Disclaimer: If I owned them, Stacy would still be on the show snogging House's face off. They belong to David Shore and his minions, the cruel geniuses. "Behind Blue Eyes" lyrics belong to The Who.
Notes: I'm a young writer with a fragile ego, but I like feedback good or bad. It's like crack Vicodin to me. There is a sequel to this fic that is currently in progress.

None of it was working. Not General Hospital, not his over-sized gray ball, not his gameboy, not even the monotone reverberations of indie rock, emphatic on his iPod. House was sitting in his office trying to think of anything but her.

The moment had been perfect. And he had let it slip through his fingers. As if he had even had a choice. The kids, as gifted and well paid as they were, wouldn't have solved it in time and Fletcher would've slowly let go of the life he had so desperately been trying to fix. His wife would've never known his secret.

House smiled to himself a little then. After the infarction, he had gone over the scenario time and again in his head. His death, a small and private funeral, Stacy would've mourned him for a long time, but she would've moved on eventually; he's sure of it now. Mark was fair proof.

Well, maybe not completely fair; after all, he was still alive, to an extent; a bum leg was a little less guilt to run away from than death. But that made him consider his guilt. Was leaving Stacy completely bereft any better than leaving her with the shadow of the man she loved? Could you measure that kind of pain? Can you measure pain? The hospital tries to measure it in numbers.

House wasn't sure, even though he sure as hell knew enough about pain by now. Indubitably, the pain they had both gone through in those months after the infarction must hold its own against grief. It was nearly grief anyway, he thought with a touch of regret. Only they both had to go through it that way. Mourning the death of a dying relationship. He's still lamenting it, has been for five years, and now, contrary to prior assumptions, it looks like she has been too. Now, as with his leg, she has a choice; but this time, so does he. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. What happens when you find the love you lost?

You're abrasive and annoying and come on way too strong, like... Vindaloo curry. When you're crazy about curry, that's fine but no matter how much you love curry, you have too much of it, it takes the roof of your mouth off. And then you never want to see curry for a really, really long time but you wake up one day and you think... god, I really miss curry.

Her analogy ran through his head over and over again. Emotions chasing his thoughts like the beads of water that presently flowed down the window of his office. When she had said it he was lost in the moment. She had said she missed him. Lost in this sublime vindication and back in a place where his leg didn't ache and neither did his heart he had kissed her. Presently, he was hearing something else behind her words. Hesitation.

She had seen what life was like without him, she missed him, but she didn't hurt when she was with Mark. …no matter how much you love curry, you have too much of it, it takes the roof of your mouth off. Was that how she had felt when they were together before the infarction? If that was the case, it was never for very long. There were rough moments. With personalities like theirs there were bound to be, but the majority of their time together was happy. He was happier than he had ever been; from the way she looked at him every morning when his eyes finally opened (she always woke first) he had thought she was too. Had she been lonely? He pictured the look of disappointment when he had answered his cell phone that night. There was more disappointment there than just the loss of a potential climb up Mt. Gregory. He was used to loneliness; he imagined it to simply be something that happened every so often, no matter the situation. His mind alone isolated him from most; he had lived with loneliness for as long as he could remember. Had he lost perspective?

Could he change for her? He had tried to after the infarction. Post-surgery he was forced to stay home anyway. On the other hand, he was so angry with her then that it probably wasn't much of an effort.

He's only lying to himself. He'll never change. The thing that separates him from the world; he can't change it, it's the thing she loves most about him and it's the thing that makes her lonely. It's the thing that makes his eyes change from that deep blue color to her favorite shade of aqua. She doesn't quite know what it is and neither does he.

No one knows what it's like

To be the bad man, to be the sad man

Behind blue eyes