Title: Life is just a game
Author: chibiness87
Genre: angst
Pairing: GSR (squinting required)
Spoilers: Through 5x21 Committed
Disclaimer: Nope. Not even a little bit mine.
A/N: My response to the LJ community gsrdrabbles prompt 22 "Games". This was meant to be fluff. But it isn't… I guess that muse must only come out in the evening… sorry about that.
My life has been full of games.
Oh, not your regular board games you can pick up in any kids toy shop. No. The games I've played have been from my invention.
Guessing games more than anything. How many bottles of beer has daddy drunk tonight? How long it will be before the fights starts? How long will we have to wait in the hospital for mom to say she walked into a door… or some other excuse? In a way I guess that's a game… which excuse will she use tonight?
Then, my mom had enough. My father was dead, and she was in a hospital. The nurses tried to play games with me there. Tried to get me to speak out against my mother. But, I know how to play games. I know all the rules, and those I don't I pick up pretty fast. My father always said I was smart.
Foster care. Now that was a game. Watching the prospective parents come and go. More guessing games. Who would be picked by whom? It was never me. No-one wants a 13-year-old with my history. They never know how to deal with it. So I sit and watch the younger kids be taken away. The cute babies, the smiling toddlers, the happy youngsters. And I guess which of the new kids are lifers. Like me.
School was my escape. School was where I could be who I was, no games involved. You don't need to play at being smart when you read all the books you could lay your hands on to be invisible. The teachers were proud of me. I could see that. One even took me under her wing. Sort of. Anyway, it was because of her I ended up in Harvard.
And the games began again. I played at being the 'normal' college kid. The one who was interested in parties and boys. Dated for the first time, just to see what all the fuss was about. Dating is a game, just like everything else. Anyone can play, if you know the rules. And if you don't, well, it's not rocket science. The rules are easy to pick up.
I eventually got tired of playing. Became the student I was. Graduated Harvard, moved back to the west coast. A new college, a new degree, a new game. A job at the end of it in the San Fran Crime Lab. And now the rules of the game changed. I was no longer a player. I was a master. Like the banker in Monopoly. I was the one calling the shots, weeding out the others involved.
Each new case was a new game. The players changed, but the rules stayed the same. And the rules let me win more often than not. And the streets became a little safer after each game reached its end. Another criminal found.
Continuing education courses led me to him. And for the first time since graduating, I wasn't the master of the game anymore. Oh, I didn't know it at the time. No. It took two years and moving to Vegas for me to see that the game I was currently in. The set of rules so complex and so hidden, I hadn't even realised I was playing.
But, for all my brains, I couldn't stop playing. Because for the first time in all the games of my life, my heart was the stakes. And to stop playing… well, it never crossed my mind. Oh sure, sometimes I cheated. You don't get to where I got to; see what I saw, without knowing how to cheat. Passing comments became my game, from me and him.
And then I lost track of the rules. And the game began to win. My lack of attention almost cost me my job. But then the rules changed to ones I was familiar with. PEAP counsellors are easy to fool. The right word in the right place with the right smile, and you're good to go. They don't know you before you step foot in their office. And few know you when you leave.
Rules are important. They are there to be tested, tried, broken. But sometimes, not playing by the rules gets you killed. I should know. I'm being held with a ceramic shard against my throat by a serial rapist, all because Grissom and I overlooked the rules. And as he stares at me through the glass door, I wonder why it is we play.