A/N: I'm going to tell you right now, straight off the bat – this is the weirdest thing I've ever written. I'm serious.
The structure is all chopped up and crazy. There are quotes and song lyrics interspersed between them (all of which will be named in the author's note at the end – no copyright infringement intended!). There's not a ton of dialogue, not at first anyway. It's a bitter and angry and sad and tortured piece. It wasn't easy to write.
Essentially, this is my (experimental) version of Moving On and beyond. Hopefully you guys like it, and will review when you're done, because feedback is awesome. It was beta-ed by the supremely awesome Wilhelmina Willoughby, who makes me wish I were a better writer every single time we talk about writing. She's truly amazing.
So...I hope you like this. Really. And please remember to review at the end!
The Wreckage
By: Zayz
Speeding
Into the horizon
Dreaming of the siren
Wishing for broken glass on the highway
It could be so easy
The rhythm
Rhythm of an engine
Always makes me empty
I see the headlights coming at me
I can't help but wonder
Flying
Flying in slow motion
Wind through my hair
And ripping through the scenery
Oh, the wreckage
It is my secret need
The memories of tonight are like sharp, jagged crystal boring through her soft tissue, despite the intervening hours.
The aftermath of the crash blurs together in a massive technicolor nightmare, even as it had unfolded before her. It was as though she had been watching it from outer space: the ambulance and police car lights, cherry red and blueberry, lurid as lollipops; the splintered wood and broken furniture; the curious neighbors; her horrified guests. They've all left now, except for Julia. Mercifully, Rachel has been at Arlene's all day; she is one less thing to take care of.
When the police and the ambulance drivers finally leave, Julia asks Cuddy what she wants to do tonight. Come home with her; go to Arlene's; rent a hotel room. "I'm staying here," Cuddy tells her, a little shaky but determined, and Julia leaves it at that. But she does insist on staying too. "You shouldn't be alone tonight," she says with a sideways glance.
Julia starts the kettle in the kitchen for a pot of tea and brings it upstairs. She knows where the extra linens are and makes up a bed on Cuddy's floor. She brings Cuddy a cup, but it sits on her bedside, untouched. Julia falls asleep, and Cuddy still lies awake, restless and tight, a little nauseous, unsettled in every sense.
By four thirty in the morning, she gives up and goes down the stairs in bare rabbit-feet, nimbly navigating down the cool wooden stairs. She peers into the dining room, with the table crumpled on one side, the chairs reduced to large splinters, shards of porcelain scattered around the room, like blood specks in a crime scene.
The room is as still as death. There are car tracks on the floor.
She steps inside. Sharp pain bites at her feet; pieces of glass penetrate the tough underside skin; her nerve cells scream. But she walks across the room with the delicate concentration of a sleepwalker and sits on a pile of wood that should have been a chair, right at the edge of the house, where the foundation meets grass.
It hurts, but she sits in the wreckage. Sits there, the summer night wind blowing gently through her curls, and drinks it in. The splinters, the hurt, the car tracks. Everything.
xXx
The sun-warmed sweat sticking to his clothes, to his scalp, the nape of his neck, is all that keeps House's mind anchored to reality.
The day has been unreal. Sometimes, he has to remind himself of what he's actually done, why he can't go home, why his whole life has been snatched from under his feet, why there is this cold, peculiar mix of numbness and apathy and barrenness spreading through every cell in his body.
It's like waking up from a bout of autopilot, or a drug trip, or a dream, and trying to determine the extent of the damage done. Yeah, what he did was destructive, and yeah, it looks like a defiant act of vengeance to the shocked outsider, but he honestly hadn't planned on crashing. It just…happened. Felt right at the time. Something stronger and smarter than him smoothly took control and smashed into Cuddy's dining room and then carried him away to the beach. And now he has fled and at least he had the sense to keep most of his Vicodin stash and then go to an ATM and withdraw all the money the machine would allow him to take. Now he's at the beach, with a tiny room in a three-star hotel, lying on a hotel towel in the sun.
There's a tiny bit of regret in him, true enough, but it's negligible. The guilt is more substantial, but mostly he finds that he's pleasantly empty. Free, almost. The weight of the break-up, and the number it had done on his head, is gone; like the fever has broken, the reflexes kicked in and vomited all of that venom and hurt and shit out, all of it, every single bit, leaving his squashed-up organs more room to spread out, breathe. And with all that space, it's strange and lonely and wonderful, and he's finding his way again.
No, he probably didn't do the right thing. And yes, he will probably feel worse as he has more time to think about it. But for now, the world beneath his skin has gone into hibernation mode and all he can feel is the fine soft sand, the spitting tide of the sea, the achingly warm sun, smiling down on his closed eyelids.
Where do we go from here?
Where do we go?
Who can we trust from here?
Who can we trust?
Yesterday was hard on all of us
Time passes like an indecisive rainstorm – heavy torrents, vivid and blazing, chilling to the bone, followed by light moody drizzles. There are moments when he is lucid and a little bit tortured by this state of affairs. The world is his oyster; the hospital job is not holding him in one place; he is free to travel, so long as he doesn't leave traces policemen can find.
Yet, he knows all too well that he's trapped, always trapped, in his cage of nerve-infested flesh and there's really nowhere he can go.
xXx
He considers investing in one of the fetching young ladies who smell weakness and eye him up and down as he wanders the streets, but when he catches their eye, he knows he can't do it.
When your skin has been ripped off your body and rivulets of blood follow you around, you do not rub it against someone else's skin. The friction of touch, of vulnerability, of warmth burns. Because that's what ripped your skin off in the first place.
xXx
He has to check the date on a newspaper to ensure that it really has been two weeks since the crash, because he doesn't believe it.
This is like an extended dream sequence, hallucination, something, something imaginary that doesn't exist in the concretely structured world he lives in. He committed a crime, but he is at perfect leisure, drinking cocktails as though he's on vacation. He's certainly not complaining much, but this sense of unreality niggles at him. It shouldn't be this way. Aren't there rules and protocols for evasive delinquents in this country? Is anyone even looking for him?
