She doesn't want to see him, talk to him, or answer any of his calls.
It's driving him to insanity, he thinks. This secrecy, this careful hiding of his feelings, this constant thinking of her when he is most reluctant. All his colleges already think he's gone mad; they won't leave him alone for it. Foreman's offered to go out for drinks more times than he normally would, for one.
He just wants to be left alone for now.
But today, it's Thanksgiving and even being alone isn't enough anymore. He wants to forget. He wants to feel none of what he is going through, despite knowing it'll only be a few hours, at most, that there is no escape from reality, that he will have to live with this from here on now.
It's why there are two bottles of wine sitting on his coffee table right now—he thinks this phase in his life deserves more than beer.
With a corkscrew Chase opens one up, relishing in the popping sound it makes. He pours himself a glass and thinks better of it; he simply takes the whole bottle into his hands. The other bottle is reserved. Allison would surely disapprove, if she'd been here.
The first sip of the liquid sends his throat on fire, like a starburst on a dull, dark sky.
I don't want to leave you.
He doesn't want to remember their story, but he can't help it. But one thing he is certain of is that he doesn't regret taking a risk with her, marrying her, loving her. She changed him. And if there is nothing else, he's just grateful, at least for that.
He had always liked her. When she first came in to work for House, she's been this fierce and intelligent and beautiful doctor, his coworker, and untouchable. Besides, she was in love with House.
Two years later she told him bluntly he was the least likely person she would fall in love with, and they began to take half-a-step to a real relationship: sleeping together. Even then he admired and was frustrated with her stubbornness.
It was a touch and go affair, now that he thinks about it and drowns more wine. Some of it spills on the couch, and he glances at it absent-mindedly for a moment before looking away. He'd followed her every move, agreeing with her, hardly being able to resist the charm she put up. Or the sex, House would retort. But it wasn't only that, and that was what ended the affair. His damn feelings.
It's Tuesday, and I like you.
Incredibly cheesy, and yet, it worked. Eventually. She tried to ignore him, insult him, of course, but he knew there was a part of her that did those things because she felt something and she was protecting herself. He swore he wouldn't hurt her. Not like the death of her first husband did.
That went well, didn't it?
Another two years and Kutner's death later, he'd begun to rethink his life. At thirty, he had his job saving lives, and Allison. The only two that really mattered. Realizing he had to protect them, especially her, more zealously, he planned a vacation for them, but more importantly, a proposal for her.
It was a doomed effort. She'd found the ring he had carefully picked out in a sock of his, and subsequently tried to avoid him the whole day. And the next two as well, which they were supposed to spend together under the sun and on the sand, while he asked her to marry him.
He never imagined that he would break up with her while he was supposed to propose.
By the end of the day, he was already considering that he apologize, and simply postpone his proposal, not cancel it. To forget his pride, and choose a life with her. It sounded like a triumph to him.
But she beat him to it, and without the ring, without the beach and the seas as their backdrop, he knelt down on his knee and she, tearfully, said yes.
Today, it's not even a year into their marriage, and he's sitting here, pathetic and alone in their apartment, drinking on Thanksgiving Day. With nothing to be thankful about, really, beyond the good wine.
He doesn't regret killing Dibala; he sees Allison's point, that he had no right to make a decision like that, but it was the lesser of two evils. One murderer for two million innocent people. Whatever damage it's done to him, to his soul, and will do, he knows he can bear all of it, or at least live through it. He's just one of the casualties in this, he reminds himself. He did what he had to.
A framed photograph of them on their wedding day stares at him. He looks incredibly happy, and he was; she glowed. She always did. He can't even recognize who he was, smiling, clueless.
The thing is, he can envision himself living a long life carrying what he did, but it's a miserable one. It's depressing. Without Allison, it's gone from gray to pitch-black.