Two Sides of the Same Coin

A Post-Nobody's Fault One-Shot

A/N: I was just so in love with "Nobody's Fault" and "Chase", that this little one-shot came to mind. I hope you enjoy!

Chase knew it was cliché, but he really did feel like his legs were on fire.

He had returned from physical therapy an hour ago, and the pain was just now starting to subside (but that was only from the high dose of morphine that made him hazy), leaving him with a pronounced soreness that permeated every muscle in his arms and legs. He closed his eyes, only to open them once again, unwilling to face the flashes of the events in the hospital room that was now covered in his own blood.

You probably have PTSD, he told himself. Flashbacks are a symptom, and they only get worse if they're not treated...

Chase could count four other times he'd felt this lost. The first had been when his father had abandoned the family, leaving him to tend to his mother's alcoholism and his baby sister. The second had been when his mother died, because as furious as he was at her, she was still his mother, and he loved her. The third had been when his sister had ceased to speak to him because no matter how he tried, no matter how he agonized, he couldn't help her cease her drinking. The fourth had been a mixture of the Dibala debacle and Cameron leaving. Her return the night of the lockdown and the subsequent happenings had put him somewhat at peace over it, but knowing that a part of him still loved her, and that a part of her still loved him in return, was an entirely different kind of loss.

But this…

This was worse.

He had almost died.

The only thing that had prevented his death was Adams plugging the hole in his heart with her finger.

He had regained feeling in his legs, but he might always have problems. He might not need a cane forever, but he might limp.

He might limp like House.

He would have to endure weeks of painful physical therapy to walk.

He should call his sister, he realized. They'd spoken once a week since he'd initiated the call a few weeks ago. He could only imagine what he would say this time: Hey sis, how are you? Me? Well, I got stabbed in the heart with a scalpel by a patient on a psychotic break and very nearly died. Then, if not for my boss' idea, I might have lost the ability to walk forever. I still have to go through painful physical therapy.

He felt unbidden tears swimming in his eyes, but for once, he didn't wipe them away. They fell, tracing through every crease on his face before dropping in small pools on his blankets. His body was broken, but his soul felt broken too. Where the hell did he even go from here? He was certainly grateful that he hadn't died, but the torrent of emotions punching him in the gut and wrenching around his heart were terrifying to sift through.

He inevitably thought of House, of the look in his mentor's eyes when he'd awoken after the stabbing, the expression on his face when he'd come to apologize, how he'd stormed in while they were trying to get rid of the clot, his own Housian version of checking to see if he was alright. He'd always looked up to House, had always respected him even when he was infuriating…a strong affection for the man had taken root in his heart, and even if he would only begrudgingly admit it, House was something like an incredibly warped father figure. In the earlier years he'd been a mentor, and now he was a friend of the oddest sort. The man himself might not have been stable, but his presence had always been a stable force in Chase's life for nearly nine years, during his two stints on the team and during his two years in surgery.

The door sliding open broke through his reverie.

It was Wilson.

"Hey there," Wilson said, his lips turning up in a melancholy smile. "Mind if I come in? I can come back later if…"

"No, I'd like to have something to listen to other than my own thoughts," Chase answered, gesturing tiredly at the chair beside him.

The truth was, he'd always liked Wilson, had always admired his patience and loyalty to House through thick and then; he'd stood by through the infarction, through Vogler, through Tritter, through Amber, through House's descent into mental illness, through losing Cuddy, had forgiven him when he'd returned after his stint in prison. At first, Wilson had been a colleague and more of a kind authority figure they could go to when House went off the rails, but he had eventually merged into the realm of friendship. He felt a smile tug at his lips when he remembered Wilson insisting he go speed dating with him, remembered House's bet.

"Girls kiss frogs and expect them to turn into you."

"I'm not that good looking."

"Yes you are."

"You really kind of are."

