Okay ladies and gents :-) I'm back! For a little while anyway...for some reason this idea for a sequel to A House That Love Built got stuck in my head and wouldn't leave. Its currently a one shot deal and for all intents and purposes shall remain so, though as you might notice I left it open for easy continuation...I'm just not ready to commit anything more then what's here currently LOL :-) No Beta...I should get one as I know my writing needs one...please don't flame, I'm human I make mistakes-try not to of course and I do check my work but I am my harshest critic and worst beta lol

I would highly suggest reading A House That Love Built first...otherwise you will be undoubtedly lost.

The Redundant Obvious Disclaimer: The characters of the show House are not mine. The quoted lyrics...not mine. No monies made, no fame gained...no benefit gained from this story once so ever...except those delicious reviews which I am so fond of...and at zero calories love to consume as often possible ;-)

What If I Came Knocking

Oh, take your time, don't live too fast
Troubles will come and they will pass
You'll find a woman and you'll find love
And don't forget that there is a someone up above
-Lynyrd Skynyrd, Simple Man

Part One: There Is A Room

You enter and close the door behind you
Now show me the world as seen from the stars
If only the lights would dim a little
I'm weary of eyes upon my scars -Incubus, Here In My Room

Pink Houses

She was beautiful. She was nearly nine and half months pregnant and she glowed. She was sleeping peacefully on her side facing him, Greg hadn't slept a full night since about month eight and half. She was very overdue, her doctor had suggested inducing but they were waiting a little longer...'when the baby is ready...it'll come' she said with such serenity and motherly grace he couldn't argue. They had chosen to keep the gender a surprise this time around. Their miracle (unexpected miracle) baby. He was wondering the wisdom in that choice now as he wasn't sure the baby was ever going to be 'ready'. He didn't believe in God, or at least he hadn't till Katie. He had to believe in something, someone greater than himself because if he didn't...if this was all there was, he'd never see his little girl again and the idea that Katie was just gone? That idea was harder to accept than God.

It had been a long, long five months..five months and 2 and half weeks. It had been one hell of a battle and adjustment. She was still skittish around him, he still kept more unsaid than not. Before cat naps were the only sleep he enjoyed he woke frequently most nights in a cool sweat reaching for her to make sure she hadn't left him again. The void between them slowly beginning to close. He could freely touch her now with out her flinching.

He folded his arms behind his head as he turned to lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Staring at the patterns the shadows were casting on the ceiling. In those patterns he saw Katie's happy bubbly baby face. He saw his wife's warm smile and her holding Katie the day they came home from the hospital. There would be a new baby to bring home soon and part of him couldn't help feeling like he was betraying the daughter he barely got to know. Replacing her with a new child that would, God permitting, grow up and see and do all things that Katie didn't.

He wasn't sure whom felt he was betraying more, Katie or this new one that would come into the world already burdened with a terrified mother who would do everything to make sure this one was safe and protected and a father still struggling with a magnitude of issues not the least of which was the death of his daughter. Already this new life was wearing a scar it didn't deserve and certainly didn't need. Life was going to be hard enough.

Katie...precious Katie. There wasn't a hour that went by that he didn't think about her. Didn't ache for her, to hold her, to hear to baby laugh to see her chubby cheeked smile. That baby girl changed everything. Everything he thought he knew, she changed his world and changed his heart. He never knew one being could change so much. Before Katie... People didn't change and everyone lied. Katie turned him into a terrified, worried, vulnerable human being.

His Katie.

The room was stuffy, oppressing. Careful not to disturb Allison he climbed from the bed, pulling on his discarded t-shirt which was draped on the foot. He silently left the room.

Katie's room was still closed. The rose garden mural not suitable for a boy but wouldn't be painted over...boy or girl that baby would not be in Katie's room. The room next to it had been made over in neutral but happy colors, Noah's Ark decorated the crib, walls and curtains. The only thing that was from Katie's room was the rocking chair. Allison moved it in one day without so much as word, it was on a night much like this he discovered it missing. They never spoke of the switch, it just was. He thought maybe it was a good sign, a sign they were coming to better terms. However the rocking chair in a different room was the only thing that changed.

Greg let himself into Katie's room quickly and quietly closing the door. He opened the curtain to let more of the moonlight in, he didn't want to turn on the light. The light was too bright, too sterile. It made the edges too sharp the lines too blunt. With the shadows and quiet he could almost picture her back and playing here.

Sitting on the alphabet block rug, back against the wall below the window he took in the room. The pink doll house she never got to play with...the blocks she more or less eyed and slightly patted with her chubby eleven month old baby hands. The mobile of flowers and toy doctor's instruments that when wound played a lullaby version of Can't Always Get What You Want. A gift from his then new fellows (13 and Taub) Foreman, and Chase.

