"How are you feeling today?"

"That question is just vague enough for me to deflect."

"Greg—may I call you Greg?"

"May I call you Annoying Brunette Therapist?"

"I'd prefer June," she sighed, smiling to herself in the most minute way as if she had actually found humor in the insult. Coming from anyone but Wilson, it was odd enough to grate on him—at least with Wilson he was kidding to some degree. No, this time he meant it and was treated like a cute but wanton child. "So…back to my original question: how are you feeling today?"

Behind him, he caught wind of Amber scoffing in extreme disapproval. "Just lie to get her out of here. Do you really need someone else to tell you what's wrong with your head?" House focused all his energy at staring down to the stone floor, but Amber's voice pulled at his neck like a leash; in the pause, he knew Dr. Shahady was waiting for him to momentarily let his guard down, slip up, reveal things he hadn't ever meant to, and he hadn't planned on making this easy for anybody. Snapping at a hallucination would push his release date so far ahead that he would never get out in time.

"In time for what?" Amber pressed, leaning close to his face. "Hey. Scoot over. Or at least ask for another chair."

"Greg?" Shahady raised her eyebrows curiously, and he took the moment of brief eye contact to readjust his position on the couch, closer to one arm rest. Amber settled next to him, a smug grin all too apparent.

"Why'd you move?"

"What am I going to have to do to get you all to stop analyzing my every move? Self-induce a coma?"

"Before you really start to detox from the Vicodin, we need to assess these hallucinations of yours," she said. The patient file was open, pen clicked and at the ready over a blank steno pad. Blank—they didn't know anything yet, and he almost wanted to keep it that way, as much as he had felt otherwise before crossing the threshold into this place. "Don't you want to get better?"

His eyes flew to the ceiling before he could stop himself. "Oh please, I invented that patient manipulation card you just waved in my face. Don't delude yourself into thinking it's going to work."

"The 'manipulation' or the treatment?" she responded casually. "Because I have full faith in the treatment if you'll let us get to that point."

One full day in and already they were shooting him with ccs of empathy: no wonder his own patients found him to be such an ass if mild Shahady was irritating.

Stretching, Amber placed an arm around House's shoulder. "You would really want to get rid of me, a part of you?" She glanced briefly towards him. "That's cold, even by your standards."

What's really cold is that you show up and wreck havoc on my life when havoc really didn't need to be wrecked, and now you're threatening to ruin my life for good! He would have shouted it, screamed it until his voice grew hoarse and shallow but he couldn't let them see how bad this was. Not yet. So instead his fists, clenched, shook atop his knees.

And the shivering only worsened when Amber returned with a smirk.

"Chilly?" Shahady asked carefully, pointing to his hands.

Amber leaned forward, close to him again, much too close, her grip on the opposite shoulder tightening despite his knowing it's not there—because he knew it felt much too real. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he heard another low chuckle. "Agree with her," she hissed in his ear. "Lie. You know you don't want to be here. We had such a good thing going."

Sighing, House looked over to the psychiatrist. "Yeah, it's a little chilly," he muttered.

"Would you like your jacket?"

"…no."

"You're getting good at this," Amber said proudly, but in a way that made him cringe or want to or simply wish her away to when she was innocent, on the glowing bus, out of his head.

"You don't have to tell me the back story on who your hallucination is, if that's it," Shahady said softly. "When Dr. Wilson called before bringing you here, he rather adamantly insisted that he relay all this, plus the recent events with your colleague. So I already know."

House almost laughed. "Probably thought I was going to be difficult and withhold it all from you." Slowly, Amber's fingers loosened and the grip on his shoulder instantly became more content, so sure of her permanent place in jolting his sanity.

"He actually said that he didn't want you to have to relive any of it," she said, even going as far as to close the file, tuck the pen in her breast pocket, stare him straight in the eye. He had to fight to keep contact—Amber's touch certainly wasn't helping. "I can understand why."

"That doesn't make any sense," he retorted. "You're going to have to hear my 'perception' of things or whatever eventually. Wilson was making sure I wouldn't be able to lie." A deadpan, smack, there was the dose of his reality she needed. Too bad it was in short supply.

"I told you exactly what he said," she sighed. "And even if what you're saying were true, it only means he's doing all he can to get you well." Smiling again, she waited for him to respond—but there was another voice in his ear.

"Why would he want you well?" Amber murmured with the intensity of a hurricane.

"Greg?" Shahady probed, a hint of questioning peering from behind her eyes. "I've known Dr. Wilson for a good while; I can tell he's very, very concerned about you."

"Why would he be concerned about you?" Amber hissed, burning his ears. "You know there's still a part of him that hates you for my death. And that same part is ecstatic that you're haunted by me…and slowly…losing…everything…"

By then the quaking had grown so noticeable that the explanation of chills was no longer viable: his fingers latched around his kneecaps and all four limbs were shaking. "Stop." First quietly, but then—"Stop!"

"Greg, who are you talking to?"

In a flurry of indefinite limbs, Amber jumped from her position on the sofa and in between House and Shahady. Malevolence danced in her now ever-present smirk, having descended from the smugness when she was manageable, even helpful. "Don't mind her," she spat, grabbing both of his shoulders and moving so close that their noses nearly grazed. "This place…you can feel it…dead end, no outlet, a—hey!" She pulled back, staring curiously at him trying to detach her grip but it only sank deeper until at last, satisfied with his struggle, she skipped backwards. "You can't touch the dead, House," she giggled, "but we will make your life hell."

Slowly she faded into the far corner of the room and, breathing heavily, he turned back to Shahady. "I understand your views on Wilson," he choked out laboriously, but she didn't answer right away. She was anxious for him: it was seeping from her pores.

"Was that Amber you were speaking with?" she asked eventually. "A few moments ago?"

