Spoilers: Burden of Proof

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~Windows To The Soul~

He had told Warrick that eyes were the windows to the soul. It wasn't exactly original. In fact, it was down right clichéd. Still, there was something to be said for clichés. They were safe, and safety was good. Tonight had proved that. Sometimes, the safest situations were the most dangerous. Family was supposed to be safe, and it disturbed him when it wasn't. Tonight, eyes had literally provided a window into a crime, and, combined with a little A/V wizardry, found a solution that satisfied justice.

It also satisfied Grissom's sense of world order, but that was just a nice side benefit.

Unfortunately, that order was uncomfortably skewed at the moment, and it had nothing to do with hamburger. At least, he was pretty sure it had nothing to do with hamburger. To be frank, he was more than a little confused at the moment.

All his life he had relied on order. Whenever he ran into something that refused to allow him to order it, he abandoned it. Tonight was a classic example. He had found the order of the bullets, through scientific experiment, and had reached a logical, plausible and satisfactory solution. If only everything were that accommodating, his life would be that much easier. He liked a good puzzle, but he liked even more the satisfaction he got when he had forced it into an eternal order.

And yet, lately he had found himself drawn toward something, someone, who refused to let him categorize her.

Therein lay the crux of the problem. How could he rely on someone he couldn't categorize? Brass was easy. He was solid, predictable, and dependable. There were no surprises. Much the same could be said of Catherine, whom he had known so long that he could at least predict when she would become unpredictable and prepare accordingly. Warrick and Nick were also variables he could control, and Greg, well, if anything the lab tech's unpredictable nature made him easy to categorize. But her.

He knew without a doubt that he could rely on her. That wasn't the problem. He also knew that she would always get the job done, if only to prove that she could. That wasn't a problem either. The problem was that he couldn't control her. Any situation with her was automatically a variable regardless of who else was involved.

She always looked straight at him. He could always see her eyes. By association, he reasoned that he should be able to see her soul as well. It unnerved him that she could his too, but he knew that it was only fair. What unsettled him the most though is that no matter how loudly her soul shouted through her eyes, he couldn't understand what on earth it was trying to tell him.

There were few things that Gil Grissom could not reason out given enough time and a good experiment premise. She seemed to be one of them. How could he not have noticed the vegetarian thing? He noticed everything else about her. How she looked when she was processing a scene, how she bubbled over with enthusiasm at the mention of body farms, how the pain lingered in her eyes at the end of their conversation this afternoon though her mouth had spread into her characteristic grin.

Why would a dead pig turn someone off ground beef? For that matter, why would someone who couldn't eat meat because of said pig be so excited about visiting a body farm? More variables. This was killing him.

He had been making supper when Catherine had arrived. It had taken him the usual amount of time to drive home, and along the way he had realized that he really wanted meatballs. After spending almost thirty minutes looking for the recipe, he had finally assembled all the ingredients, when the knock had come on his door, and he opened it to reveal Catherine, a bottle of orange and a bag from the liquor store he knew contained vodka.

Catherine only looked at him when she wanted something. He knew that. She was predictable. She set traps, and thought herself clever, but to one who knew her, Catherine was predictable. He probably was too when you got right down to it. Which is how she had known he would be here making supper. He had always insisted that the meal one cooked when one got home from work was supper, regardless of what time one consumed it.

Catherine was drinking. This was also predictable. When she was drinking, she looked at him more often, and he could tell from her eyes that she was plotting something. He also knew that she would definitely have a better grip on the situation than he would, regardless of her incipient inebriation. Catherine wouldn't solve his problem, but he knew she would help him get started.

After a discussion Grissom had only barely understood, Catherine and her alcohol had retired to the window seat and his eyes had fallen on his phone list. He had dialed the florist, and ordered a plant to be sent to Sara at the lab. He couldn't think of something for the sentiment fast enough. What he came up with was hardly poetry, and now he realized that it was also decidedly lacking in soul, but she wouldn't see his eyes, and he'd have to do something else anyway, so he blurted out the first thing that crossed his mind, and hoped it would do for a start.

"From Grissom"