My good friend Veronique was talking about a vision of House and Cuddy she'd had and my mind went here. It's nowhere near the direction her mind went, but she's still responsible for the nudge to my muse. Don't hate on her for it. She can't be held responsible for my insanity. And since the medicine is vague and takes a lot of license, she shouldn't even be connected with it! Sorry, V. This will be two chapters, btw. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: If I was involved in with the show, we'd have never gotten to this point anyway.

His Head, Her Heart

Cuddy groaned when she heard the knock at the door. She couldn't imagine who would be visiting at this time of night. Nor could she think of anyone she'd want to see at this time of night, especially considering she had just decided to run a bath for some pampering time. The fact her visitor hadn't stopped knocking, but was incessantly…

She stumbled, her heart beginning to race as the unusual tone of the knock registered with her.

It couldn't be. She swallowed hard and lifted a hand to her chest as she took a deep, calming breath. This was it. The moment she'd been expecting, the moment she'd been dreading and anticipating for over two years.

She swung the door open without hesitation.

House froze, the curve of his cane lifted in front of him as he stared wide-eyed at her. He'd lost weight, she immediately noticed. His beard was heavily sprinkled with grey, much more than she remembered. And he was losing his hair. From her angle she could guess the thinning area at the crown of his head was a full-fledged bald spot at this point. There were additional wrinkles around his eyes and dark circles rimming the bottom. He was tired. If the deep slump and the way he was leaning to one side was any indication, he was also hurting.

"All this time and you still haven't learned to knock like a normal human being?"

It had been almost three years since she'd seen him, and he was allegedly dead. Wilson was really dead. She'd gone to his funeral and wondered when this day would occur, when the dead would rise and greet her.

"Normal is boring," he smirked, and then flinched, immediately regretting his reflex response. Dammit! He was blowing this already; he silently slapped himself. The last time he'd seen her he'd parked his car in her dining room. He needed to be remorseful and apologetic, beg for mercy…

Cuddy didn't miss the twinge of panic flicker in his eyes. He was nervous, perhaps even scared. He should be.

House couldn't take his eyes of her. She still took his breath away. He'd accepted that she always would, and tried to steel himself against the impact she would have on his senses when he saw her again. Nothing could have prepared him.

She'd lost weight, too much weight. Her cheeks were slightly sunken, the veins in her neck protruded, the line of her clavicle was much more defined and he could see the bones of her chest. She was wearing a tank top and yoga pants, as she always had when she was relaxing at home, but they weren't snug. They were loose fitting, very unlike the Cuddy he remembered, the one who haunted his dreams. But even as his peripheral vision took in these details, his focus remained on her expression as her eyes curiously looked him over.

"You're not surprised to see me," he said, and frowned. The fact she hadn't slammed the door in his face was shocking, that she was calmly and collectively sizing him up was astonishing.

Cuddy arched a brow at him.

He jerked at this unexpected realization. "You knew I wasn't dead?"

"Seriously?" She mocked him.

House was disconcerted. He'd imagined seeing her again many times over the years, even played out scenes in his head over the past few months. She'd always been angry, or afraid, slamming the door in his face and refusing to see him. He'd prepared himself for a battle, ready to beg and bargain for her to hear him out…even though in every scenario he never knew what to say. How could he ever find the right words to apologize for what he'd done? How could he ever ask anything of her?

Cuddy pulled the shawl draped over her shoulders tighter around her, took a deep breath and stared at him with a steady but indiscernible glare. "So are we going to treat you, or are you here for your last rites?"

House felt the air rush out of him and leaned heavily on his cane when his legs threatened to give out.

"You'd better come in before you fall over," she quickly said, aware of his reaction, but making no move to assist him. She opened the door wider and moved inside for him to follow.

He closed the door behind him as he followed her. His eyes quickly looked around her place as they walked through a small entry and into the family room. He recognized some of the furniture and artwork, most of the pictures and trinkets, but there was so much different. Why wouldn't it be? It was a new place, a new home. A home she'd been forced to make in another state after he'd destroyed her life.

"Where's Rachel?"

Cuddy jolted, turning to glare at him. Her eyes full of fire and darts. "Don't you dare," she spat. "You don't get to ask about her."

