Title: Evolution
Summary: "There were many ways to tell how they started, even more than the ways to tell how it ended" HousexCameron start 3x24, with spoilers for the last episode
A/N: found this hidden in a folder on my computer, so I wrote an ending and here it is! Wrote it ages ago
There were many ways to tell how they started, even more than the ways to tell how it ended. The simple explanation was the void, as a vacuum appeared in the absence of Foreman and Chase she had met him in his office. There had been a resignation letter written, a sinking feeling in her gut over the way they had been played, strung along in a charade which would end up in House getting the drugs he felt he needed to subsist. When she had met his gaze, one softer than she had felt upon her skin when she kissed him, merely weeks ago, scheming to satisfy her own curiosity, a feeling alien to her. It was one which rendered her silent. The letter in her hand had folded easily, tucked in her hand for another time.
She had resigned once before, yet this time the permanence of the thought left her aching. A dream had followed her along the corridor, a simple thought of how she would pursue whatever existed between her and Chase. Hunt down and put down whatever residual feelings she had for House, and embark on a new life.
Dreams and thoughts were in a different world from reality and action. Whatever she had planned to say had been replaced with a simple sentence; "I guess it's just you and I now." Of course, there had been a flutter in her chest. Possibilities had limits, but in that moment it didn't feel that way.
So, it started, painstakingly slow in the beginning. There had been moments where they touched, and found different reasons to linger, where they would sit close and have their thighs pressed against the other, with no intention to move or shift away. Their second kiss was anticipated, yet took them both by surprise.
In the absence of other fellows their workload had been left light – House did occasionally interview new people, but would bury their files under garbage, and leave her to call them to inform that the position would not go to them. With his hand pressed by Cuddy they had a few cases, and at the end of one which unexpectedly took a turn for the worse, with the patient diseased mere minutes after presenting new symptoms, they found themselves in the office talking. Neither of them would remember the topic of their discussion, it was neither light and avoiding, nor deep and profound, yet somehow they found themselves caught up in the other's space, and with a tempting tilt of his head, she had stood up on her toes and brushed his mouth.
There were a series of those types of scenarios the following weeks, a slow succession of what eventually seemed inevitable. As if testing the ice on a lake they took small steps forward, sometimes backed up a little to find better and more secure footing. It didn't take long until she would appear at his house with beers and a movie, sometimes if she was on call she would bring soft drink. He would do the same, and would knock on her door at odd times of the day, or night, insisting that something good was on TV, and that she needed to see it.
It's like that they end up in bed the first time. Cameron had anticipated him to be rougher, more scrutinizing, and he had expected her to be submissive, almost fumbling. Instead he bit her neck gently and kissed her chest and stomach with a yearning need to explore, touched and curled into her, watching her with an attentive eye to see how he could bring her most pleasure. She rocked against him, her hands occupied themselves with his body, pushed him down on the mattress and straddled him, leaving no room to argue about it. There was a look of domination which felt obvious in the bedroom, as she touched herself and him, as each thing appeared to happen only by her will.
It was a contrast to the other part of their lives, where she would come to know that what little footing they had found would be swept away by his addiction.
Barely a month after they understood that what they had was more than a fling he hires new fellows. She tried to find herself in the equation, but failed. He tried to find how the new team ticked, and as a consequence it pushed the limits of their already fragile relationship. In the end she does resign, accepting another position in the ER, which would challenge her limits in other ways. It was at that point the two of them understood that this was a hurdle they would either get through stronger, or lose each other in.
People outside their relationship would have guessed that House did not fight for their relationship, but the two of them knew something that others did not: when House loved, he loved deeply. He had no intention of letting her go. Despite the infancy of their relationship it was with this new development that Cameron packed up her apartment and moved in with him. A few months in and the best thing she knew was waking up with him snoring next to her.
