A/N: I'm supposed to be finished with fanfiction. Seriously. But I've been binging on House fics and episodes the last couple days, and it got me itching.
No slash intended.
Warning: some dark content.
The Answer
House stands in the middle of a road, stretching endlessly in both directions. It must be late afternoon; the world is gray with mist and a blanket of rain clouds. He can see forest, far away, on one side of the road after a large stretch of flatland. He turns in a circle and sees nothing more, no people or buildings or cars. Just the road and the sky and the earth.
He looks down at himself and sees he's wearing his winter coat. He doesn't remember putting it on or where he was before or how he got here. He doesn't have his cane. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other and feels no pain. His hand goes to check his thigh and doesn't feel the misshapen scar that should be there.
This must be a dream. Or a hallucination. God help him, maybe he's gone crazy again. A relapse.
"You're wrong."
House turns toward the voice and finds Wilson standing in the road too, a few yards away. Wilson has both hands in his coat pockets and doesn't look happy.
"You don't remember," he says. "You're dying."
House processes this information for a moment. Then he asks how. Wilson bows his head, and House knows right away it isn't good. Not that he ever expected his own death to be pleasant.
"You finally did it," says Wilson, sounding sad in a way that surprises House. "Overdosed."
"Vicodin?" says House.
"No. You bought something stronger; you knew what you wanted."
House doesn't know what to say. Suicide was never his style, for all the self-destructive things he did throughout his adult life. He doesn't remember anything, but he maybe he changed his mind.
"Let's go for a walk," says Wilson. House doesn't move, until Wilson reaches him. The two men begin to walk down the road shoulder to shoulder. For a few minutes, they don't speak, and House wonders if the road has an end or a beginning at all.
"Why are you here?" he says. Wilson's face cracks with a smile.
"We need to talk," he says. "And I don't have a choice but to follow you anyway."
One thing at a time, House decides.
"What are we talking about?"
Wilson doesn't look at him as they walk, keeps his eyes ahead, but House watches him.
"Why did you do this?" says Wilson. It isn't bitter or accusatory. Only a simple question, the kind House finds boring. It should have a simple answer – only, he doesn't know what it is. He still can't fully believe he's committed suicide. Accidental overdose, sure. But to have intent? Is that what he wanted? Is that what it finally came to?
"It doesn't make any sense," says House, thinking out loud. He squints into the mist. "No more reason to kill myself now than every day of the last ten years. Maybe less of a reason, if I remember correctly. Went to rehab. Came back. Still had my job. Still had a way to manage to the pain. Still had you."
He pauses, and the only sound is their footfalls, like gentle notes on a piano.
"I don't know," says House. "I can't remember."
"It wasn't an accident," says Wilson, reading his thoughts.
"I can't give you what you want. I don't know the answer."
Wilson looks down at his shoes moving over the wet tar.
"But you have to know," says House. "If I'm really dying, then this whole thing is just a hallucination created by my brain's last electrical pulses as it shuts down. You're my own conscience. So you have to know the answer because I have to know the answer."
A corner of Wilson's mouth curls up.
"Not quite," he says. "I know you're an atheist to the end, but this is more than just your brain, for once. I don't know the answer."
"Only because you don't want to know," says House. "You must not like the answer."
"I don't know because you haven't told me. The question is, why don't you know?"
House stops, and Wilson stops with him. They turn toward each other, forming a V in the road, and House shakes his head. He looks behind them, and it's no different than what lies ahead.
"What do you mean you don't have a choice but to follow?" he says to Wilson.
At first, Wilson stares into the distance, in the direction they're going, and House can see his breath puffing white from his lips. Wilson's cheeks are red with the cold, and he looks younger than House knows he should. Wilson looks like he's been relieved of his own bad leg, his own scars and chronic pain.
House watches him until Wilson stares back, his brown eyes the brightest color House can see. For a long time, they just look at each other, and House feels like they're having the dozens of conversations they should've had throughout the course of their friendship, all at once now and without words.
"I don't," says Wilson, again with a plain, emotionless honesty. "You can't go down this road without me."
