Notes: Title is from "Shine a Light" by the Rolling Stones. This is a companion piece to Pandorama's "Sympathy for the Devil." No spoilers post 5 to 9. Set vaguely s6 (I like to think she's just left Lucas) Reviews are appreciated. Thanks for reading.
Shine a Light
The keys are clanging in her cold palm.
She hadn't meant to come here. Yet she put the key in the ignition and sped as if it were an emergency, as if their lives depended on it. She parked and resisted all logic, without hesitation.
Now she can only listen and remember as the echo of every footstep brings her closer.
-
She wasn't looking for trouble then, or for him. She was overly ambitious, still green as an undergrad with a formidable chip on her shoulder and he was an ornery novice, a brilliant ornery novice inching closer to the inevitability of expulsion.
The halls of the hospital were too quiet. It was early morning in Michigan and even the nurses were brewing prescription strength Arabica. Cuddy was there with her roommate who was being x-rayed after a nasty inebriated fall before sunrise. Restless in the waiting room, Cuddy regretted bringing no books to study and opted to wander the halls while her girlfriend got fitted for a plaster cast.
It was a dull stroll until she saw him, blue lazy youth, scrubs and long legs and
Nikes dangling off the bottom of the bed. He was House, stretched out and she
stared until a pager sounded and he saw her, watching him. A smile filled his face,
a proud gleam in his eye. A lyric on his lips as she rushed away: You could be mine.
They'd talk in the bookstore. She'd find him in Endocrinology, rest her head on his shoulder, feel his hand on the small of her back days later when they danced to that song she'd never forget. The time between their first glance and last kiss she would fall for him.
He was arrogant, selfish, uncontrollable. Yet she wanted to save him without changing him. Each flaw was married to a passionate energy that transcended it. Every reason why they shouldn't, or couldn't became harder to justify until the day Lisa Cuddy the coed realized love was the word, a vast word that meant nothing before this, before him.
They would have one night. One night spent plunging into the brevity of oblivion, together, one night with no words, no promises or plans made, no regrets except knowing it would never be enough.
The light of the next morning shone soft through thin drapes. House was still beside her when she first opened her eyes, but she dozed back off and woke again to see he was gone. She thought he'd call. When he didn't, Cuddy knew she had lost something, and worse, she knew that it had all meant nothing.
-
She hadn't been pining for reunion, though she'd never forgotten him. It took three days before his chart was handed to her, until he requested her. The name House she hadn't heard in how long, and there was that instantaneous pang at seeing another woman by his side.
She argued amputation and he fought her. Two legs or the rest of his life, and only he would gamble against a clot, toss the dice to let them tumble toward white complex tachycardia.
It was her hands holding the paddles, her stethoscope against his rising chest, his heart beating because
of her.
The surgery was a compromise, the metaphorical middle ground that would save his life. Mutilating a limb would leave him lesser than she remembered. And the guilt, she couldn't blame him if he never forgave her. But he would walk, work, he'd have a tomorrow. A tomorrow where he'd hit rock bottom and she'd reach out her hand and hire him. A tomorrow where the light of the operating table didn't glare off his powerless frame.
A tomorrow with her.
-
She didn't pull the trigger but a message to her might have been his last words. No panic could compare to hearing he'd been shot. Twice. She watched the surgery to remove the bullets, administered the ketamine herself. It was her flashlight shining bright into his eyes as soon as he woke. Her sigh of relief was the first sound he heard. House answered with groggy appreciation.
"Cuddy." He blinked until his blinded blurred vision could focus.
"My leg. It doesn't hurt."
The pain was gone, and she was ecstatic beneath the white tailored veil of rational composure. Cuddy had been forcing detachment from the insensitive asset for so long that it wasn't hard not to hug him. It didn't taint the victory of seeing him turn down the dosage of his morphine drip, or watching his first steps without the cane.
He took time off and she let him recover. Her daily routine had revolved around his antics and interjections. She missed him and wondered at what point she had become emotionally dependent upon what other's could only see as an expensive nuisance.
Cuddy saw him once that summer, running early through her neighborhood. She wondered how far he was from his starting line and was torn between hollering a hello and leaving well enough alone.
If he could run around he might come around, cross the bridge that had come between them and let her
love him.
Or, she augured, turning her back on the runner and getting in her car, it might only be a tortuous respite, as fleeting as their one night.
-
She couldn't grasp his obsession with solving the puzzle of the anonymous bus passenger. How it all started with him stumbling drunk in an alley, feeling his best friend had abandoned him––the self pity he could never forgive himself for––didn't matter to her when his heart stopped.
Every regret, wasted time and words unsaid—donors and departments and unquelled doubts—she couldn't watch him die again. Her lips fell on his, bringing him back as the overcast spring day paled through the windows of a Princeton crosstown. Then relief, ineffable relief when he gasped with an epiphany that would only postpone the undeniable until the night she lost Joy and he reciprocated the rescue.
-
Cuddy's ability to save him House almost intuits, and has certainly taken advantage of. It's cost millions, tried patience and undammed rivers of tears. Through it all the perpetrator has somehow become the victim. Or maybe he was all along. That her constancy was a delusion, that House had to hallucinate a happy ending, could only imagine another night with her, savior Cuddy has been dissecting and reconsidering.
She knows their shared past doesn't promise them a future, but it has given them an intimacy immune to interference, alteration and, she realizes with more certainty in her stride, time.
Wilson is on call tonight, sitting bedside while another patient dies. She made sure he was still there, made sure House would be alone and even thought of having Wilson's car impounded. No interruptions, not even his altruistic blessing or I told you so.
She knocks, her knuckles striking softly against the door that should be hers. She waits. A part of her wants to run away because she could be wrong or it could be too late. How many chances they've fought and forfeited. The part of her that's stronger keeps her heels grounded. It's the part that loves him, because of everything they've endured, together, and in spite of the fact he might never love her back. Not the same way, nobody could. For months she's wondered if he's been healed enough to try.
The keys slide out of her now clammy palm and it's the sound of them dropping that House hears, opening the door.
"If you're here to take the condo back by coup––"
"I'm not," she says smiling diffidently and it's been forever since he's seen Partypants lacking confidence. House shuffles out of the way and lets her in.
He tries to deduce her motives for the late night house call, why she seems nervous but ebullient. Her words offer no clues since she's ranting about malaria and how he handled his last case so he sits down, stretches his arm behind her and says,
"Why are you really here?"
Then it fractures under the weight of all their mistakes and before he can blink, Cuddy's lips are pressed to his. He's still midword with his mouth open and his heart's pounding above where she's unbuttoning. The unexpected thrill of kissing Cuddy is resurrected but this time there's no music and no remorse.
This time she's saving herself.