Anna woke with a start. It took a few moments for her to register her surroundings: the leather couch beneath her fingers and the musical instruments in the corner, the flickering television that created lingering shadows around the room. She stumbled to her feet and turned it off.
This was her father's place, childish and miserable by equal measures. She crossed the room to run her finger along the titles on the bookshelf: medical books and philosophy interspersed with cheap fiction and Conan Doyle. She selected The Adventures off the shelf and attempted to read, but try as she might, the words slid from her mind. She slammed the book down in disgust- it was harder to be fine at three-thirty in the morning.
Judging by the noise coming from House's bedroom, he wasn't asleep either. She could hear pacing, interspersed by winces and groans. She wondered if his leg was keeping him awake at night. It had surprised her when he limped into the airport the day before, his hand wrapped white-knuckled around a walking stick and a scowl on his face that dared her to ask about it.
He finally emerged from his bedroom, in long, loose pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt. His eyes were puffy with lack of sleep and he leaned heavily into his cane.
"Can't you sleep?" Anna asked.
He grunted and made his way over to the cupboard above the sink, plucking out an amber bottle. She had noticed these littering the flat and glowing like lanterns in the gloom. He swallowed a handful of pills from the bottle and gave them a minute to kick in.
"Can't you?" he replied.
Anna avoided his gaze and shrugged her shoulders. Old habits were hard to break, but she didn't tell House that.
"Goodnight," she said. But she heard House's pacing long into the night, as she tried to settle down on the stiff couch.
When House stumped into the kitchen the next morning, Anna realised that she'd fallen asleep. The sun fought its way through the chinks in the heavy curtains. House clutching coffee with one hand and rubbing his thigh with the other. Anna knew well enough to recognise the pain on his face but chose not to comment. She didn't know what to say
Anna got up, folded her blanket and set about rummaging for some breakfast. She found a loaf of bread under the sink and popped two slices in the toaster.
"Want any?" she asked for good measure.
"What, stale toast? It's all yours." He looked over at her wearily. "Don't say I don't spoil you."
"Wouldn't dream of it." Anna stood on her toes to try and reach one of the higher cupboards.
"Hey!" She almost lost her balance in surprise at his sharp tone. "Stop messing up my stuff." Anna immediately wondered what was hidden there.
"What the hell are you looking for, anyway? Peanut butter's on the counter, jelly in the fridge."
"Jelly? Oh, jam." Anna wondered how long it would take her to adjust to this new lingo, if she ever would, if she ever should. "I was looking for tea."
"What kind?"
"Tea." Anna frowned. "Tea tea. Normal tea. Like how my mum used to make it."
"I don't know how your mum used to make tea." He mocked her accent, but his voice sounded tired rather than mirthful. "There's coffee or there's water or there's beer."
"Beer, then." Anna rolled her eyes as she filled her glass with water. "Are you sure there's no tea? I can't wake up without it."
"Trust me, coffee's much more effective. Anyway, why do you need to wake up? Go back to sleep."
"I want to…" She paused, rephrased, "I'm going to come into work with you."
"No. No, no, no. Not happening."
"Why not?"
She used to go to work with him, in the days before. She had been seven, eight, and House always forgot to book a babysitter. It was Cuddy who ended up running around the hospital after her, trying to limit the damage. Once she had tied six wheelchairs into a caterpillar and ridden them down the stairs. Cuddy sent her home in disgrace. House went golfing for the last time later that day.
"Because you don't need a babysitter and I don't need a whiny kid yapping at me while I'm trying to work."
He got to his feet, leaning all his weight onto his cane. His gaze lingered ruefully on his suit jacket on the other side of the room and Anna went and got it for him without a word. He snatched it from her but didn't say thanks.
"I'm not whiny," she said instead.
"All kids are. Whiny eating-and-pooping-machines that constantly need their egos stroking. I don't need to deal with that while I'm trying to save lives."
Anna scoffed. "Playing your Gameboy, you mean."
"Something like that."
House put on his jacket and ran a hand through his hair. It was thinner than Anna remembered. His perpetual five o'clock shadow had blossomed into a full-blown beard. She wondered what else had changed.
"I won't bother you," she blurted as his hand rested on the doorknob, "please, I'll sit and read in your office. It'll be like I'm not there."
"Actually not there beats almost not there."
