A/N: Instead of going straight to the House/Cuddy goodness like a good little Huddy fan post-finale, I chose to write something a little different first: how Cuddy broke it to Lucas that she's going to break off their engagement.

Timeline was a little sketchy in the epi, but in Zay-land, House went into Cuddy's office with the book around nine-thirty, got to the site by ten, spent four hours with Hannah and left the crash site around two in the morning…Cuddy came over to House's place maybe around six-thirty, seven…which leaves us several hours unaccounted for. That's where this story takes place.

Enjoy – and review! I hope it goes okay, because I tried my best…

Mood music: Uncertainty (The Fray)

Resolution
By: Zayz

Cuddy steps into the room still in her pink scrubs, straight from the hospital site, and instantly Lucas knows that she wants to talk. Now.

That's the first sign of trouble. She doesn't go upstairs to change into her everyday clothes; she doesn't want to look or feel normal again. She is dirty, exhausted, and could probably use a shower.

That, and she's not wearing the ring. She's holding it in her hands, playing with it, rather than letting it sit where it belongs, on her left finger.

Instantly, when he takes in the sight of her as he comes out of his food-and-late-night-TV coma, he can tell something is off.

"Lucas." She says his name softly, wearily.

"Lisa." His tone is more alarmed, a little startled. He is as relaxed as she is not, lying on the couch with his feet up on the coffee-table, cups and a couple of candy wrappers beside him. The TV glows, the warble of some sit-com quiet so as not to wake Rachel. Briefly, he glances at the clock next to him and finds that it is two-thirty in the morning.

"You're late," he notes. "I was waiting for you."

She smiles wryly. "A crane fell on a building. We had a lot of people to take care of. I told you I'd be obscenely late."

"I know," says Lucas, sitting up straighter on the couch, turning off the TV and taking his feet off the table, so as to look less bum-like. "But still. I missed you."

He scoots over to make room for her next to him on the couch, his smile inviting, his arms loose and open for her. But she can see the concern carefully hidden behind his eyes. He isn't stupid; he is sure something is off and he is right.

Cuddy purses her lips and walks slowly towards Lucas. She moves over the cups of coffee on the table and sits on that instead of the sofa. They are now at eye level, she across from him, and he can smell the dirt on her, see the dried blood on her scrubs and her hands. Up close, she looks even more exhausted than he initially thought.

Gently, he puts his hand on top of her hand, the one holding the ring. It's a protective gesture, one of concern, affection, calmness. She looks harried, her hair wild around her face, but he is still. And his hand is on hers.

"So…is everything okay now?" he asks her.

"We got the victims of the accident safely into the hospital," says Cuddy. "We saved as many as we could. We got most of them. All our nurses are staying the night to look after them, so they're in good hands if anything happens. I made sure of it, which is why I'm even later than I'd wanted to be."

"Well…that's good," says Lucas genuinely.

"What about here?" she asks. "How's Rachel?"

"Rachel is fine," he assures her. "I gave her dinner at seven and she was asleep by eight. She's been sleeping ever since."

Cuddy breathes a sigh of relief.

"Okay," she says. "Good."

And, feeling guilty—

"What about you? How are you doing?"

"Good," says Lucas pleasantly. "Fortunately for you, you have a fiancé who is accustomed to crazy hours."

She tries to smile, but he said it. That word they have never said aloud until this moment; that word which has been whirring through her mind at top speed in endless circles. Her inner medical nerd likens it to the electron whizzing around the nucleus, restless and feverish and full of dangerous energy.

As of last night, Lucas is indeed her fiancé.

Fiancé.

It sounds so official when that word is finally in the air.

She sighs painfully and purses her lips again; and in that second, he now knows what this is about. He increases the pressure of his hand on hers, every kind of protective – self-protective included. By holding her there, he's trying to protect himself from having her walk away from him and the life he has asked her to lead with him. He's protecting himself from whatever potentially destructive murk lurks in her head. His eyes are worried as he takes in her face, tries to analyze her mood.

Then, finally, she says, "Lucas, we have to talk."

"What do you want to talk about?"

He doesn't mean to, but a note of defensiveness stains his tone and it's already out in the open between them by the time he realizes it. She seems to shrink a little at the sound of it, but her determination to have this obviously difficult conversation trumps her desire to keep her mouth shut.

So she bravely says, "I want to talk about us."

"What about us?"

His light blue eyes should be clear, like clean pool water, but she finds them clouded over a little. He's on the defensive, letting her take the lead so that he can watch her strategy and match it. He's real there, right in front of her, sitting on the couch – their couch, the one they bought together that happy afternoon at the furniture store, with Rachel tranquilized by ice cream in her stroller, the two of them bouncing on sofas like children and laughing as they tried to find the perfect one for their new home.

He's been with her all year, taking care of her and her baby, helping her find some direction in her life. She wasn't in a good place when she met him, but now she is in a good place and she knows it's because of him. He's been patient and funny and he makes her feel good. He does. He moved in with her and she was happiest when they just sat around together, watching TV, Rachel sitting between them.