This time, when he sleeps away the hours in the sun, he gets a wicked sunburn that takes another week to fade.
xXx
It takes the New Jersey police three months to come knocking on his door, holding up handcuffs. He cracks a joke about bondage, which doesn't amuse them. But after so many long, quiet, relentlessly sunny days, carefully living on the sum he took from the ATM machine, the numbed peace he had started with has now faded into some incredulity, it's almost a relief when they catch him. He lets them put on the cuffs and marches as well as his leg will allow to the court where they try him. He refuses the lawyer and gets sentenced to prison.
And all he can think is, finally, something that makes sense. Prison. Punishment.
And a good thing too. The Vicodin stash has kept the worst at bay, but he's running low, and it'll be nice to get a refill, a state-funded pass to that lovely hazy place where everything's a little fuzzy around the edges and all is almost, almost well.
In the light of the sun,
is there anyone?
Oh, it has begun...
I think I'll start a new life
I think I'll start it over, where no one knows my name
No one knows my name
She gives her two week's notice the minute she wakes up in the morning, still nestled in the remains of her dining room. Sitting there with glass in her feet and wood in her hair, in yesterday's clothes, she takes her phone out of her pocket and calls her superior. Says that there's been an accident, and she's leaving. Yes, this is her final decision. Yes, she will help find a replacement. She appreciates the well wishes and concern. Yes, this is her final decision.
It's like planning a divorce. Lawyers need to be contacted; final pay must be negotiated; her child needs to be pulled out of daycare; her things need to be packed; she needs to start looking for a job. She lives out of a small open suitcase with only bare necessities for two weeks while all the arrangements are taken care of, something leaden and heavy clinging to her midsection.
She hates that she has to leave. The hospital is her baby, her pride and joy. She loves it almost as much as her real baby, because both of them need her equally, and she is responsible for both of their well-being. She feels like a terrible mother, running away. But there really isn't a choice in the matter.
He will haunt these halls, if she stays, and right now, she can't bear to think of him. Even the sight of his name on the door as she passes it in the hallway does something to her that she doesn't like, that she can't – won't – stand any longer than she has to.
xXx
Foreman is not an ideal replacement. He has a record, for one thing. He has worked a long time under House, for another. Cuddy is not sure she can trust him. But as she goes through the highly qualified pile of resumes on the desk that will very shortly cease to be hers, she decides that she wants to leave her hospital in familiar hands, hands that she at least knows, even if she doesn't entirely trust them.
The board is none too pleased, going through Foreman's file. But by now, they know all the details of the crash, of House's escape, of House and Cuddy's shattered relationship. And since she feels so strongly about this candidate, they take pity on her. He's not too bad, they suppose. So they give Foreman the job.
xXx
She tells him, and though he doesn't show it overtly, she can tell he is over the moon. And he has every right to be. This is the biggest promotion he could be offered.
Like the board, Foreman feels sorry for her. Knowing House as he does, for as long as he has, he can figure how badly the relationship ended. And he knows her too, so he knows how hard it is for her to leave this hospital in someone else's hands.
"I'll keep it running smoothly," he promises her. "The hospital will be fine."
The paperwork is signed, by the board, by Foreman, by Cuddy. There is a party for her on her last evening, full of sugar and supermarket frosting. She gives goodbyes and hugs and then returns to her office one last time, to take a last sentimental look at this, the queen's post of the kingdom she ran so zealously.
But when she gets there, Foreman is inside, already deep in discussion with decorators about how he wants the office restructured. He looks up in surprise when she walks in, but his expression softens a little. He asks the decorators if he can have a minute.
"I've been meaning to ask you. What do you want me to do about House's team?" he asks.
His name sends a bitter pang down her spine. She considers the question for a long minute.
"They're your staff now," she says at last. "Reassign them. Fire them. It's your decision."
He nods. She turns on her heel and leaves without a look back.
xXx
Cuddy decides to stay in a hotel for the next couple of weeks, as her plans become finalized, to avoid looking at the stark reminder of that horrible night every minute she's at home. She bribes the construction workers to get the work done quick, and hires a realtor to sell the house; they are to keep in touch through phone and email as the process goes on.
Finding a job, surprisingly, is not difficult. She sends out her resume to a few places that are looking to hire, and gets a response a week later from a newly-opened hospital in San Francisco, asking if she could fly down to negotiate a contract. She says yes as quickly as she can without sounding desperate or overly elated, and swiftly moves onto the moving part of things. The pay is less than what she made at Princeton Plainsboro, but she's just grateful that California is as far from New Jersey as she can get in the continental United States. That alone is her driving motivation.
So boxes are packed; movers are negotiated with; Rachel is pulled out of daycare and Cuddy spends an entire day cleaning the house from top to bottom. All of this happens at lightning speed, but honestly, she prefers that. The movement keeps her busy, distracted. And, exactly three weeks after the crash, her flight is scheduled for eight AM to California. The morning scene from Newark airport is tired, gray and cloudy, but California is always sunny. Warm. Big and full of strangers.
At eight fifteen, the plane is ready to take off. She closes her eyes and her breathing slows with stage one sleep as the plane lifts up, up, up, turns New Jersey into an ambiguous mass of gray, and then leaves it behind.
Liar, liar
You're such a great big liar
With the tallest tales that I have ever heard
The dreams start in prison. Something about the sun and the waves and the lazy rhythm of the days kept him at peace, even a little optimistic – but the stark brick walls of prison and the reality that this is where he will spend the next year or two is what suddenly reminds him that he is now officially a convict.
All those years at the hospital of avoiding jail or particularly incriminating lawsuits, of manipulation and consideration and careful tip-toeing…and now he's really here. In jail. Rock bottom.
Days are passed mostly in apathy. Flinging sarcasm around like bullets, trying to find the right "friends" to protect him, navigating his way around to try and survive, downing pain pills like lifelines.
Nights are entirely different monsters.
Night brings unrest, brings loneliness and the kind of vulnerability he spends his life hiding from. But here there's nowhere to hide. The walls are stark and there is a scary homicidal man lying a few inches above him, and suddenly everything wells up inside him like long-festering hurricane winds.
Because when it really mattered, he told the truth and she was the one who lied. And that thought keeps jolting him awake at three AM in cold sweat, ax wounds all over his insides.
