A/N - This is the sequel/companion story to my earlier story - A Slave in the Mirror. For all those who wanted to know what happened to Canon!House in that story this is the answer. A reminder that this story takes place directly after the events of the season 2 episode Distractions. In the CollarVerse Greg received fifty lashes at the end of that chapter. This story opens shortly after the sentence has been carried out.

Warnings - There is no explicit violence or non-con in this story, although there is mention of both, there is an allusion to child abuse.

Thanks again to Oflymonddreams who both created the CollarVerse and also gave me the title of this story :) If you haven't caught up with the latest chapters in Collar!Redux Season Two yet the season has been concluded with a dramatic twist of events!

This story should be considered AU to CollarRedux canon.

Wilson made his way down to the slave ward eagerly. It had been twelve hours since the first part of Greg's sentence had been carried out and he was still buzzing from the excitement of watching those fifty strokes. Although he would never want to cause Greg pain himself, there was a part of him that responded to the exquisite pain the flogging had caused Greg. Every moan through the gag, every twitch of his skin, the slump of his shoulders as he collapsed against the whipping post at the end. The fine lines of red across his shoulders and upper back. Wilson had never been as aroused as he had been when the flogging was finished and Greg had been dragged away, only half conscious. .

He shouldn't be coming down here really, it wasn't a good look, for a department head to be seen down here, amongst the slaves, but it was part of his plan to get Greg to trust him. If he could just persuade his slave that he meant him no harm, that he was prepared to look after Greg, to help him, maybe one day Greg would want to be with him. He'd start by getting him out of here, taking him home and caring for him while he recovered. Maybe he could persuade Cuddy not to have the balance of the sentence carried out. It would be a shame to miss another session like that, but Greg would surely appreciate what Wilson had done for him.

He signed himself into the ward, and made his way down the row of beds. There were two other slaves there, both restrained face down, he ignored them and made straight for Greg lying in a bed at the end of the long room.

He was naked of course, his arms and legs spreadeagled, and fastened to the four corners of the bed, face down like the other slaves. Wilson smiled as he lent down and ran his hand through Greg's thinning hair, Greg twitched under his hand, Wilson wasn't sure if he was awake, or conscious of his surroundings.

"Greg," he said gently, while petting his hair. Suddenly he jerked his hand away and took a closer look at the prone slave. His collar was gone, along with Wilson's tag. Wilson ran his eye down his body and saw what he'd missed before, a clean back, no whip marks. When he looked closer he couldn't see the fine scar lines from previous whippings that usually covered his slave's shoulders and back.

The collar being missing was improbable, the scars and whip marks being gone was impossible.

He shook Greg's shoulder, this time not trying to be gentle.

"Greg!"

Greg stirred in the bed, turning his head sleepily towards Wilson and moaning. Then he tried to move his arms and his eyes snapped open, panicked. He looked up at the head of the bed and tugged, then tried to kick, the restraints held him tightly.

"What the...Wilson! What the fuck's going on? What have you done?" He kept pulling at the restraints.

"Where's your collar? And my tag? And what happened to your back?" Wilson looked around for the nurse, lounging at a table at the entrance to the ward. "Nurse, get over here now!"

"Wilson! Let me up! What do you think you're doing?" Greg was getting more panicked in the bed and the nurse hurried over.

"Is something wrong, Doctor?"

Wilson gestured to Greg.

"This slave seems to be missing his collar, and would you like to explain how his back healed so quickly? When did you last check him?"

"We check 'em every hour, Doc. Standing orders. This one's been out of it since he got here, just moaning and whining like they all do." The nurse bent over to have a closer look at Greg's back. "That's impossible, he was real cut up when they brought him in."

"Call security," Wilson said, dismissing the nurse with a curt nod.

"Wilson, have you completely lost your mind? You were the one telling my yesterday to get a hobby, go bowling and now you've tied me to a fucking bed? Where the hell is this? Let me up."

"Greg, quiet down, you're going to hurt yourself. I need to figure out what's going on here, and you don't need to get into any more trouble than you already are."

"I need you to untie me, this isn't funny Wilson, I don't want to detox, or go to rehab or whatever the hell you think this is. Some sort of intervention? Been reading Drug Addiction for Complete Idiots again? I'm fine, I don't need you, and I don't need whatever this crap is."

