House alone
House felt his new guitar come tentatively alive under his hands. It was new, different and somehow also quite familiar. Not his fist guitar, but it still brought to mind the feeling his first guitar had given him when he tried it out for the first time. Of course, his skills at playing were a lot better now than they had been then, but still. It was a thrill to learn to know it, to find out what its true voice was, how to reach it, how to bring it alive.
His team had left him that day. Well, Chase he had chased away a day earlier, but they were all gone. Wilson was more upset with the change than he was. Or it could be that Wilson's belief in him not being a heartless bastard was shaken. But that couldn't be helped. Contrary to what Jimmy believed, House did not mind change. He didn't particularly like it, but it didn't really bother him either. He had lived with it all his life, after all. As a child he never knew one year where he was going to be the next one, sometimes it was even not knowing week by week. He had had his team for three years. Usually he managed to drive them away much sooner.
Foreman should have stayed for a while yet, though. He hadn't learned all he could. The neurologist still couldn't see outside the box, except once in a very rare occasion. House still believed that Foreman could learn it. Whether he would, was now a little uncertain. But Foreman had decided he didn't need House anymore. What a silly thing to decide. Something like that shouldn't have been in the equation at all. But then, Foreman was afraid. Afraid of turning into House. Of course Wilson had said that it was just his perception of what House was that scared Foreman and Jimmy had been right. He had also been wrong in thinking that knowing what House really was would scare Foreman any less.
When they had been watching the boys through the glass Foreman had said that he didn't want to turn into him, that he didn't like needing to be like House as a human being to be like him as a doctor. House smiled remembering his own retort You have been like me since you were eight. It wasn't true in actual sense, but it was true in the sense that the demons Foreman feared had been with him ever since he had been old enough to sense that they were there. Being away from House was not going to change the direction Foreman was travelling in. Something else needed to happen; something else needed to change to change him. He either had to leave his past behind or he had to make peace with it. Well, it was up to him now. House was no longer in position to help or hinder.
And to think while everybody worried about Foreman turning into House – or his perception of House, Chase had quietly, unnoticed by anyone really been turning into him. The boy had tried to be anything and everything his father had not been – except he couldn't avoid medicine, it was in his genes. And then he had ended up adopting House as a father. Even House had missed it for a long time, but that time he had faked the brain cancer, Chase had cried. Even Cameron hadn't cried, not like that at least. Chase had. Of course the situation reminded him of what happened with Rowan Chase, but still. He should not have cried. It had taken some time for House to understand where Chase had been coming from because – though he sometimes did refer to his team as his children – he had never seen himself as any kind of father-figure. But for Chase he had been. And the boy needed something better than to turn into him. Chase needed to find himself – at least now that he had suddenly spouted a backbone he could. Hopefully Cameron was not going to screw that up.
Cameron's resignation had been a bit of a surprise. Not much, but a little. Obviously she no longer loved him! Or then she was running away, again. Hopefully not the latter as she obviously was running to Chase. She probably had recognised the "young House" Chase was becoming – even if the recognition was not conscious. Though there were some outward signs, too. Chase had distinctly forgotten to brush his hair lately and he needed a trim. And that was surprising in a man who – even if he denied it vigorously – was so proud of his great hair. He had also started to eat Reubens. Cameron would have picked on those things at least subconsciously. And then Chase was the one thing that Cameron found utterly appealing: he was damaged. Not on the outside, of course, but damaged he still was. House didn't hold much hope for the young love, but then that too was out of his hands. They would have to muddle through.
He didn't really think, though, that Cameron had resigned because of Chase. No, she was the one who most hated change in his team. She had left so that she wouldn't need to face the change in the team, in House, in the comfortable routine she had established for herself over the three years. She would much rather go somewhere all new than see things familiar change beyond recognition. This way the team, him, PPTH would always be the way they were in her memory. Preserved there in unchanging splendour. And there would probably be even a shrine there for the brilliant doctor House. She was romantic that way. Or maybe not, maybe there would be a dartboard in her mind with his picture on it and every time she thought of him she would throw mental darts at him. That, actually, would be much better. But that, too, was now out of his hands.
What he had in his hands was this new, beautiful instrument that he could lure to his will and he had all night to do it.
Yeah, it was time for a change and sometimes change was a very good thing. And perhaps he could even get a little excited about future now that he didn't know what there was in it. Maybe. God knew – if there was one, of course. If there wasn't, then nobody knew.