A/N: Well, I haven't written fanfiction in quite some time, and never in this fandom. But I have to say, [H]ouse's "Thirteen" caught my eye. She's both deeply flawed and a well-intentioned, self-aware, decent human being— and she only got more complex and more fascinating over time. Now that Olivia Wilde has left the show, I wanted to give my own take on Thirteen's backstory.

There will be ten one-shots, each under 1000 words, each set sometime pre-canon. No particular chronological order. Most will deal with multiple events, tied together thematically— and there will be quick jumps in timeline so watch for changes in tense. Present dialogue in quotation marks, past (remembered) dialogue is in italics.

Without further ado, here's the first of the series— dealing with Thirteen's love of contemporary art (Moving On) and her relationship with a thirty-year-old man at seventeen (Private Lives):

Disclaimer: I don't own [H]ouse, on which this piece is based, Thriving Ivory whose song "Hey Lady" this piece is titled after, or the incredibly talented Margaret Atwood's "Variations on the Word Sleep," which I quote.

- one -

BLUE-EYED METAPHOR

.

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

Margaret Atwood

.

You've always had a soft spot for artists.

"Don't move."

You pause in the middle of Sartre, struggling to keep from squinting in the blinding mid-afternoon light as you hear the quick clicks of a camera.

He slides into the empty seat next to you, his dark hair windswept, his leather jacket out of place in the small-town coffeehouse. "You have beautiful contrast."

You're seventeen and accustomed to the occasional heavy-handed advance every time you sit alone in your college sweatshirt, hair held up in a messy bun by hilighters and gnawed pencils, and cargo bag full of used textbooks. But never quite like this.

"Philosophy?" He nods at the book in your hand, fingers stained with embarrassingly pink hilighter. "Yet pre-med, according to the orgo book in your bag. The contrasts continue."

Your hand wanders to push the textbook in question further into her bottomless pit of a bag. "Why is that a contrast?"

"My college bio prof always complained about philosophers— why ask questions but never answer them?"

You smile at the irony.

He holds out his hand. "James Seaver. Journalist by day, photographer by night."

.

He takes you to gallery openings in New York. Sheathed in dark velvet dresses and four-inch heels, you smile while he points out cubist influences in Wesselmann still lifes.

You've always liked art, but never so much as held a brush yourself. Unlike your mother, whose sheet music is still boxed away somewhere in the attic or Finn, who left caricatures of teachers in your locker, you've never been willing to use what you could so easily lose. You've always trusted your mind better than your hands.

You focus on keeping traction over gleaming marble floors.

You slipped on heels for the first time when you were thirteen. Your father gaped a little as you came down the stairs, half stumbling, head dipping every once in a while to catch your stride. He laughed a little, but you caught the slightest shadow of tears in his eyes and not for the first time, you wondered what— who he sees.

Your father is a sociology professor with a knack for drawing patterns you could never quite wrap your head around. One of those summers you spent on the front stoop in cut-offs and pre-teen pretension, you decided to read every book in his study. Find out why absurdist, self-referential literature sustained him between days in lecture halls and nights in a hospice cot. How he could possibly lay a single red rose on your mother's grave and unflinchingly accept a careless woman's lies of omission, a daughter's hatred, a disease that took a pianist's steady hands, a mother's even temper, a woman's sense of self.

But you got stuck on Infinite Jest.

On the last step, he reached out a hand to guide you. You'll grow into it.

And you did. You learned to walk in heels, learned how to dart lithely past the free throw line, just as you'll learn to pipet with nanoliter precision. You'll grow into that grown-up grace, that air of sophistication Anne never had.

When James looks at you, his eyes tracing the angles of your profile, he doesn't see her freckles across the bridge of your nose, the harshness of her jawline. He isn't searching for a familiar gesture or someone he loves— just a pretty girl, just the beauty of wide green eyes, dark hair on pale skin. And that, you can give.

You let him take off your dress that night. Between breaths, you make a mental note to yourself that in your spare moments between physics problem sets and philosophy papers, you'll decipher those topsy-turvy signatures and read up on fauvism and Dali and tachisme.

Sometimes, bathed in dawning light, before you have to battle New York traffic to get to nine o'clock Organic Chemistry, you forget where you are. His loft is in a midtown brownstone, filled with prints you're too young and too ill-read to recognize. But it may as well be your grandmother's Boston brick monstrosity lined with saints and unanswered questions. His hands, large with rough, flat nails, could be your father's, paging through Kerouac or pressed white against the kitchen sink.

You wonder if he still misses her— the breath of her laugh on his neck, the French ballads she'd sing lightly in the shower, the tightness with which she held her little boy's hand. You don't, but not because you hate her. You just can't miss something you never had. You might carry the burden of her chromosomes, but he holds something far worse— her memories.

So you try not to care too much when the slightest flicker of disappointment passes across his eyes when you couldn't hit the right pitch to save your life and fared far better at shooting three-pointers than pirouetting on pointe.

You know I love you, he whispered, slinging an arm around your shoulder.

You do know that. You just don't know what he loves you for.

.

You took the photos before you left— a veritable stack of them. High-contrast black-and-whites or monochromatic prints, mostly. Clever angles to hide the tiny scar on your cheek, light striking your eyes for just the right ethereal shade. You had every intention of burning them— of destroying his art, of destroying the gullible, innocent, weak girl he took you for— but flipping through those photos, you realized you didn't even know what he saw when he looked through that camera lens.

Years later, sitting across a table from Foreman, you think you must've always liked what you don't understand.

A/N: The last bit refers to that scene in The Tyrant when Thirteen says to Foreman, "I want to understand you." I considered referring to House instead, but strangely enough, House is someone Thirteen does understand.

Reviews would be lovely. Have a great Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/winter solstice.