DAY ONE IN THE LIFE AND TIMES OF NEW GIRL

Sadness blanketed the team, and she wanted it to go away. She had never known Warrick Brown, and she didn't want to hate him quite so much.

She wasn't even supposed to be his replacement. She was supposed to be a Sara Sidow, or Side something's replacement. She hadn't gotten the whole name. She'd just seen the photo on the supervisor's desk. That was when she knew that replacing Sara Sidle wouldn't be any easier than replacing Warrick Brown would have been.

The assistant shift supervisor had mumbled something about never replacing anybody, but Riley knew that was just a fantasy that they kept up -- a fantasy perpetuated so that everyone would feel important. To make it seem like they'd never really forget the investigators that came before. To make it seem like the sterile square building's occupants were anything more than cogs in a wheel, inevitably in need of a bit more oil and, eventually, new shinier pieces to fill places occupied by ones rusty beyond repair. Maybe they'd learn. Maybe they wouldn't.

If Catherine Willows hadn't learned in this many years that nobody was irreplaceable, then maybe she never would. Riley wasn't sure whether to pity or to envy the other woman for maintaining such a fantasy. She wondered how many hours spent awake and restless in bed went toward such maintenance -- toward ensuring Catherine that she mattered, that Warrick had mattered, that Sara had mattered. But, ultimately, Riley didn't want to know. Reality, not fantasy, was her business.

Fantasies cracked and splintered. Sometimes it took bullets to shatter them. Sometimes it took ropes, and pills. Knives. Drugs. Alcohol. She'd seen it all, splattered out over the pavement. Dried blood was all it amounted to in the end anyways.

Her first case was gratifying.

They'd saved a kid. He had a freakish resemblance to another photograph on Gil Grissom's desk. Warrick Brown. The same slightly upward, curly hair. The same light mocha skin. The same wide, light eyes.

But alive.

Alive.

That was the imperative.

Who knew how long the kid would actually survive? That was life. The experience would probably be traumatic. How was a kid supposed to forget that?

Then again, how was he supposed to remember it?

He had the unique opportunity to write in his college essay about how he'd been kidnapped by a serial killer and frozen to death on a bicycle before two investigators found him at the last dramatic moment and gave him CPR, after a rash of similar cases? It could almost make a humorous essay, if the kid went about it in the right way. Serial killers, carbon monoxide and bicycles. How many essays had started that way?

Dr. Alwick was odd. Reminded Riley of her obnoxious parents. It was no wonder that Riley still thought about high school a bit too much. Formative experiences indeed. And oh, for the joys of psychoanalysis.

She was fairly certain, though, that her subconscious was beyond saving. Then again, she was sure most people's were.

Because, when it came down to it, no matter how much work someone put into staying sane or modifying their behavior, in the end, everyone was irrational. In the end, everyone's all parts crazy.

As many laws as people abide by, or as many seemingly altruistic actions as as they take, she knew, they were still motivated by their own welfare. Still -- and forever -- at the mercy of their own whims.

She had helped save a boy that day, but, inevitably, there would always be more bodies to come.

Because people just sucked that way.

C'est la vie. Such is life.


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