystal clear image in my head of them, when the latter two were newborns and we all stood around marveling at the new beings, thinking at how amazing it was that what was once cells had become sweet little infants.

            We were hope-ridden then.

            Their heads bob, and they process this information.  I allow myself rise from the cool floor, dust my hands on my jeans, "Listen.  I'm gonna go see what work I have left to do.  Then I'll come by and say my goodbyes."

            Sullenly, they do not remark when I leave on a journey to the locker room, crawl slowly down the hallway with my hands in my pockets so I can't scratch at my stomach.

            The burn itches like hell.  It was probably a second degree, judging from the damage, but the last time I went to the hospital for treatment they were calling me a suicide attempt.  Made me spend the night in the psych ward until I demanded to be released.

            I won't make that mistake ever again.

            I give in and lift the gauze pad protecting it.  Let my fingers graze over it, not with nails…fingertips rough-kind over the sore skin.  I hit the doorway and remove my appendages from under my shirt.

            Grissom watches me when I enter the room, seems to know that I'm leaving possibly to never come back; to never step within the confines of this lab ever again.

            Oddly, that prospect doesn't bother me like I thought it would.

            When he follows me, I'm not surprised.  The others probably volunteered him.  He speaks and I listen out of respect because I enjoy his quick wit and lithesome remarks, "I put you in for a leave of absence for the next month.  If you need longer, call.  If you need someone to talk to, call."

            Gods, I can't believe this.  I can't believe these people I've worked with for the last five years and their sudden behavior.

            Perhaps I should have told them more.  Maybe something about being seven, but caring for my younger siblings while my mother puked on the bathroom floor and my father was god-knows-where.  Or my brother Fyodor's junior high graduation when I had to get all nine of us dressed, fed, and transported to the school; Mama was in the hospital for alcohol poisoning and Papa was 'working overtime'.

            I wipe the lone tear that's tracking cold down my cheek, "'S funny.  My father has to be dying for any one to say they're sorry or to even offer me their time to talk." I straighten up and slip off my lab coat, my shirt, "No one ever cared about me before."

            "What the…" His fingers come to rest on the largest portion of burn marks, high on the column of my spine, "Greg?"

            "Scars.  From the explosion, but mostly from a fire when I was a kid." I shrug them off because he can only see my back from this angle, while I pull on a clean Good Charlotte tee and change my shoes.

            He must furrow his brow, "Why didn't you ever tell us about that?"

            Do I tell him off?  Do I tell him my reasons for avoiding the topic like the goddamn plague?  Or do I answer his question with all the sincerity and truth I can muster from the confines of my morality?

            I grab my bag from its storage in the locker, then turn around slowly.  Train my sickening gaze of severe distrust on his unknowing face, "Because no one ever asked."

            And I leave, close my locker and spin the combination lock before speeding from the room and for my car.  Sara calls to me as I stroll further and further from where she and the rest of the team stand with what they once thought was perfect clarity of me.

            Their perceptions were wrong.  I'm not afraid to tell them such, but I won't.  Doesn't matter anymore.

            I'm so tired of people assuming things about me, as if they knew me.  There's only one person that has any semblance of right to do so – Grissom.  Because I had to tell him about my name change when I applied for a job and because he's talked to my mother for fifteen minutes once before.

            I trust him to keep that information in that safe he calls a mind.

            My car has somehow started and begun driving, though I don't recall doing anything to facilitate those acts.  Nonetheless, I continue toward the airport careful to stop at the red lights and keep my eyes on the road.  Lord knows what would happen if I didn't.

            Crash.  Kill.  Become a statistic.

            Like Nikolai' girlfriend, victim of a hit and run.

            I've never been in one, but I've down the tests for them time and time again.  The loss of kids lives when a seatbelt or a working airbag could've saved them…  It's a waste, and it's heartbreaking.

            And I won't be one of them.

            The rain pounds down suddenly and pours out on to the road like Niagara Falls, making it extremely slick and slippery.  Gibbery, forcing the inexperienced from the pavement and into the confines of parking lots.  I now have the road to myself; I downshift to maintain traction.

            But I still feel the wheels begin to spin in the puddles of the Strip.  I try to pull off the road, make an effort to get out of the path of incoming traffic as I skid.  I curve.  I slam the breaks and careen out of control.

            Oh please God, please watch over me and anyone in my path.  Fuckfuckfuck.  Damnit!

            I can already see the SUV swerving in an effort to avoid me…

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*v* Cassie Jamie *v*

csimiami@cassie-jamie.com