"H'lo?" she slurred, her face pressed awkwardly against the receiver.
"Come home," said House on the other end, and hung up. She tried to stare at the phone in her hand but she couldn't seem to focus on it in the dark, and she fell asleep with the thing jammed into her pillow, almost bruising her cheekbone.
When she woke up again, she called in sick and booked a plane ticket to Princeton.
On the plane she had second thoughts. She hadn't told Alex where she was going exactly; she'd left him a note, but he'd worry. She couldn't have said anything more than that she'd be gone for a few days. She didn't know why she'd gone. She was happy in Oregon. She was happy without House. After she'd left PPTH, she'd never expected to hear from him again. Foreman emailed now and again, and Chase called to tease her about how he'd let her go for House and now she was with someone else, and how was that fair? but it was all good natured. Leaving House had been the best thing the three of them had ever done.
And now she was going back. One phone call, two words, and even now she wasn't sure it hadn't been a dream, except that her face was sore where the phone had been wedged against it, and the tone of his voice tugged at something behind her ribs. iCome home/i, whispered the voice in her head. His voice, still familiar after years. His voice like the voice out of the wilderness that she'd never believed in.
She swallowed hard against the pressure of the stale air and the chemical buttery taste of the airplane pretzels. California had been as far as she could go, and now this one call and she was going back. It wasn't fair. But it was House.
Security nodded her through at PPTH (no improvements there, she thought), and Diagnostics was where it had always been. He was sitting with his back to her, his hair a little thinner. The sun was setting and it put a halo around him, the light so bruisy and tarnished from the Jersey smog that it was almost appropriate. She stood in the doorway, her bag slung over her shoulder. It was like coming home after college, the absolute familiarity of the place and the sense that she'd outgrown it. Suddenly she was so weary that her bones ached. She dropped her bag on the footstool of the yellow chair and stood hipshot, leaning into the exhaustion.
"You came," he said without turning around.
"You called," she said, as if it were that simple.
He spun his chair. The sun gleamed as it slanted across his cheek, the light catching in the grizzle of stubble that seemed to have a lot more silver in it now. His shoulders were a little stooped as he levered himself up. He looked tired. He looked old. Something in her heart clenched like a sigh of regret, just for a second.
"Why did you do it?" she asked.
"My Gameboy broke," he said. "I had a lot of time to think."
"I left," she said. "I'm leaving again soon. I have a new life now, House. I have a good job at a good hospital. I have an apartment I love. I have a serious boyfriend who's probably going to propose in a month or so, and when he does, I'll say yes. Don't do this."
"You'd rather never know?" he asked, bracing one hand on his desk. "That's not what I taught you."
"It's too late, House."
"You were my girl," he said. "You were my faith in the world's sweet things."
"I'm not your girl anymore," she said, holding her chin high.
"No," he said, looking her over quietly. "No, you grew up."
"What do you want from me?"
He looked at the pale splay of his fingers on his desk. "Hope, I suppose. That I didn't destroy your life."
"Did you call Chase and Foreman?" she demanded.
"Chase called me," he said. "Wanted me to know that he was okay, despite everything. Wanted to know if I'd heard from you. Apparently you broke his tiny heart."
"He grew up too," she said. "Chase isn't my responsibility."
"No," he said seriously, and the light behind him made her eyes water. "You were all my responsibility and I did poorly by you. My road of good intentions led where everyone else's does. You know Foreman ran his car off the road last year?"
"I know," she said, "he called me. They thought it was a suicide attempt at first. He wanted me as a kind of character witness for when he went into therapy. Might have helped if you'd written up his charts better. The left/right reversal was a tough sell without any evidence."
"Amoebic brain damage is a lot less common than raging depression," said House. "Anyway, who knows? Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It wasn't as if he was happy."
"No," she said, and dropped into his yellow chair. "You pretty much took care of that."
"Yeah, but I had a head start. He was already miserable." House's mouth quirked and for an instant she saw the man who'd hired her. "You look good."
"Thank you." She'd gained a few pounds, she knew, but in all the right places. Happiness did that to a person, she wanted to say. He was thinner than he had been. She wondered how many milligrams a day he was up to. She wondered if Wilson and Cuddy had the energy to care anymore.
She wondered how she had ever had the energy to care.
"How are your new Fellows?" she asked.
"Useless," he said, picking up the cane. "Promising, though. Carlile actually made a decent joke the other day, and Bhat does good coffee. Cortez's superpower has not yet revealed itself."