When she talks herself through it in her head, he is perfect. He is everything she needs right now. He is reliable – but more than that, he is safe.

She never has to worry about whether he will be home when he said he would, whether he means what he says. He treats her well and she likes that. She likes feeling like things are going right, for once. She likes knowing there's going to be something there for her, ready to help her if she needs it, pick up the phone and listen to her cry if that's what she wants.

And yet, she is sitting on their coffee table, wearing her pink scrubs, sweaty and dirty and in desperate need of some sleep, about to say the hardest thing she's ever had to say.

She swallows thickly and the conclusion – horrible as it is – is cemented in her head. She must approach this with the deadly calm of her inner medical nerd, looking objectively and calmly at something that could up being messy.

"Lucas," she says, "I don't think we should get married."

Lucas starts, his eyes widening slightly. On some level, he comprehends the meaning of these words; but on another, it's like she hasn't spoken them at all.

"Wait…what?"

"I don't think we should get married," Cuddy repeats, softer and quieter and sadder this time, as the truth of it sets into both of them.

Instinctively, he looks down at their hands, his still on top of hers. But then she frees her hand opens lets her fingers open like a flower in bloom, the ring sitting in the palm of her dirty hand. It's silver, with a nice-sized diamond in the middle, and it's beautiful, no doubt about it. But she places it with the precision of a surgeon into the palm of his hand and closes his fingers around it.

He looks her in the eye, slightly thunderstruck but restraining himself admirably, and he asks the simple question:

"Why?"

But simple questions almost never have simple answers and she knows that. They both know that. So he holds the ring in his hand and he waits for her to gather the right words in her numb, shell-shocked brain; he lets this go out of his hands for a minute and waits for her to come up with that complicated answer that will surely break both of their hearts.

She tries to think intelligently, to phrase this in a way that would minimize his hurt and her guilt; but then it strikes her that she is tired of pretending. She is tired of phrasing eloquently feelings and truths that are ugly, brutal, stark. She's been through enough tonight; she's done with being politically correct.

No over-emotional tantrums, but no detached calm either. She just says what is whizzing through her mind right this second.

"I can't do this," she says. "I mean, I've tried to let this relationship unfold and go where it may – I really have. That's what you told me to do, when we first started out and I had my doubts. You wanted to give it a try. And so we did.

"It sounds perfect, the little family of three. We're pretty well-matched in personality and in occupation: we both have weird hours, but between us, we manage to keep things going. There's always milk in the refrigerator and I'm not going broke paying my nanny to be here every single hour of every single day, because I know someone will be there at least some of the time. We go out to eat; we watch movies; we play with Rachel. But…I don't know. Sometimes I just lie awake at night and wonder if this is it. If 'nice' is all I'm ever going to feel."

Lucas listens attentively, but something deadens behind his eyes as her words and their meanings filter their way into his brain, one by one.

"So…you're saying you're bored," he says, something dead in his voice too.

It sounds awful when he puts it like that, but it's honest. And it's true. She's bored and that's the ugly, brutal, and stark truth of the matter.

"I'm sorry," she says gently. "I am. But…I can't do this."

"Last night you thought you could," he reminds her, somewhat bitterly. "What changed?"

She shrugs, the tiredness even more potent in her face, in her deflated posture. "Nothing," she says sadly. "That's the problem. It's always been like this. I thought I could ignore it…but now I know I can't."

"What about this relationship is so boring to you?" Lucas asks – no, demands – regaining some of his gusto as he passes from shock to anger. "That I actually care about you and your values? That I don't go through your desk or harass you everyday? That I'm not a manipulative bastard dedicated to making everyone's life miserable, including my own?"

The insinuations are cutting and highly obvious. It's almost embarrassing how much so. Granted, she's said the same things many times herself, but it still makes her cheeks color to hear them spat like that from his mouth, in this context.

"This has nothing to do with House," she says flatly.

"It has everything to do with House," Lucas tells her, his voice like cold hard steel. "It always has."

"It doesn't," she repeats, a little more firmly. "This is about you and me."

"Lisa…" It's late and he's tired and she's even more so, but suddenly he becomes the wary one – the wary one with grit in his voice and a bitter, resentful anger welling up to the surface.

"What?"

"You love him," Lucas informs her, his eyes right on hers, his words striking her like an arrow shot directly to the heart. "And he loves you. I'm just the guy in the middle; whatever you have for me, it's never going to match what you've got for him. And that's why you're trying to break off our marriage for him."

Cuddy sighs, pursing her lips again, wondering how to put this. The familiar impulse to sugar-coat and make do is tantalizing, but she can't do that anymore.

There's something about tonight, about the vast scope of tragedy and the inevitable truth of mortality she has witnessed, that pushes her out of her comfort zone, into what she knew she had to do all along.

"This isn't about House," she says. "It's not even about you and me. It's just about me. And this doesn't feel right anymore – to me." She pauses. "I don't want to settle. I want to be completely sure that this is what I want…and it isn't."

