Lisa Cuddy was enjoying a rare moment of relaxation in the middle of a workday. For once there was nothing urgent to be done: no phone calls from demanding donors to answer, no meetings to subtly steer towards the right decisions, no complaints from patients or staff to settle or make disappear. She hadn't even heard from House since he'd asked her advice on which of his candidates to keep, and while House did far more damage when he was flying under the radar, if she worried about everything he did that she didn't know about, she'd lose her mind.

Of course House chose that moment to barge in uninvited. Nature — and destructive diagnosticians — abhors a vacuum.

"How much is left in the budget?" he demanded.

"I told you before, the money for your little game is gone. Hire two fellows or I'm taking the over-runs from your salary."

House shook his head impatiently. "I still have until Friday to decide, so keep your grubby administrative paws out of my paycheque. I mean the one for my legal bills. The 50,000 hush money."

"I upped it to 75,000 after your little run-in with Tritter. Though you've barely touched it this year. Keeping a low profile?"

"Saving up for a rainy day. Speaking of which..."

Cuddy knew it had been too good to be true. "What did you do to your patient this time?"

House gave her his most innocent look. "Nothing that he's going to complain about. Though I should sue him for damages to my musical sensibilities."

"Oh god, one of the candidates filed for sexual harassment." It was only a matter of time before House insulted the wrong person. Some days Cuddy considered suing him herself, but the last thing she needed was more paperwork relating to House.

"They wish. I'm not being sued. But Wilson is. Or will be."

"Wilson?" Cuddy couldn't remember the last time Wilson had been sued by a patient. Most of his legal troubles came from his divorces or his association with House, or, in at least one case, both. "What did you do this time?"

"Me? Why do you always assume I'm the one to blame? Wilson is more than capable of screwing up on his own."

That was true, but House's expression of innocence had never been very convincing. "What did you mean he's going to be sued? How do you know that?"

House shifted nervously and looked away. "I might have told the patient to sue. So, really," he added brightly, "it's only fair that the legal costs come out of my budget."

Every time House burst into her office with some outrageous scheme to treat a patient or run his department, Cuddy told herself that nothing he could do would surprise her. Apparently she'd been wrong. "You told a patient to sue your best friend? That's low, even for you."

House shook his head in frustration, though she didn't know whether it was at Wilson's situation or her failure to follow the twisted workings of his mind. "The guy doesn't have a case. Wilson didn't do anything wrong, or at least he didn't do anything that wasn't justified by the information he had."

Sometimes Cuddy wondered if she had fallen down a rabbit hole years ago and never made it back out to the real world. "So naturally you just had to go ahead and provoke a nuisance suit."

"Wilson diagnosed the guy with adenocarcinoma. Turned out the biopsy was a false positive, which Wilson found out when he re-ran the tests. Instead of only having six months to live, he's got all the time in the world to blame other people for his miserable life. And the first person he's blaming is Wilson for telling him he's not dying any more. And now Wilson feels guilty because the guy's out six grand on selling his house and doesn't want to go to Italy any more."

"Still not seeing how exposing Wilson — and by extension this hospital — to a lawsuit is a good idea."

"Because the idiot is up there right now trying to buy off his conscience by giving Lazarus the money to cover the broker commission. I'm just saving him from himself. You get the lawyers to make the lawsuit go away, Wilson gets to keep his 6000 and he learns an even more valuable lesson: not to be such a schlemiel."

It was a testament to how much time she'd spent in House's presence that she could actually see his point. Unfortunately, she could just as clearly anticipate how Wilson would react to this development. "I realize that you consider lawsuits a badge of honour, but normal people don't like getting sued."

"He's not going to be sued." House managed to sound both dismissive and defensive. "Even if he finds a lawyer desperate enough to take the case, a law clerk could kill it before it got to court. It'll barely dent the budget. And we both know if you don't spend that money you'll never get it back next year, and god knows what I might do."

Unfortunately, Cuddy had enough first-hand experience to imagine a range of possibilities. "How about instead I tell Wilson he has 20,000 to retain a lawyer if he decides to kill you. Though I'm not sure the DA would press the case."

"Wilson won't kill me," House said confidently. "He works too hard to keep me from self-destructing to do the destructing himself."

"Well, then maybe you should return the favour." The phone rang and Cuddy glanced at the screen, half expecting it to be Wilson confessing past and future transgressions. But it was the chair of the board and she couldn't let it go to voice mail. "I need to get this. But I'll give legal a heads-up," she added when House looked as though he intended to stay. "Go away. And the next time you want to teach Wilson a lesson, buy him a textbook."

She didn't see Wilson at all the next day, though she heard from Foreman — who had heard from Kutner — that Wilson had been by House's office and had looked angry enough to rip House's head off. But between fielding House's request for a brain biopsy and getting conned into approving an extra Diagnostic fellow, she had a laundry list of reasons why she wanted to kill House. It wasn't until the Monday after Survivor: Diagnostics had come to a close that she decided she should check in with Wilson.