House looked at her with a slight crease between his eyebrows. Anna mistook it for concern, then realised that it was analytical. Instead of being worried about why she didn't want to be alone, he was curious.
"I have cable," he told her. "Now leaving you with only the broadcast channels, that would be cruel."
Anna gulped.
"Okay," she said.
Although she didn't expect him to leave until he did, slamming the door behind him.
The apartment rattled. She was alone.
Anna padded in her socks to the bathroom mirror, the only mirror in the flat. Her pyjamas were too big for her ("to grow into") and the faded cartoon unicorn on the front looked pathetic, far too babyish for her twelve years. Her long hair was bright red, not pretty so much as assaulting. The bright colour paled her skin and made the dark rings under her eyes look even more obvious. Her eyes- blue eyes, his eyes- were red and inflamed from a week of crying beneath her thick glasses.
She wasn't quite sure why, except that when the idea occurred to her she couldn't shake it. She went to her suitcase, which she had stowed behind the sofa last night, and found her pencil case. Taking the small, blunted, scissors, she watched them glint in the sunlight. She wanted to do something that wasn't sensible, or well thought out, damn the consequences. So she began to cut.
She hacked away with no plan, in some places sawing through thick locks. Gingery hair coated the carpet. She had been growing it out for years.
Finally, she screwed up the nerve to look in the mirror. It was lopsided, uneven, about as long as her shoulders. She plucked twenty centimetres of severed hair from the floor. It would have horrified her mum. She called it her Crowning Glory.
The flat was still gloomy, even after Anna threw open the curtains and switched on all the lights. The amber bottles gave her the creeps. There was nothing in the flat to distract her from her hurtling thoughts or her strange hair. The television was odd and she couldn't follow any of the soaps. Her mind was too crowded to read, and the lines kept repeating themselves.
A calm descended as she devised a new plan. She poked around in the hall closet for a baseball cap of House's and tucked the remains of her hair into it. Climbing onto a chair, she found a jar full of money on top of the dresser, from which she shoved a few bills in her pocket. After a moment's consideration, she emptied her rucksack onto the sofa, packing it instead with a notebook and pen, as well as A Study in Scarlet in case she got bored.
Finding the bus stop was easy. She asked the driver for directions to Princeton Plainsboro and got off at the stop directly outside the hospital. When she entered the familiar lobby, nobody looked at her twice. Everybody seemed to know who Doctor House was, and everybody pointed her towards the fourth floor, not without asking if it was really him who she wanted to see.
House's office was a world away from the cramped old room he used to inhabit. It was large, wonderfully large, with glass walls and his name on the door. Anna let herself in.
He had a smart reclining chair in one corner, a bookshelf and a small television, a computer and an overcrowded desk with some familiar knick-knacks. On the shelf was the phrenology head, with its blank porcelain eyes staring off into the middle-distance, that used to unnerve her when she was younger.
She twirled House's desk chair around and plonked onto it. It surprised her how little PPTH had changed; even the oversized tennis ball still sat on his desk. She remembered asking House to let her play with it, how he always refused. She threw it in the air and caught it a few times, but did not feel the sense of long-awaited satisfaction that she had been expecting. It didn't matter anymore.
"Are you alright?"
Anna rubbed her eyes and looked up at the woman who had just entered the room. Her white coat suggested that she was a doctor; she was dark-haired and stunningly pretty.
"I've made a mistake," admitted Anna.
"Well," said the woman calmly, coming and sitting down on the edge of the desk. She had the air of somebody who was confident around children, to the point that she enjoyed the opportunity to flex her skills. "I've learnt that there aren't many mistakes which can't be fixed. I'm Allison."
"Anna." She ran a glum hand through her hair.
"Did you do it yourself?" asked Allison with a smile.
"With safety scissors." Anna shook her head. "I had to really hack away at it." She paused for a moment and reflected. "It was a stupid idea."
"I dyed my hair when I was a kid. Everyone at school had gone pink, but my mom wouldn't take me to the hairdressers. So I bought the hair dye, locked myself in the bathroom and tried to do it myself. Only problem was, I read the instructions wrong and my hair turned out green."
Despite herself, Anna giggled.
"Did you fix it?"
"At first my mom was furious, and she said that she was going to make me keep it green as a punishment. That lasted about three days, then she finally took me to the hairdressers and they dyed it back. Most embarrassing three days of my life. I wasn't very good at dying my hair, but I did use to cut my mom and my sister's hair, so I could always have a go at straightening up yours."
