A/N: This piece came to me very randomly, out of nowhere. It's actually the fic that's taken me the least amount of time to write (if you count size in the calculations); I got it written on loose leaf paper, typed, and posted in a little over 2 hours. I think my muse was being a show-off because I'd just got finished complaining that it had left me. Eh, what can you do?
Wow, a lot of milestones are being reached with this one. This is my first fic in first-person in this fandom, as well as the first one to not be in the POV of House or Wilson. It's also fic number 10 on the site! Yay, double digits!
Anyway, this is another piece that's very different from everything else I've put up, but I like it. Cameron is such a fascinating character (all of them are, really) and I'm so glad I'm finally doing something with her.
I think this also sets the record for longest author's note, lol. So, I'll shut up now (and get on with the story). Sorry, sorry.
Takes place after the episode 97 Seconds.
DISCLAIMER: Still don't own them.
-AmayaSora
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ------ ---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----
When I first met House, he could accurately be called a monster. He was arrogant, brash, rude, sarcastic, misanthropic… and that was why I took the job.
That first year he was completely shut off. Totally, utterly surrounded by brick walls. Now, don't get me wrong, he had his moments (all two of them), but in general he came of as cold and uncaring.
Even then I could see what a lie that was. Everybody lies; he was right about that. He was probably right about me, too, that I get too personally emotionally involved with everyone, that I have the world's biggest doctor complex and have a compulsive desire to help people. But it was those qualities that made me able to see the real Gregory House, the one no one was permitted to know in case they hurt him. And it was those qualities that made me able to help.
-------------0000------------------
I observed, mildly and meekly, for a while, never questioning him, never doing anything at all that might make him add another row of bricks. The others thought it was because I loved him. Maybe I did, but never in a sexual way. It was more motherly than anything else, I think.
Regardless, the Vogler incident gave me my first chance to chip away at the block surrounding House. I resigned (it actually was partly to help the others keep their jobs, as I told him), banking on my assumptions to save me.
They did. He came himself to get me back, and I knew for sure then that I had been right all along. But I foolishly took that as a breakthrough, and forced myself closer to him than he was comfortable with. He shut me down, and himself away.
I lay low for a while, letting him see that it was he who was in control, something he so desperately needed to feel. My efforts were rewarded when he asked me to the monster truck rally. I'll never forget it; he opened the gates, at least a little, and allowed me to meet the inner Greg House that he hid from the world. And that exhilarated me.
Steadily, he began to come out of his shell. He allowed himself more and more to outwardly show his inner feelings. I'm not arrogant enough (or naïve enough) to think that that was all my doing, because a portion of it was Wilson. But I'm sure I helped it along in my own, gentle way, similar and yet different from Wilson's. I helped House to live.
-------------000----------------
It was weird, because a small voice inside me ended up being glad that House was shot. He got the ketamine which took away the pain (at least for a while), and the bricks were flying left and right, the walls tumbling down. Freedom from the leg pain led to freedom for his true self. I'd never seen him look younger, happier, or more open.
Until it all came to a screeching halt. The ketamine wore off, Cuddy and Wilson lied to and manipulated him (this was why I was so opposed to the idea. I'm not saying I knew that the crash was to follow, but I figured that it wasn't a good idea to betray him just when he was beginning to step over the rubble. Wilson realized this, too, he told me later, but not in time to stop it). We were back to where we started. Worse than where we started, because the walls towered higher than ever.
So this time I had to use drastic measures to get my point across, because my old ways were too much like Wilson's failing ones. I became fussy and combatative. I became a more dominant presence, a tougher one. In short, I became like House (though never completely as misanthropic, sarcastic, or miserable. I don't think I could have if I tried.) I was giving him a taste of his own medicine, to make him see what he was doing and how it affected the people around him, as well as what it did to himself.
The others caught on, too, and began to rebel a bit, but they never understood why they should be doing it. They'd just had enough of his crap. Nevertheless, it was working. The bricks were crumbling a bit.
----------00------------------
I fully credit Detective Tritter for the final wake-up call. I might have thanked him for it, had I not been so busy hating him for putting House through all of that. But it did help lower the wall. He saw the evil side of human nature through Tritter's vindictive fury, but also the good kind, through Cuddy perjuring herself (a major shocker for everyone involved), and the rest of us still sticking by him. He realized that people wouldn't hurt him all the time.
My (and Tritter's) not-so-gentle prodding worked marvelously. The walls were slowly but steadily falling. You could see it in the fact that he went back to talking with patients, in the subtle changes beginning to occur in his interactions with his colleagues. He was still House, but in a slightly kinder, less abrasive way.
And then he fired Chase. I'm not a mind reader or a psychologist, but I think I know why he did it. Chase's manner of behaving wasn't making his task any easier. Foreman's resignation sparked that idea in him, because it made House see all the more clearly that his barriers were hurting him more as a person than they were protecting him from harm. I think he wanted it to be as easy as possible to let the walls down and something about Chase made it hard. Maybe it was because they came from completely different worlds. Or maybe it was because they were just as similar to each other as he and Foreman were. I don't know that, only that he fired him.
And when he did, I knew I'd done all I could. I resigned. I resigned, but didn't leave the hospital. I needed him to know that I hadn't rejected the real him, but rather was stepping back to allow it to shine through.
I resigned because it's up to him now. I handed him the sledgehammer, but only he can wield it. Only he can tear down those walls that keep him from true happiness.
---------0---------
And maybe, just maybe, that sledgehammer runs on electricity, Cameron thought with a smile as she watched House, finally discharged, leave the hospital with Wilson, a spring in his step despite the limp.
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Please tell me what you think of the story!