"I figured I'd let the chaos die down before I came in," Wilson said, folding his hands in his lap, a sheen of sadness covering his usually warm brown eyes. "Last time I came you were asleep. How're you feeling?"

"Honestly?" Chase said. "I feel like death warmed over. And the physical therapy is a bitch."

"I don't doubt that," Wilson replied. "I remember when Hou…" he trailed off, eyes widening at the comparison he'd just made.

This wasn't lost on Chase, but that ironic thought had already occurred to him, and he had seen the ghosts in House's eyes when he'd come in to apologize during the physical therapy session, a hurricane practically raging within them.

"He…apologized," Chase said without ceremony, remembering the haunted look in his mentor's eyes, turning them from their usual bright blue to stormy grey.

Wilson stared at him for a solid thirty seconds or so, his eyes widening slightly.

"He…" Wilson paused. "Apologized?"

"He came into my physical therapy session," Chase replied. "As you might have heard, Cofield decided that the stabbing was nobody's fault, and House disagreed. And then he said… he said he was sorry. And he looked me right in the eyes when he said it."

"House only apologizes if he truly feels guilty about something," Wilson said, contemplating Chase. "And even then…well, you know as well as I do that it very rarely happens."

Chase nodded, still trying to process that it had actually happened, still trying to believe he hadn't imagined House's moment of such raw vulnerability. Even if a part of him blamed House, even if a part of him was angry at his boss, that apology…it meant something to him, had hit him so hard that he'd felt the little breath he still retained from the effort of the physical therapy, leave him.

"Do you blame him?" Wilson asked, ever gentle.

"I…" Chase hesitated. He hardly even knew how he felt, and the pharmacy of medications he was on didn't make his thinking any clearer. He felt immensely grateful toward House for thinking of the clot, felt touched at the apology, yet a part of him still felt angry. "I didn't…I don't…maybe."

Wilson rested a hand on his shoulder, sensing his distress.

"All you need to focus on is getting well," he said seriously. "Don't let all the crap from the Cofield mess bother you. You've got a support system here. Although," he said, lips curving up into a wry smile. "House's support will probably involve him standing outside the door like a spectral shadow. Or bursting in randomly on your physical therapy sessions."

"Two for two already," Chase answered. "He's already stood out there once today. I woke up and saw him."

Quiet fell for a few moments until Wilson spoke up once more, his words surprising Chase.

"You know," he said, focused on Chase's face. "Of all House's fellows, you really took his medical lessons to heart. The good ones, I mean."

"I took the bad ones too," Chase whispered. "I went into the room to perform that test against House's orders, just like he would if he were me. I was reckless."

"You couldn't have known what was going to happen," Wilson reassured him. "Bad things just happen sometimes," he said, echoing House's earlier words. "You were a really good doctor when you walked through these doors, but you stuck with House, and now you're an excellent one. You look outside of the box when it comes to diagnostics, and that was always House's biggest strength."

"Thank you," Chase said, slightly taken aback at the compliment, but knowing Wilson wouldn't have said it if he didn't believe it to be true.

"You're willing to go beyond the ordinary bounds to save the patient," Wilson continued. "That doesn't mean you're like…"

He was interrupted as more footsteps approached, signaling the arrival of Adams, Park, Taub, and Foreman, in clear defiance of the two-visitor at a time ICU rule.

"Hey man," Foreman said, and Chase could hear the concern seeping into his tone as he pulled the chart off the bed railing, clearly checking to make sure everything necessary was being done to help his friend. His eyes flickered to Wilson. "Hey Wilson. I see you caught Chase while he was awake."

"Took some doing," Wilson teased, rising from his chair, and clapping Chase's shoulder once again.

"I'm on morphine," Chase insisted, but for the first time since the stabbing, he felt himself chuckle ever so slightly, but even that hurt at this point. "If I recall, Foreman, you didn't spend a lot of time being conscious when you were recovering from almost dying, either."