Anna regarded Allison with interest.
"Do you work with Dr House or something?"
"He's my boss. Are you here to see him?"
"He's my dad."
Allison had taken off her lab coat and was folding it up. She almost dropped it.
"House? I didn't know he even had children," she said, trying to keep the strain of surprise out of her voice.
"Well, I've only lived with him since yesterday."
Allison frowned. "Where did you grow up?"
"London, mainly. I lived over here for a while. It's complicated." Anna tried to make it clear that she wasn't going to talk about it. "Could you fix my hair?"
"Sure. We can do it in the outer office- have a seat."
Allison chattered away while she first combed, then snipped, Anna's uneven hairdo, telling stories of her childhood, of tobogganing in the snow, of lemonade stands. Anna knew well enough to recognise a manipulation tactic, realised that Allison was waiting for her to chime in with childhood tales of her own.
And she did, eventually, like the telescope that House had shipped to her flat in England, and that she and her mum had spent a long, lazy Sunday trying to put together on the balcony.
"My mum would have hated me having my hair short," Anna confided.
"Is that why you did it?" Allison asked mildly.
"No. I don't know why I did it. It's not the sort of thing I do. You know it reached my waist, this morning? I could sit on it if I tried."
"Change isn't always bad." Allison finished off the ends with a final flourish. "There you are."
She rummaged in her bag and presented Anna with her reflection in her powder-case. Anna twisted a lock of her new short hair around her index finger. She certainly felt lighter.
"I like it," Anna was surprised to hear herself say, "thank you."
"No problem. And here comes your dad-"
House threw open the door with a face of thunder and took a seat at the conference table, closest to the door. Propping up his legs with a wince, he reached for yet another pill bottle.
"I ask you." House gestured broadly with his cane. "A kid's got a cold, I prescribe it a packet of tissues and have to spend half an hour, half an hour- that's a good round of Gameboy, persuading the fussy parents it's not meningitis. Why are parents biologically programmed to be morons?"
"You'd know," said Anna.
House twisted around in his chair and spotted Anna. He slumped back and took another pill.
"What are you doing here?"
"I got the bus," Anna smiled at his expression. "The number six."
He narrowed his eyes like he had suddenly had an epiphany.
"You." He jabbed a finger in her direction. "Are a control freak."
"Am not!"
"Why did you follow me in? Scared I was going to disappear if you let me out of your sight? Now it all makes sense… separation anxiety, trying to manipulate the situation… texbook behaviour in cases of childhood bereavement-"
"Dr House!" said Allison, shocked, cutting him off mid-flow. Anna wished her hair was still long enough to hide her face.
"And why is your hair all over the carpet? Has Cameron been scalping you? See, kid, I warned you not to come in- no child should have to face Cameron, the half-crazed employee I keep locked away in my office."
"I'll get a broom," Anna interrupted.
When she came back into the office, Allison and House had been talking about her. She tried not to be offended as she set about sweeping up.
"You've ruined my afternoon, kid," House mourned.
"It's a hobby, right? And I left my knitting in England, so…" She chanced a look up from her sweeping to gauge his reaction. She could have sworn she caught the slightest smirk.
House ran the back of his thumbnail over his eyebrow. "You look like a nerdy, reclusive type- There's a library here. Why don't you piss off and leave me alone?" He rubbed his thigh absently and glanced at the clock. "I'm going home at… four forty-three. Be here or walk."
Anna thought it sounded like a reasonable idea. "So does this mean I can come in tomorrow too? It's… boring at the flat.".
"No." He shuddered. "Don't you have school to go to or something?"
"You need to send off the forms." Anna tried to muster her best stern expression. "And the immigration forms. And…"
"Are you still here?"
House was still massaging his thigh, more vigorously now, kneading and biting his lip. Anna realised she was staring and dropped her gaze with a blush. He looked at her venomously.
"Something to say?" He spat.
Anna shook her head and scurried off.
a/n: British English spelling is intentional. (I've used AE in some speech where the alternate spelling implies accent.)
I'm British, so I apologise for the inevitable cultural mistakes that come from setting a story in a different country. Please let me know if you spot any, or have any other feedback. This fic is in its early stages, and I would be grateful for input.