House stepped back, stunned by her quick fury after such a reserved welcome.

"How's your wife?" She snarled.

He swallowed hard and dropped his head to stare at the floor. He deserved her anger; he deserved her hate.

Cuddy flopped down in a chair near the fireplace and pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders.

He wondered if she was chilled or protecting herself.

"We're divorced," he answered even though he understood she didn't really care. He knew she'd only asked to shut him up, to let him know the topic of Rachel was not up for discussion. He got the message. She may be showing a willingness to hear him out, even show a distant kindness to him, but she was not going to expose her daughter to any risk. He was a risk. He always had been. After everything that had happened, she was sure to regret taking a risk with him above anything else in her life.

She stared at him blankly, her fury replaced with a controlled apathy. He shook his head and turned away, feeling a familiar frustration rise within him. How many times had he desperately tried to get a response from her? To catch a glimpse of the same pain and sadness he was feeling? She'd always been so controlled, showing only a brief flash of anger or resentment and then quickly hiding it behind a wall of calm. In the past, it infuriated him. Now, it just felt warranted and smart. They had a way of coming together in pain and darkness. Maintaining such an air of cool disinterest put distance between them that felt cavernous.

"Your choice or hers?" She asked with disdain.

He bowed his head. He didn't want to talk about Dominika.

"How'd you know?" He asked instead, dropping the book bag from his shoulder onto the floor at the coffee table.

She watched him look around the room, knowing he was taking in every detail and processing clues that would tell him what she'd been doing all this time, what he'd missed of her life. He was fidgeting, bouncing his cane – a new one it seemed, or at least new to her since she didn't recognize the mahogany color or the intricate etchings – and wiggling the fingers on his free hand as if playing the notes on a piano.

"That you weren't dead or that you're sick?" She asked.

He frowned at her before answering, "Both."

She looked away from his curious, examining eyes and stared out the window. A shadow fell over her features and House could feel the sadness emanating from her.

"I was so angry," she finally said. "It was bad enough you'd put me through hell and then married a hooker, but to have you destroy my home, endanger my life and Rachel's…"

"I didn't…"

"You ran your car through my dining room," she said, gesturing with her hand to prevent further argument. "I was terrified. Weeks later and I still couldn't believe it. I couldn't reconcile the man I knew with the man that destroyed my life that day. And that was my first real clue. That's when I started to piece it together. The man I knew and loved would have never done that to me. He wasn't violent; He was self-destructive and careless, and possibly a lunatic, but never violent like that."

House stilled as he listened to her.

"As hurt as you were, that was not something the House I'd known for over twenty years would ever do," she said. "And that made me think about all of the things you'd been doing that were out of character…extreme behaviors even for you!" Her eyes locked with his. "That's when I knew something was wrong, something they didn't catch when they worked on your leg, something you were either ignoring or too numbed with drugs to notice."

He stared blankly at the bookshelf behind her as he considered her words.

She was right. He had been too stoned to notice. At first he'd been too focused on the pain from the break-up, then the guilt from what he'd done. He'd attributed so much to the hate and humiliation he felt, and the stress of prison life. By the time he'd returned to PPTH and tried to rebuild his life, he was almost numb, experiencing a calm that wasn't peaceful at all. He didn't feel like himself, but wasn't sure what a man in his position and condition was supposed to feel like. He'd tried to create a life from that numb place, unwilling to go to such extremes again to feel because that would mean taking equally horrifying measures not to feel. He was tired to that treadmill. So, he tried to create a phlegmatic life, focused only on the things that would prevent any depth of emotion or thought.

Then Wilson had gotten sick. The only thing that really mattered to him was slipping away. The only person left in his life that really knew and understood him – and still managed to love him – was dying. His focus became totally absorbed with his friend, desperate to help him, to save him. Until it was clear he couldn't.

It wasn't until they were on the road, determined to make the most of Wilson's last few months, House had begun to notice the symptoms. He'd catalogued them, written them in his memory as he would on a whiteboard, and searched for patterns and clues. It hadn't taken long to realize the symptoms may have started long before their road trip. He began to realize he had been dealing with more than heartache and shame for quite some time.