He, the man with the slogan 'everybody lies' who spent his whole life doubting humanity, told the truth; she, the righteous ruler of the hospital who prided herself on her sound judgment, lied. And when he's vulnerable, when he has no more strength to hold off the truths thrashing inside of him, screaming to get out, he is so hurt that his body seems too frail and confined for what rages inside him.
He is just hollow and bitter and anguished and betrayed and ashamed and claustrophobic and lost, lost here, in everything. It all went so, so wrong that he doesn't even know where to begin as he tries to dissect it. With her, for hinting for so long that she wanted to be with him; with him, for letting himself be flattered into the belief that she was serious; with her again, for coming into his bathroom and saving him and telling him she loved him; with him again, for trusting her and trying for her and finding, for once in his life, some tiny ray of sunshine to cling to, to strive for.
He remembers that magic hour, unreal and hovering between night and day; he remembers the love that bloomed, so fragile and soft and hopeful. It was for her, all for her. And she was so tired, so fragile and soft and hopeful right along with him; to anyone's ears, it would have sounded like she loved him too.
Who cares about common? she had said. Common is boring. I like being with you. You make me better. Hopefully, I make you better. What we have is uncommon, and I've never been happier...I don't want you to change. I know you're screwed up. I know you are always going to be screwed up. But you're the most incredible man I've ever known. You are always going to be the most incredible man I have ever known.
That's what she had said to him. He can even bring to mind with searing accuracy the look on her face when she had said it – all dazzled, awed, full of wonder.
But then he remembers when the weather got cold and their lives were too tightly interwoven, meshed together, and she started getting distant—
You are my problem. You are the most selfish, self-centered son of a bitch on the face of the planet – and I'm sick of it! I'm just done. I can't deal with you anymore...You can't love someone without making yourself open to their problems, their fears. And you're not willing to do that...I want you to care about more than just what you want. What you think. You need me, House. And you may even love me. But you don't care about me. And I deserve someone who does.
These words House can believe so much quicker than the early ones. In fact, when she said these last few things, in his ocean of shock and hurt, he remembers thinking, 'About time.' He had been waiting for them almost since the second she agreed to be his. He had known, after all, that relationships always end in either break-up or death. He had known this was coming even before she let them try.
And yet, despite this…he had blindly let himself go along for the fairytale anyway. He had finally lowered his guard of lying and doubt, and believed her when she said that no matter what he threw at her, she would always be there because she knew him best, better than anyone, and she loved him for it. He had let himself get comfortable with the idea that she would never leave. Let himself sacrifice work, solitude, comfort, familiarity, all for her. All for the lie that she believed and he believed; the lie that came back to bite them in the ass.
He loved her then, he honestly thought he did. And now he just hates her. Hates her for lying to him; hates himself even more for falling for it.
Bottom line, there is nowhere to go now. He screwed up. He screwed up by allowing a romantic relationship to start with Cuddy despite knowing better from past experience; he screwed up by actually being surprised and traumatized by the inevitable break-up and then crashing his car into her house. And now he has officially burned every bridge he'd ever had – Wilson, Cuddy, his team, everyone. And now he's all alone in this prison cell while they move on without him.
That's all he'd wanted too, in the end. To move on, from the cold, quiet horror of realizing his supposedly-melodramatic misanthropy had been right the first time. But he hadn't known how and now he's paying dearly for it.
Fire, fire
You set my soul on fire
Sick and tired of this mad desire
Fluttering inside me like a hawk
Wire wire
Got my hands on wires
Will heaven help you when I get them off?
California is strange, warm, bright. When she gets there, the first thing Cuddy does is put the box of winter things in the attic, because it's never winter here. The nicest day in a New Jersey summer is a normal day here.
She starts at the new hospital – her new hospital – immediately. Her salary is indeed a little lower than she's used to, and her mother isn't around to offer free babysitting anymore, but Cuddy finds Rachel a daycare close to them, which she reportedly likes. The new staff is helpful, friendly; the new board is welcoming enough; the workload is about the same as Princeton Plainsboro and she slides into that routine pretty easily.
That not a soul knows her here seemed like a blessing when she was fleeing New Jersey…but now that she's actually here, it's much lonelier than she had expected.
No one knows her baggage, but no one knows her smile either, or her strength, or her charm. She literally has to start from scratch, find people to talk to, ask to dinner. She starts at work, but they so obviously want to get in the good books of their new administrator that she gives up and immerses herself in her work, her new apartment – fixing it up, shopping for furniture in her lunch hours to avoid eating alone.
The loneliness gives her a lot more time to think than she would have liked, and sometimes in these unguarded moments, watching TV or walking down the street trying to get a feel for the area, she catches herself missing him. Catches herself looking for him around the hospital, his eternally scruffy jaw and electric eyes, his indelible insights and quick wit, his gaze roaming shamelessly around her breasts. The way he was always, always right. Annoying as he was, he was part of her landscape and now she kind of misses him. Being away from his faults reminds her of the good things about him, that made her laugh, made her love him.
But every time she starts that train of thought, she has to snap herself out of it – fast. She made her decision, damn it, and it was a good one, a rational one, the right one for her and her daughter.
And anyway, she shouldn't be missing him at all. He hurt her, with his indifference and his selfishness and his meanness and then with his car. Her instincts were wrong; her head should have overruled her messy, self-destructive heart; and this is all an enormous fucking mess.
She hasn't got all the time in the world. She's getting older, and all she wants – all she wants – is to settle down, feel okay and in-control again, maybe find a nice guy who will be a good father to her daughter.
California is strange, warm, bright and lonely, but maybe it'll be here. Maybe what she's looking for – peace, security, love, intimacy – will be here waiting for her.
Now that she's thrown away her entire carefully-constructed life in New Jersey, she cannot afford to believe anything else.
I've been built up and trusted
Broke down and busted
They'll get theirs and we'll get ours if you can just
Hold on
Hold on
Years ago my heart was set to live on
And I've been trying hard against unbelievable odds
Gets so hard at times like now to hold on
Going to fall if I don't fight it
Hold on
Hold on
The days go on; she gets dressed for work, mascara and lipstick and something tight that makes her look better than she feels.
The days go on; he opens his eyes, stares at the ceiling, and wonders.
