I hold no rights to anything CSI except to look upon them lovingly each Thursday night.

No Beta, so all mistakes are my own.

A/N OK, this is my slightly twisted idea of how to get myself on the show. Yes sadly I'm an actor as well as a writer, but a dreamer most of all. I would play Gwen.

Family, Like it or Not

Grissom sat at his desk behind a mound of overdue paperwork. He takes off his glasses and rubs the tiredness from his eyes with his knuckles much like a four year old just waking up. He sighs, "I'd give anything for a distraction, any distraction." As if on cue Sara enters his office practically floating. "Hey"

"You are literally a sight for sore eyes." Grissom comes around his desk to meet her on the couch.

"Gris, you look beat with a stick."

"It's all this paperwork, I kinda let it go while you were recovering. But it has to be done or the reorganization can't go through."

"I still can't believe you got Ecklie to agree to that." Sara crossed to sit behind Gil's desk.

"What choice did he have? The Sheriff knew better than to disagree and Catherine was still technically a supervisor, we just traded you for Warrick, which from what I hear around the lab works for them too." Grissom joined Sara behind his desk as she signed her transfer request.

"Grissom, Warrick is a married man." "Only for another few weeks," came Warrick's voice from the office door, "once Tina and I get through the waiting period it's done."

"Hey, I'm sorry Warrick, I didn't know." "No worries girl, it was a crazy thing do jumping into a marriage like that. We were never suited to be a couple."

"Well now maybe you can move on to a more suited partner." Sara couldn't hold back her wry grin and Warrick turned to see Catherine standing in the door he had only moments before vacated. And she could almost swear she saw Warrick blush at Catherine's words.

"Hey did my invitation to this party get lost?" It was Jim's turn to lean into the doorway of Gil's office.

"What do you need Jim?" Gris asked with no malice at all.

"Well, we have a guest out front that is asking to speak to you; formally I might add Dr Gilbert Xavier Grissom." No one in the office could keep from smiling at the mention of Grissom's middle name.

"It was a family thing, do you have a name?" Grissom said as he stood to exit his office. "No, she said she thought it best if she were to tell you herself, she's got a kid too, can't be much more than a year old."

Everyone followed Grissom out of the office, but only Sara and Jim followed him to the reception area where Judy was chatting with a cherubic looking woman with a toddler by her side.

Jim made the introduction. "Miss, this is the man you were looking for."

"Yes, I'd recognize that face anywhere." The smiling woman reached out her hand for Grissom to take. As he did he said, "I'm sorry, have we met before?"

"PA!" The word came more like a squeal than a name as the small boy clung to Gil's leg.

The women bent to face the boy and remove him from Grissom's leg, "no Sammy, that's not PA." The boy released Gil, but his blue eyes never left Gil's face.

"Sorry about that, but you really do look just like Dad." At that confession, all jaws dropped, except the mysterious visitor. "Oh geez, I'm sorry, I'm Gwen. Gwen Grissom, I'm your sister, and this is my son Sammy."

With the group, minus Jim, in Gil's office, the explanation began. "I really meant for that to go differently, I'm usually so good with people." Gwen sat on the couch next to but not too close to Gil while Sara showed Sammy the bugs in Grissom's office that the boy seemed drawn to.

"Like I said, I'm your sister, half sister really. I didn't know myself until about six weeks ago."

"I'm sorry Gwen, but I don't understand, please continue."

"Well you see, your father met and married my mother some 45 years ago. I came along shortly after. We had a perfectly normal life. Mom died about 8 years ago, ovarian cancer so it was just Dad and me. Then I met Sammy's dad shortly before he was deployed Iraq. We got engaged, I got pregnant, and Sam was deployed. He got killed three weeks later."

"I'm sorry Gwen, that sucks," Sara said to show support and that she had been paying attention.

"Yeah well, it was all pretty whirlwind, and to be honest I didn't really know Sam all that well, but he gave me Sammy when I thought children weren't going to be a part of my life. Anyway, Dad never really got over Mom's death and he died six weeks ago. I was clearing out his things when I found this."

She handed Gil an old photo, badly yellowed and creased down the middle. It was a man who strongly resembled Gil with a small boy about Sammy's age riding on his shoulders.

"Wow Gil, he looks just like you!" Sara said having crossed to the couch with Sammy to look at the photo. "PA!" Sammy said again reaching out for Gil. "No Sammy," Gwen said taking him from Sara, "this is your Uncle." "Unca Pa" the boy said, bringing small smiles and giggles from the adults.

"That little boy must be you Gil," Sara said, "he's looking at the butterflies!!"

"Wow…that is me and my father, before he left." Gil sat back on the sofa, "I was five I think and my mother had just started to lose her hearing. I don't remember them fighting or anything, one day he was just gone, my mother never spoke of it again." He went silent.

"That explains a lot." Gwen put Sammy next to her on the sofa and handed him his book, Sara noticed it was Miss Spider's Tea Party, "another bug man" she thought.

I didn't notice when I was a kid, but as I got older there was always something there, like a gap between us that neither of us could cross. It got better when Sammy was born, but never really went away. It was you; you were the sadness behind his eyes."

"I doubt that Gwen, Mom and I never moved, he didn't keep in touch, he never even tried."

"That's not true, when I found that photo in his wallet, I started inspecting the boxes more carefully, I found these." She handed Gil a small stack of eight or ten cards, each stamped return to sender. "He tried."

"Birthday cards," Sara noticed the post mark dates on the envelopes, "he sent you birthday cards." Sara sat down next to Gil on the sofa. She didn't know how this would affect him, but she wanted to be close to him.

"I wonder why Mom didn't let me have these; I was a little boy without a father whose mother was going silent." Gil wasn't angry with his mother, just introspective.

"Well, I won't pretend to understand your mother Gil, but as a single mom, I don't know how to introduce Sammy to a man he'll never know, a man I barely knew myself. Maybe your mom thought it would be easier for you to move on with no father at all instead of a reminder on your birthday of a father who left."

"Gil, didn't you tell Catherine that your father died when you were nine?" Sara remembered that case where a mother claimed the son she killed to 'protect' had been abducted.

"Yeah, well, he was actually my step-father. He and my mother had only been married a short time when it happened."

"I'm sorry Gil, if I'd known this was going to cause you pain I never would have looked for you. It's just that except for Sammy, you're the only family I have left." Gwen stood and got Sammy ready to leave.

"I'm sorry Gwen, it's just this is a lot of information to take in all at once and I've had a bad few weeks," Grissom stood as he referred to the recent events with Sara and the miniature killer, he smiled as his lifted Sammy and continued, "but as a friend of mine once said, family is family like it or not, right Sammy?"

"Unca Pa!" Sammy answered with joy, as they left Grissom's office for the break room to introduce the newest members of the family.