House kept tugging at the bonds. Something was wrong here, very wrong. Whatever lame ass detox programme Wilson had him in they shouldn't be tying him to the bed, not until things got a lot worse. He mentally evaluated himself. The pain in his leg was only a little over standard, and although he wanted a Vicodin he wasn't craving one with every essence of his being, he wasn't nauseous, he wasn't sweating, his heart wasn't racing. He was only in the very early stages of detox if at all, there was certainly no need for restraints and...He peered down his naked body and saw a tube coming out of his dick, he'd been cathed. Tied down naked on a bed, peeing into a tube, what the hell was this? And Wilson had said something about 'slave', this had to be some sort of joke, Wilson's revenge for whatever he thought House had done wrong. He'd been pretty pissed about the whole 'induced migraine' and coma patient thing, not to mention the revenge on the evil Von Lieberman.

He hated being tied down, dear old Dad had tried that one a couple of times when he was kid, but he'd screamed and yelled loud enough to wake the dead, or at least the respectable couple in the next house over and Dad had let up. The ice bath hadn't exactly been a fun substitute but it had been better than being tied to something.

He tried to look around, to get an idea of where he was but it was just a dingy hospital ward. An old-fashioned one by the looks of it, not the gleaming private rooms of PPTH, with their glass walls, but a poorly lit, narrow room with narrow beds, with not so much as a privacy screen between them. He could see a man and a woman in two other beds, both naked and face down, their arms over their heads in an unnatural position, both tied. He pulled at his bonds again, scared, despite the presence of Wilson.

"Doctor Wilson, is there a problem?"

House looked back around and saw an unfamiliar man in a PPTH security guard uniform talking to Wilson.

"Yeah, there's a fucking problem, I'm tied to this bed. Let me up."

The man glanced at him, a cold expression on his face, and his hand went to a baton on his hip.

"Quiet Greg, or I'll gag you, and you know how much you like that."

"You'll gag me?" House yelled, this was getting beyond a joke. And why were they all calling him Greg? "Have you been visiting one of those places in between frisking little old ladies trying to lift drugs from the pharmacy?"

The man started towards him, pulling the baton out when Wilson grabbed his arm.

"No, look at him. He doesn't have his collar."

"The medical staff removed it.."

"No, they didn't - not for a simple whipping. And look at his back. No whip marks. You know he was whipped yesterday, he was covered in lash marks. I saw them. Something is going on here."

The man looked at his back and then at Wilson.

"Yeah, um...I'll call the chief, he'll want to contact Doctor Cuddy, anything regarding this slave is supposed to go through her. Don't worry Doc, once we've got her authorisation we'll take the slave and get the truth out of him."

"Wilson! I don't know what you think you're doing but you're taking this too far..." House said, trying to keep his voice reasonable, Wilson may have flipped completely, House had always pegged him for an 'impending nervous breakdown' type, it was bound to happen eventually, oncology had a way of burning people up if you took it personally, which of course bleeding heart Wilson did.

The burly guard turned back from where he'd been talking into his phone and grabbed a handful of House's hair, tugging on it hard. In his other hand he took his baton and pressed it against House's throat.

"Shut up, Greg! Now you be quiet like a good boy or I'll make you be quiet. Do you understand? Don't talk, just nod."

House felt tears springing to his eyes as the guard tugged at his hair. The baton was pressing against his throat, threatening to cut off his air. Wilson was standing behind the guard, his eyes wide, making no move to intervene. Very slowly and carefully House nodded, firmly clamping his lips shut. There was a time for discretion and this looked to be it.

"Good boy." The guard released him and took the baton away, still eyeing him. House kept his mouth shut.

The guard studied his phone, reading a message there.

"Boss is on his way, he's alerted Doctor Cuddy. We'll talk outside."

The guard started to move off and, after a glance back at House, Wilson turned away as well.

"Wilson, don't..." House started to croak out, hating himself for sounding pathetic but he was beginning to be very scared and whatever the hell was happening at least he could be sure that Wilson wouldn't hurt him.

Wilson looked back at him, his eyes going wide again, and then he smiled slightly, looking pleased, of all things.

"Just relax, Greg, we'll sort this out, find out what's happened. I won't let them do anything to you."

For some reason House didn't find that very reassuring.