The doll house...he didn't know why but he could picture his blond haired, blue-green eyed little girl playing there so thoroughly but he did and it made his heart ache just a little more, a little deeper, a little differently. Maybe it was the fact his last name was House, he let a coarse, ironic laugh break the stillness. It wasn't that. Maybe it was because Katie had been conceived in the midst of the chaotic renovation...maybe it was because it was the first thing he had bought and Allison had made such fun of him for it. 'She won't be able to play with this for ages Greg!' she had giggled even while arranging the little doll furniture in the old fashioned bright pink house. 'It'll be a choking hazard till she's 8' she had further chastised him with a gentle laugh, all the while arranging the various rooms 'just so'.

Would the ache ever lessen? Would he be able to live with the guilt if it did? He wasn't sure, but he did wish, in some illogical, irrational part of his soul that he denied existed he wished he could go into one of those little rooms in that pink doll house and find his Katie playing in her room...and they could just be, be in that suspended bit of illogical, cotton candy colored bliss... But those were just wishes and what good were wishes? Especially ones made on little pink houses.

She felt him leave the room. The shift of the mattress, the quiet click of the door. She let go the breath she had been holding. It was still difficult some nights to share the bed. She loved him. Of that there was no doubt. She had always, would always love him. They were making big strides but at times being in the bed with him...making love with him, she felt a million miles away. She still woke some days with a panic in her chest, ache in arms for a baby that was no longer there...she woke some days thinking Katie was still there. She tried to be open, tried to talk, tried to tell him what was tearing her apart but things like that didn't always have words to describe them.

A source of guilt, of comfort...of confusion but always of great pure love was the baby growing in her womb. This baby such a surprise, such a confusing blessing but... Oh the guilt she felt over the this baby, the guilt over feeling guilty! How many nights, days had she spent sobbing into Katie's pillow? How many hours had she lost just sitting in her room? She would go, sit in that rocking chair that had been her grandmothers and stare up at the sky feeding her daughter wrapped in that receiving blanket she now held clutched to her heart. Could Katie see her, could Katie feel her loving her from so far away? What did the world look like from where Katie surely was...up there in those stars, in those heavens?

It was worse when the baby starting kicking, the feeling of new life moving in her. Any day this precious baby would be in her arms and she couldn't wait and part of her would wonder if she could give this baby all her love, all her devotion like this baby deserved because she was still so wrapped up in a child that was.

Rubbing her belly absently she fights tears that soon are falling silently. She's glad she's alone but part of her is feeling that abandonment of when he left. Sure, on an intellectual level she understands his motives, his reasons. She understands how her actions pushed him to do what he did. But that didn't mean she was cerebral all the time about those things. In fact it rather meant the opposite.

Tears pick up their flow she can't stop them, can't rationalize them away so they slip ever steadily down her cheeks and she hates herself for them. She is going to be a mother...again, any day and instead of being excited and anxious she is terrified and confused.

So many things...so many changes and rearranges that were trying to work themselves out and she is just trying to hang onto something that doesn't make her ache. But she aches. Aches in her heart, in her soul and in her memories.

Soon...soon it would have to better. She hoped.

And that she hoped was a good sign because for while hope seemed lost, lost in a room with no doors, no windows. Lost in a room like a coffin where no air was. But she was finding the cracks and she was finding the hope.

They laid in bed back to back both knew the other was awake but neither made move to talk. The room was just starting to brighten. The weight of the night hung heavy but what was there to say? Nothing surely that hadn't already been said. Nothing surely that would bring them any closer, bridge the gap that was ever spanning between them, though they shared the same bed.

But pity and wallowing was for the night time. The day was for moving forward, moving on.

"What time is it?" Allison asked with a yawn. The alarm hadn't gone off yet so she knew it was before 7.

"6:59...7:00" Greg answered at the same time his hand came down on the alarm just as it was going off.

"We've been doing that a lot lately...waking up just before the alarm."

Greg nodded to himself feeling her shift in the bed to lay on her back, he mimicked her.

"What do you have scheduled today?"

Greg though on the question for a moment folding his hands on his chest. "We haven't had a case in weeks...we're all starting to go a little stir crazy. Cuddy swears I still owe her clinic hours...so I guess that means I'll be in the nurses lounge borrowing their TV till I'm found and which case I will move to dermatology my latest refuge as you know."

She gave him a half grin. "Of course you are..." Allison shifted feeling a crick in her back.

"You okay?"

"Hmm? Yeah, fine, just slept funny I think, my lower back has been aching, but only off and on..."

Greg looked at her funny. "Allison..."

It dawned on her about the same time as the muscles of lower back hardened again, only this time sharper, tighter and the pain was moving.

"Allison I think you're having contractions."

Allison started to panic, "You think Sherlock?" she nearly shrieked. She was a doctor, she knew what was happening...she had done this before she knew what to expect. She was having contractions...and that was scary as hell.

Greg grinned at her, "Cute...now just calm down, we're still a ways away now-why don't we go down stairs and watch that DVR'd episode of NCIS...it'll take your mind of it...and when the contractions are closer together we'll go to the hospital and..."

Allison, now sitting at the foot of the bed starred at her husband wide eyed. He was never the calm rational one-ever. But that was the least of her worries. "House," this caught his attention, she hardly ever called him House, "my water just broke."