The return to the hospital is not smooth. House ambles in and Change swoops down from all directions, rustling his hair, cackling in his ear, tripping him up in the hallways and making colors swim in technicolor waves before his eyes.
Foreman is his boss. House's old office has been turned into an orthopedics room. His things are nowhere to be found. His name is gone from the door. His team is gone from these halls, gone along with Cuddy into a faraway abyss that swallowed them all whole. It is as though he is wandering through a parallel universe, but the jokes aren't funny.
Work begins and continues forth, almost the same as before. But he can feel the change in him, the almost paranoid unwillingness to go anywhere near any patients, as though the next stranger he talks to will dump his ass and run too. He tries to fight it, tries to act his normal self; and though he doesn't do a perfect job, Dr. Park and later Dr. Adams don't know him well enough to detect a difference.
In small, peculiar ways, he even finds himself missing Cuddy, as he navigates around this new world disguised as his familiar universe. He half-expects her to turn up in his office as he proceeds with treatments; it gives him a start to see cool-headed Foreman turn up instead, holding himself with a haughty authority House still doesn't feel he has earned. He finds himself missing the smell of her perfume, the quick clacketty-clacketty-clack of her heels; the way they turned clinic hours into a high-stakes poker game every few days; the way he got away with things and felt in tune with her, the subtext warm with implicit understanding; the way he passes by the office and it's not her name on the door anymore.
It's awkward and alien, having Foreman telling him what to do and actually having leverage over him; having this raincloud full to burst over every conversation he has around the hospital, particularly with Wilson. Wilson, his overly-moral best friend whom House suspects still hasn't forgiven him for how he behaved. Cuddy and her status and her doings and goings are theoretical now, thoroughly absent from his life; and he finds a part of him would even be happy to see her, happy to do whatever clinic duties she wanted, even though he'd be sure to put up a fight before acquiescing. Just because she's someone he knows.
No matter what he says, House hates change: you can't blindly trust the new suckish circumstances to be better than the old suckish circumstances, and in this new situation, you don't even know the rules to survive. You have nothing to go on anymore.
He thrives on criteria. He only knows how to be creative within boundaries; and here, there is just white emptiness extending off the page, worryingly blank, unhelpful.
Being with you is so dysfunctional
I really shouldn't miss you
But I can't let you go
It takes her two months, but at last, Cuddy does give in. She goes through the Recycling Bin on her computer and finds the list of contacts she had deleted in a mad rush of emotion when she had first resigned from Princeton Plainsboro. In there is Wilson's email address.
Leaving no time for her smarter, more cautious self to protest, she copies-pastes it into a new email. She leaves the subject line blank and types a cool, faux-chatty email to Wilson, asking him would-be-casually what's going on. House's name is conspicuously, and determinedly, absent from the message.
Wilson responds back within half an hour – and just like that, their relationship is re-established.
Wilson has always been a good friend. It's surprising how much so, considering his close relationship with House. And Cuddy finds herself glad to be talking to Wilson again; like in this empty vacuum, she has caught hold of a solitary tube leading back to the real world.
He should have been a psychiatrist, for the way he understands what she wants without her telling him, without her physically even there to give the bodily cues. He patiently, carefully gives her morsels of information of Princeton Plainsboro under Foreman's new regime. It's doing well enough, he says. The budgets are down, obviously, due to the recession, but Foreman is keeping it together. The finances are in order. Wilson himself is doing fine. He sometimes offers her happier patient stories of recovery, spontaneous remission. And Cuddy is grateful, more so than she can tell him, for his discretion.
She feels a little more alive each time he sends her an email. It makes it easier to get through the day, knowing that her abandoned hospital-baby is still waddling on two firm feet in her absence.
xXx
On a squally, rainy September afternoon, she ducks into a coffee shop for a pick-me-up before returning to work after her lunch break. While she stands in line, a conspicuously good-looking guy sitting at a table alone catches her eye. In spite of herself, she blushes. He really is quite nice-looking; easy on the eyes. They are a gentle, forget-me-not blue.
Sixty seconds of awkward, playful eye contact and the guy stands up, joins her in line. He tells her his name is Sam. She tells him that her name is Lisa.
Lisa. He repeats it, the syllables soft and lyrical from his mouth. Her cheeks burn.
Sam proceeds to make small talk, buys her the coffee before she can reach for her wallet, and then makes her embarrassingly late to work because they hang around the table chatting.
It's foreign and hard and scary and kind of wonderful, making the small talk with Sam, feeling his eyes boring into her as they discuss pleasant nothings. It's been a long time since she's talked to someone like this, without expectations.
She's not the new boss whose ass needs copious kissing. She's not the ex-girlfriend with the ex-boyfriend who drove a car into her dining room. She's just a woman in a coffee shop, talking to a man – no history, no pressure, just talking, words flowing and building and interlacing sweetly, organically.
They start with names. They end with him asking for her phone number, and her happily giving it, grateful that for once, something finally seems to be going right.
xXx
The high promptly crashes into the dirt, of course. She comes back to the office glowing for the first time in months, to find the email from Wilson, written to her while she was in the coffee shop.
It says that House has been released from jail and is coming back to Princeton Plainsboro on conditional parole.
She almost faints where she sits, the heart palpitations like the flapping wings of angry hawks.
Because how, how can he show his face there in her beloved place, the one place in the world where she felt safe and in-control, when she can never go there again because of him, because he ruined it like he ruined her?
She deletes the email. She has no response. None but a hollowness and an anger and a resentment that can't, won't be abated.
Time is a slippery fish flitting erratically through rough choppy waves; sometimes vivid, poignant, meaningful; other times slow and plodding and melancholy, barely comprehensible. Through rain and shine and sleet and snow, it swims determinedly on.
It's been over a year now, since The Incident. The scar wounds graffitied all over their hearts, though still red and irritable when to the gentlest touch, are beginning to heal. The days are piling on, passing by, and their lives are resembling okay, normal, more and more every day.
But it occurs to both of them sometimes across the country, across time zones and many weeks, that though they both remain angry and bitter and hurt, irreparable, he still owns her and she still owns him.
