Set after season 8 finale. Here 'Everybody dies' takes place just a few months after 'Bombshells', but anyway after House spent six months in jail for having driven his car into Cuddy's living room. Same events of the series: House and Cuddy's break-up, his marriage with Dominika and all the s*** that came after, including Wilson's cancer.
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THE LETTER
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Chapter 1 - Death changes everything
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"He's... dead" he just whispered as soon as he heard her voice on the other end of the line.
Cuddy stood motionless.
"W-what?" She said as she almost choked that word in her throat.
"Er... there was a fire and... he was there and...er..."
Wilson voice cracked.
"I know he wasn't part of your life anymore but... they couldn't even recognize him, Cuddy, and... er... sorry, this doesn't matter right now... er... the funeral is tomorrow at 4 pm. I just... thought you have to know..."
She didn't reply. No sound came from the other end of the line and for a moment he thought the line was off. Until he heard Arlene's voice in the background.
... Lisa?
... Honey, what's wrong?
What came after he couldn't tell for sure. Muffled sounds. Her labored breathing. Then, the line was off.
He was sure Cuddy should have been there. He was dead, for Christ sake! But she wasn't there...
He looked at that empty chair. Everyone was there. Everyone who had worked with him was there. Even Nurse Jeffrey.
His team. The old one near the new one.
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Park and Adams.
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... House hired me when no one else would...
... He got me fired. He gave me the guts to get fired...
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Masters. Taub. Thirteen. And Cameron. And Chase.
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...he gave me the courage to quit...
... he made me a better parent, whether he meant to or not...
...he was willing to kill me. And I'll always be grateful...
... he wasn't always easy to deal with... but somewhere in there...he knew how to love...
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And Foreman.
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... He was my boss. And my employee. And both times...I learned from him...
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Everyone was there. Who hated him was there... next to who had loved him.
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His mother. Even Stacy and... Dominika.
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... He was a good son...
... He was a trying boyfriend... but I... never stopped loving him...
... He was my husband for real. I couldn't help but love him...
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He was his friend. And an ass. An ass who saved lives, but an ass anyway.
He mocked anyone... patients, co-workers, his dwindling friends. Anyone who didn't measure up to his insane ideals of integrity. He claimed to be on some heroic quest for truth, but the truth was, he was a bitter jerk who liked making people miserable. And he proved that by dying selfishly, numbed by narcotics, without a thought of anyone. A betrayal of everyone who cared about him.
And yet... they were all there. All. All but the only one he had really loved.
Everyone had a few words for him. But... not even a word from her. Not from Cuddy. That was weird. Despite the events of the last months he had been an important part of her life. And death changes everything! Was she really so mad with him not to pay even her last respects to him?
He squeezed Blythe's hand, looking at her for a brief moment as she looked back. She had anything left anymore. She didn't have the same composure she had had at her husband's funeral. No mother should see her son's death. He watched her as she looked in front of herself. Her eyes full of tears as her son's blue eyes stared at her from the picture near the altar. The same eyes she couldn't look into anymore.
No mother should attend her son's funeral.
"Gregory!"
"Gregory, c'mon! Stop hiding. Where are you?"
She bend over to look under the desk but he wasn't there.
"I swear to God I'm gonna kill him with my own hands as soon as I catch him!" She hissed in a low voice, talking to herself and running a hand on her forehead "Shit! Actually his mother is gonna kill me with her own hands!" She pointed out with a sigh as she walk down the hallway, opening doors and calling his name from time to time and bending over here and there to look for him under every desk and chair.
Blythe House looked at her and couldn't help a little smile from appearing on her lips. How many times had she did the same with her Gregory?! She shook her head slightly as a lump closed her throat at that thought and sighed, looking at the clock on that waiting room wall and then turning her attention back to the magazine in her hands. Not that she was really reading it actually. She was barely watching the pictures on it. Because everything reminded her of her son. From the Cheerios advertising in bright colors on the bottom of the magazine page to the old man with a cane sitting in front of her in that orthopedic ward of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
It lasted just a minute and then a bump under the plastic chair in which she sat caught her attention. She bent down and she couldn't help but smile as she looked at the little boy crouched under it. More or less two years old. Covering his face with both hands as he obviously thought none could see him if he didn't see them.
"Gregory, right?" She asked in a soft tone, smiling and looking at him.
"Nuwse bad. Me want Mommy" he said not taking his tiny hands from his face.
"We can look for Mommy, sweetheart" She said "Ok?"
He nodded, lowering his head as he slinked out, then standing up and reaching out for Blythe's hand and meeting her gaze.
The smile on her face froze and she looked into his eyes as she was watching a ghost.
"Les's look fow Mommy?" He asked.
She swallowed and just nodded, deeply inhaling as she stood up. For sure her mind was making fool of her. However she couldn't help but thinking of her Greg as she took his tiny hand and walked with him down the hallway. He was too little to know where his mother could be, and that poor woman was certainly driving crazy not knowing where her little boy was, so she thought that all she could do was to take him at the nurses' station on the ground floor.
She watched the closed door of the elevator as they slowly slid open. The two women inside were arguing about something and for a moment they didn't pay attention at her, nor she at them, too focused on that little boy holding her hand.
She froze as soon as she looked up and her green eyes met the gray-blue ones in front of hers. They both looked speechless at each other for a moment before a 'Mommy!' distracted them, making them both look down at the little boy. He left Blythe's hand and put his arms around his mother's leg.
Blythe looked at her own hand for a moment before looking again at the woman in front of her and at the little boy now in her arms, his tiny arms around her neck. Again as she was looking at a ghost.