"But then you sabotaged your court hearing and ended up in jail for the long haul," she said. "I thought I must be wrong. You'd had time to process and figure it out before you turned yourself in. You could have used the illness as a defense, but you didn't. I thought I must have been kidding myself, looking for excuses…So, I was back to hating you, to hating myself for loving a man like you."

House looked up at her then. "I'm sorry." He said the words he'd been practicing for months, for years. She didn't respond, electing to just continue explaining.

"Wilson told me how you were when you got back to the hospital," she said. "When I heard you refused to talk about me, or even listen to anyone talk about me, I knew it would be easy to get some answers. So when I talked with people from the hospital, I'd ask how you were, what you were doing, how you looked. People are always willing to talk about you, House."

"Yeah," he mumbled. "I'm the tabloid everyone hates to admit they read."

Cuddy grinned slightly. That was actually a true assessment.

"I tried to warn them something was wrong," she said.

"They wouldn't have seen it any more than I did," he shrugged. "Too many behaviors and so-called 'symptoms' could be attributed to others things."

Cuddy nodded and took a moment to look him over. He was wearing a black t-shirt with a light blue button shirt over it and his signature jeans and sneakers. He was still wearing his coat, the brown one he didn't wear except on special occasions, usually choosing one of his leather jackets instead. In spite of the toil the past few years had taken on him, he looked good, really good.

"Why don't you take your coat off and stay awhile," she said. There was an unintentional flirtation in her voice that came so natural to her.

He looked at her surprised, but began to remove his coat.

"The way Wilson acted at your funeral and disappeared after you 'died' made no sense given his condition," she told him. "Which clued me into the fact you weren't dead at all. Foreman vaguely confirmed it."

House turned then and seemed to melt onto the sofa where he'd just dropped his coat. Cuddy understood. Just the mention of Wilson was debilitating at times. She still mourned him. House was still grieving. Wilson was their best friend. He was all House had.

"You did good with him," she whispered. She wanted him to know she was proud of him, wanted him to know what a good thing he'd done.

"I didn't do enough."

"You gave up your life so he could live his," she said. "I'm glad you were there for him."

Like you couldn't be there for me.

The unspoken words hung in the air between them. His eyes glistened with water, but he wouldn't shed a tear. He didn't deserve to feel sad with her, didn't deserve sympathy any more than her respect, not after all he'd done. He seemed to collapse into himself, cowering like an abused animal expecting the next blow.

"So what is it?" She pointedly asked. "Tumor? Infection? MS?"

House kept his eyes on his hands as he wove his fingers together.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said.

"Don't," she stopped him, not wanting to delve into the past until she knew what she was dealing with right now. "I'm assuming you had tests to confirm your suspicions. What did you find?"

House reached for his bag and removed a large envelope, quietly handing it to her.

He returned to his position on the sofa and watched as she looked through the contents of the file. "Traumatic neuronal injury," she whispered as she read. "Increased cyclic AMP and glutamate levels… excitotoxicity…neurodegeneration…ischemia," she zoned in on certain words, frowning as she read through the various test results. Finally, she pulled out the scans to hold them up to the light. One by one she examined them, shaking her head and biting at her lower lip in concentration.

Cuddy dropped the hand holding the scan back into her lap and stared at him, shocked.

"How?" she asked.

"Don't know," he shrugged nonchalantly.

"House," she warned, not willing to accept any vague answers or feigned unconcern.

"I cracked my skull a few years back AND had deep brain stimulation. Maybe I have a weak head," he scoffed.

"That was years ago," she argued. "I hardly think this is a form of secondary brain injury after all this time."

He sighed and leaned back in frustration. "Maybe one of my hallucinations hit me in the head," he said. "Or I hit my head when I fell down and hurt myself, or the sudden return to drugs after being clean for so long. Wait! It could have been that jump from the balcony, or when that hooker got too rough with the S&M."

Cuddy recognized his biting sarcasm for what it was: humiliation. Remembering the days of debauchery after their break-up, she understood his disgust. She shared it.

"Maybe it was the experimental drugs, or the hairbrush, or the beatings in prison, or the bike accident…"

"Or all of the above?" She asked calmly, unwilling to fall into his web of self-hate.