House refuses to break eye contact, to let Wilson pull away.
"Yes," he says. "I can."
Wilson purses his lips and gives the slightest head shake.
"No. Doesn't work that way."
"Why not?"
Wilson sighs a long, white breath and looks away.
"Let's just say you're not someone I can ever divorce."
He begins to move again, in the same direction, and House follows after a second's pause.
"Are you dying too?" he says, no longer calm and detached. He snatches Wilson's arm, and Wilson looks at him. "Are you?"
"That depends on your definition of dying," says Wilson. He takes his arm from House's grip, and House doesn't resist letting go. They walk.
"Dying's pretty clear cut, the last time I checked," House says, irritated now. "Either your body's major systems are failing or they're not. Which is it, Wilson?"
"My body's fine, House."
"Then, you're not dying."
"I'm here."
"Doesn't matter. I told you. You're a figment of my failing brain."
Wilson doesn't try to protest this time, and for a few minutes, they walk in silence, until House speaks quietly.
"I'm not surprised you're the last image I've chosen to conjure up."
"You have a soul, House," says Wilson. "So do I. It doesn't take organ failure to kill a man."
"The last of my soul walked out the door with Poppy the Asian hooker, a few months back," says House. "Or maybe that was just the last of my cash. Not that there's a difference."
"I don't doubt your materialistic essence is scattered all over the eastern seaboard, but trust me: the goods have belonged to me all along. And you've got a monopoly on mine, not that I'm surprised."
"This is crap," says House. "I refuse to believe my subconscious harbors a belief in this New Age bullshit."
"It doesn't."
House rolls his eyes. They saunter down the road, but as far as House can tell, they're no closer to the end. He would ask where they're going, but he doesn't care because he knows none of this is real. Their shoulders brush and bump together, just a little, and House realizes this is the best he's felt in years. Just walking with Wilson, his leg whole.
"You're saying—I'm killing you," he says, voice soft again.
"You didn't know," says Wilson. "Neither did I."
House eyes the ground with quiet, piercing blues.
"This is stupid. I don't matter that much to anyone. My brain's just letting my ego have one last joyride."
"You're egotistical when it comes to your job, your abilities. Not so much when it comes to yourself as a person."
"Right."
But there's no conviction in House's protest.
"I guess everyone has a limit to how much misery they can live with," says Wilson. "You must've hit yours. I just didn't see it coming."
"I already told you, nothing got worse. You could even argue my life got better the last couple years, if it changed at all."
"You were still in pain. There was never any chance of eliminating it. We both knew that."
"I'm not that obsessed with my leg, Wilson."
"I'm not talking about your leg."
Wilson stops and looks at House.
"Has your opinion of me really sunk that low?" says House. "You think I turned into one of those idiots who check out because life is too hard?"
"I think—you're human. As much as you've always hated the idea. And I also think we both missed something. House."
Wilson leans in a little toward his best friend but keeps his fists inside his coat. His face tightens, and his mouth twists. He lifts his eyes to House's, and House tries to see him.
"I'm sorry," Wilson whispers. House watches a kind of grief wash against Wilson's face, eyes watering.
"For what?" House says, not knowing why they've grown so quiet here, as if they could be overheard.
"For not realizing—that what you needed all along was me."
They stand facing each other in the road, in the middle of a dark, gray world, and House accepts this answer with the kind of peace that comes when the answer is one he knew deep down all along. It is the same kind of epiphany he's had over hundreds of cases, the perfect puzzle piece uncovered after sifting through layers of cloud. There had always been a space between him and Wilson, a gap they hadn't seen, as if they had reached for each other's hand and stopped just short of touching.
"I'm sorry," says House, without thinking. "For not seeing I was what you needed."
Wilson gives him a weak smile and faces the road.
"What do we do?" he says. House looks into the distance with him.
"Try again."
House closes his eyes and feels the gap between them close, a wave of bliss sweeping over him, and he knows this feeling better than anything: right.
When he wakes up, Wilson's face hovers over his. Bright with tears. And Wilson smiles.