Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or any of the characters from CSI.

Part One: Before

Prologue: Minnesota

I wasn't born in Minnesota. Or anywhere near it, for that matter—California is home, to me. But I have come to love it as if it were home to me. The people are people, like everywhere else, but perhaps with a little more deference and kindness. It's not even an active consideration—just the norm of interactions, here. It's a cultural thing. I don't think that exists in most of the country—it wasn't that way in California, and it wasn't that way in Chicago, either. I liked Chicago too—it took a while to get used to the cold.

I don't know how I would have handled Minneapolis if it hadn't been for the taste of winter that Chicago had given me. People call Chicago the windy city—they've obviously never come further north. Out of the city, nearing the western side of the state, the wind comes so strong that it could knock you off your feet… I'd been out in some of the worst weather, snow days and blizzards… days that kids walking to school might literally have been lifted from the ground from the force of the gales.

But the people made up for the weather—and Twins games were fun because they're affordable, for me, and never as crowded as in larger fields, even though the Metrodome had only been built a few years before I moved to Minneapolis. It was actually quite fascinating—the first major sports facility to have a dome supported completely by air. The scientist in me was giddy, the first time I entered.

I moved here from Chicago, because I was offered a better job—I would have been stuck working in the coroner's office in Chicago, which I had done all through grad school, but Hennepin county had an opening for a CSI, level one. It was the beginning of everything for me—the beginning of the career I hadn't known I'd wanted when I first fell in love with bugs, but somehow, the two worked together well. Bugs appeared on bodies in a timeline—they were forensically valuable. And my particular expertise in the area is fairly rare.

It was on my first day that I met Dr. Philip Gerard. I was twenty-eight years old—I say this like I am looking back from a great distance, from much greater maturity and growth. I feel much wiser, much more experienced, but I've only been here in Minneapolis a short time. But every moment has been invigorating! I miss my mother, who still lives in Marina Del Rey, because she's the only family I've had since I was nine, but I have never felt more alive than I do now.

Dr. Gerard took me under his wing, making my training his personal responsibility—I learned, like a child at their mother's knee, the commandments of forensics. I learned to follow the evidence—to trust it, rather than people—and that you can't crunch evidence to fit a theory. These, of course, were things I learned in school and in training—but you don't really understand how difficult they can be in application until you're there, facing the evidence, and having to tear the pictures of the crimes from the backs of your eyelids just so that you can think straight. He also taught me detachment, as a survival tool; you can't let victims become personal, or you wouldn't last at this job. He taught me that gallows humor was the deepest form of reverence for the dead—self-preservation for a higher purpose, the justice of the person on the table before you.

He made me love Minnesota, more than the people or the Metro dome or even the winters I had grown to appreciate—I loved Minnesota because of the man I had become there, under his guidance, and the man I anticipated becoming, staying here. I would never had had the nerve to ask Rebecca to move all the way to Minneapolis to be with be, if not for the confidence I gained from him—from only a few months doing something I loved and that I was good at. I missed her, and I wanted her there with me, so I asked. Amazing.

I had rarely had girlfriends, growing up. My first serious relationship was in Chicago—Rebecca Andrews. She was a theatre major—it's a wonder we ever fell for each other in the first place. I like to think that it's because of my mother—she had run an art gallery, when I was little, and had imparted upon me an appreciation for the arts. I loved theatre, art museums, literature… so even if she didn't understand my science, we shared many passions. When I moved, we stayed together, long-distance for a while. I started playing poker again, to raise money to drive to see her on the weekends. Finally, she auditioned at the Guthrie and got a part—and agreed to move to Minneapolis and see how she could do in the theatres there. I was ecstatic, and quickly started looking for an apartment to replace the studio I had signed a six-month lease on, when I had moved up here so hastily.

That was the moment I realized that things were turning around—that I might, just might, be able to have my cake and eat it too. I don't remember being so optimistic since my dad died, but it felt good to hope fiercely for a change. I had a beautiful woman who loved me enough to uproot her life for me, who was going to be appearing in a play at a prestigious theatre and who would hopefully, from that point on, be a familiar face at the Guthrie. I loved my job, loved my mentor, who took on an almost-fatherly role every once and a while, and I really, truly, loved Minnesota.