Walking Bright

Rating: M just to be safe

Canon: House, MD

Disclaimer: House and the song are not mine.

Genre: Angst

Warnings: Character Death, song!fic

Characters: House, Cuddy, Wilson, etc…

Pairing: Huddy, with House-Wilson-Cuddy friendship mentioned…

Setting: PPTH

Summary: the pain is going and he concedes that maybe it is time to accept the end. [Huddy Kind of ramble-eey…What if he'd really had the tumor, but it hadn't shown up.
He's been feeling a little off lately but he isn't really worried. His leg takes up too much of his concentration though and the minute he sees the scan of the coma patient that is soon gonna die, he knows. Gregory House had always been a smart man and he knew the truth. He knew how good a diagnostician he really was-House had worked at it for a long time and knew the problem.

Once he had been almost easy-going but with the infraction a few years previous his mind had dulled and everything that came out of his mouth was meant to lash out at others. Once he had run miles everyday beside Cuddy and Wilson and a few random other people. He'd been the king of the physical side. Games of tennis and swimming were something he was known for though he never did get that last game of golf with Cuddy.

Now his leg is a withered thing. Wilson hasn't run a mile since and Cuddy no longer prays.

Truly he hated it but it was there and he couldn't change it. He limps to his bedroom.

In his life, there had only been two people he'd ever trusted. And still to his dying day, he hoped that they'd still be there. Expressing his feelings was something he'd never been very good at. Now it was lost to the past. But his two friends have known that for a while.

But even they think he is addicted. He isn't but no one believes him. Parts of him hurt always and the breakthrough pain is constant now, throbbing below the noticeable surface. The Vicodin numbs it just a little, enough to be bearable. But it doesn't help anymore.

Until one day he just doesn't feel most of his leg anymore. He knows what's wrong now, knows that I can't be helped. He won't mention it. Gregory House will go back to his job of useless paychecks and lying patients and he knows that nothing will change.

Except… It will…

I'm walking on sunshine, wooah
I'm walking on sunshine, woooah
I'm walking on sunshine, woooah
and don't it feel good!!

Wilson gives him a ride everyday now. House tells him that his bike had been stolen. The truth is he has sold it for money he will never bother with. If he can't really feel his leg then he can't drive his bike anywhere.

Having perfected the moves, he limps into work snarking as usual. Nothing is different. But if he had worn sandals to work then maybe someone would have noticed how his leg quit reacting to central stimuli. Maybe someone would notice how he doesn't wince the same.

He thinks it's funny that no one has noticed how the pills no longer shake in his pocket. They're full and not even in his pocket any longer. He doesn't need them. He hears a Nurse Brenda rudely ask why he hasn't chucked some more pills, that maybe it'll calm his arrogance. And he wonders why Cuddy doesn't understand why he hates her. Nurse Brenda is a giant hypocrite, more so even than him.

Nurse Brenda is stupid. He wants to hit her over the head with his cane. It'll hurt more than a fist.

All day House is just a little more over-attentive to Cuddy, asking random questions and pointing fun at everything she does and says. He is just a little more sincere than normally and she wonders what he'd up to. When nothing happens, she even gives him a few laughs.

Lisa hasn't laughed in a long time.

He knew what was coming. He planned it all out really. Before going home, Wilson wondered who House had gotten a ride from, but shrugged. One of the Ducklings or Cuddy probably took him home when he wanted off at five. But maybe, he concedes, doing this is better than dying on the hospital table states away.

The next morning the Ducklings find him in his office, asleep. It was rare to see this level of trust and they hated to wake him, but should before Cuddy or Wilson came to tell him about Clinic duty. They're still mad at him for forging a patient's chart as his own though, for lying to them and for using them. They don't understand the small undertone of music playing from the computer on repeat or the fact that his cane is nowhere to be seen. Chase tries to wake him up but the moment he touches House, Chase freezes. House is cold, cold like water, cold like ice, cold like a faceless corpse.

The ducklings have never been more aware of who House had truly been to them than they were in that moment. He patronized them, bothered them, and ordered them around. He was rude and sarcastic and didn't seem to have an emotional bone in his body. But looking over everything, they could finally recognize how he really cared.

Cuddy has felt weird all day, the back of her spine tickling and her sleep not coming to her. She wonders, as she gets up at five to be at work by six, what patient will die today? It's seven when she gets up from her desk. House will unlikely be at work yet, but occasionally miracles do happen.

