A.N.: I do not own House MD. The assholes who do already ran it into the ground. I'm just still dealing with all my feelz. The song that inspired this one shot is "Like We Never Loved At All" by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. Go listen to it. You will understand my pain.

How can you just walk on by without one tear in your eye?
Don't you have the slightest feelings left for me?
Maybe that's just your way of dealing with the pain
Forgetting everything between our rise and fall
Like we never loved at all.

Cuddy had thought that the whole thing was a bluff. He couldn't possibly go through with it. Since he had returned to work after his spiral of hookers and Vicodin he had been pushing all of her buttons getting her to fold left and right. A new flat screen tv for his office. Letting him roll around on that damn segway. It all played perfectly on her guilt. She deserved it. She deserved it for abandoning him. She should feel bad. She did feel bad, but this wedding? It was cruel.

The invitation had been to hurt her. She knew he was throwing a low blow. The decision was there in her own hands. Should she go? After all, she had finally taken back all the slack she had given him. Wilson was right, no matter what her guilt was playing at she couldn't let him go out of control. If she showed, maybe it would stop him. Maybe it would all be a joke. So she would go. Certainly he would stop it if he saw her there. They weren't so far gone that there was no turning back.

But as she stood there at Wilson's side she knew for certain that this was no joke. He wasn't going to take it back. Chase was conducting the ceremony, and this was all for real. There standing in the same living room where House had first told her that he loved her he was going to marry another woman. A fucking hooker or pedicurist or whatever the hell it was that she did, that was who he was going to marry. It was an enormous slap in the face, a punch to the gut.

She had thought often of marrying him. Actually she had thought often of if he would ever marry her. He didn't seem like the marrying type. Commitment wasn't exactly his forte, but then there had been so many times when she had just been with him there in his arms where she swore that he would have wanted that forever. She was happy to live there under the intensity of his stare. He might have failed in the simple things that most people took for granted in a relationship, but questioning his devotion was not something she did. Sure she got mad. Sure she wondered if he actually had what it took to make it long term, but his love? No, he loved her. Maybe not enough, but it was still there.

Their gazes locked right in the middle of it, and that disgustingly smug smirk actually brought bile up her throat burning all along the way. She was sure she would vomit there on the spot. He was enjoying her pain, and she had never hated him more because of it.

He said I do (or his version of it), and she was done. She couldn't take it anymore. Her presence hadn't stopped him. If anything it must have fueled his resolution to do it. Her hand grazed Wilson's shoulder to let him know she had to go, and she escaped out the front door before the marriage could be sealed with a kiss.

The cool of the night air nipped at her exposed skin, but it didn't even register. Her sobs were audible, echoing through the street as she struggled to pull herself together. Lisa Cuddy was so strong. She fought against men and women of power and won. She decided that she wanted a child, and found her own way of getting one. She was not, however, unbreakable. If she had thought that breaking up with him was the hardest thing she had ever done, she was wrong. Attending his wedding was far far worse.

"Do you need a tissue?"

His voice broke through the sobbing that had hit her so hard she struggled to even breathe, "Go.. Away.." She managed to choke out, shifting her face slightly more towards the brick wall that she had leaned herself up against for support. The last thing she needed was for House to use this against her for the rest of their days. They might not be in a relationship anymore, but they still had to work together, God help them.

"You interrupted my wedding. If anyone should be bitching it should be me." She couldn't see it, but she could hear the smirk he was wearing.

In an instant she was rounding on him, "Fuck you, and fuck your wedding!" She yelled through her tears throwing her hand out towards the entrance to the apartment complex, "You got what you wanted, House! You hurt me, as if I wasn't already hurting enough, you selfish bastard! Did you think I walked away unscathed!? Did you think it wasn't killing me to see you and not have you!? Did you think I haven't cried myself to sleep every fucking night because you weren't beside me knowing that instead some fucking hooker got to be there with you?! You were wrong! I've been dying inside this whole time! A part of me thought that you would come back. A small part of me thought you would stop circling the fucking drain, and ask me for a second chance. Instead you did this! You got married, and now there can never be an us! You have her, and I fucking hate you! I hate you, House! I hope you are happy with yourself." She was gasping for air again as the sheer weight of what she felt crashed down around her again. There was no stopping it. Misery pulled her under drowning her in her own tears right there in front of 221 Baker Street.

