AN: An idea I've been playing with for a while. This is going to be a collection of short pieces about Cameron's life, beginning shortly after her husband dies and going on from there. I don't now how many it will be in the end. Depends on how many ideas I'll have.

Disclaimer: Chapter is named after the song "Forever" by Vertical Horizon which I borrowed the lyrics from. I don't own it or any characters and facts related to House.

Hope you enjoy!

I wanted you to be everything to me

But now I've got to learn to carry on

And I know I cannot hide

This emptiness inside

Nothing feels the same since you've gone.

She didn't cry at first when her husband died. She felt rather numb. Even at the funeral, standing between her brother and sister who had come to support her - the only ones of her family who had come – she couldn't shed a tear. She just kept staring into space with empty eyes (life seemed to have left them with her husband) until her brother gently shook her arm. "It's over, Ally." That was when she stepped forward like a sleepwalker and threw a single red rose on top of the other flowers which already laid on his coffin. Then she turned her back to the grave and slowly walked away without looking back, not returning to the place for quite a while. She didn't cry that day.

In fact, she didn't cry for a long time. For weeks, she simply kept on going, answering questions and phone calls of people who told her how sorry they were mechanically, smiling and nodding at the right times, living her life as she was supposed to, doing everything they expected. Except crying. She even managed somehow to go to college. Days flew by like in a haze and when she fell into bed at nights she hardly could remember how she had spent the last hours. Life felt like walking around inside a great bubble where nothing could reach her these days. Her family – meaning her siblings – tried, but they failed.

The breakdown came exactly six weeks, four days and fifteen and a half hours after he passed away. She was standing in front of her bathroom mirror one evening and for the first time she really noticed how much she had changed since his death. She was so thin now and deep black shadows circled her eyes because she slept so uneasily. The sight of her blonde hair glittering in the light of the lamp suddenly made her gasp. In an instant, she remembered again how much he had loved it, how he lazily used to play with it on Sunday morning when they hadn't gotten up yet and how he called her an angel for it. She could practically feel his fingers running through it again. Allison started to shiver at that thought and soon found herself sitting on the floor, shaking violently. The tears she thought she'd never have finally streamed down her cheeks freely. She cried that whole night until she felt like there wasn't a single drop of water left inside her body.

The next day she dyed her hair brown.