The Ten Principles

Author: LadyLuminol

Rating: K+ (for now)

Summary: Every scientist follows the Ten Principles. Whether they know it or not. (GSR)

A/N: Everyone, I apologize! I am sorry for not updating in forever, and I take all the blame. There, I said it. I really am sorry, but life got in the way (I'm in the process of challenging Grade 12 Bio for the credit, and it's batty around here! Plus I'm going to Queen's University for a week and I have to pack!).

.oOo.

Chapter One — The Principle of Objectivity

Scientists cultivate the ability to gather and examine facts. They base their conclusions on only these facts.

Lots of alcohol and no familiar faces — her personal checklist for a good bar. Not that the checklist was particularly challenging, of course; she'd never make it three feet into a bar if she didn't relax her germ-phobic rules. Thankfully, she didn't have to try again with the even more unsavory-looking bar a block south, because habitual drunks drooling on the film-covered bar confirmed the former, and a quick scan through the haze did for the latter.

Satisfied, Sara dropped heavily into a booth and systematically proceeded to block everything her PEAP counselor had told her about mixing 'drinking and thinking', as the overweight, overbearing psychologist had told her in one of what she saw as a waste of fifteen hours she could have spent on a case. Of course, the counselor had told her to stop dwelling on her 'trouble spots' as well.

Just how the hell was she supposed to do that when he was part of the reason she started drinking anyway?

Quit it, genius, she berated herself silently. Just order the goddamn drink and slug it like it's a Guinness and you're Irish. Twisting the top off her Smirnoff Ice (the numbers for the alcohol content had looked good), she took the first pull of alcohol she'd had in three months. And damn, did it feel good!

An hour later, she was flicking yet another cap back and forth in her hands, semi-inebriated and wondering whether Grissom would print it if he found her here drunk in a place barely clean enough to pass as a bar. She figured he would, just so he could have another weapon in his arsenal of things to be 'concerned' about.

That's not fair, her inner mental voice slurred slightly. You don't know how he'd feel. Stick with the facts, genius, they're all you got. Nodding decisively to her inner monologue, she signaled the bartender for another drink and asked him for a pen and a napkin when he brought the icy-cool bottle to her.

Slowly she started to scratch out the pros and cons, if you could call them that, of the situation. Tedious, long, and requiring a lot of alcohol. After a few minutes she sat back to look at her list, and smirked a bit.

Pros

He asked me to come to Vegas

He asked me to stay

He trusted me to investigate Warrick. Twice.

"Since I met you." (what was that about? I dunno, and neither does he!)

The whole 'honey' thing when 'Supervisor' Willows blew up the lab

The Dr Lurie interrogation (NB – don't tell him I know!)

Personal bubble invasions

Cons

He said no

Teri Miller

Lady Heather (please tell me there were cheap drugs involved in that!)

The 'freezeme out' attitude

He asked Sofia out

He doesn't trust me anymore

The 'pros' outnumbered the 'cons', she noted, but what 'cons' she came up with! She vaguely thought that the fact she knew about all of his love interests in the past five years and what had happened could be termed stalking, but the thought was irrelevant when she knew he had, once, returned her feelings.

I think.

Aarg! I just don't know enough! At this rate, I'd be better off pulling petals from a daisy. At least I'd get a coherent answer!

Another drink, this time a Mudslide. They were her comfort drink, as much as that made her sound like an alcoholic. When she was at Berkeley, her best friends had tried to get her over a breakup in the only way a Berkeley student knows how: acid and alcohol. She remembered skipping the acid, but the next morning the dozen or so Mudslides she drank had given her the second-worse hangover she'd ever had.

She didn't want to think about the worst one. Brass had thought about it enough that day for the both of them.

Giving up on her alcohol-induced ramblings and incoherencies, she stumbled to the bar. The bartender promptly pickpocketed her keys and slipped in a note about how to get them back the next morning, along with the amount of her bar tab, and called her a cab. The creative bartender, recognizing his unceremoniously drunk patron from a robbery from his old life, merely lifted her wallet and gave the cabbie the address from the driver's license, tipping him healthily to make sure she got in the door safe.

And then he closed up, thankful that in his own small way, he had helped the woman who put him on the right path.

.oOo.

Across town from where Sara was being shoved in a cab, one Doctor Gilbert A. Grissom, Ph.D. Entomology, was getting equally drunk in the privacy of his own home.

Actually, he was sitting in the bathtub with a snifter and a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. The bathtub was a practicality; easy to clean up in the morning, and conveniently close to the toilet, which he was sure he would be in need of. The Wild Turkey was the important part. And it didn't matter if he had the whole bottle, because he was pretty sure he didn't have to get up the next night.

Or so he hoped.

He'd called in sick for the first time in nine years, made Greg shift supervisor to piss Sofia off, and walked the thirteen steps to his alcohol cabinet. A passing fancy about a bottle of oak-aged Glenfiddich was first, but practicality won out and he grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey. Not bothering with the glass or the ice, he just grabbed a pillow and a blanket and settled himself into his (empty) Jacuzzi tub for a night of fall-down drunken good times. Or just fall-down drunkenness. Or just drunkenness; he wasn't sure which option was which at this point, although he was reasonably certain that attempting to stand would result in the second option.

About a fifth of a bottle ago, he had started to think about the problem that had driven him to drink in the first place. Sara.

Or, more precisely, his relationship with her. Or, even more to the point, the lack thereof. He wanted to regain that trust, the easy friendship and the quote-unquote 'geek mind-meld'. He craved that little bit of unpredictability in his over-structured life. It had made him feel alive, to know that she could throw curveballs as well as the World Series pitchers he watched religiously every year in October. Ever since she tried to leave, that life, that spark, had been gone, and it wasn't nearly as fun to drag his sorry ass to work every night.

He wanted to go back two years and fix the mistakes he made, but unless his amazingly brilliant theoretical physicist came up with time-travel for that express purpose, it was impossible. And that was the sad state of affairs. A half-empty bottle of bourbon and a desire for time-travel.

Pathetic.

He took another swig, cursing himself for ever letting his objectivity go. Focus on the career, always on the career, had been his mantra for a very, very long time. But a career was a cold thing to go home to every night. Careers couldn't make you your favorite dinner on your birthday, or play Scrabble, or keep you warm at night. Sure, they filled up space in his closets and time in his life, but time wasn't mandated and closet space was at a premium in his townhouse.

And that's when it happened. Doctor Gilbert Augustus Grissom, Ph.D., had a lightbulb moment.

Objectivity isn't everything.

For a scientist, this was an earth-shaking concept. He had been wrong for twenty-six years, since his first day as a coroner in the Los Angeles Coroner's Office. More than half his life, he'd been operating on an incorrect theory. And that's when Lightbulb Moment # 2 hit.

Sara was right. She did know what to do about this, and she was right.

If Lightbulb No. 1 was earth-shaking, Lightbulb No. 2 was akin to the Sun suddenly appearing in your living room. He had created a theory, that life with Sara would be impossible. Then he blamed the evidence for lying to him when all along he was lying to the evidence. And to Sara. He had violated the basic tenet of science—you must consider the all the facts. He hadn't.

And now he'd ruined the best chance at happiness he'd ever gotten. Damn.

With that thought, he drifted off into the unconsciousness that only the dead and the drunk know.

TBC…