A/N: This idea came to me today and I decided to write it right away. This story takes place in an AU, where Cuddy seems to have gotten herself in some big trouble... I didn't have a beta reader for this and English is not my first language, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes. R&R to let me know if it's worth continuing or not please.

Disclaimer: I do not own House MD or any of it's characters. It's property of David Shore and FOX. If they were mine, things would have been totally different now.

A deadly game

Prologue

So this was it. While the darkness was closing itself around her, there was only one thought that kept playing through her head. How the hell had she gotten herself into this mess? It was as if her own mind was playing a cruel, sadistic game with her. No matter how hard she tried to forget about her naivety, the thoughts kept firing themselves back at her. They were all she could focus on. Well, that and the pain obviously.

She had been hoping she would be able to shut it out. Many stories and rumors go around about the moment before one dies: tales about white lights, ghost appearances, out-of-body experiences and memories flashing by. But those weren't the things she was interested in right now. She didn't care for them, nor did she believe in any of those things.

No. Lisa Cuddy was a rational woman, only believing in what she could see with her own eyes, what she could explain with her own mind. That was what she trusted and she would secretly ridicule people who spent their lives advocating any other truth than the truth of science. Having spent a great deal of her life with books as her best and frankly only friends made for the fact that she happened to know a tad bit about the way the human body works. Okay, that was an understatement. Having been a doctor once, she knew a lot about it and right now, she couldn't help but remember that our body, in its own way, can give us one last moment of utter peace before it decides to completely shut down.

Like the flame of an almost burnt down candle slowly extinguishes before it is reduced to a small film of smoke, our mind can numb pain gradually until at a certain point, one feels nothing at all anymore. What wouldn't she have given to experience that; for the aching to just go away, even if it were only for a second. To experience those heavenly moments free of pain before it would mercilessly strike back again with full force and shut down her mind leaving her body behind as a useless pile of bones.

Unfortunately, fate seemed to think time had come to punish her for her impiety, since she could feel the blood slowly escaping her body, trickling down her ribcage to make contact with the hard, cold concrete underneath her. Her head was throbbing due to the gash above her right eyebrow, some strands of her short, dark hair sticking to the dried blood around it. While her arteries where slowly being drained, she could feel the pain, mercilessly radiating from the giant gape just beneath her shoulder, making its way through her beaten and bruised body, raging like a cold fire.

She had given up on fighting it, given up on trying to alarm someone. The gag that had rudely been shoved into her mouth and the tight ties that were slowly cutting in the skin of her wrists and ankles prevented her from doing so anyway. The fighting phase had passed hours ago, preceded by panic, followed by helplessness and eventually acceptance. Accepting her destiny, she was now only waiting for the inevitable to arrive.

While she was counting down the minutes before her body would stop functioning at all, pain etched on her delicate features, she once more thought about the ridiculousness of this whole situation. Here she was, lying on the filthy concrete of a dark, abandoned alley surrounded by darkness, life slowly being sucked out of her, while a mere 50 yards further, thousands of citizens went on with their daily lives oblivious to her predicament.

Students would be getting out to party, celebrating the end of their midterms. Husbands would be found fighting over cabs, eager to leave their concrete work prisons and go home to spent time with their wives and kids. Loners would roam the street longing for company and drowning their sorrows in alcohol in one of the many sinister bars around town. All the while, she would be lying in the same spot, unable to move or scream, slowly bleeding to death.

People always feel the need to romanticize death, hoping it will somehow make the concept less painful or harsh. Children aren't told their favorite pet is dead. No, we tell them it's just going to a better place or going to sleep for eternity. It occurred to her that she actually was going to slip into her perpetual sleep in the metropolis famously known as 'the city that never sleeps'. Could it be more ironic?

In fact, because of the absurdity of her situation, she thought this scene could have easily been taken from one of those cheap novels one reads while on vacation, when the only thing you want to do is give your brain some rest and relax. Trying to forget about your own life and its problems, you immerse yourself in these stories, fully aware of the storyline and its ending long before you have reached the last page, but not caring either way.

In hindsight, she should have known how all of this would end long before the whole situation occurred too, should have been aware this would end badly. There had been enough indications foreshadowing this outcome. Yet, she had failed to notice, had been in way over her head, too determined to find out the truth and free herself of the burden that had been pressing on her shoulders for as long as she could remember.

Tortured by these thoughts of her own failure, a last punishment for her imprudence it seemed, she noticed her surroundings became a haze before everything eventually went black.

So what the hell happened to Cuddy? Just let me know if you wanna find out and I'll continue :)