"She's gone," Wilson said, his voice hollow, his dark eyes shadowed with grief.

House and Wilson were sitting in House's office, and Amber had just been pronounced dead. Wilson had been beside her at the end, and his tears seemed to have been, at least for the moment, spent.

"Wilson," House said, his voice low and surprisingly earnest, "I'm so sorry."

Wilson nodded, but there was a question that he needed to ask now, before his courage failed him.

"Why were you with her?" Wilson asked, looking at House intently.

The question was thrown at House accusingly, and the diagnostician looked into the brown eyes of his best friend. How was he going to say this?

Amber sat across from House, his desk between them. It was well after dark and the lights of Princeton could be seen shining through the glass of House's office. House was staring at the woman before him, unable to believe the words she had just spoken.

"You're not serious," he said, looking into her face for any trace of a lie.

Amber raised a cultured eyebrow.

"Would I really lie about something like that?"

"What…what did Wilson say?"

"I didn't tell him."

House stared at Amber, now rising to his feet.

"You haven't told your oncologist boyfriend that you're dying of cancer yet you tell me?"

Amber simply nodded.

"Why?"

"You know him. He would want to be my doctor. I have a doctor. I want to spend this time with my boyfriend. But when I'm gone he'll want to know the truth. He deserves it."

House simply fell back into his chair, still stunned. Shaking his head, he could not bring himself to look at the woman opposite him.

"You…can't stand me. I've tried to sabotage everything you have going with Wilson from the beginning. Why the hell would you trust me with this?"

"Because you and I play the game, House; we play it with other people, we played it with each other. We play to win, we thrive on it. The one person who sees through all that crap is Wilson. That's why he means so much to us. While we're playing games he sees who we really are. There's no love lost between you and me, House, and I'm fine with that. I know you are, too. But I also know you love him as much as I do, even if you'd never admit it. I'm asking you, and trusting you, to protect him. I'm asking you to be his friend."

"She came to my office," House said slowly, "just before I left that night."

"Why?" Wilson asked quietly.

"She wanted to talk to me. She wanted to tell me something she…couldn't tell you."

"What?" Wilson said incredulously, his voice louder now.

"What could she possibly want to tell you that she wouldn't want to tell me?"

"That she was dying."

Wilson was completely bewildered, and House saw it on the younger oncologist's face. Before Wilson could speak, however, House continued.

"She had stage 4 ovarian cancer that had already spread to the lymph nodes. That night she found out it had metastasized to her colon and liver. It was progressing rapidly and her oncologist told her there wasn't anything but palliative treatment left."

"Oh, god," Wilson said, his head falling into his hands.

"She had maybe a month or two left," House said.

"Why wouldn't she tell me?" Wilson said despondently, "god damn it, how did I not know?"

"This," House said forcefully, reaching out to take Wilson's forearm in a firm grip, "is exactly why she didn't tell you. She knew you'd do this, she knew you'd find some way to blame yourself."

Wilson drew his arm from House's grip.

"You don't know-"

"I do know! She said it that night. 'He'd want to be my doctor'. She sure as hell had your number."

Wilson looked back up at House, brown eyes meeting blue.

"She kept it from me-"

"To protect you. You finally had someone who wanted to take care of you for a change."

Wilson shook his head, seemingly wanting to clear it.

"Wait a minute. She told you and you…kept it secret. That's why you went to the bar. To try to deal with it, in your own messed-up way."

"Some way of dealing," House said bitterly, "I get on a bus and she follows me to make sure I don't pass out on the street or something. The bus crash ends up killing her and I lose my memory of everything important. You were robbed of the time you had left with her because of me."

Wilson looked at House, and House was amazed yet again at the inexhaustible supply of compassion his friend possessed.

"I don't blame you, House. How could I blame you for an accident? You couldn't help what happened to you, or to her."

"She's still dead," House said.

"But you're not," Wilson said, his voice surprisingly strong. "You're still here. Losing her is the worst thing I've ever gone through and I don't know if I'll deal with it very well. But I can go through it knowing my best friend is across the hallway."

House shook his head.

"I'm still sorry she died," House said softly.

"Me, too," Wilson said.

Silence reigned for several long moments, a comfortable silence. Finally, however, House spoke, his voice quiet but sincere.

"She loved you, you know."

Wilson smiled sadly.

"I know. I loved her, too."

House reached into a drawer on the side of his desk and pulled out a nondescript white box.

"She gave this to me to give you," House said simply, placing the box on the desk in front of Wilson.

With slightly trembling fingers Wilson opened the small package.

Inside was a small red rose in bloom, solidly encased in golden amber.

A/N: I was watching the preview for "Wilson's Heart" and I've been writing little random scenes for days now...this is one inspired by a couple of moments in the preview, namely House's uncharacteristically gentle "I'm so sorry" and Wilson's "why were you with her?"

I can't take the "House and Amber were having an affair" scenario at face value. I'm sure the writers have something else in store, and this is my interpretation of one possibility.