Disclaimer: I do not own anything. I'm just borrowing the characters. I promise I'll give them back.
Summary: Wilson's ghosts come to play at night. Wilson-centric. Not set in a specific season.
Author's note: After a long – very long- break, I finally had the inspiration for another fic. I hope that I haven't lost my touch… It's been… 5 years! Time goes by faster than it seems….
I think this story will have 3 chapters. Or 4, depending on how it turns out. Hope you'll enjoy! =] Reviews are appreciated. ^_^
Author's note bis: English isn't my mother tongue, even though it has improved over the 4-5 years that I've been absent from this site. =]
The Dreamer's Complex
Chapter One: The Boy in the Grey Hallway
Somehow the door to my life is locked and I don't understand how to open it again. (Stig Dagermann)
He is standing in an empty grey hallway. Judging by the familiar abandoned beds placed along the decaying walls, and the various items – syringes, scalpels, perfusions bags and latex gloves – left on the handcart, he is standing in a grey hospital hallway.
He already knows that it's not PPTH. And he already knows what's going to happen, so he stalls. The best he can. Because he still hopes that if he stalls long enough, if he finally finds the right amount of stalling he has to do, he can maybe change the outcome that's bound to happen.(Even though he knows in the back of his mind – the rational part, the part which would make House proud of him – that if something is bound to happen, it is going to happen. Sooner or later.) With any luck, it will happen later. Or never. (Wishful thinking)
He rouses from his thoughts to take a look at his surroundings. Even if it's stuck on repeat, some little details change. Not enough to alter the course of future events though.
At first glance, nothing is out of the ordinary. The hospital beds are still at the exact same place along the walls: two on the right side, five on the left side. The fours rooms – two on each side – are patient-free. And furniture-free. The four rooms just have four greyish walls. The door is still standing in front of him, at the very end of the hallway. The wavering neon light is still giving an eerie feeling to the place. But the most important thing that has never changed is the silence. The heavy, frightening Silence. (A capital "s" is needed, because the Silence itself feels like an intimate friend – it has accompanied him countless times in here – and like the closest foe – squalor and horror need the Silence to blossom. It's the kind of Silence that one can feel before an impeding doom. The kind of Silence that tells, no screams, to you "DANGER!" The one that appeals to the basic animal instinct: flight.
He tries to shake off his gloomy thoughts and tries to take a tentative small (he is still stalling after all) step forward. Then a second step. And another. And another. He has made 12 small steps before he notices a shining object on the second bed on his left. Something that wasn't there before. Walking towards the bed he remembers a quote he read a long time ago. That never changes too. The need to express his thoughts out loud to fight the oppressing silence that's threatening the well-being of his already fragile nerves. The need to feel alive in this deadly atmosphere. So he recites the bit of poem. His voice, as always, is quivering. With fear? Probably. With hopelessness? Certainly. With desperation? Definitely.
"When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
For I had lost the path that does not stray"
Although he's not in a forest in the literal sense of the word, he did loose the path that does not stray. He wonders if he will ever find it again. And he has already lived half of his life. No need to pretend that he is young. His best days are behind him, and he dreads to know what will happen to him in the remaining half of his life. (He's a doctor. He's aware that the second half of his life is not going to be as pleasant as the first half.) A sudden wave of weariness envelops him and he again fights off his pessimistic thoughts. (Even if he knows that it's a useless action, he still does it because normalcy is all he has left in here. Because it gives him a sense of comfort.)
Finally standing near the bed, he takes the object in his hands.
It's a box. A simple, plain iron box. Large enough to be taken with two hands, the box is surprisingly heavy. Wondering what might be in it (and happy to find good reason to stall), he carefully opens the box.
Nothing. Empty.
And then suddenly he remembers where the box came from. Who gave it to him. And most importantly, for what purposes it was given to him.
NB: The quote is taken from "Inferno", part of Dante's Divine Comedy.