House stayed silent the whole time she ranted his hands shoved in his pockets, and his gaze set on her as if he was trying to diagnose a particularly interesting new puzzle. He waited until she had calmed down enough to breath properly again then took a step towards her so she wouldn't struggle to hear what he had to say, "Screw you, Cuddy." Three small words spoken in so calm a tone that they actually seemed ten times harsher than if he had screamed them at her.

He watched as her eyes grew wide with confusion before he elaborated, "You abandoned me. I slipped up once, and you just took off. The very idea that you might die literally tore me from the inside out, so I took one pill to dull the pain. I took it so that I could be with you, because otherwise I knew I would never have the strength I needed to be the man you needed me to be. I wanted to be there at your side, so I did what I had to do to get me there. It wasn't about leaving you alone. It was about doing what had to be done so that you wouldn't be alone."

"Life is pain." She countered only to be met with him literally snarling at her.

"Who are you to tell me about pain, Cuddy!?" Another step forward and they were in each other's personal space for the first time since the break up, "I live with pain every day. You know nothing of real pain. You said we were supposed to be there for each other, and yet you left me alone in mine. There was no talk of second chances or rehab. You didn't check on me. Nothing. We were supposed to average our misery."

At any other time she might have smiled at the memory of having to scare him speechless to get him to deal with her mother with her, but there was no way she was going to smile in the wake of all that he had told her. She never once considered that he had done what he had to to be there for her. All she saw was that he was hiding from her pain. What about his pain? Still, his actions afterward were reprehensible, "Why didn't you try to come and talk to me?"

"I'm not exactly the forgive and forget type, Cuddy. Why didn't you try to stop me?"

She shrugged a little, "My pride was hurt. You had women in your bed before my place in it was even cold. I kept hoping you might stop long enough to miss me. You never did."

His head shook ever so slightly, "There has never been a moment when I didn't miss you."

Tears still poured down her cheeks, but they came slower now, "I should have talked it out with you, but.. I was just so hurt. So scared. It's not just about me anymore. I can't have Rachel around drugs. I panicked. It was so stupid."

"Maybe I should have tried harder to get you to listen. I've been stupid too." He admitted with a shrug, "You were just more stupid." He chanced a tease just to lighten the mood.

Her eyes rolled slipping oh so easily back into their banter, "You just got hitched to a hooker. I think you are far more stupid."

"I didn't marry her." House stated plainly as if he was telling her he didn't buy a certain book he had said that he would.

Confusion was written clearly on her face, "House I was just in there. You got married."

A smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, and his hands found their way naturally to her narrow waist to pull her closer, "You left before we sealed the deal. I was waiting for you to do something. Leaving was good enough for me, even if I would have preferred an objection. Though I guess sobbing and screaming like a maniac outside is dramatic enough."

The full weight of her little outburst finally hit her, and her hands flew quickly to cover her face, "Oh my God. Your neighbors! Everyone at the wedding…." Anything further that she could have said was quickly cut off by House taking hold of her wrists to pull her hands away from her face.

"Screw 'em." He muttered before pressing his lips to hers.

There in the middle of the sidewalk they kissed like they had never kissed before. He poured every emotion he felt for her into that kiss, and she did the same for him. Finally they allowed themselves to be fully vulnerable together. So much miscommunication between them had led to their demise the first time. One would only hope that they would learn from that mistake. Together they could listen more, be more patient. They had all of the potential in the world, and if they were smart they would accept their second chance and use it for all that it was worth.