Wilson was in his office, sorting through his emails and messages from the weekend, when she dropped by. Now and then she liked to walk in without knocking — though unlike House she checked with his assistant to make sure he wasn't with a patient — just to gauge his reaction. If Wilson was disappointed that it was her, all was well between Wilson and House and her last line of defence was still intact. If he looked relieved, House was driving him crazy and she had a day of patient and staff complaints ahead of her.

Wilson glanced up warily before he masked his expression with a polite smile. He still looked wary when the smile faded, however. "I have a meeting with Colin Mackie this afternoon," he said. "Is that your doing or House's?"

"That depends on how pissed off you are," she replied, hoping to tease another smile from him. When she was unsuccessful, Cuddy realized she should have talked to Wilson before he'd had the weekend to brood over the situation. "I sent a memo to legal, but it was House's idea," she admitted. If she couldn't defuse the situation, she could at least diffuse the blame.

"That wasn't necessary," Wilson replied, his voice clipped. "I have everything under control. It was my mistake and I'll take care of it."

Cuddy was beginning to understand the method behind House's latest madness. Taking responsibility for his actions was one thing, but Wilson's tendency towards self-martyrdom was a liability in itself. "You made the diagnosis based on a false positive on a test run by the lab. That makes it the hospital's responsibility as well." She smiled, trying to placate him. "Just talk to Mackie. It's his job to deal with things like this."

"You mean it's his job to make it go away."

Cuddy frowned. "You sound like you don't want it to go away."

"You don't get it. Mr. McKenna has already had his world shattered twice. I tell him he's dying and then three months later it's 'Oops, sorry, we made a mistake, you're not dying after all. Have a nice day.' Now House has made him think that he'll win a nice big settlement in a lawsuit. What's going to happen when he finds out that's a lie as well?"

"That's not your problem, Wilson." It was something House would have said and it made Cuddy a little sick to hear the words come out of her mouth, no matter how true they were.

"And what if he wins?" Wilson retorted. "How will that make the hospital look?" Unspoken was the corollary: How would that make Wilson look? "Either way, somebody loses. My way, nobody lost."

"Except you."

Wilson shrugged. "Six thousand dollars — that I can afford and he needs — for a waiver of liability. Everybody wins." His hands passed restlessly over his desk, tidying paperwork that was already carefully organized. "But that's not the kind of game House likes to play. Someone has to lose. Someone has to get hurt."

He sounded bitter rather than angry, which worried Cuddy even more. Anger would blow over, but bitterness festered. She tried to pretend that she was only concerned for House and Wilson's sakes, but she knew she didn't have any chance of mitigating House's worst excesses without Wilson whispering the occasional word of caution in his ear. God knows, the only times he listened to her was when she wasn't being serious. "I take it you heard what he did." The whole hospital had heard about the results of House's hiring game within hours of the final firing.

"I ran into Amber Volakis," he said in answer. "She was devastated."

That wasn't Cuddy's concern. Wilson might be a sucker for every sob story that crossed his path, but she was relieved not to have two ethically challenged doctors in one department, goading each other to greater depths of outlandish behaviour. "I made him hire back Thirteen, which is what the jackass wanted me to do all along."

"You did tell him to replace his team," Wilson pointed out mildly. "And it's not as though you could expect him to count Foreman, since that wasn't his decision."

Cuddy didn't know whether she should be relieved or annoyed that Wilson was taking House's side. The line might be crumbling, but it was still intact. "Are you justifying what he did?" she asked, probing just how far Wilson's allegiance extended.

But Wilson wasn't playing. "I'm saying you should have known he'd get his own way in the end. He always does." The bitterness was back and so was the wariness. "Are you here to complain about House or to make sure he gets his way with Mr. McKenna as well?"

For the first time, Cuddy could hear the underlying hurt in Wilson's voice and she realized she was missing something important. "I don't approve of what House did," she said carefully, "but I know he did it for your own good."

Wilson just gaped at her. Whatever he might have said in response was lost in the sound of his office door slamming open. House strode in, his backpack slung over his shoulder, still wearing his motorcycle jacket. He'd obviously just arrived, and Cuddy checked her watch out of habit, even though punctuality was one of the battles she'd forfeited long ago.

"You didn't return my call," he accused, glaring at Wilson and ignoring Cuddy completely.

"You never return my calls," Wilson countered calmly.

"Your calls are boring. Mine was an emergency."

"Running out of peanut butter does not constitute an emergency."

"It does when it's the only source of protein in my diet. You're always on my case about eating properly."

"You can die of starvation for all I care," Wilson said and stared at his computer screen, pretending to be engrossed in a spreadsheet.

House had never taken kindly to being ignored, however. "You're not seriously still pissed off about Not-Dying Guy? Cuddy's taking care of it." He glanced at her for support, but Cuddy had risen to her position by knowing when to intervene and when to stay safely clear of conflicts.

