Title: Pieces of Me
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own House MD.
Summary: Character death! For a brief time, House and Cuddy both get what they want. Then Fate steps in and tragedy strikes. Will House be able to pick up the pieces?
House stared contemplatively at the amber liquid in his shot glass as he swirled it. Around and around, and he knew all he needed to do was throw his head back, down it, and start the cycle that would numb the pain that rivaled anything his leg ever produced.
It was simple. Just drink this one. Then another one. And another. He'd done it before, knew the cycle by heart. Follow it with one too many Vicodin, and it would stop the pain, perhaps for good.
But he couldn't.
"God damn it!"
He swore suddenly, threw the glass and watched it shatter against the wall; he regretted it, as a high-pitched wail started up in the next room.
Damn it all. Damn her, especially. Damn her, for getting what she wanted, and then having the gall to leave before she had a chance to enjoy it. Damn her for giving him hope in getting everything he wanted, then snatching it away.
But most of all, the diagnostician damned himself, for not being able to save her. There hadn't been anything to diagnosis, no slow-acting disease that lingered long enough for him to find a cure. No. Just one night, icy roads, and some stupid kid who had too much to drink.
He closed his eyes, rubbed a hand over his stubble, as his last memory of her came back.
"House, I need you to watch her for tonight; I'll be working late."
House frowned.
"You're not even off maternity leave yet, and I don't know if you've noticed, but I kinda live with you now, so you don't need to go all the way to the office to have hot employer-employee sex."
Cuddy rolled her eyes.
"I just need to put some things in order; it'll only take a few hours. Are you telling me you can't handle her?"
House knew that his ego was being baited; however, that did nothing change the fact that it was working.
"Well, all I'm saying, is that if she starts screaming the during The OC, I can't really be held responsible."
The Dean of Medicine leaned close to him then, and his blue eyes found hers, one eyebrow raised. She let her lips ghost over his, her hand brushing against his arm, squeezing lightly.
"How about I hold you responsible when I get home, then?"
House decided then and there that even if she was the mother of his child, Lisa Cuddy was evil.
"No fair cheating."
He muttered, even as he wrapped his arm around her waist, drew her closer, and kissed her again, this time deepening it more to his liking. The moment lasted several seconds, the temperature in the room rising, before she pulled away, shaking her head. There was a sparkle in her eyes that he secretly knew only he could produce.
"Work now, play later, Greg . ..I'll see you later tonight, okay?"
House made a big show of sighing, but finally acquiesced.
"Oh, fine. But you should know that this is cruel and abusive punishment, leaving a poor cripple all alone-"
"You won't be alone. Now go, before she wakes up again."
She knelt, cooed and placed a gentle kiss on the slumbering infant's head, before handing the bassinet to House, her fingers brushing against his.
"You be good for daddy, sweetheart. Mommy loves you both very much."
House tried his best to keep up a tough-guy stance, refraining from saying anything, merely catching her gaze with intense, ice blue eyes; eyes that seared the words he so rarely said aloud into her heart. She smiled, nodded, and turned back to her paperwork.
House choked back a sob, balled his hands into fists so tightly that his knuckles turned white around his cane. He didn't want to remember the rest. The phone call, Wilson stopping him when he got to the hospital. He remembered trying to push past Wilson, snarling at him to get the hell out of the way. Then he'd recognized the look in Wilson's gaze, the deliberately calm, yet somehow unsteady tone to his voice, as he told House to wait a minute.
And everything in House rebelled against the revelation that came to him; he lashed out against it with everything he had, and suddenly the oncologist was on his ass in the snow, his nose and lip bleeding. Anything to get that sorrowful look out of his eyes, to keep that sickening tone from his voice.
"House. Greg. She's-"
"NO! No God damnit, no she's not!"
And he'd raced into the hospital, ignoring the agony in his leg, limping faster into the ER just in time to see one of the nurses finish writing something on a clipboard. And there, on the table, amidst all that blood, was the woman he loved, looking deathly pale. Too pale.
"No, no, no, NO!"
He didn't even realize he was speaking out loud , as he ripped the clipboard out of the nurse's hands and threw it on the ground. The nurse looked terrified.
"Dr. House!"
"Paddles."
He snarled; the nurse shook her head.
"Dr. House, she's been gone for ten min-"
He moved to shove her out of the way to get at them himself.
"I said give me the fucking paddles!"
"House."
Wilson put a hand on his shoulder, and House whirled, nearly losing his balance. His gaze was wild as he looked at Wilson. Then, before his friend's eyes, he seemed to crumple with a pained gasp, moving towards the table. He reached out, brushed his fingers against Cuddy's cheek, then nearly recoiled at the coolness of her skin.