They are irreparable, but their paths are still interlaced tightly together like they have been for too many years, like knotted ribbons too tangled up to ever be pulled apart, even in ruin and misery. For them, being apart doesn't work like it does for normal people. Nothing about them does. Because even as life blunders onward, they have a little of the other inside of them, like an inoperable tumor sporadically secreting spurts of aching remembrance that tests suspiciously like love.
It's mutated, and wrong, and devastating, and painful, and a little bit pathetic, but it's love. Love that creeps into their lives like noxious fumes slithering in from the crack between the floor and the door, and damns them to be stuck with the other in some way, even this way, no matter the miles.
Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
You hold me without touch,
Keep me without chains.
Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
Exactly two and a half years after the incident, Cuddy first gets the papers about the neuroscience conference.
She is intrigued and excited – until she finds, with a bomb-shock radiating through her insides, that it will take place at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey.
At first, she thinks that it's a bad joke. She turns the sheets over and over, double and triple-checks the location, but each time the same bold black pixels proclaim that yes, it will indeed be at Princeton Plainsboro.
She hadn't realized, as she finally found her rhythm in San Francisco, how fragile and insulated her life has become; how much it would upset her, seeing the familiar details of her hospital put before her but with deliberate changes. The Dean of Medicine, Dr. Eric Foreman, welcomes a group of select doctors to a discussion on recent breakthroughs in neuroscience. It will take place in a week. The speakers are distinguished, intelligent people; the ideas being presented will almost certainly contribute something significant to modern medicine. She must go, must hear what is being said. She must hop on a plane back to New Jersey, even though that's the last thing she would ever voluntarily do.
She has to wonder who set this conference up, who invited her to it. Did they know her history? The part of her that House trained so well is reluctant to believe it's coincidence, even though the rational part of her says it very well could be. Princeton Plainsboro is a respectable national hospital after all.
So she has to go. The first day of the conference takes place two weeks from now. They have already booked her a nice hotel room. She considers taking Rachel along, but figures that the little girl would be bored stiff, waiting around for her mother all day – and anyway, there won't be anywhere for her to remain supervised, since there won't be childcare at the hotel.
Luckily, Sam is happy to take care of that for her. Sam, her steady boyfriend for a year now, who has been so patient, so happy to spend an afternoon with her daughter if Cuddy is in a bind. They still don't live together – Cuddy is still quite averse to that particular step in the relationship process – but Sam acts as though their homes are connected by a long tunnel, not officially conjoined but connected all the same, regardless of distance. Now that she is used to life with him, she cannot imagine what it would be like to live here without him. He is undoubtedly the best thing about San Francisco.
When Cuddy tells Sam that she has to go to Princeton Plainsboro for a conference, he doesn't hesitate in offering to take in Rachel. But then he fixes her with The Look, because for all the time they have been together, all the intimacy they have built up – eagerly on his part, cautiously on hers – Cuddy has never given many details about why she fled New Jersey two years ago.
He asks her again, why she left, if she's okay to go back there by herself. She says she will tell him another night, and that yes, she's okay to go back there by herself.
He just sighs then, and offers to drop her at the airport. She accepts gratefully.
xXx
The plane ride to New Jersey is long, quiet and a little unbearable.
Her stomach practices an astonishing series of gymnastics the entire way – to the point where she has to ask for a couple of shots of vodka when the air hostess comes around. The alcohol helps, relaxes her a little, but the apprehension that is manifesting in tight nausea remains.
It's been two years. Two whole years. And now she's different, and the hospital is different, and she doesn't know if she can handle a collision course right now.
Particularly because he is there. And he will know about this conference. And she has a distinct feeling that this will not end well.
xXx
Cuddy arrives the evening before the conference is supposed to start. She checks into the hotel and soaks in the bathtub for an hour with a medical journal, trying to relax. It doesn't work, of course – she knows herself too well to take her own meager distractions seriously – so she pops the sleeping pills she had the sense to bring with her, and falls into a dreamless seven-hour sleep.
She wakes up with her stomach putting on a repeat performance of its airplane flips and tricks. She forces herself through a little breakfast, a little morning yoga, and then it's off to the hospital for the conference. It begins at ten.
She navigates the streets like the pro she still is, seamlessly falling back into the familiar roads and traffic patterns, the neon shop signs passing in a multi-color blur from her car window. She remembers the route perfectly; somehow, she thinks she always will. Even if her heart tries desperately to wash itself clean of Princeton Plainsboro, those habits are too deeply ingrained into her neural networks to let them go.
Once at the hospital, it sends another pang through her to see her old parking spot occupied by Foreman's car. She has to park in the visitor's lot, and then go inside through the front doors, into the place she used to consider home.
xXx
People look at her like they have seen a ghost. She would have thought that they knew about the conference here, that they would figure she would be attending it, but apparently not. The old staff who remember her say hello, stop for a moment to chat, ask how she is – but they are wary, curious, informing her as clearly as if they had screamed in her ear, that her history does count for something here, unlike California.
She goes into the clinic – another pang, when she sees Foreman's name on the door instead of hers. She knocks on the door and there is Foreman, sitting at a desk skulking on the side of the office rather than sitting front and center like she used to. He looks up when she comes in, and smiles politely.
They shake hands, say all that is proper and polite. He expresses enthusiasm for the conference; he says he is glad she could make it. She cannot honestly return the sentiment.
Foreman appears ready to chit-chat if Cuddy desires it, but she can see him itching to go back to the stack of papers sitting neatly on his desk, so she frees him and leaves the office. In spite of herself, she steps into the elevator and steps out on House's old floor.
She isn't sure what perverse masochism is guiding this as she incidentally-on-purpose walks down the hall in the direction of House's office – what if he's in there, what if he sees her? – but Fate is on her side today and the office is empty. But his name is on the door in the same stark white letters, Gregory House, M.D. Diagnostics is printed beneath it. Almost as though nothing has changed.
She shakes her head, somehow outrageously amused. Of course, House would wangle his way back into his old life, force his unchanging self to fit into this changed new world. She wonders vaguely how long it took him to get all of this back together.
He isn't in the office, but she can see two empty-looking cups of coffee sitting on the desk, so he must be somewhere in the building, probably in Wilson's office, or napping in the clinic, or hounding his team to do some procedure, like he used to do when she was in charge. The pitter-patter of her heart accelerates, her hands shaky and numb and surreal, as she allows those memories to come edging back into her consciousness. It's like remembering another life – her real one, the one that she has tried so hard to bury but can't because it is such an enormous part of her.
