A/N Because it's Thirteen, and she deserves this.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. At all. If I'd owned House I just would've paid Olivia Wilde to sit there all day so I could stare at her. In a non-creepy way, of course.
SOMEONE BETTER, SOMEONE STRONGER
On most days, Thirteen held her head high. She'd fight battle after battle with her chin planted firmly in the air and sometimes- not always, but sometimes- she would win those battles.
It wasn't until the dead of night that she'd go home- sometimes drunk yet always alone- and let her brave face fall, crumbling to ashes in the harsh darkness of her solitude.
The walls of her apartment would always seem to close in on her and she liked to think of it as her own personal apocalypse; the end slowly creeping closer and closer until it knocked the air right from her tired lungs.
But the tears of these nights that threatened to overwhelm her enitre being never passed the corners of her blood-shot eyes because she could always remember the mornings; looking around her team- her family- before she fought the day's fight and knowing she was not alone, that every struggle's scar was well worth the light at the end she so yearned for. The light she so hoped would finally save her from her labyrinth of suffering.
In that sense, she knew the loss of Remy Hadley was a more-than-fair trade for the gain of Thirteen.
While she was aware the loss of the war was inevitable, it didn't mean she couldn't still find her own little way to be victorious. And there was no way she would fall to her grave quietly and politely.
No. Thirteen would breathe her last breath a fighter.
The Remy Hadley she'd once known was gone and it was perhaps something to mourn but she just couldn't bring herself to. In the place of Remy was someone better- someone stronger.
THE END
A/N Yeah, yeah, it's short. Sue me. Or don't. Preferably the latter, but whatever floats your boat. Review?
P.S If you get the 'labyrinth of suffering reference', cookies for you!