House opened his eyes, his hand immediately reaching for his leg, as it always did when he woke up staring at the grey ceilings of the PPTH patient rooms. He gasped when he felt the lack of pain. For years, he had been in constant pain. It had bothered him in sleep, in alcohol induced stupors, in overdoses of Vicodin. And now it didn't hurt. It was still there, firmly attached to his hip. But it didn't hurt. He closed his eyes again, revealing in the lack of pain. The ketamine had worked. He was free. Free of the crippling agony, free of the pitying stares, free of the restrains that had stopped him being able to live. He was free.

He was released the next day, and he walked out of the hospital taller than he had been even before the infraction. Wilson was grinning at his best friend, sharing the joy of him being able to walk. House hadn't realised how much he missed it, the perfect ease of just moving without evaluating the potential pain of each step."I can walk" he said quietly as the men sat in the front of Wilson's car"I know" Wilson said simply.

House felt cooped up in his apartment. He had enjoyed being able to walk around it, to be able to do the short exercises his PTs had told him to do. But now he wanted more than anything to get out. Inside the disordered closet, he dug around to find his old pair of running shoes. He hadn't used them for years. He tied them tight onto his feet, grabbing his iPod before he slammed the door. As soon as he was out onto the street, House began to run. The first few steps were strained, awkward, hesitant. But he relaxed into it within a minute, and before long, he was panting, his heart rate double anything it had been for years, sweat pouring in the glory of exertion down his face. He flung his head back to look at the sky while he moved. He was free. He was blessed. He'd been given the most wonderful gift he could imagine. He could run again.

It lasted two months. Then the pain returned. It was so familiar, House could never mistake it for anything else. His heart broke, the gift snatched cruelly away. Wilson didn't even believe him. He laughed. His best friend laughed at his pain. It wasn't like he'd ever understood before. He'd always gone on about his pills, about psychosomatic pain. House knew he was wrong, that he had always been wrong. Because until you've been in unbearable pain every day of your life you have no idea. House took his cane from his golf caddy. He'd had the infract playing golf. How ironic. He limped, biting his lip hard, al hard it bled as he tried to block the pain that was slowly enveloping his soul, trying to block the tears of grief at his loss. Losing it the first time had been so hard, to know that he would never run again, never play lacrosse, or hockey, or baseball, or row, or even walk ever again. It had been the hardest thing to accept in his whole life. And now he had to do it again. It was worse this time. He had been given a glimpse of what he had lost, of what he could have. He'd been so sure that the ketamine would work, that he could be cured. But he'd been wrong. There was no hope. He had lost. There was no hope.