"I don't want to talk about it. See? Wilson's a smart one."

"What was she saying?"

"What part of 'I don't want to talk about it' don't you get? Do you need me to act it out? But as fair warning, I suck at charades."

"Dr. Wilson also said that you use this snarkiness as a way to hide," she said with enough force to jam shut the flow of the dispute. After a pause, she continued, "I wouldn't bother if this weren't important. What did she say?"

Of the few parts of his life that he was certain, his silence on Amber's actual words was a must. Shouldn't it have mattered more that she was speaking rather than what? Quickly he ran down the list, just as a handle to the world—Amber was smirking from her corner—and came up short for anything impressive.

Keep quiet about Amber.

Don't piss off Wilson and Cuddy.

Don't worry Wilson and Cuddy.

Escape with medical license intact.

"Dr. Ambitious," Amber taunted, twirling a long strand of blonde hair between her fingers. His eyes snapped toward her, completely unaware that Shahady's were trailing after his, that she was cautiously moving from her chair around to where he was sitting, sensing—"Amazing," Amber continued. "World-renowned physician reduced to this…aims only to survive the loony bin…" Sighing, she strikes a pensive frown, smug to the core, facing him with a gaze that led back to the empty depths of his imagined soul. A flash of fear pulsed through his skin.

"Greg?" Shahady was almost touching his arm. "Can you hear me?"

"Your mother must be so proud."

And all at once—

House leaped to his feet, stumbled on his bad leg, ignoring the cane, knocking it and almost Shahady to the ground, bursts of surprise or anger from both, shouting at him, at the fiction…

"You want to screw with me?" he yelled as he gradually hobbled to the corner. "You want to send me spiraling to my own hell? Look around, Cut-Throat Bitch: you've already done it! Lowest of the low, real cheap move getting inside my head, but why don't you take a hint and shut the hell up?"

"Afraid it doesn't work like that," she chuckled—and then she was gone, blip, without a trace, leaving him to swivel searchingly, eyes lowered to a glare.

"Coward," he muttered.

"Remember, she's not real!" Shahady called; a hint of desperation spilled over the edge while she watched his leg threaten to collapse. "Here…God, if you're not going to listen, at least take your cane." Picking it up, she secured it in his grip, but he still said nothing, just leering.

"Behind you."

As soon as the voice registered, he spun around violently, much too rashly for his leg, and pitched his cane like a spear where he had heard it. Despite the proximity, the psychiatrist's squeak of alarm was barely that of a mouse.

"There's your just desserts. Mmm, delicious!"

But he stopped short—because fallen on the cold floor, legs sprawled, hand clutching at a discolored, spreading bruise on her chest was not Amber. The shocked, hurt fury was too familiar. The soaked red eyes were far too recent. Where she had come was a mystery, but under the weight of the cane's impact, now laying to the side, was Cuddy.

"Oh God…" Just as he stepped forward, to do what he had little idea (but perhaps it was simply a gesture), Cuddy's lips twitched, pulled up along her cheek in the most infinitesimal flicker. The crying stopped abruptly, replaced by an uncharacteristically cruel laugh as her dark hair bleached itself before his eyes. "Dammit."

"Greg?" Shahady tried not to admit she was helpless.

Amber sprang to her feet with ease and sauntered close, again much too close, and he could almost feel her breath fogging against his skin. "Weak."

"I'm going to kill you!" He lunged forward, hands outstretched in a frenzy, but without seeming to budge, she reappeared just beyond his reach.

"I can't die, House," she said softly, just to make him listen under his gasping and thumping heart. "I'm you. So wouldn't that make this a suicide?"

He blinked, and when the world returned she had been erased, her voice whispering in his ear, "I've caused enough trouble for a couple hours…" Reluctantly he faced Shahady, who still wore a slight but ebbing expression that bore the overwhelming flurry of thoughts like a public banner. But beyond her, just like before, Kutner stood staring, stoic; House waited for him to speak, but the hallucination remained silent, shook his head and moved on, passing straight through the wall.

"You were never the quiet one, Kutner. Don't just shake your head," he snapped.

"Kutner?"

He glanced at Dr. Shahady, bending to retrieve his cane, but curiously found that it was still in his hand. Had it ever left? "Yeah. Kutner."

"The file says that you have only been hallucinating Amber Volakis." She paused and they locked eyes. "How long have you been seeing Kutner?"

"The first time was yesterday," he muttered. There was no point in lying about it: a quarter of his goals had already been ripped asunder anyway.

"And the second was just now?" Hurriedly she moved to his patient file to make note of it, and how he hated it, being studied. He was the studier, not the subject.

"Yes," he muttered, almost incoherently—and then his lunch was all over the floor. "Ugh…"

Shahady rushed to his side to catch his collapsing form in mid-fall. "Oh dear…the detox must finally be kicking in…let's get you to your room…don't worry about the mess; someone will get it…" Despite the stream of attempted comforts issuing from her mouth keeping him tied to reality, all he managed for a reply was an absent, pained moan.

They were met at the door by another psychiatrist, who, after catching one glimpse of Shahady's face, ran to House's other side. Gradually the threesome slogged down the hallway.

"Felix…" she murmured over House's groan. "I can't do this one alone."

XXX

That night was the first night House appeared in Wilson's dreams.

When he awoke the following morning, all the details ran together in a mush of vagueness, fuzzy along all the edges save for that one thing—him. Of nothing else in the dream was he surer. But there were other facets, too, those he couldn't relate in many more ways than a concept salad. There was House, gray walls, and—if his memory served him correctly—a javelin.

His eyes were glued to his bedroom ceiling.

He wished he could get the unnerving laughter to stop echoing in his ears.

A/N: I'd love some reviews as inspiration to figure out later chapters. :)