Sooo, every summer I say "I'm going to write so much!" and then I don't... But I've started this story and the sequel to ATB, which I'm sorry to say will be on the back burner for a bit because I need to get out of that universe for a little while, but have no fear, you'll get it in due time! Meanwhile, you can have this! There are several chapters already written. You can blame Marlene ( surviva_chick) for the shortness of this chapter because she insisted it needs to end on a cliff hanger. Also this is entitled after the song "The Last Time" by Taylor Swift, listen to it and you'll understand why. Special thanks to Ali (givemekevinbacon), Marlene, Kelly, and Dengel for their encouragement and critiques, as well as dealing with my relentless emails. I'll post the next chapter soonish. Let me know what you think in your reviews!
It had been forty – eight hours on the dot since Wilson's heart had given out and his suffering had ended. Gregory House had consumed a grand total of thirty tablets of Vicodin. The immunity his body had created against the powerful narcotic had caused him to resort to higher levels of the drug to attempt to numb his pain; both physical and emotional. Thirty pills in forty – eight hours, and the pain had yet to cease.
He leaned against the wall, in a far of corner of the crowded synagogue. He couldn't help but let a small smile escape through as he noted the copious amounts of people there to pay their respects.
His eyes were locked on the closed mahogany casket across the room. Wilson had requested it be a closed casket funeral; he wanted to be remembered at his best, not the ghost of the man he had been. He wanted to cause less pain to those already mourning his loss. Always like him to care more about others, even until his dying breath.
House respected his best friend's wishes. In all honesty, he didn't want anyone to see Wilson's corpse as it was. There had been bags beneath his eyes, his cheek bones as prominent as they had been when they had met, the deterioration of his health causing his skin to sag as he lost weight, his bones becoming more pronounced. He wanted Wilson to be remembered at his best.
He was pulled from his thoughts as he noted a petite figure clad in black move towards him through his peripheral view. His heart rate increased as the figure came nearer walking with the determined stride he had observed so many times in the last decade, but had not witnessed in over two years.
She didn't know what emotions she was feeling; she only knew that majority of her felt numb. She was never one too comfortable with death. After being Chief Administrator for so long she had forgotten what it was like to be faced with death every day. She knew that deaths were occurring around her, but she was never the one to be there to experience the loss of a human life first hand, or to be the one to break the news to the family members of the deceased. There were rarities where she was there when a life could not be saved or worse yet she would be the one to be the bearer of bad news, but the losses of the ones she held dear where the ones that never occurred to her as a possibility.
She found it hysterical that the possibility of Wilson dying before her had never occurred to her, but as she approached the man's best friend, the absurdity of it all struck her as unbelievable. Wilson was never the one who was supposed to die first. It was supposed to be either her or House. They had always thought it would have been House, and he almost had been the first to go, several times, but they had never once thought it would have been Wilson.
It occurred to her that she had not seen the figure she had expected to find looming in the background, hidden from view, seeing as he was supposed to be dead to the world but she was one of the very few who knew he was indeed not.
It had been two years since she had last seen him. She couldn't help but feel a jolt of anticipation as she scanned the crowd in the small synagogue where the funeral of one of her closest friends was being held, but she spotted him along the back, hidden within the shadows just as she had expected. He shouldn't have been there, but she knew that he would not be able to forgive himself if he did not attend the funeral of the one person who had stuck with him when she couldn't.
She often wondered how things had been after she had left; if it had been difficult for him to move on from her, if he had even tried to move on from her. God knows she had tried to move on from him and had failed. There was no comparison to the feelings she still felt for House, regardless of his insanity and the most volatile act that she had ever seen him commit against another person, - that person, sadly being her – she still felt something for the man.
Cuddy stood from her seat at the front of the synagogue and approached the secluded corner where she had spotted him just minutes earlier, leaning against the wall.
She hadn't seen him in over two years, and if she hadn't known who he was, she wouldn't have recognized him. The lines on House's face were so much deeper, his hair greyer than ever, his eyes bloodshot, and his overall demeanor defeated. She hadn't seen him look like that since he had left for rehab years earlier.
It made her pity him.
She pitied him because he had to endure the loss of his best friend alone, without the support of anyone else. She pitied him because he had to watch as the life was drained from the one person who had ever truly cared about him enough to be completely selfless for his well-being rather than their own.
Not only did she pity him, but as she looked up at him and felt his piercing blue eyes analyze her to the core, she also pitied herself, for allowing herself to pity him. If it were anyone else, they would not deserve her pity, but it was him. No matter what he did, he would always be deserving of what he least deserved from her.
They stood in silence as they stared at one another; the air tense with words left unsaid that needed saying.
He could not believe that she was standing in front of him, her cool grey eyes staring up at him as he looked down at her.
He certainly would not have believed what happened next had he not felt the sting of her palm across his face.