Title: The Price of Virtue
Author: Kurukami
Feedback: Very much wanted.
Category: Angst.
Distribution: Please do not distribute or archive without permission.
Disclaimer: Barbara Hall is the creator of "Joan of Arcadia" and CBS owns it. I own nothing of importance in this matter save the stringing together of words my brain meshes together. Don't sue me; I'm broke enough as it is.

A/N: This short piece is fairly dark and definitely a downer. It was an idea that had been floating around in my head for a while, ever since the actor that plays Vice-Principal Gavin Price was nowhere to be seen in the early episodes of season 2. Anyways, this is a one-shot from Price's point of view – there won't be followup chapters.

He looks in the mirror every morning and sees the new lines in his face. Sees the hair that went from blond to grey over the past year. Wonders again at the effort he puts forth to maintain order in his surroundings when so much in his life is foundering in chaos.

He suspects it's a coping mechanism. He braces the foundations of his life with routine because without that support, without that focus, he would have even more trouble dragging himself out of bed in the morning to face a world which, despite all efforts and fervor and belief, seems indifferent to any sense of fairness or justice. He has to believe that, somehow, somewhere, his efforts to instill discipline and a sense of what's right in those he oversees will have some positive effect.

Even though his failings in that regard are still so fresh in his mind. Even though so few of them seem to care.

He strides down the corridors, smartly dressed, white shirt freshly starched, tie just so. He sees virtually everything. Students know this; his reputation is part of what makes him effective in his position. The fear that he might be just around the corner, prepared to intervene, has likely stopped more troublemakers over the years than he could count. He knows the students have never cared for him, but that emotion doesn't matter as long as he can provide the discipline and order necessary for them to become well-adjusted members of society.

That emotion doesn't matter. The words echo in his thoughts, and he tries to shut them out. Machiavelli: it is better to be feared than loved. The anxiety and apprehension he inspires will persuade them to lead better lives; it will improve them, make them more productive in the long run, won't it?

It doesn't matter. Alternative meanings of the phrase murmur in the back of his mind, distracting him. It doesn't matter.

A voice whispers in his head. It didn't matter, for her. If you had tried to be warmer, less rigid with her, perhaps she might still...

He tries to block away those thoughts. While he is working, it's easier; his mind is occupied. But sitting at his desk, completing paperwork, his mind always drifts back to the months before.

Gwen had turned up on his doorstep late in May, the day after the end of the school year. He remembers how she looked as she peered through the screen door, huddling under the eaves in an attempt to shelter from the unseasonable rainstorm, remembers her first words to him in four years.

"Hey, Gavin, how's my big brother?" He remembers the shock he felt at how she looked – exhausted, almost gaunt, a pleading gaze belying the jaunty tone she adopted. She'd said she was trying to leave the past behind, push beyond the failures that she'd had and restart her life. It was just that she needed a foundation to build on.

He couldn't turn away the only family he had left, even though they'd had their disagreements. He couldn't, especially with the memory of their father drinking himself into an early grave in the wake of Mom's death. And at first, it had gone well – he'd helped her get past the initial weeks, when she fought so hard against the pull of withdrawal.

I never asked what caused it. Why didn't I ask?

He'd been there when she woke shouting at night terrors, drenched in sweat. Been there to hold her arms when she got angry at her convalescence, felt the dots of scar tissue in the crooks of her elbows. Been there as often as he could, trying to provide a structure of habit and discipline that would enable her to rejoin society. The summer months slipped away, and it seemed to work. Gwen found a job at a coffee shop, got a cell phone, began classes at the nearby community college. For a while, things seemed good. But then, as it had years before when he'd tried to hold what remained of the family together, Gwen began to chafe at his rules. She told him he was smothering her; that she was twenty-six years old and could live her life without need for rigid, unflinching rules that made no allowance for circumstance.

They fought, and she left him behind, just as she had before.

She'd left him messages twice since that night. The first time, while he was off at a conference in D.C., informed him that she had taken her things and moved out to a new place, where she could live whatever way she wanted. The second time, six days later, he saw her name on his cell phone and switched the ringer for the incoming call off, still angry over her rejection, not bothering to listen to what she had to say.

He remembers the last time he saw her. That was after the other call, the one with a woman asking his name with clinical disinterest, telling him he needed to come down. He remembers the soft whisper of the sheet drawn back. He remembers Gwen's half-lidded eyes, with their pupils shrunk down to pinpoints, staring endlessly out of her pale face. He remembers the bruising, lightly ringed around her left bicep, the dark purpled circle in the crook of her elbow. He remembers the word the coroner used: overdose.

He remembers the voicemail icon, staring endlessly out at him from his cell phone's display, every time he closes his eyes.

It's autumn now, fading towards a bleak winter. His hair is greyer than it was in spring, and the lines in his face seem more pronounced with each morning's look in the mirror. He walks the school corridors, and tries to convince himself that his efforts to impart discipline and proper behavior are worthwhile. He wonders, in the moments when he allows himself to stop working, if people can ever really change.

If she could have.

If he ever can.