Some things really don't change, she thinks to herself, as she heads back to the conference room. House doesn't seem to have. And now that she's back here, in these blissfully familiar surroundings, she finds that she hasn't really either.
She's still strong, still smart, still attached to this place and looking good. Still, despite prior knowledge and better instincts, drawn to House like a moth to the flame that burns it alive.
You show up like a hurricane, all hungry-eyed and weather-stained
The clock forgets to tick and I the same
I died the day you disappeared, so why would you be welcome here?
Ride the wind that brought you back away
I recall
Both tender fire and bitter squall
A history so deep it hurts to look
Of course House knows about the conference. And of course he knows that Cuddy will be attending the conference. In all honesty, he had been wondering when she would be dragged back here by the mysterious force in the universe that wills misery on people. It was only a matter of time, after all: conferences happen here all the time, and Cuddy loves pretentious chatter and this place too much to resist coming back.
The image of her back in these hallways, even if just for two days, is enough to send a flurry of arrows into his bones – but he finds that after two years, his softness has built up more resistance than it had before. His heart is harder, colder than it was before, and doesn't hurt as bad when sharp things come flying; and in this case, he finds it a blessing.
Over lunch on the first day of the conference, Wilson is the one to bring it up. He says would-be casually, "So there's a neurology conference going on upstairs, today and tomorrow."
"Yeah, I know."
"Should be…scintillating."
Wilson's eyes are too meaningful; subtlety has never been his strongest suit. It's why he's such a terrible poker player.
"Yeah, for the suits who want to find the next big thing to invest their non-existent budget money in," House retorts, biting down a French fry.
He can almost pinpoint the surrender in the set of Wilson's mouth. "You know what I mean," he says at last. "Cuddy will be here."
"Really!" His eyes widen sarcastically; he drops his fry and claps his hands to his mouth. "Cuddy! I wouldn't have guessed!"
Wilson rolls his eyes. "Okay, okay, point taken. So what are you going to do?"
"What am I going to do? What do you mean, what am I going to do?"
"I mean, how are you going to screw this up?"
House eats three fries in one gulp, mulling this one over. "I haven't decided yet."
"Here's an idea – how about you act like a mature adult and talk to her when the conference lets out today?" says Wilson.
"Talk to her about what?" He takes a sip of Wilson's orange juice. "It's been two years. We've moved on. There's nothing to say. She's here for a conference and that's it."
"You know that's not it." Wilson pauses hesitantly. "Look, there are a lot of conferences held here throughout the year, and this is the first one she's come to. It might be a sign that she's….you know, ready to talk."
"She doesn't give a damn about me." There is no trace of sadness or self-pity in the statement; just truth, as cold and hard as he is. "As a professional pencil-pusher, she's supposed to come to these scintillating things. It's her job. She probably didn't have a choice."
"She always has a choice."
House eats another fry and fixes his friend with one of his calculating blue stares. Wilson holds his ground.
"Look," says Wilson, "I know talking is probably the last thing either of you wants to do. And I don't blame you; it's going to be awkward, and hard. But…maybe it'll be a good thing. Closure."
"I already got mine." House averts his gaze to his fries.
"If that's what you believe." Wilson finishes his juice, checks his watch. "Look, I've got a patient coming in about ten minutes; I have to tell her that her results came in and she's got small-cell lung cancer. I'll be busy this afternoon. Whatever you decide to do, talk to her, not talk to her – just don't do anything stupid."
House looks up.
"And by anything stupid, I mean anything I would consider stupid," Wilson clarifies dryly.
xXx
As he goes to his office for a nap, he finds himself mulling over the choice much more than he would like to.
To screw with her, to not screw with her; to see how she is, to play imaginary scenarios in his head forever; to chase after her, to spare himself and leave her well and alone. These are the questions, the choices. And in light of them, he is honestly not sure how today and tomorrow will go.
xXx
The next morning, at eight AM sharp, House exceeds everyone's expectations and turns up to work earlier than he has in weeks. He then exceeds all remaining expectations by taking the long way to his office – passing by the conference room where doctors are filing in for the morning as he does so.
As expected, Cuddy is amongst these doctors. She's noticeably the best-looking one there. And she still possesses her preternatural ability to be unconsciously in-tune with him – something he knows because the moment he walks by and looks up to catch a glimpse of her, she glances back and fixes her gaze on him, almost as if she knew he would be there.
It lasts for perhaps half a second before he has passed by – but God, what a glimpse it is.
In that half-second, they see that though it had been years, though her hair has grown out and his is thinner, though they are both more lined around the mouth and around the eyes, their wounds, so desperate to heal, still have fresh blood left in them to trickle out, flashing scarlet in the sun.
The whole world goes red for their half-second as they bleed and then pretend to move on.
xXx
It's highly evident, from the way their thoughts are constantly polluted by the other through the morning, that existing in the same building as each other, even just for a few hours, is going to be much more trying than they had anticipated.
They were okay when they were apart, quietly rebuilding their lives and leaving the other hypothetical rather than flesh-and-blood real – but despite the years, they are suddenly back to the same raw hurt that drove them apart. And it is driving both of them crazy.
A few more hours, only a few more hours. And then it'll be over. She'll fly away on an airplane and he'll crawl back to the bottom of his little rut, and they will be okay.
xXx
Or not.
xXx
At noon, House glances at the clock and figures Wilson will probably be downstairs eating lunch, since this is usually his patient-free hour. He decides to go and join Wilson in the cafeteria. Eat a little, bounce ideas, and then come back up here for some TV. The team should have test results to discuss by that point.
He arrives in the cafeteria and finds it choked up with people from the conference, eager to get a bite to eat and then hurry back upstairs in time for the session to start again. House locates Wilson's table – but there's a head of dark curly hair sitting across from him.
The head turns. Cuddy's face is attached to it. Something wilts and dies and melts away behind House's navel. The same thing seems to be happening behind her eyes.
He arrives at the table, his smile unbearably cool.
Cordially: "Dr. Cuddy."
