Title: The Game
Fandom: General Hospital
Characters: Tracy Quartermaine
Prompt: #15 Alter
Word Count: 1,667 words
Rating: G
Summary: Tracy plays a game.
Author's Notes: AU: Dillon gets Tracy hooked on a game, and it starts her thinking about what might have been.

The game was deceptively simple. It started, as so many things started, over supper. Dillon was going on, as he often did, about some film he saw.

A man, Mom, could travel back in time and change pivotal moments in his life. He would go to a pivotal point in time and alter his actions just slightly. Each time he did it, though, he changed the entire tone of his life, and not always in a good way.

That started the speculation. What time would you go to, Mom? What would you do differently? How would it change you?

The game…

Point in time—Summer, 1957.

Tracy is stuck with the dull-witted son of her father's business partner. Their mothers are having tea, and the children are playing little games to while away the time before dinner. Tracy, naturally given to creative play, has taken the boy in hand, showing him where to sit, how to act, teaching him the rules as she makes them up.

Several small chairs are pulled together, and the boy is upset. He does not want to play school. It's not school, Tracy explains. This is a conference room. We're playing office—I'll be the president, and you are the vice-president.

The dull-witted boy does not know what these words mean, and Tracy is impatient as she explains the concepts to him.

"That can't be right. A girl can't be a boy's boss."

Tracy is so angry, she pushes him and the chair he's sitting in over onto floor. He runs crying to his mother, and Tracy is punished for the rest of the week.

Alteration:

Tracy smiles, biting down her rude response, and pulls out her art supplies. They draw quietly together for the rest of the afternoon, and the boy dutifully thanks her when his mother comes to gather him off in the evening.

Change:

Tracy Ashton sits alone in her charming manor, fat and lazy and bored out of her mind. She is resigned to the drudgery of life as Lady Ashton, with the endless garden parties and charitable events. She thinks sometimes she might like to take a job, but Lawrence wouldn't approve. She wonders what it would have been like to have a career, but motherhood keeps her busy. And her charity work is very fulfilling….

Tracy shook her head, opening her laptop as she leaned in bed against a wall of pillows. Not bloody likely, she thought. That would have been a mistake of tragic proportions, stifling her little feminist tendencies before they could even begin to bud. Her attitude may have caused her a lot of trouble over the years, but that's one corner she never would have turned in any direction but the one she took.

She reached over to the night-stand, picking up the pair of glasses she'd left there. No contacts in bed, she reminded herself. Never a good idea. She had work to do, but for some reason, Dillon's game had her attention wavering.

Point in Time – 1981.

You can have two million dollars, Tracy. Two million dollars, but only if you spend it on your husband's campaign.

She takes the money, grateful for whatever she can get, and leaves, eventually, to join her husband in Albany.

Alteration:

Tracy turns to her father, rage filling her body at his arrogance. He has pushed her too far this time, with his tests and his mind games and his demands and his conditions.

She tells him to go fuck himself, and his two million dollars.

She walks out of his life, out of Mitch's life, and never looks back.

Change:

Tracy takes her dinner out of the microwave, burning her finger on the plastic as she removes it to let the food cool. She has had a terrible day at work, but at least it's the weekend. She opens the window, looking out over the river. It's the Mississippi, and she's pretty amazed by it. This year in New Orleans, last year in San Diego. Her consulting position keeps her busy, and she's happy enough with it. She thinks that maybe she might want to put down roots, but whenever she starts down that road, she hears the siren's call of change in the back of her mind…

Ned came to visit her at Mardi Gras. It was fun for her, especially catching up on the gossip from Quartermaine Central. That life seems so far away now, all the scheming and backstabbing and lobbying for position. She cooked him a gumbo; it was so terrible they just laughed about it and went down to a little place she knew on Royal Street for a late supper.

Tracy had to laugh at herself. Yeah, she stands up to Daddy and turns into Mary Tyler Moore. No way. She stared at her computer screen—the numbers were all beginning to look alike to her. She didn't want to work tonight, even though she knew the quarterly figures had to be to the accountant by Friday. She'd rather be sleeping, or making love, or soaking in a hot bubble bath.

