I don't own the sand box, I'm just playing with the toys.

This story is based on the poem by Sir Walter Scott

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung.

-The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Sir Walter Scott

PROLOGUE

She faced her desk away from the window precisely because she loved it. The view always intoxicated her. The bustle, the flow, the feel of life being lived mere feet away attracted her in way she found hard to quantify. She was the omniscient observer of the natural order; it was a drug that pulled constantly at her attention. With her back to the tug and pull of nature (albeit the urban version), she could focus on the mundane and often troubling aspect of running a hospital, especially a hospital that contained Gregory House, her other distraction.

She rarely let her mind drift to thoughts of him more than she had to. He was magnetic, even on paper. His caustic personality and sheer genius generated more paperwork, hassles, headaches and long evenings than the rest of the hospital combined. Tired and frustrated with his insane requests and upset patients, she questioned once again why she kept him around. But she knew. It was not his medical abilities and by no stretch of the imagination was it because patients loved it him. It was because she did.

One of House's patients had overheard him berate her for something (she couldn't remember what it had been about now) and later questioned her judgment, insinuating that she must've been abused at some point in her life to take that kind of treatment from House. She wished it was that simple.

Over the years he had managed to insinuate himself into almost every aspect of her life. Even his mocking had an intimacy to it simply for the fact that he knew exactly which of her buttons to push. Of course he sometimes took things to far, genuinely hurt her and drove knives into her heart but she chose to put that aside in exchange for the moments in between where he made her happy. Maybe she was damaged because those moments were worth it to her.

Or they had been. She'd always thought that the bond they shared was special. They hurt each other but they were also privy to each other secrets and fears and that meant something to her but he'd shown today how little he really thought of her. Today was the day she found out about the secret life he'd been living. He wasn't the cryptically open book she'd always thought he was. He was a liar to her, to Wilson, to his team, to Stacey.

She turned to the window to watch the people outside and mourn the death of the what she thought she had.