Her intensely competitive nature gets the better of her nerves. Her smile is even cooler – like thinly veiled ice.
Cordially: "Dr. House."
"It is very nice to see you."
It isn't.
"Thank you. Same to you."
Regarding your implicit statement, anyway.
A quick, shaky breath. "How are you?"
I hope you're not fine.
"Fine." A pause the length of a heartbeat. Placidly, challengingly: "Would you like to sit down?"
Please don't.
"No. I was just leaving."
I wasn't.
"Well, have a good day."
Please don't.
"I will."
I won't.
House catches Wilson's eye, which had been worriedly passing from him to her and back, as though he were watching a high-stakes tennis match. Then he turns around and limps out, hand clutching his cane hard, his stomach irritated by the fact that it is no longer entitled to lunch today.
xXx
Wilson takes care to take several bites out of his sandwich and chew them properly, letting the silence spiral thickly, uncomfortably between them before he catches her eye. Where very recently she had been animated, almost herself again, she is now subdued, lost in thought. When Wilson looks at her, she braces herself for the worst.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks.
She exhales, long and slow.
"No."
xXx
That evening, to celebrate after the long conference, a bunch of the doctors decide to get together for drinks. Deciding that her lunchtime encounter with House qualified as an event significantly awful enough to merit a little alcohol, Cuddy goes with them. Since she doesn't have to pay, and her need to forget overtakes her need to keep her head on straight, she ends up having a few more drinks than she probably should.
The drinks make her warm, comfortable – reckless. Her mushy, strung-out brain, already stressed out about being back in New Jersey, starts having dangerous ideas, and she finds she no longer has much filter with which to stop herself.
After she excuses herself from the drinking party, she goes back to the hospital, does a bit of illegal snooping. Manages to find House's file, which includes details about his stint in prison and his parole. It also has the piece of information she actually wants – his current address. Just a few miles away from the hospital.
She calls a cab, gives House's address, and goes to his building, a little unsteady on her feet. She puts on her brightest smile and most charming manner and convinces the man at the desk that she is here to surprise House, so could she please get clearance to go upstairs without having him informed?
The guy at the desk is young and a little naïve, so after a bit of wheedling, he lets her go up. She takes the elevator up to his floor, finds the right door, knocks on it loudly, one, two, three times. She stands there, waiting, her heart ready to pound right out of her chest.
It's a good thing she's drunk, really; there's no way she could have convinced herself this was a good idea if she hadn't been intoxicated.
Fortunately, the wait is short. Just a few seconds before she hears uneven footsteps padding to the door.
It opens. The face of Gregory House appears. Takes in Cuddy's face, her black heels, black skirt, her tight buttoned-up blouse baring just a hint of cleavage. His eyes go dead. He makes to slam the door in her face, but she had been expecting that, and she has enough reflex left in her to hold it open.
"We need to talk," she informs him.
"No, we don't," he says shortly. "Good night."
He makes to shut the door again. She holds firmly, and forces it open. She steps inside, and then shuts it. The look he gives her makes her all tingly and nervous with anticipation she can't explain, but she fights for her cool, looks around the place with some interest.
The apartment is tiny. She recognizes most of the things in here; they are his, he didn't bother buying much new. In fact, she's willing to bet the only new things in this apartment are food and beer.
His couch is here – the one they sat on together, when she stayed over that very first night and he was wearing his ratty bathrobe and she adored him. His piano is in the corner of the room, the lid open; he was probably playing tonight. The artwork on the walls is the same as in his old place too. She steps towards the couch, lightly fingering the fabric, warm from his weight, smelling of him, anti-septic and cologne and a little garlic.
He watches her look around, then sits down on the opposite end of the couch, picks up the remote and turns the TV on. It jolts her out of her reverie; her brow furrows.
"Turn that off," she says.
"Just because you're here, doesn't mean I have to listen to you."
She walks over to him and snatches the remote out of his hand, turning the TV off. She puts the remote on the dining table and returns to the couch. She's now standing next to him again. He has that look on his face that she knows so well – the edgy, tense, caged one. The one he gets when he's calculating how best to exit the scene.
"If you try to make a break for it, I'd outrun you," she reminds him.
He looks up at her. He's annoyed, obviously, but there's a grief and a wariness behind the irritation that kind of captivates her. "What do you want from me?"
"I just want to talk."
He leans in close and sniffs.
"You're drunk."
"Maybe a little," she allows.
"Then I really don't want to talk. You're a puker."
"I won't puke."
He glowers at her. "Get out."
"No."
"Why?"
The alcohol and the intensity of his stare is making her dizzy. "We need to talk."
"What is there left to talk about?" He sounds bitterer than she would expect.
She sighs, considering where on Earth to begin. "Why are you still here?"
"What do you mean, why am I still here?" He wrinkles his nose derisively. "I live here."
"Why?"
He considers. "It's close to the hospital."
"Why do you still work there?"
"My choice was work at the hospital or stay in jail. The hospital has a nicer bathroom."
"Oh."
They hesitate, the silent air thick with words they are dying to fling at one another.
Then–
"Satisfied? Will you leave now?"
"No. Just one more thing."
"What?"
House is staring at her again, and God, looking at him now, she powerfully remembers why she was always so magnetically attracted to him. He's so intense, his eyes so blue, so capable of seeing straight to your soul if you aren't careful. Something about him makes her bolder and braver than she ever is without him. The combination of his presence, his stiff guardedness, and the alcohol in her blood makes her wild, makes her say things aloud that she would never even admit to herself.
Say you're sorry
Won't you please say you're sorry?
"You were supposed to apologize," she says.
Just say you're sorry
"Apologize?"
No more, no less
"Yeah, for driving your car through my dining room."
"I could apologize for that, but I'd be lying."
Words you won't use
You don't feel them like I do
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not sorry about driving my car through your dining room."
I'm not the one who went and made a mistake
Outrage wells up in her like a tidal wave. "You're unbelievable, you know that?"
I want to walk away too
But I want you to say you are sorry
"Let me remind you that you are the one who, after having a few cocktails, chose to come into my apartment in the middle of the night, on a mission you knew was doomed to fail. How did you even get my address?"
I'm not the one who went and made a mistake
"That doesn't matter."