Cuddy wasn't pleased at being called down to the slave ward, matters concerning the medical status of the hospital's slaves was not her concern, that was the purview of the slave overseer, Cuddy preferred to have nothing to do with that aspect of the hospital, much like she didn't get her hands dirty fixing the furniture and MRI machines. Of course Greg was a special case, she was his direct supervisor, and by necessity she had set up the current arrangement whereby anything that concerned him also concerned her. Greg had nearly been irreparably vandalised a couple of times in his first few weeks at PPTH because the slave Overseer hadn't known how to handle him properly. He was a very expensive, very important to the hospital slave, and he needed careful handling. Wilson tagging him was supposed to help relieve her burden in that regard, as Stacy's tagging of Greg had, but so far it seemed to be a spectacular failure.

Now she was standing outside the ward, feeling out of place in this neglected corner of her hospital, in her stylish clothes and heels. The ward was small and dingy, not like the gleaming glass fronted rooms of the main hospital. There was no need to waste money on aesthetics for slave patients, they wouldn't appreciate it. The function of the slave ward was to get the slaves healed as quickly as possible, and with a minimum of fuss so the slaves could resume their work.

She could see into the ward and there were three slaves in there, all naked and restrained face down. She knew one of the patients would be Greg, recovering from the whipping she'd ordered. She didn't want to see the consequences of that whipping for herself, she never went to watch. The whippings were necessary to maintain discipline, but she got no enjoyment out of it.

The Security supervisor for night shift, a security guard she didn't recognise, and a junior nurse were standing next to Wilson outside the ward when she arrived, and she turned away form the door to the ward and towards the men. She listened to their tale of a Greg House, with his collar removed, no lash marks on his back and, according to Wilson, no scars from the numerous whippings he'd received over the years. She'd seen Greg's back, it was criss-crossed with the thin white lines of previous beatings. Greg apparently had been ranting and raving until the security guard had made him shut up.

The nurse defensively denied any knowledge of what had occurred, he insisted that he'd checked Greg regularly and the collar and marks had been present at his last check. Cuddy didn't necessarily believe him about the regular checks, she'd had to discipline the nursing staff down here more than once for making use of slaves that were supposed to be their patients. But even if the nurse had been remiss in his duties there was no reason to think that he had anything to do with the odd situation, what could he have done?

"So, what are you suggesting has happened? Greg has an identical twin and they have somehow swapped places? Time travel? Alternative realities?"

Wilson was looking at her with that naive, puzzled, expression he adopted when he was trying to get his own way. She shrugged, "What, do you think I've never seen a Star Trek episode?." She walked away from the men and entered the ward, making her way to where Greg was lying. He was watching her with a guarded expression but was silent for once, apparently whatever threat the guard had used had been effective. Good, she didn't need his smart mouthed remarks at the moment.

"Open your mouth, Greg," she ordered and he stared at her silently for a moment and then glanced at the security guard who was standing behind her and slowly opened his mouth.

"Wider than that. Good. Hmmm, you can close your mouth."

She turned to Wilson. "Greg lost a tooth soon after I bought him, we've never needed to have it replaced. This man has all his teeth. Do a thorough physical exam on him, including an MRI, DNA samples and a tox screen. Do it personally, I don't want to hear any gossip about this." She turned to include both security officers in her glare, although she knew that something like this could hardly be kept quiet. "Compare the results to the last full physical he was given. Bring him to my office with the results tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. He can sleep in diagnostics when you've finished with him as he obviously doesn't need to be here, but security will be posted outside."

She looked again at Greg. "If this is some form of deceit you will be receiving those fifty lashes again, and all the rest I waived. So if you have anything to say to me then I suggest you say it now."

Greg's eyes flicked again to the security guard, and then to Wilson, he looked more uncertain than she had ever seen him since those first weeks after she purchased him. He swallowed hard and she could see that he was scared.

"I have no idea what is going on, the last thing I remember is laying down on my bed, and then I woke up here. Either you people are all crazy, or this is some sort of elaborate practical joke, or I'm really in a loony bin somewhere hallucinating all this. Whatever, I just want someone to take off these restraints and get me some clothes."

For a moment she thought about taking control of the investigation herself, Greg was a very important and expensive hospital asset after all, and Wilson was somewhat 'personally' involved but she dismissed the idea. She had always taken care to take a very impersonal approach to Greg, to treat him exactly as what he was, hospital equipment, there was no reason to change that approach now.

"Very well, carry on Doctor Wilson. I will see you in the morning."

With that she turned around and left the slave ward, relieved to be out of the place.

tbc

Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed the chapter it would be great if you would leave a review, it's always nice to know that people are reading :)