A/N: Okay, not my first House fic, but the first I've posted. This might be drabble, I'm not sure. I do know, but this is some of my best stuff, so if you flame me, I will know where you live (jk, flame away my children, flame away. I really don't care.)

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Cameron was a pretty girl. It sucked, the kind of stereotypes that follow you around when you're pretty, and Cameron wasn't just pretty. She was smart, and you can't be a smart and pretty girl without being something else too: funny, dirty or dead.

Or damaged, she adds decidedly, staring into her cold coffee. Pretty girls don't go to med school unless they're damaged.

Who hurt her? Was it dad who thought marrying a dying man stupid, or mom who believed it heroic? Her sister who called her Barbie every chance she got? House for taunting, Foreman for believing, Chase for sex? Or was it the dying man himself, the one whose face she couldn't get out of her head, the one who would have died alone if she hadn't stepped in. He still died all the same. Were her tears worth the comfort she had provided then?

She wasn't funny. She tried and failed. She wasn't crude enough to carry a decent punch line and didn't have the heart for anything rogue. Dirty was out, it didn't work on her, and dead was a joke.

But damaged? That she could carry, that she could be. She let other hurt her. She stepped up to the plate and handed them the baseball bat. She set herself up to be beaten down. She expected it.

Why had she taken this stupid job? The pay was crap, the tasks degrading, and the objectives immoral. House was brilliant but cold, a combination Cameron had always had trouble coping with. He was never open. He was never warm, at least not to her. She was usually ignored and underestimated when she wasn't. She didn't stay because of him. She didn't stay for either of her co-workers either; Foreman whose words could burn and Chase who was a moron most of the time.

No, that wasn't true. Chase wasn't a moron. House wouldn't have hired him if he were. He was just young, only a few years of med school when he started working in the Clinic. What was it that had made House hire him? Somehow, the call-from-his-dad thing didn't seem particularly likely. The chances that Rowan Chase would go out of his way for his son's benefit were slim. It was far more likely House had noticed the trace of brilliance Chase occasionally allowed to shine through. Why he withheld it, why he built up walls between himself and everyone else was a mystery to all. Sometimes she doubted even Chase himself knew.

Then there was Foreman, defiant and daring with a 4.0 grade point average from one of the best medical schools in the world. He could match every step with House and still manage not to completely alienate everyone around him. Most of the time. He had stolen her article, taken advantage of her trust and friendship. Of course, she had forgiven him. Cameron forgave everyone, no matter what the cost was to herself. It killed her not to.

It disappoints them, a whispered voice cooed through her mind. People expect Saint Allison to forgive their sins and accept their empty repents.

"Am I a disappointment?"

Ideas muse through her mind for a moment before she decides.

I am a disappointment.

Not to her family surely, for becoming a doctor made for some pretty large bragging rights. Sometimes they questioned if she was too anti-social without a cute boyfriend to bring home or too lonely without a cute boyfriend at all.

"Unless you're getting some major action from all those adorable male nurses in those oh-so-functional supply closets, I suggest you spend a little more time in a mini-skirt and a little less time in a lab coat, Barbie-doll."

Ah, the shrewd words of wisdom from a kid sister with kids of her own. The man she had married was still alive. The man she married had probably never had anything worse than the chicken pox. The man she married had given her children, three lovely healthy children who had her pretty eyes and her doting smile. She had married a man who would never die lonely, one who would loved her. Why couldn't Cameron get past the fact that she hadn't married a man at all, just a terminal cancer and the shadow it ate alive? Why was she letting ghost under her skin years too late? Why couldn't she let go? She couldn't let go...

Slowly she places her coffee mug down on the table before her, afraid it will spill in her shaking hands. She says nothing, terrified someone will hear her fears, terrified her nightmares will be acknowledged into actuality. Yet somehow, somewhere, someone should be listening. God wasn't. God didn't exist.

People create some kind of super-being to control their lives so they won't have to, Cameron muses, carefully tracing the rim of her coffee cup, watching the dried residue smear with renaissance red lipstick, smudging them into nonexistence. They think fate isn't in their hands, they think their actions aren't their fault.

She lifts her hand as if suddenly burned.

They're wrong.

Are they? Cameron had always hated her own lack of faith. She could believe in the human spirit, in medicine, in the good in people, but she couldn't bring herself to believe in God. Some people dedicated their whole lives to Him. Some people chose to devote their entire beings to something which they had no real proof of existence. Chase almost had. Why hadn't he?

Probably dropped out the minute it came time for him to take that Vow of Abstinence.

Cameron snorted, a cruel smile filling her lips, almost immediately followed by a burning guilt. That was unkind. For a moment, she searched for a reason to be angry with Chase, a reason to hate him, justification for her malice. She found none. She never did.

Unable to lift the crude taste of acrimony from her lips, she took a swig of cold, bitter coffee, letting her mouth be filled the familiar taste to wash out the foreign tang of hatred. And in an instant it was gone, washed away, leaving no hint that it had ever existed apart from the fresh scars that now tainted her day. Cameron wasn't one to let the scars fade. She was too pretty, too smart. She was too damaged.

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Comments would be lovely, and I'm sorry, non-Cameron fans, for staring out with her, but I promise to cover everybody. Everybody's got vices, right? Chase is next (cause daddy issues are fun!) and I promise to include Wilson, Foreman, and House, with a probably on Cuddy. Maybe even Stacy. Am I missing anyone? Comment for world peace or inner peace or whatever works for you.