He paused to stare at her before simply nodding.

Cuddy closed her eyes to process the information. At this point, it didn't matter when or how it happened. House had a brain injury with corresponding insults. The behavior changes, the extreme reactions, depression, explosive irritability, anxiety, jealousy, all of it could have been a result of this progressive trauma.

"I wanted you to hurt," he suddenly said.

She opened her eyes to find him staring at her with a pained expression.

"I wanted to know you felt the pain that I was feeling," he continued. "You were so calm and aloof. It was so easy for you to move on like I didn't matter."

Cuddy turned away from his sad eyes as she remembered those painful days. He'd been so cruel, so uncontrolled and vicious. The cancer scare had shaken her; walking away from him had devastated her. She'd been quietly dying inside, desperate to regain her equilibrium, to find some sense of stability. She'd crawled into a protective carapace, hiding her broken heart from view, and projecting an image that ensured no one would get too close, no one would see she was broken.

"It wasn't easy," she whispered, meeting his gaze once again. "I was barely breathing."

He stared at her, seeing the truth, accepting the truth he'd known all along. "I'm sorry, Cuddy," he said with a raspy voice. "I'm so sorry."

He had many regrets. She was certain of it. He also carried enough self-recrimination and self-loathing to last a lifetime. She didn't need to add to it. Attacking him now wouldn't change anything. After reading that medical file, she wasn't even sure it would be fair. But did an illness excuse his actions, forgive all the pain. How it all happened didn't change the result, did it?

"I know you could never forgive me. I wouldn't expect you to. I just needed you to know…I just…" His voice trailed off and his eyes moved back and forth, as if frantically searching for words in the space around them. He took a deep breath and continued. "I never deserved you," he said. "I don't deserve anything." His voice was cracking beneath the strain of his pent-up emotions. "But…I love you. That's never changed."

Cuddy looked at him, really looked at him. He was just a shell of the man she once knew, the man she once loved. He had truly lost everything this time. He had no job, no identity, no Wilson…now even his mind was threatened.

She stood and walked over to sit on the coffee table to face him. His eyes searched hers.

Those blue eyes. She could still drown in them.

"What are we going to do?" She asked.

His eyes widened even as he arched a brow in question.

"I'm assuming there are treatment options you've looked into, unless being dead already is creating an issue," she said. "And in that case, and any case for that matter, I'm assuming you're here because you want my help."

He was clearly shocked.

She watched the movement of his jaw as he fought the emotions that threatened to overtake him.

"I'm not dead," he said.

"I can see that."

"I had a lawyer take care of it," he further explained.

Cuddy imagined his current medical condition helped him get out of trouble.

"So what is it you need?" She asked.

His gaze dropped to her lips.

"What would your boyfriend say?"

Cuddy rolled her eyes. "Subtle," she said.

"It's one of my best attributes."

She shook her head, looking away from him to hide her grin. Then he touched her hand. She felt an electric shock run through her at the contact and looked back at him, wide-eyed and frightened.

He jerked his hand back and mumbled "sorry."

Cuddy watched him begin to move restlessly. Her response had upset him. His touch had upset her. But not in the same way. She wasn't frightened of him. Ironically, after everything that had happened, with everything she knew, she wasn't afraid he would hurt her. It wasn't him that scared her.

She didn't know how she felt. She didn't know if his condition changed anything. It diffused the anger, allowed at least the door to be open for forgiveness. It shed a new light on the situation and perhaps created a path of understanding. It proved the theories and hypothesis she'd clung to in hope and desperation, but it didn't bring any clarity to her thoughts or emotions. Suddenly becoming aware that a simple touch from him could still ignite her desire only baffled her more.

"There's no one in my life," she finally said with a hint of defiance. "But that doesn't mean anything to you or to us, House."

He breathed a sigh of relief, not because she wasn't married already (although that brought him more pleasure than he had a right to feel) but because she wasn't walking away. Maybe he had something to live for after all.

"I'm brain damaged not stupid," he answered back.

She chuckled.

"Why would you help me?" He asked her in all honesty.

She shrugged. "I'm an idiot."

TBC