DISCLAIMER: Sadly, Amber, House, Cuddy, Wilson, and Wilson's eyebrows do not belong to me.
Sometimes, bad things happen. Bad things like bus accidents, bad things like people getting the wrong type of medication into their bodies. The medication is supposed to make it okay, but it can't cure everything. It can't cure death, or an impending death. It makes it no less frustrating, no more tolerable, to help cure people when you must also watch them die.
"I'm tired," Amber whispers, her voice is cracking like she had just barely gotten over a case of laryngitis. I feel my face drifting closer to hers, breathing her hair. It doesn't smell like the shampoo she keeps in my shower. It smells like blood and hospital. The wounds on her face are further reminders of what is to come, the very sight making my breath shudder out from me. I feel like I am breathing ice. "I think it's time to go to sleep."
"Just a little longer," I plead, breaths shaking and eyes squeezed tightly shut. I don't think it would make a difference if I could have had another year with her, though it wasn't so sudden, she voiced my thought for me.
"We are always going to want just a little longer," she replied quietly, her face under my chin. This feeling would be what I missed the most. Amber was not like any of my ex-wives. She would assert her own thoughts and insist that I did the same. She was in many ways House. There was a reason that she was called Cutthroat Bitch. House didn't exactly award pet names without reason, only petty playground insults.
"But I don't think… I don't think I can do it," she watched the words fall from my lips through half-lidded eyes. Turning herself to become closer still, she widened her eyes.
"It's okay."
In many ways, she was not House. She could be vindictive to those standing in her way, but she was not heartless. With the majority of people, there was a social contract. I ask if you like my shoes, you say yes. Not because you really like them. Because you don't intend to be the jerk who breaks the social contract. House would outright say I had made the most appalling choice of footwear he had seen in his life and analyze my poor choice. He would come up with some convoluted theory that I was trying to make myself seem less attractive to women as a defense mechanism. Amber might just proceed on the social contract, saying that they looked fine and we should go because our reservation wouldn't be held for much longer. She would make people feel better as necessary.
"It's not okay," I choked back my tears again. "How could this be okay with you? Why aren't you angry?"
"That's not…" she insisted, her shaking hand against my chest. "…the last feeling I want to experience."
Though we were already nose to nose, I wanted her closer. I wanted to breathe her before I could have no air. In that moment, our faces merged. For a moment, I thought I could give her my sustenance. This kiss could keep her alive. This kiss could keep us together for as long as forever suited us. Even if forever was only a few more seconds.
Her arms holding mine seemed infinite, but the sort of infinite that could be shattered with the drop of a pin. But suddenly, it was time to let her sleep after all she had gone through in this last day. With the extension of one arm, her life force was taken from her, flipping of switches on machines. My muscles grew only more tense, where hers grew limp. Amber let her mouth twitch into a weak semblance of a smile. She looked bright-eyed like a child or like House when he manages to get a new toy from Cuddy with one of his insane schemes.
Amber's face was last to relax, last to give away her condition. As in life, she held her poker face until she collected her chips. Her neck dipped forward, and she was doing just what she wanted, sleeping.