Somehow, House is left until last.
He hates the irony of it, bouncing a ball around his empty conference room and wondering what they would have made of this.
Chase, on his dying day, laughed until the laughter tore at his chest and sent him into terrible, gasping coughs. He'd understood about irony. House had asked him what he should do, when he was the only one. Chase just laughed and said he didn't care and then doubled over again, the terrible illness curling his body into a taut living skeleton as he struggled to breathe.
Thirteen had not been the first, but she'd been the first to know what was coming. The same day Foreman died – people don't talk to House about that, don't mention how the second doctor to get shot at Princeton Plainsboro wasn't so lucky – they found Thirteen in the morgue. Practical gesture, House said. The needle and syringe were thrown across the room, perhaps in regret, and Thirteen was crumpled as if she had fallen out of the sky.
Kutner's car crash had been just that – a car crash. He'd been driving fast, and the other guy'd been driving faster, and neither of them survived. He was dead from seconds after impact, they said.
Cameron, too, had had a very ordinary death. The funeral had been closed-casket, to hide the livid bruises and the places where bones had broken through skin. When House had helped them to carry her body in, it had smelled of snow and blood. House never braved those steep, icy steps – nobody else ever uses them, now.
Taub was irony, again. Just like with House, the diagnosticians failed him. His wife didn't want a post-mortem, and House tried anyway and when they found out, the security guards had to drag him away. They never did find out what killed him.
And then there was Wilson. House doesn't talk about Wilson, doesn't even think about him. Wilson and Chase had commiserated over their own bad luck, back when Wilson was lying in a hospital bed and Chase was still on his own two feet, though the disease was already stripping the skin from his flesh and the strength from his body.
House doesn't like irony. He doesn't like marking dates, either. But still, his birthday – it's been a long time. He twirls his cane and stares at the card from Cuddy, retired now, and then turns back to the case-files. He hums a tune under his breath as he thumbs through the files, bitterly, and wonders if it's time for a journey.
He won't give them the satisfaction, but it's nice to think about. He's so tired sometimes. He feels so old.
He'll know when the time comes. The morphine in his desk drawer isn't going anywhere. It whispers to him, even at night, and he knows that once he takes it he'll be able to walk again. Death, after all, is just like dreaming.