"Touche," Foreman replied, pulling up a chair, as Adams, Park, and Taub looked at each other curiously, wondering what Chase was referring to. Chase smiled as Adams quietly placed a Milky Way bar on his table, which she'd caught him eating several times on some of their late nights watching patients.

"Well, we're already over the limit in here, so I'm going to head out," Wilson said, meeting Chase's gaze, telling him without words where he was headed next. "Let me know if you need anything."

Chase nodded, glad for the presence of his friends, but also wondering what kind of state Wilson might find House in, because the truth was, if House truly blamed himself for something, if he truly felt guilty, he became even more incorrigible than usual. He turned to face friends, trying to ignore the sound of his world spinning circles around him.

House heard Wilson scrape his key into the lock of 221b. He walked in silently, closing the door behind him with a click.

"Differential diagnosis, Wilson," he said, before his friend could even utter a word.

"What are you talking about?" Wilson asked, coming around to sit next to House on the couch, duly noting the glass of amber scotch sitting on the coffee table.

"Differential diagnosis," House repeated. "For Chase turning into me."

House felt Wilson's internal worry sensor turn on, felt his best friend's eyes searching his face despite the fact that he wasn't making eye contact in return.

"House, what…"

"He had a crappy father," House began, cutting him off. "He had a mother who he loved, but a mother who was too weak to fight against the father. A situation spiraled out of control and he lost the woman he loved. He got injured out of nowhere, almost died, almost lost the use of his legs forever. Sure, he switched around the losing the woman and the almost losing use of his legs part…"

"House, Chase will walk again…"

"That's not the point!" House shouted, slamming his hand down on the table in a rare show of true anger, nearly toppling the glass of scotch to the floor. "It still happened. The fact that he'll walk again doesn't make up for all the weeks of physical therapy he'll have to go through, it won't make for any of it. I remember that pain, Wilson."

"House," Wilson said, and his gentle tone only served to make House more frustrated. "It wasn't your fault. You said yourself sometimes bad things just happen."

"I wanted him to be medically like me," House said, largely ignoring his friend's comment. "Not adopt my personality. He's slowly been doing it, and now this happened."

"Do you want me to stand here and say it was all your fault?" Wilson said, his own voice rising out of irritation. "To feed into your guilt?"

"I'm the one who taught him not to give a crap what anybody else thought and stand by his ideas, and look what happened?" House said, finally meeting Wilson's gaze, his eyes sparking with electricity.

"All of your fellows, including Chase, have gone against your directions before," Wilson said, ever persistent. "And nothing like this has ever happened. You feel guilty because this is Chase, the fellow you've known the longest, and whatever you say to the contrary, you care about him a lot. You've mentored him, you've taught him, you've spent time with him, and he's put up with a lot of your crap."

House responded by taking a generous swig of his scotch, and Wilson allowed him a moment, watching as he rubbed his leg almost out of instinct.

"Just be there for him in whatever way you're capable of," Wilson said, emotion edging into his voice. "Don't turn inward toward yourself and try to ignore what happened…don't do what you did when you thought Cuddy was dying."

House's head whipped around, and there was spark of ire in his eyes so intense that Wilson thought he was about to get a punch in the face. It burnt out quickly, however, replaced with a melancholy gleam as the diagnostician's eyes flickered to the bottle of Vicodin that rested on the edge of the table. House's mind flashed back to the physical therapy room, to watching Chase struggle to take even the smallest step, could hear each agonizing huff of pain, remembered the hard, yet shattered red-eyed gaze of which he'd been on the receiving end. He remembered how Chase had turned instantly to him in desperation when he'd woken up and couldn't feel his legs, a son pleading with his father to find a solution.

He turned once more to Wilson, silently sliding over the Chinese menu from which he'd been planning to order, his unspoken request for company, a request to not be left alone with his guilt and his thoughts.

"I won't let him be like me," House half-whispered, meeting his best friend's eyes. "I won't."