He grimaces slightly at the word 'settle,' but otherwise remains admirably cool. His poker face had always been better than hers.

"What happened at that accident site?" Lucas asks finally.

And all Cuddy can do is shrug, smile sadly, and say, "I don't know."

"So…you're sure about this," he double-checks.

It kills her a little inside, but she nods.

Lucas mulls on this a moment, his eyes faraway, focused on some horizon just above her left shoulder.

"Fine," he says at last. "Okay. Then that's that."

"I'm sorry," she says; and as he unwillingly looks her in the eye, he knows she means it.

"I'm sorry too," he says a little stiffly. "I mean, I kind of figured this might happen…but I was hoping I was wrong."

"I like you, Lucas, I do," she says a little desperately. "Just…not as a husband."

He nods, some of the poker face cracking to reveal a very hurt, recently rejected guy. "I get it," he says.

She feels terrible, worse than she had when she was driving here, the images of the accident still fresh in her mind, her stomach twisting in anticipation of what she had to do when she reached. But at the same time, there's an understanding now. He does get what she was trying to say. Whatever she so poorly articulated to explain the elusive emotion packed into her chest, it made sense to them both.

This relationship, whatever it was, cannot survive tonight. When it comes down to it, Cuddy is not serious enough to pursue this relationship any farther and Lucas doesn't know her well enough to back off as he should. He, in his dysfunctional way, tries to cling – he reaches his hand out and puts it on top of hers – but she is limp underneath, resolute.

For him, she was it, the smart, beautiful woman who gave him a reason to reconsider his bachelorhood; but for her, he was just an intermission, a fling after many years of loneliness, a desperate attempt to prove to herself that she can maintain her end of a relationship. The emotional chasm ended up getting the better of them both.

Lucas stands up from the couch and, following his lead, Cuddy stands up from the table. The house is silent, still, and it feels like they are the only two people alive at this unearthly hour, somewhere between night and day, fittingly in-limbo. Lucas holds the ring, glinting silver in the dim light, and slips it into his pocket. Swallowing thickly, the guilt coursing through her, Cuddy comes forward first and hugs him. She fits perfectly in the scope of his arms, feeling his warm weight through the pink scrubs. He squeezes her tightly for a moment and then lets her go. Instantly, the warmth is gone and she is left in just the pink scrubs, feeling emptier than ever.

"You can stay here," Lucas tells her, almost as an afterthought. "I still have my own place. I never sold it."

"You didn't?" This thought never crossed her mind. He had been living with her so long that she never bothered to wonder what happened to his old flat.

"No," he says. "In my experience, you always need to have a back-up option."

She blushes slightly pink, but there's no bitterness in his voice this time. Just practicality; just the need to move forward and brush this off. He is not the type of person to dwell. He never has been. It hurts too much.

"Good night," says Cuddy softly.

And, just as softly, he tells her, "You mean, good-bye."

They look at each other for a few more seconds, as though trying to commit the moment to memory, but she knows they shouldn't make it more sentimental than it needs to be. She leans in and kisses him briefly on the lips – the last time she will ever do so – and he opens the door to leave.

"I'll come in tomorrow to pick up my stuff," he says.

"I'll probably be at work all day, so you can come in whenever you want," she says.

He gives her a nod of acknowledgement; and, without another word, he's out the door and into the night, going goodness knows where. Maybe to his old place; maybe to a friend's. It's no longer her business where – and suddenly, despite everything, that hurts.

Her heart pounding both far too fast and far too slow, she closes the door and the quiet is almost suffocating. As though in a dream, she goes to the kitchen and starts up the coffee-maker. She waits as it heats up and pulls a mug out of the cabinet – the blue one saying 'sexy' that Lucas found at some weird little shop near a stake-out location and bought for her last week. She is lost in thought when the coffee-maker whistles, it takes her completely by surprise.

She pours the coffee into the mug and takes a tiny sip. It's scalding, ready to burn her tongue, but that suits her mood right now. She takes another tiny sip.

The house is so damn quiet. She drinks her coffee slowly, time a shapeless umbrella over her head, ceasing to matter, her thoughts straying farther than she ever lets them, lost in all the space they've suddenly been given.

It's been said that the person you think about first when tragedy hits is the person that means the most to you; and God, standing here now, in this kitchen she furnished with Lucas, there's only one person she can think of.

And in that instant – leaning against her counter with the scalding coffee in her hand, exhausted and recently separated from the man she thought she loved, alone in this dimly-lit house besides her sleeping baby – she knows.

Adrenaline helpfully beginning its course through her body to wake her up, with nothing more to lose tonight but everything to gain, she leaves the 'sexy' mug on the counter, picks up her keys from the table, and makes her way to her car, ready to be honest one more time before the day fully breaks.

A/N: And there you have it. A House one-shot, finished in the heat of my hideous writer's block. You have no idea the effort it took to write this; but I had to. It's a story that needed to be told – and regardless of my success, I told it. Bite me.

Or, you know, scratch that. Don't bite me. Review instead. That would be more productive for us both, I think.

Cheers…