"The rest of what I said does. I don't want to talk to you. You know that. So why are you here?"
Something in her face softens. "I needed to hear you say it."
"That I'm sorry?"
"Yes."
"I'm not. It was all your fault anyway."
Words are no use
You don't need them like I do
"My fault? Because I broke up with you?"
I want the one word that you refuse to say to me
You're so good at giving me responsibility
Maybe it's his nerves, or his signature brashness, or maybe he just doesn't have any guard left here tonight in the presence of the ex-girlfriend who has tortured him these past two years – but he is as honest with her tonight as he was the night she told him it was over and he said he didn't want it to be.
He tells her, "Yes."
Say you're sorry
But she doesn't see the honesty, all she hears is the word, and the implications it gives, and it just makes her angrier.
"I broke up with you because you were impossible."
"You lied to me."
"I did not."
"You did."
Her cheeks go horribly red and blotchy. "Are you seriously going to hold our break-up against me forever?"
I'm not the one who went and made a mistake
"What else am I supposed to do?"
"Get over it! Move on!"
I wanna walk away too
But I want you to say you're sorry
"Like you did, drinking and then tracking down my apartment to force some kind of sorrowful confession of guilt from me in order to get the closure you've been craving for two years?"
"That's—"
"I get it. You want closure. You want an epilogue, where you can see how I'm doing and decide based on that how guilty you want to feel over for me for the rest of your life. I'm guessing it's because you've managed to lasso another guy into a long-term relationship with you; otherwise, it wouldn't matter what happened to me or how you felt about me. You just want to make sure you can wrap the bow on this and then move on to whatever happy ending you think you've found."
Her cheeks burn. "House—"
"I'm right. I'm always right. You know it too. So, now that you've seen me, why don't you get out of my apartment and go enjoy your new man-candy for as long as he keeps his shine?"
It gave him a savage pleasure, letting those words spill out of his mouth like a venomous waterfall, all his bitterness poured out of him and into her, where it should be. But the look on her face tells him clearly that his analysis hit below the belt; and for a split-second, she is terribly, terribly soft, like a doe recently run over by a car, staring up at the sky and wondering why it happened, why it hurts so much.
But it's just a split-second – and then she's back to her strength, her anger and indignation, longing to be half as cruel to him as he can be to her.
"Well, then you enjoy yourself too, because you're the only company you will ever have."
She rises to leave at last, teetering a little on her heels in the suddenness of the movement. His eyes flash, as the pain in his leg, in his whole body doubles.
I wanna walk away too
But I want you to say you're sorry
"How did you picture this ending?" he asks her, more ruthlessly than he had originally intended. "Any of this? The break-up, then coming to see me tonight? What did you even expect?"
For the first time, he sees in her eyes a glimpse of the vast, agonizing grief he had wrestled with through the long prison nights. "I don't know. But certainly not what I got."
"And that's the problem," he says, solemn. "You never know what to expect. And when you make a mess you don't think you can fix, you run. It doesn't matter if anyone else got left behind."
Just say you're sorry
No more, no less
She looks so bitter, so sad. "I could say the same about you."
Just say you're sorry
No more, no less
"I tried," he admits. "But you lied to me."
"I never lied to you."
"You told me that you didn't want me to change. But you dumped me anyway."
And there it is, the crux of the matter, laid out plain between the two of them like a gulf ten miles wide, waiting for them to cross it on lifeboats. She briefly closes her eyes, the leaden hurt and exhaustion setting in.
"I loved you," she says. "And you loved me. But we deserved better than what we gave each other."
He just stares at her then.
"I'm still not sorry I crashed into your house."
Won't you please say you're sorry?
"And I'm still not sorry I broke up with you."
Won't you please say you're sorry?
His guts go cold. He gets up, limps to his door, and holds it open for her.
"Get out of my apartment," he says.
She clack-clacks to the door and stands there in the frame, looking so small and thin against the bright white walls of the hallway. They stare at each other for a few seconds more, memorizing every last detail – the curls falling past her shoulders, the gray patches in his beard.
I wash my hands clean and let you watch me as I go
I'm sorry for you, just so you know
"Good-bye, House."
"Good-bye, Cuddy."
He closes the door with a resolute snap, and then goes for the beer in the fridge, the pills on the counter.
She gets on the plane the next morning with a pounding headache and a wicked hangover, her suitcase rolling along behind her. She settles into her seat and tries her best to go to sleep.
When she lands, she finds she had a call from Wilson while the plane was in-flight. He had left her a harried message.
Lisa, it's James. Foreman sent cops to House's apartment when he didn't come into work today. ER docs said something about a Vicodin and alcohol overdose. They have him in the ICU. Don't know if he's going to make it. Do you have any idea what happened?
She drops her phone. The screen shatters. People stop, stare. She drops herself to her knees and shatters too.
Driving away from the wreck of the day
And it's finally quiet in my head
Driving alone, finally on my way home to the comfort of my bed
And if this is giving up, I'm giving up
on love.
I'm giving up on love.
A/N: And that…was that.
The quotes used—
The beginning ("speeding…") italics are from Vanessa Carlton's The Wreckage.
The "where do we go from here" italics are from Fink's Yesterday Was Hard on All of Us.
The "in the light of the sun" italics are from Augustana's Boston.
The "liar, liar" italics are from A Fine Frenzy's Liar Liar.
The Cuddy dialogue quotes come from episodes 7.03, 7.01, 7.13, 7.15 and 7.13 in that order.
The "fire fire" italics are also from A Fine Frenzy's Liar Liar.
The "I've been built up" italics are from The Wellspring's cover of The Ballad of El Goodo.
The "being with you…" italics are from Kelly Clarkson's My Life Would Suck Without You.
The "something always brings me back to you" italics are from Sara Bareilles's Gravity.
The "you show up like a hurricane" italics are from A Fine Frenzy's Elements.
The italics through the argument about apologizing from Sara Bareilles's Say You're Sorry.
The very last quote of italics ("driving away...") is from Anna Nalick's, Wreck of the Day.
I know this was long and nutty and quite emotional, but I do hope you will remember to review at the end and make all my effort worthwhile. How's that for emotional blackmail? Haha.
But seriously. Please review.