Or playing The Game.

Point in Time – 1993

Banished again. Marco Dane has agreed to help her and Dillon, and they are running off to Europe together. She's got the tickets and the money from the stuff he stole from Daddy. It's almost fun this time. It would be fun if her heart wasn't broken….

Alteration:

At the last moment, she makes a run for it. She makes her choice, she switches her plans…she double-crosses him. Takes the money, takes her baby, and loses herself in Europe. She's not going to be dependent on any man, ever again. She's not going to trust any man, ever again.

Change:

Tracy arrives in the Maarkam Islands on a litter carried by four shirtless natives. How ironic that her husband and his mistress are the first people she sees. Luke Spencer at least has the decency to look uncomfortable.

She is furious with him, and more furious with herself for caring. Luke Spencer is a poor excuse for a husband, but her money has given her this trump card and she fully intends to play it.

Tonight, he's going to sleep with her, Holly Sutton be damned.

Tracy closed her laptop. There was a point where speculation went too far, and any reality that had her married to Luke Spencer was a reality she didn't want to consider. She was still chuckling when her husband came in to bed.

"Laughing at nothing, Slugger?"

She reached out a hand to him, pulling him hard onto the bed and kissing him deeply. "Playing Dillon's crazy game."

Marco Dane rolled his eyes. "You know, you'll make yourself crazy worrying about what might have been." He stretched out on the bed next to her, taking her laptop and placing it on the nightstand. "Enough work for you, too. We have a long day tomorrow."

"How is Lila Rose?"

"Stubborn, like her mother—"

"And her father—"

"She is insisting that she shouldn't have to go to Dillon's graduation because—"

"She's going to Dillon's graduation," Tracy said firmly. Marco was a notorious soft-touch where their daughter was concerned, and this new stubborn streak of hers was a little more than he was capable of handling. "You don't graduate from high school every day, and I want the entire family there."

Marco nodded, grateful that Tracy was able to take the hard stance for him. He was okay where regular parental duties came to play, but there were some latent Quartermaine genetic traits that tended to emerge in their kids that only Tracy was qualified to handle. "Um, I talked to Dillon about Paul."

"I told you I'd talk to him," Tracy said, perturbed.

"Look, he was glad he heard it from me. I told him you tried, that you called and you even offered to pay his airfare if money was an issue."

"Fucking bastard," she muttered under her breath, then pulled Marco to her, kissing him on the cheek. "Sorry, baby. I'm not mad at you. It was sweet of you to handle it for me." She played her hand over his head. He'd long since given up on staying the baldness, and shaved it smooth. She never could emphasize enough to him how incredibly sexy she found it. "It was stupid to even think he would come," she continued, wondering to herself why she'd even tried to invite Dillon's biological father. After a few initial attempts, Paul had just given up on trying to be part of his son's life. Lazy, weak, loser of a bastard that he was. "You're the only father my son has ever known. I don't know why I ever even bothered to consider Paul Hornsby."

"Because you want him to have family there. You're hurt because Edward and Lila turned you down, and you—"

"I'm an idiot," she said firmly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. "You and Dillon and Lila Rose are the only family I need, the only family I ever needed, baby." She leaned her head against his shoulder, which still felt strong and safe after twelve years of marriage. "Hey, I played the game about you," she laughed. "I tried to imagine what would have happened if I had double-crossed you at the airport, back when we were headed for Europe in ninety-three."

Marco feined mock horror. "Slugger, no! You? Double-cross me?" Both of them knew good and well that Tracy would have been perfectly capable of such an act, especially back then. "What was the outcome?"

She laughed, unbuttoning his shirt as she spoke. "I wound up married to Luke Spencer, and having to blackmail him into having sex with me."

That broke them both up with laughter, and they were still joking about the concept of a Luke-Tracy marriage when they fell asleep an hour later, warm and sated from lovemaking, and ready for their son's big day.

The End

Written for the 100situations Challenge.