Honeymoon phases pass. The rose-colored glasses come off eventually, and realizing that not only would their relationship consist of good things, they would also have to deal with the other's demons. Eight months in she finds him in the bathtub fully clothed and passed out, she washed him, undressed him, and put him to bed. When he felt better a few days later he kissed her body until she fell apart beneath him, and told her for the first time that he loved her.
Ten months into their relationship she woke him up every night with vivid nightmares and screams. There was never any coherency to what she screamed, and she never offered any explanation to their two weeks of sleep deprivation.
They discovered things about each other which left them confused. House could not figure out why Cameron only called her parents once every other month, and why she did not tell them about him. Cameron found the stash of adult magazines when she was cleaning, and saw on the print dates that he was still subscribing. She did not confront him about it.
It goes four months since the time she found him in the tub to the next time she comes home to find him passed out on the couch and unresponsive. Though she could not motivate it to herself she didn't call for help, after over a year with him the shame of it would be hers; he would not carry it.
They spend their lives like that, a rapid succession of his worsening addiction, an addiction that would at times leave him impotent to her touch, unable to rise a reaction and find a spark between them. There was a sense of pride within her. Love was not the only thing which kept her there, she was far too strong to be completely wooed by its power, and she knew he was broken, but she had felt as if it was her duty to make him a little less broken. If he succumbed to his addiction, not only would she lose him, she would've failed him.
Thus she stayed. Each time a glimmer of a man she found hard to tolerate emerged, she would fight against the resentment that rose like bile in her throat, silencing it with a kiss. She would let him fill her, and with that she hoped that if he kept filling her up, touching her and making her ache with longing and desire, then she would learn to love all parts of him.
More often she would find him passed out, beyond the point of any addiction she could handle on her own. What she had signed up for was the Vicodin, a bit too much each day, but not this part of it. Too proud, both of them, to be anything other than the anchor tied to the other's foot, they kept treading on ice. It was one misstep that sent them through it.
Children had never been on the agenda for them, though something she desperately wanted, it was not right in their situation. The pregnancy came as a shock to them. She had always been meticulous about her birth control, and they hadn't had much sex in the few months. 18 months after their relationship started she emerged from the bathroom with a pale white face, looking at him as he sat on the couch watching TV.
The phrase "I'm pregnant," left her mouth after minutes of trying to push it off her tongue. It sounded at more like a question than a fact. It left a silence that was heavy on the both, because they both understood what changes they were about to experience.
It was not that she did not try. She tried to the point where she felt nauseous. His addiction spiraled in a way which she was unable to grasp of, and his ability to deal with the present unraveled quicker, and quicker. At the discovery of impending fatherhood it was for him like falling off of a cliff. Wanting desperately to be a good father, a better one than his one, yet feeling completely unable to fulfill that duty, left him unequipped.
At five months pregnant she stood before him, her stomach curved in an obvious way, with the last of her clothes packed in a bag, her things already sealed up in boxes and stored in the back of a car. She tried for a while to find something to say, but eventually all she is able to muster up was a kiss to his cheek.
By Michelle's birth he was too succumbed to his addiction to note the date, nor the calls which blew up his phone. At that point Cameron knew that she made the right choice, and named their daughter Michelle Georgia Cameron. He didn't deserve the last name.
As a fading ghost he occupied only parts of their lives, venturing in when the haze of drugs let up. He never apologized for missing her birth, and Cameron never expected him to. Michelle grows up with a silence about her, speaking was a foreign act to her mouth, and bright blue eyes simply observed. Neither House nor Cameron had ever been extroverted, neither finding a penchant for talking beyond what they deemed necessary, something which seemed to be imprinted to their DNA.
Just as House loved, as did Cameron. Love was a vine that curled itself into every organ of her body, and though House's flowers wilted the stem still held a tight grip of her. From a short distance in the ER she was given a front row seat to the dwindling of House's career, the imminent collapse of it circling like a vulture above a dying gazelle.