She almost makes the elevator with House's protégés but it closes before she can get there. She takes the stairs. Cuddy sees Foreman, Cameron, and Chase walk into his office through the glass doors and walks towards them. At least she can tell them to remind House about Clinic duty.

She sees him right before Chase goes to wake him. He looks so peaceful, she thinks, almost like he's sleeping… and that itch crawls up her spine. Cuddy doesn't need to touch House to see it. She whimpers when Wilson comes to sit her down in his own complete shock because she never got to tell anyone the good news.

The basic will has been read and she is somewhat surprised that Greg had left everything to her anyway, despite not believing him in the end. She touches the coat rack and sobs when she sees his pet rat, still fed and watered. It occurs to her that it is probably the last thing he had done in his apartment, the last thing he had touched in this place.

She hears a familiar noise and her head snaps towards the piano in hope, open and waiting. But no one is there. She sniffles and goes to look at the sound. The television is on.

Lisa Cuddy and Gregory House sit at the piano together. He is playing and she runs her hands over his. She sings. "Used to think" she says as the keys play and the people around them watch this in awe. They have played together before but each time there is something new.

"Maybe, you loved me, now I knows that it's true" Cuddy says in Greg's apartment. She can't help it. She curls up and sobs in his couch, smelling him, making herself believe that he is still there, that he is going to jump out from his bed and laugh that they all actually fell for it.

She listens and watches to the tape, recognizing the blank empty tape box half-open without its tape. There is a series of them on his shelf. She never asked what they were, never really even wondered. Now, she thinks she knows. She whimpers again. Cuddy knows what she should have done. Lisa should have accepted the proposal when he asked before they split from med school in separate ways.

Later on, she finds three full bottles of Vicodin in his drawer, the dates confirming that they weren't stolen or anything. How long has he been dying? She wonders.

When she gets the facts of the autopsy, she is shocked to find he really did have a terminal cancer in his brain. It was small, but located in his pain center. That's why he hurt so bad and the pills never worked properly. At least he felt no pain in the end, not for a couple of weeks, the coroner says.

Lisa just wants to cry.

She keeps the last note for her in a secret place at her home.

Cuddy don't be sad, be mad. You're hot when you get all huffy. I mean really, who'd a thunk you missed an old gimp like me?

As you are here, then apparently I have kicked the bucket, am six feet under and pushing up daisies. I am currently pointing at you and laughing. Ha Ha! You can't hit me.

I wish I could have been there for you, run with you and Wilson again. But I can't, and I'm sorry for that. I would however like to say congratulations.

House

P.S. Lisa, just in case, there is a box of some stuff under the bed for you. –Love Greg.

And she cries.

She looks under his bed and doesn't find a little box. She finds a big box the size of the bed itself and is astounded. Some of it is old stuff, things she had mostly forgotten or put into her past and blocked out. There are a thousand of little things in there of a past they shared and had not looked at together since it ended, since he asked her to marry him and she refused, thinking he had been joking.

The first thing she notices is a red-pink pair of lacy underwear and she laughs at the memory it brings of him sneaking through her stuff. As if he had known what she would think-and he knew her well enough that it was probably true, there was a scrap of paper in it that said, so I'm your stalker, and Lisa could just imagine Greg shrugging as if it was no big thing.

She looks through a thousand things and picks out a few things that were meant for Wilson.

A small box of four vials catches her attention and she laughs not-quite-hollowly. She wont need them. He already knocked her up. She touches her belly and laughs.

4 Years later…

Lisa Cuddy is laid out on her couch. Little Greg James Jr. and Eliza Marianne Cuddy-House are spread over her legs as the Fantasia is played its pieces. Sounds spread around the mostly-quiet room, ricocheting off of the walls and into ears. The piano a room away doesn't seem empty.

7-month-old James Gregory nursed at her breast. She had use for one of the vials after all, it seems. Looking at her children, Lisa Cuddy looks up at the ceiling wondering if there really is a God, and if Greg is watching them. She thanks him, loves him, and misses him. But she knows he would be happy for her. That's why he gave her three children after all, so she would be happy.

While the four nod off to sleep, the storm outside carries on. Cuddy thinks that the wind against the house reminds her of the not-so-secret stalking Gregory House had done. She thinks it almost sounds like the walking he did to get through the door.

Step-steptap. Step-steptap.

Or maybe the sound of him sneaking through her window.

Step-creak. Step-creak.

And at night she still dreams of him.

When the home movies end and the storm slows from a tremble, Lisa Cuddy could swear she heard the same piano she had sung with his fingering keys play a soothing rhythm with those same ghostly fingers and adds her voice to the strum…

End.