Silence settled uneasily over the room like a screw-top that wouldn't thread correctly. Cameron looked through the wall into the conference room. The table was spread with papers. She wondered if the Fellows were down in the lab. Lambs to the slaughter, but she wasn't the woman to talk them out of it. They were here for a reason, just as she and Chase and Foreman and all the others had been. They all carried this thing in them. They wouldn't be better off for leaving.
"Well," she said, bracing her hands on her thighs. "You dragged me out here. The least you can do is buy me dinner."
"I've got a patient," he said. "Cuddy'll have my head if I leave."
When had he become whipped? "Cafeteria's fine."
He nodded. "You always were easy to please."
"Too bad you never did anything about it while I still worked here," she couldn't resist saying.
"Cameron," he said. "I don't regret it. A fellowship isn't supposed to last forever. I didn't do right by you, any of you, but you all did fine for yourselves. That's the way it's supposed to be."
"No," she said, standing up and walking over to him. His eyes as they tracked her were blue and shadowed like the ocean off the coast. "I don't accept that cruelty and indifference are the status quo. Not even for you. It meant more than that. Chase can't settle down. Foreman pops lithium like candy and he's still going to screw up his marriage because he's not over you. You made us these people and we were glad to be them, but we're still paying. We've just learned not to send you the bill. It's too late to show us that you care now, House."
He reached out and pressed two fingers under the right side of her jaw. She stood very still. His fingertips were rough and warm and dry against her skin. "You've still got a pulse," he said, and took his fingers away. She felt the ghost of pressure and had to clench her hands by her sides to keep from reaching up. He touched his own throat. "I've still got a pulse. It's not too late."
"I'm not your daughter," she said. "You don't need to fix it or provide for me. I do fine on my own."
"I'm not doing it out of obligation," he said softly. "Cameron. You know me better than that."
"House, it took years," she said, and her mouth didn't tremble at all.
He touched her forehead with one fingertip, drawing it along her hairline, brushing her bangs to the side. "Took me years too, to realize. It hasn't been the same without you."
"It's too late," she said again. "Don't do this to me. I finally learned to be happy without you."
"I love you," he said.
"You selfish bastard," she said, but her eyes were searching his face.
"I don't want you to be my daughter," he said. "I don't want you to be my plaything. Even an old man learns to repent."
"Why did you call me?"
"Because you lied," he said, tipping his face so that he stared down at her in that thoughtful down-his-nose House way. "You're not over me. You can't make a new life when you haven't let go of the old one."
"I haven't even thought about you."
"You picked up the phone. You got on a plane."
She turned her face away, sending his fingertip skidding across the curve of her ear. "You have to wait for the autopsy on this one."
"You inviting me to your wedding?" He stepped closer, crowding in the way he always had.
"Stop it," she said, quiet and angry, something burning in her chest. "Stop jerking me around. Stop telling me these things. I'm not the girl you hired, House, I've changed." She moved away, reaching for her bag. "I shouldn't have come."
"Why do you think I called you?" he said behind her. "You're not the girl I hired. You're the woman I want. I didn't know who you'd be when you left. I didn't know who I'd be when you left. When I knew, I told you."
Her fingers were tangled loosely through the straps. She looked down at the bag, counting the teeth on the zipper. "House, I can't."
"Go home," he said. "Be happy. I hope he's a good man. He's probably an idiot."
"You're a jackass," she said, turning on him. "And he iis/i a good man. He's not a sadistic workaholic opiate addict, just for starters, and he actually appreciates who I am instead of who he thinks he made me into."
"You were a good doctor," House said. "Now you're a better doctor."
"I'm not a better person," she said vehemently, and was startled to feel tears prickling in her eyes.
"Cameron," he said.
"Goddammit, I hate this," she said, and flung herself into his arms. He caught her and folded her against him, his hand slowly stroking her back.
"You're still a good person," he said into her hair. "I never wanted to change that about you. I wanted you near me in case it was infectious."
She laughed and it was half a sob. "What a cosmic joke," she said thickly. "What am I going to do?"
"You're going to go home and be happy with your man and your job and your apartment," he said. "Or you're going to stay."
She looked up at him. "What do you want me to do?"
He kissed her forehead. "It's not my choice anymore."
She breathed deeply, her head pillowed on his shoulder. Her chest was still burning, but it was a clean, bright feeling. "I think," she said, her words slow and measured, "that you owe me a sandwich."
He smiled.