The stint in rehab was a rouse, a way to give illusion of taking responsibility, and Cameron knew it. After having lived with the man she understood parts of him she was sure perplexed him. Though she hoped, as any mother would over the father to her child, that he would come out of it with the strength to fight. Michelle did not know her father's face, barely knew how to form the word 'dad', so when she was sitting on her hip as they waited for House in the clinic, the girl did not understand the flash of joy which spread across House's features when he entered the room.
Hope. Cameron understood that the feeling was the last to perish for a reason. It was a way to keep hanging on despite the empirical evidence that you were in fact fast approaching a cliff, and the wings on your back have already been clipped. Michelle squirmed in House's lap, and curled her lips in discontent at her mother. Love was something that developed, it wasn't intrinsically there. The love between mother and child developed as a biological survival tactic, but the one between father and child, relative and child, was dependent on social conditioning. House hadn't been there, which meant that Michelle had never learnt to love her father. It was possible, though, Michelle was barely two and it was possibly to ratify the past still.
It was temporary. The dance of hoping for a better future abruptly ended as House's addiction slowly took root again. They had spent two months after rehab in a blissful, and willful, ignorance of the future. House saw his daughter every day, and Cameron felt as if she was about to explode from the happiness it gave her. Throughout her own upbringing her own father had been a distant authority figure that appeared with a roaring rage, and disappeared into work and a few glasses of scotch. The possibility that Michelle's father could be different was all that was needed.
He spent the night sometimes, and they found a rhythm again, and she had missed the way it felt when she rocked herself against him. Taking time to explore the planes of his face and body, searching for the similarities of their daughter. His eyes, his mouth, his ears, the proportion of his fingers and his toes, she recognized them instantly. She told him about this, told him stories of their demure daughter who at times in a fit of rage would pause and look at her mother in shock of the sounds which escaped her mouth.
When the time ended, as House felt the creeping desire for pills again, and knew he would succumb to the pull, he made Cameron promise to always instill a deep respect for consumption of all things drugs. They both knew the hereditary that he passed to their daughter, that each drop of alcohol she consumed, and whatever drug she might ever experiment with, was one thing closer to the fate of her father. Losing a partner to drugs was earth shatteringly painful, yet the mere thought of her daughter ever following the same path did not have a quantifiable expression.
Years pass with the understanding of how it would inevitably end. Cameron let go of him as the addiction took its grasp of him again. She shielded their daughter from the agonizing struggle of her father's perishing. Eventually all she waited for was the call that informed her that he was gone. Eventually she expected the invite to his funeral.
Michelle was nearing five when the fire took him. By that point she was old enough to comprehend the idea of fathers, noticing the differences in family dynamics and sets, the vacant spot in her own little family became obvious. Questions which would have been difficult to answer before his death became near impossible to summarize for a five year old whom shouldn't blame herself for the absence. Children do though. They always find ways to tear themselves a part about things they had no ability to influence.
His funeral was a spectacle put up for those who survived him, with people forgetting the terror and abuse which the doctor had put them through. Death seemed to strip away negative qualities and uncloak the good ones which hid beneath a dusty stone exterior. Despite having left House behind her years ago, and having clung to the bad parts of him to keep herself going, the recollection of good days felt like being in the middle of a multiple car pile-up. Each wave of memories left her raw, coarse. Her daughter's snuggles and scent fused and bound her together again.
Love never left anyone untouched by its force – it was a storm appearing in the middle of a clear blue sky, a sudden surge of wanton that left unattended leapt like a beast inside of you roaring at you to give in. Love was equally benign as it was malignant, a double edged sword balanced carefully.
Yet, love lingered in the essence of what makes a person human, and Cameron knew this well. Just as love destroyed it also built, and in her daughter's swell of blonde hair and pale blue eyes she found building blocks which would shape their future.
As grass grew over the grave she never visited she packed up their lives in boxes. Princeton would be a memory, but not a present.