Stuff100: The Gold Rings

[lb_lee]

The Gold Rings

Prompt: "Yellow"
Summary: Grey's job is the most important thing in the world to her. AU.
Notes: Something else I’ve wanted to write for a long time.

Grey loves the gold rings on the navy blue jacket.  Specialist.  A title, an honorific, a label.  A symbol of skill, competence, proficiency, worthiness.

It’s also completely gender-neutral.  The name Specialist Grey doesn’t say a thing about whether its bearer is a man or a woman, because it’s unimportant.  What’s important is the job.  The work.

Grey never consciously worked to take her first name out of circulation.  It just turned out that way.  More and more, people started calling her Specialist Grey, Specialist Grey, until now she signs all her papers that way, and nobody ever remarks on it, because they don’t even know what the first name on her driver’s license is anymore.  Which is just as well.  She’ll never be able to change it.

There are a lot of things about herself she’ll never be able to change.  Even if she was ever able to whittle her body down to size, soften her face, her chest, her skin, fit into the dresses and pointed shoes, she’d feel ridiculous.  However tailored, they’ll never fit her like the navy blue jacket with the gold rings.  In her black tie and white cuffs, with her Old Spice deodorant and her hair clipped to a precise quarter inch, she is the personification of order.  She is never more deeply at peace with herself than when she’s in uniform, on the job, her body merely an extension of the United States government.

Maybe that’s why the fizzies have never called her out, forced her on psycheval.  Maybe they don’t know she’s a woman—or maybe they do but can’t believe it.  Because Grey is a woman, she knows that and has known it for as long as she can remember, but she will never give up her masculinity.  Never.  The two have nothing to do with each other, in her mind

She tries to pick it apart for a while in her thirties, which is when the lines start to mount up on her face and her hairline starts to seriously recede.  She finds Christine Jorgensen’s story in the library, but sees little that applies to her.  The wrestling, the shooting, the crewcuts, none of it ever felt unnatural or wrong to her.  She never felt the urge to play with dolls, or play house, or play gently in general, really; though she no longer gets much call to do so, there’s still deep satisfaction and a slight thrill that comes from pinning a man down, or being the one pinned.  Perhaps, if she preferred women, her other preferences would be more understandable, but it was always the men she wanted.

No, she will never pass for a transsexual.  Even if she could talk, even if she could force herself into the tight-shouldered dresses and the narrow shoes, she’d never be able to persuade a psychiatrist of anything.  By this point, she doubts it would do her much good anyway.  Her body has withstood so many beatings over the years that she doesn’t know how many more she can take.

Because she is getting older.  Her back is starting to go and her knee never quite recovered from that last bout of bursitis, and she’s starting to have trouble reading the paper in the morning because the letters blur, and she knows she won’t last much longer.  Unless she keeps on being the best, she’ll go on the chopping block, get turned out to office pasture like Andersen and Cooper and all the rest.  Even if she had any chance at all of someone believing her, she can’t let anyone know; she can’t give them any excuse to find her obsolete.

Because she does love her job.  More than anything.  More than her life, more than her freedom, more than her gender.  All forms of identity are secondary, because above all, she is a specialist.

And she can’t lose that.  She’ll keep the first name, love the rough body, withstand the damage to her knees, shoulders, and spine, if it means she can do this forever.  Or at least until she drops, felled by someone stronger than she is or a heart attack or a car accident.

As long as she gets to stay Specialist Grey.  As long as she gets to keep her navy blue jacket with the gold rings.

 

Comments

[natalief.livejournal.com]

Something about this resonates with me. I am not sure what, exactly, and will have to read it again.

I also wonder what a specialist *does* ! ;-p