Wilson pushed himself upright and leaned towards House. For a moment, Cuddy thought she might have to physically intervene after all, but Wilson just braced himself on the desktop. "Cuddy wouldn't have to take care of it if you could just learn to mind your own business. I might not be a diagnostic genius, and my patients aren't senators or spies, but they're important to me and I can't do my best for them when you undermine their confidence in me."

"Don't be so dramatic," House snapped. "Nobody's undermining your patients' confidence in you. Doctors get sued all the time."

"No, you get sued all the time. The rest of us don't take it quite so lightly."

"You know damn well it will never get to court. No harm, no foul."

"You told my patient I was incompetent!" Wilson's voice cracked, and Cuddy stepped forward and placed a comforting hand on his arm, but he shook her off.

House didn't even blink. "Not in so many words. I merely reminded him that you screwed up his life. Which you did, by the way. Can you imagine what it must be like going back to being just another ordinary schmuck, after three months of people thinking he was special? Some people might take those three months as a gift, but an ordinary schmuck isn't going to see what he gained, just what he lost. Or what he could gain."

"I don't need you to teach me about the baser side of human nature," Wilson retorted. "I understand it all too well, thank you very much." He leaned back, his shoulders slumping. "Why does it offend you so much that I want to try to fix my mistake?"

"Because 6000 isn't going to fix what's wrong with his life, isn't going to make him important again. It's just another false positive, like that biopsy result that got you into trouble in the first place. You can't cure his unhappiness any more than you could cure the cancer he didn't have."

Cuddy saw the words physically rock Wilson and she reached out to him again, but he stepped back, using his chair as a barrier. She'd seen Wilson through three failed marriages and the loss of countless patients, but it occurred to her that she'd never once known him to seek or accept comfort from someone else.

"So what you're saying is that no matter what I do I'll fail," he said evenly, and Cuddy wished for the bitterness back. "There's no point in even trying."

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you meant. Nice tries are worthless, right?"

This time it was House who flinched slightly from what Cuddy guessed were his own words being thrown back at him. A long memory was an asset in any friendship, but with House it was a matter of survival. "Only if they fail," he said. "And that's why you're pissed off. Not because I interfered, or undermined you, or messed with your patient's head. It's because you think you failed him. And because he failed you."

Wilson opened his mouth to protest, but then just shook his head slightly and stared at House.

"How often do you get to reverse a death sentence? You were happy that you screwed up. You couldn't wait to tell him he was going to live. And he pissed all over your happiness. That's why you were paying him off. So you could get that happy feeling back."

"Until you pissed all over it."

"Because it wasn't going to happen. You could have given him 6 million and he still wouldn't have been satisfied. Might as well save yourself the six grand. I did you a favour."

"You don't do favours," Wilson retorted. "You conduct social experiments to amuse yourself. And you don't care who suffers as long as it's interesting."

"And you think that if you try to make everyone around you happy, it will somehow justify your miserable existence."

"How terrible of me," Wilson exclaimed. "Trying to be a positive force in the universe. I deserve to be punished for that."

"No, you don't," House said quietly. "And yet you are, time and time again." He looked away and shifted his weight awkwardly, gripping the handle of his cane for extra support. "You would have been better off telling him the first test was accurate after all and hoping that he got hit by a bus before he realized you were lying." House turned away and walked out as abruptly as he had entered, but not before he gave Cuddy a hard, meaningful look.

She had learned to listen to House's silences as well as his words, knowing that what he couldn't bring himself to say was often more important than all the jabs and insults put together. "He really is just trying to protect you," she said, knowing House wanted her to give Wilson the reassurance that he couldn't. "In his own destructive way."

Wilson sighed. "I know." His eyes, always so expressive, were dark with regret. "I thought the news would make my patient happy, but it didn't, and I just wanted to fix it. House is right: I'm an idiot."

He looked so bewildered that Cuddy had to fight the urge to pat him on the head and tell him everything would be all right. "You're not an idiot," she said instead. "There's nothing wrong with wanting people to be happy. Believing it's possible might be a little naive, but it's not stupid." She thought about the times they'd gone out socially together, how attentive he'd been to her needs, to the point that she'd worried he wasn't having any fun himself. She wondered if he ever did something just for himself. "Talk to Mackie," she told him. "And tell him I'll authorize an up-front settlement of up to 30,000 in return for that waiver of liability. It won't make Mr. McKenna rich or happy, but it'll at least get him to Italy."

Mackie, she knew, would negotiate that down to 20,000 out of principle; they'd be well within House's legal budget for the year. Wilson still looked unconvinced, but he would eventually accept that this was the best solution for everybody. And House could notch another victory on his mental tally board of manipulation. As for her, she had the satisfaction of protecting the hospital, helping Wilson, and appeasing House without sacrificing half of Europe. It was a good day's work and it wasn't even noon.

With luck — and a locked door — she might even enjoy an afternoon of peace.