Disclaimer: I don't own any House characters. Title is from the song of the same name by Stone Sour, © 2010 Roadrunner Records.
Chapter One: Highway to PPTH
There was a certain amount of irony to it. Of all the things people had called Amber throughout her lifetime, "angel" had not ever been one of them. But here she was, long fluffy white wings matching quite perfectly with her silky blonde hair, and as she stuck one foot over the New Jersey Transit train turnstile, she thought to herself that she didn't totally mind the gig she had been given. Except for how awkward these damn wings are, she added as an afterthought. She wondered if they were retractable, and figured out a moment later that unfortunately, they were not.
Even worse, she was starting to get some extremely strange looks, as she walked from the platform into the open door for the train. The sooner she found Wilson and did what she needed to do, the better.
"What you wearin'?" a tall, bronze-skinned man inquired, giving Amber a look that she assumed was meant to be flirtatious but was, instead, all sorts of creepy.
"Wings," Amber retorted. "I'm in a traveling production of Jesus Christ Superstar."
Luckily, her stop was next, and she stepped gingerly on to the platform as she sighed. How the hell was she supposed to announce herself to Wilson? There really was no easy way to tell someone that you were their dead girlfriend, coming back to help them out so they didn't ruin their relationship with their best friend.
She was knocked out of her thoughts by a rough nudge – a man had just banged into her, a tall blonde with a dusty beard and tract marks all over his arms. Drug addict, she thought disgustedly. Why me? Why today?
"Excuse me," the blonde murmured under his breath, and she turned to say something to him, some retort, and then thought better of it. After all, her boss – or supervisor, or whatever she wanted to call him – for this jaunt in purgatory was a rock musician who'd passed away of a drug overdose. Some kind of opiate – she couldn't remember which one, and he didn't like to talk about it. Sweet guy, though. Such a shame.
So she guessed that the man who'd just bumped into her could get off without her saying something nasty to him. She was on a mission, after all, and she should try and be as discreet as possible – not quite as easy as it seems when one is walking around with huge fluffy white wings.
Amber found herself at a crossroads, and she stopped. At first she wasn't quite sure why, just that her feet seemed to have willed themselves to stand in place at this downturn of the concrete – a handicap ramp, she figured, as she hung half-on, half-off of it.
She gazed up, her eyes following a metal railing that'd been painted a dark green, forest green, maybe. At the top of the railing was a long wide metal sign with curved edges, an orange stripe on top of a pink stripe and on top of those, an illustration of a little blue figure with one leg raised, next to a crude rendering of a vehicle of some sort.
Bus stop, Amber thought wryly. I need to take the bus.
She'd thought about it before she'd got there, and she'd hoped that maybe she could just take the train and walk – but her taste for walking while getting these bizarre stares was running out. She could take a cab – but that'd be even worse, with the luck she would end up with some creepy old guy who'd spend the entire time trying to hit on her and making crappy jokes about whether she'd fallen from Heaven.
No, asshole, she could picture herself retorting, I've fallen from Purgatory. Get it right.
The 600 bus pulled up, and Amber's thoughts of going for a cab were brushed to the side. How would I pay for it, anyway? she wondered, considering I've only been given what… Amber checked her pockets as the door opened. Six dollars and fifty cents. That won't get me very far. She stepped on to the step of the bus and grabbed the metal handle, pulling herself up – something she'd done so many times before in her life, just different buses, different towns but they'd never held this sense of foreboding before.
She made her way to the back, getting caught in the aisle several times, and sat down, gazing out at the wondrous streets of Princeton where she'd lived… Had it been only a few months ago? It felt like years.
She had to figure out what she'd say to Wilson, and what she'd say to House. Wilson would likely be more easy to convince – House would assume he was having some kind of psychotic symptom, and the possibility of him trying to perform brain surgery on himself was a definite risk. She'd go to Wilson first – that's where the problem was, after all, really. She didn't even really need to go to House.
Then again, that's what the rules had said, that's what her boss had told her: Get House and Wilson back together. And then the more ominous, Stop Wilson from doing what he's about to do.
Her blood ran cold at that, but she didn't have time to consider what it must mean. A man had sat down next to her, a man in his mid-sixties, and he'd asked her what stop to get off at.
"Oh, right down this next road," Amber replied brusquely. Don't ever answer their questions, she thought to herself, hasn't that always been my rule?
"Oh, that's good, young lady," the man replied. "I always want to know what bus I'm on. It'd be bad if I didn't know, then I'd get lost! Are you married?"
For exactly this reason.
"Yeah, I am," Amber replied, turning her head. Maybe that'll get rid of him.
"What's your husband's name? You're a pretty girl."
Or… maybe not.
This whole angel thing was turning out to be a lot harder than it seemed in the movies…
