Disclaimer: I don't own House or Coldplay.
Word Count: 1434
Shipping: House/Cameron, though it can be interpreted as House/female character.
Warning: Character death … sort of.
Status: Complete.
Reviews: Yes please!
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Infallible
Steal my heart and hold my tongue And the wheels just keep on turning
I feel my time, my time has come
Let me in, unlock the door
I've never felt this way before
The drummer begins to drum
I don't know which way I'm going
I don't know which way I've come
He loves her more than the moon, the stars and the wide, wide world. He would fly to the moon and back for her. He would fetch her a little piece of heaven to grow in that garden of her heart, just so she would be happy. He would hold the world's troubles at bay until she had put all her pieces together, just so the world would see her fears.
But he can't.
Because he can't tell her he loves her, or that he would do anything for her. Because he knows he will hurt her. He knows that he cannot pick her up when she falls; cannot put the pieces together when she shatters; cannot wipe her tears when she cries. Because his hands have no strength left in them; his eyesight is too weak to see the fragile shards and because he doesn't carry tissues around with him. He doesn't need tissues: he doesn't cry.
But he wants to.
He wants to cry until there is no water left in his body. They say that an adult man is 65 water – that's a lot of his body. He'll cry and cry until there is nothing left but skin and bones and organs. Until all that's left is a shell – what difference does it make? He's a shell already. He's always been a shell for longer than she's been around.
But she filled him and gave him more to be than an empty case. She gave him flesh and a bit of her soul. And sometimes he thinks he hates her for that, because it means that he can be hurt all over again. And he feels it – every time she walks by, every time the rain touches his shoulders, every time he sits in the dark waiting. Because he can't sleep anymore. And at night, by the flickering candlelight – the flickering candlelight that is grossly overrated by romantic fools, lovers, dreamers and her – he feverishly flips the pages of his beloved books, trying to find that passage that would tell him what to do – how he feels.
He can never find it.
And in the background, the music softly plays. He can't listen to rock or pop or even jazz anymore, because it just makes his head hurt. And the music that is played is soft and soothing and he hates it because its lyrics are so sad and deep. But he knows he has to have music with lyrics so he can occupy his mind. Or lack thereof, he thinks with a wry sad smile.
"Night has brought to those who sleep, only dreams they cannot keep," he hears the artist sing. Maybe that's why he doesn't sleep, he muses as his pen falters over the page. He lets it rest on the paper and watches with a detached tiredness as the ink seeps out of the pen and into the page like the life seeping out of a dying man. He has seen so many people die; tried to save the lives of so many, but he cannot save them all. Of course he can't.
He wants to.
He wants to be able to save everybody more than anything else, because then there's a possibility that they may want to save him too. And he refuses to sleep, because he knows there's a chance that one day he won't wake up. That's the chance that he fears, dreads and embraces above all else.
The clock is ticking and he watches it bitterly. The least they could do is make the clocks silent, he thinks resentfully. Who wants to hear the seconds of their life ticking slowly away one by one?
He knows he is gradually killing himself, but he really doesn't care. Because as long as he doesn't care that he's dying, he can convince himself that she won't care either. Because he should be the one who cares the most for himself right?
Wrong
He still goes to work everyday, and his boss lets him, although it's obvious that he can't work anymore. To him it means that he still has some use; some purpose in the world; some knowledge that the world hasn't filled his spot yet. It's interviewing applicants though, he knows. Thousands of applicants – thousands of babies born each day. Which one is going to be him, he wonders? To her it means she can still keep an eye on him; watch on helplessly as the bags underneath his eyes grow bigger, as the light in his eyes grows dimmer, as his expression loses its omniscience and is marred by confusion.
He knows that. He knows all that and he feels it as she looks at him each morning when he shuffles in late. He feels it as he gives another barely coherent order that he knows they will pretend to obey. He knows it as the patient gets better, because he knows he has not solved the puzzle, hasn't done anything. It was all their work. . He knows it in her hushed conversations with her fellow co-workers. He sees her breaking before him, and he knows that when he goes she'll crack and there's nothing he can do about it. He is too selfish to stop coming to work, and he knows that she needs him there. Because it's the only way she can see him – the only way she'll know that he's alright – not passed out in a gutter, drunk, or at home in a pool of his own blood because he can't take it anymore.
He always had a morbid mind.
And then the day comes where he doesn't want to go home, because if he goes home he knows he will lose himself. The office is dark, but he stays there, unmoving. Nothing is going to make him go home. Nothing. Cuddy sees him through the glass walls as she starts to leave the building, but she doesn't tell him to go home. But he watches, and watches the tears glistening in her eyes and feels a stab of guilt that he is making more people miserable than is inevitable.
The office is so familiar, and he thinks he loves it. He loves the way it assimilates him and knows who he is. Because he's not sure he knows that anymore. Does he want to know? He sees her walking past the office with her co-workers, and he loves the way it hides him so that she cannot see him. Because if she turns around and he sees the pain in her eyes, he know he'll jump at the chance to be selfish and take her down with him.
The clocks here aren't silent either, but fortunately there's only one in the room. And that is easily masked by the music that he puts on. It blares through the speakers, and his head throbs, but he loves it. He loves the music that can drown out everything. And if he tries hard enough, he can believe that it will drown the world out too. And maybe – just maybe – it will drown him too.
He's already drowning.
No one's in the building anymore and he realises that he's not scared of going to sleep anymore. Before, at home, he was scared because he knew that if he slept … forever, there was a chance no one would know. But here – there's no possibility of that happening. He loves elimination.
He turns off the music, and realises that something is missing. There is silence in the room, and he realises the clock has stopped. He looks at it for a moment, then slowly, deliberately pushes it off the desk. He hears its glass face shatter, and he is secretly pleased.
He rests his head on the desk. He is tired – so tired. And he knows it's his fault. It's always his fault. But he doesn't mind. He closes his eyes.
He loves her.
And the wheels just keep on turning For you I'd wait 'til kingdom come ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The drummers begin to drum
I don't know which way I'm going
I don't know what I've become
Until my days, my days are done
And say you'll come and set me free
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me