Disclaimer: The Pretender is not mine.

Normal children did not spend their time hiding inside of vents. Miss Parker may not have had much experience in what normal was for children, but she was sure of that. Angelo was a special level of not normal - even for the Centre. She did not hold that against him. She was beginning to think that she rather liked it. It was a selfish notion on her part, but she did not mind being a little bit selfish. There were so many things in her life that she wanted that she did not get to have that she got a little bit possessive about the ones that she did. A little boy who spent his time hiding in the darkened air exchange system had not been on her list of things which she wanted, but friends were enough of a rarity for her that she would take whatever she could get. Besides, Angelo was sweet (if a little hard to understand), and he had needed someone to coax him out of those vents before he starved to death. The adults that were in charge at the Centre were surprisingly clueless when it came to children despite all of the time that they supposedly spent studying them. She was happy to have been able to help.

Jarod was still her best friend, but he was always so busy. They were taking up more and more of his time with sims. She knew that they said that his work was important (and Jarod certainly believed that it was), but it did not seem right to her that they expected him to do so many things that the adults around him could not be bothered to do on their own - not that she would ever say that to anyone out loud. She knew better. She had known better for a long time.

She was also supposed to be busy. As far as anyone knew, she was. She was supposed to be completing her lessons for the day in a room several floors above their heads. It had not taken her long to figure out that her father had no intention of interrupting his day to check on her. As long as the assigned work was completed at the end of the day, no one asked any questions. It was supposed to be enough to keep her very busy. Her mother had always encouraged her to let everyone think that schoolwork took more effort than it actually did. It was an ingrained habit, and it had not occurred to her to change it after she was gone. She polished off her tasks in just under an hour and then amused herself as best she could for the rest of the day. Angelo was quickly becoming one of her regular visits. No one ever seemed to come looking for him. The vents were some sort of a no man's land in a world that was otherwise strictly controlled. She brought him snacks, and he ate most of them even if he always gave her a sad look when it wasn't Cracker Jacks that she was offering.

He was a good listener, and she found herself letting words come out in the dim, enclosed space that she normally would not have uttered. It was never anything as drastic as her thoughts about Jarod (not even the vents were a safe enough feeling place for that), but she talked about her days and her father and her home and the way that she got lonely. Angelo munched on caramel covered pieces of popcorn and listened attentively and said random things that were not so very random when she was awake in her bed at home at night thinking them over.

They were not talking on this day. They were sitting in quiet companionship and taking turns reaching in and pulling out pieces from the Cracker Jack box. It had become a bit of a game for them to eat one piece at a time and see how long they could make the box last. It was nice. It was comfortable, and she did not have much of either of those left in her life. She could almost pretend that she was having a quiet day at home with the younger sibling that she had never had waiting for their parents to be ready to play a game with them like that snow covered day from long ago before her world had come crashing down around her ears.

"Play?" The little boy beside her asked with his eyes scrunching up the way they always did when he pronounced a word that he seemed to have plucked out of thin air without knowing what it meant. "Play," he repeated smiling at her this time as if he had decided that the word meant something good.

"Alright," she told him tolerantly. She had just been thinking about how nice it was to sit down and play a game together. There were no stacks of board games just sitting around in a closet at the Centre, and someone (namely Sydney) would notice if she swiped the chess set from his office. She would have to teach him something they could play just with themselves.

"Teach," Angelo told her with a small nod of his head as though he was agreeing with something that she had not even said. She wondered about that sometimes.

"I said alright," she stated a bit testily never liking when her thoughts went down that path. "Give me your hand," she ordered. She carefully wrapped his little fingers into a fist and held them together. "Rock," she told him. "Remember how to make that shape." She next pushed his hand out flat between her own and held it up in front of him. "Paper." Then, she folded his thumb and two fingers together while separating the other two from each other. "Scissors," she announced. "Show me." She helped him once with the placement of his fingers on scissors and started to walk him through the rules.

She would lose every single round once he caught on, but she would not mind as much as she usually did when she noticed the way his eyes had brightened while he nearly laughed out loud at the expression on her face as he guessed correctly time after time. She would end up the one doing the laughing even though she would clap her hand over her mouth to cut off the sound. Angelo would pat her awkwardly on the arm and tell her "Not bad. Doesn't mind." She would fall asleep that night thinking about those words and wondering if they were true.

-RPS RPS RPS-

Miles away a little boy locked in a dark shed and curled into a corner would have the worried lines on his face smooth out in his sleep as his fingers moved into strange patterns of a game that he was not playing.

-RPS RPS RPS-

Years later, Miss Parker would seem to have an uncanny knack for knowing just where in the Centre hierarchy each person whose path she crossed fell. She would have a strange ability to know who was about to be tipped out of power and who was about to make an ascending move, and no one ever noticed the man that roamed the vents making the odd hand signs of a children's game at her from behind and above those people's heads.