"You can't do this. You can't."
He pleaded, reaching out and grasping her lifeless hand. Wilson stood next to him, as the nurse scurried away.
"She fought, House. Stayed alive during the ambulance ride, made it to the operating table. . .but the internal damage was too bad. It's a miracle she didn't die on impact."
"Get out."
House's voice was hoarse, and Wilson recognized from the tension in his friend's form that he was about to be hit again; he hesitated, then left the room.
"Lisa. Please. . .don't. . . ."
House swallowed, his tongue thick in his mouth, as he gazed at her, stroked his thumb along her palm.
"Don't go."
He whispered, and closed his eyes to stop the bitter-hot tears; they came anyways, and he stayed like that for a long time, leaning over Cuddy's body as his own shook with silent sobs.
Almost two hours later, his leg on fire, his mind a whirlwind of pain, he heard a familiar voice.
"House."
"Go away."
He muttered, remembering his anger from before. A miracle. Wilson had called it a miracle that Cuddy made it to the hospital alive. He wanted to scream that of course it wasn't a miracle, she was dead! What the fuck kind of miracle could that be? Miracles didn't exist. . .because if they did, his angel wouldn't have been taken away like this.
"Your daughter needs you."
Wilson cradled the infant carefully against his shoulder; she'd been strapped in her car seat, and crying loudly, ever since House left the vehicle. He supported her head, careful not to let her see the ER room. House stared at him for a long moment, as though he didn't recognize him.
Wilson was about to speak again when House stood, painfully, and limped over to the sink. Mechanically, without thinking, he washed Cuddy's blood from his hands; his shirt was stained, so he pulled the button-up off, tossed it to the side. Then he limped forward, and took his daughter in his arms, carrying her not to his office, but to Cuddy's. He sat in her chair, a part of him desperately hoping that she'd burst in any moment and kick him out of it; then, facing the window, he rocked back and forth slowly, staring straight ahead. He stayed like that until his daughter finally fell asleep. It was the middle of the night, but sleep wouldn't come for him. His life had shattered, and the only thing keeping him from doing the same was the little bundle in his arms.
House opened his eyes, felt tears again running down his cheeks. He never cried, but now it seemed beyond his control. He'd beaten Wilson back, with scathing insults, threats- hell, he'd even come close to begging. His best friend finally agreed to let him go home alone, but promised to drop by in the morning. House guessed it must've been near morning by now; around six, the sun starting to come up. It seemed so very wrong to him. How could the sun be rising on a new day, when his whole world had been broken in one night?
The crying grew louder, and House made himself stand, moved towards the bedroom.
He gazed down at his daughter, their daughter, but most of all, her daughter. The child she'd wanted so badly, for so long, and finally been blessed with. The little girl who had her mother's dark curls and her father's ice-blue eyes, features noticeable barely a few weeks after her birth.
He remembered the birth; remembered the exhausted, yet exhilarated smile that graced Cuddy's features when she held Elena. Remembered how she seemed to take so naturally to mothering, the joy in her face when she held their daughter.
His heart throbbed painfully, in sync with his leg, as he thought bitterly that he'd never see that smile again.
Elena caught his gaze, reached out her tiny little arms, and House obliged, lifting her out of the crib and holding her against his chest. She grasped his t-shirt in a perfectly formed little fist, held tightly, and cried.
"I'm sorry."
His voice broke. Sorry, that she was without a mother, and with a drug-addicted, shattered cripple for a father. Sorry that he couldn't save Cuddy. Sorry he didn't make her come home with him that night. Sorry, sorry, sorry. And it didn't do one hell of a bit of good, being sorry.
House felt the rage come over him again, but then a tiny hand brushed against the stubble on his cheek, and he realized that Elena's cries were quieting. She was regarding him with strangely intense eyes, eyes that matched his own in color, but had her mother's sparkle to them.
And in his mind, the words echoed, with a tone that wasn't his own.
Our daughter needs you.
He nodded, and somehow managed to find the strength to keep his voice from breaking. A strength he knew, instinctively, wasn't entirely his. A strength he knew he would need to cling to, if they were ever going to make it through this.
"I know."
He looked down at Elena, and spoke quietly to the infant.
"Don't cry . . . I'm here. And I'm not going anywhere."
Author's Note:
I have no idea where this one came from. I was in the middle of physics homework, and it just demanded to be let out. I'll probably edit in the future. Not sure if it's a one-shot or not. Please, please read and review!! I'd really like some feedback on this one, considering there was no forethought to it whatsoever.