A/N: The following story is the third in the series of the "Susan Chronicles". Susan was introduced in "Not Alone" as a lab technician that was hired by the board and forced upon House to do all his lab testing due to him being the cause of high turn-over rates in the hospital's main lab. In addition to being a very skilled lab technician, she had a special secret for House to discover. In "Testing" Susan underwent a number of trials as House's lab tech that affected her not only as a lab technician and employee of PPTH, but personally. In this story, Susan's relationship with House grows and together they overcome an adversarial situation at PPTH. The timing of this episode is during the first half of Season 7.

Disclaimer: I do not own House, but only borrow the characters to tell my tale. Susan however is completely my invention. Nor do I own Kansas or the album "Leftoverture" from which "Carry On My Wayward Son" is taken.

Part I: "Not Alone" Story ID: 6576430

Part II: "Testing" Story ID: 6593800

I hope you enjoy this story and I look forward to any feedback that you may have.

GAMES

by clp66

Chapter 1

"Carry on my wayward son, there'll be peace when you are done….." sang out from her iPod stereo speakers. Susan sat at her desk in the lab with a pad of paper and a pen deep in thought. In front of her were several pieces of paper with diagrams drawn all over them. Each of the pages had titles written at the top and the diagrams consisted of ovals, squares and diamonds with arrows flowing from one shape to the other. Some of the diagrams were fairly straight forward and others were very complicated and hard to follow. These diagrams were crossed out and tossed off to the side with "too complicated" scribbled across the front. Susan took off her glasses, set them on her desk and rubbed her face and eyes tiredly. When she removed her hands from her face Dr. House was sitting in front of her desk. "Oh, I didn't hear you come in," she said as she turned down the music.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"They're process flow diagrams," she replied

"I know what they are," he responded, "I asked what you were doing."

"I'm working on my procedure manual," Susan answered.

"Look around you," Dr. House said. "Do you see anybody else in this lab?"

Susan didn't bother looking around and said, "You."

"You know what I'm trying to say. You're the only person in this lab, I think you know what your own procedures are; you don't need a procedure manual" he said.

"You wouldn't think so would you?" said Susan, "but regulations require that I have a manual in this lab and you know that."

"Why don't you just use the manual in the main lab? If it's good enough for them, it ought to be good enough for you" House replied.

"I can refer to their manuals, but I have to have ready access to them and they're not electronic. However, since I work for YOU, and not every other doctor in this hospital, the manuals in the main lab wouldn't do me any good anyway. The things I have to do in here for your patients tend to be a bit more complicated than what they do in there, and for those few procedures that are similar, my instrumentation is different. Remember I got all the used and abused equipment when this lab was set up. So, I might as well write them all from scratch." she said. "Besides, I don't like their format – they're hard to follow for somebody that needs to walk in and do a procedure off the cuff."

Susan leaned back in her chair, stretched and then put her glasses back on, "So, I'm sure you didn't come in here to talk about procedure manuals, what brings you to my world Dr. House?" she asked.

"I wanted to see what you were doing for lunch." he replied.

"Wilson too busy?" she asked.

"I thought you might like some company" House said then noticed the unconvinced look on Susan's face and quickly added, "And yeah – Wilson's attending a 'lunch and listen seminar' today."

Susan smiled and opened her desk drawer to get money out of her purse, "I assume I'm buying." She said.

"Of course, you don't expect me to pay do you?" He asked.

"Well no, not really," she said with a smile.

In the cafeteria, Susan and Dr. House placed their orders and sat down at an empty table. Before he even started on his own plate, he reached across the table and stole a couple of Susan's fries. "You have fries on your own plate," Susan scolded.

"Yours taste better," House replied.

Susan reached across the table and started to grab a couple of fries from House's plate, but she wasn't quick enough and House slapped her hand. "Eat your own," he said. Susan laughed as she withdrew her hand and picked up her hamburger.

Across the cafeteria Martha Masters sat studying one of her textbooks while eating her lunch. She looked up from her book in time to see the playful exchange between House and Susan. "Weird isn't it?" she heard someone say. She looked up and saw it was Nurse Jeffery, "I think they've got something going on and I'm dying to catch them at it," he said.

"No, I'm sure you're mistaken. Dr. House and Dr. Cuddy are together; he wouldn't do anything to mess that up." Martha said.

"Who do you think you're talking about? Dr. House lies right and left about everything; you think he'd have any compunction about getting something on the side? He'd do it just to see how long he'd get away with it," Jeffery said.

"Well, you got me there." Masters replied. "Still though, it's none of our business."

Martha looked back at her text to continue reading as Jeffery sat down at her table. "Did you know she donated half her liver to Dr. House several months back?"

Martha being new to the team hadn't learned all the history, and she wasn't privy to a lot going around her. Dr. House didn't trust her because she was "too honest" and the team wasn't warming up to her they way she had hoped. It was hard working in that environment, and she resented being left out. "No, I hadn't heard that. It's remarkable she was a match for him, but I can see where that might be a bonding point for them," she said being drawn into Jeffrey's gossip while she watched House and Susan interact.

"It was quite a coincidence and the entire hospital was whispering about it. I tell you there were quite a few people that were not happy things worked out so well for him;" Jeffery said conspiratorially, "myself included."

Martha looked indignantly at Jeffery and said, "You wish he would have died? He's one of the most brilliant doctors there is and has helped so many patients that nobody else could. Why would you wish that?"

Jeffrey backtracked, "I don't wish that he would have died, but you know the way he treats people. It might have been nice if he couldn't recover to the point that he could come back to work. Certainly things would be much more peaceful around here."

Martha agreed that Jeffrey had a point, but she thought House's contributions to the hospital were more important than his misanthropic tendencies.

"Well whatever you think, they've bonded in some way. Several weeks back I saw them sitting together at the jogging park. I took a picture of them; I'll email it to you," Jeffery said.

Martha got up from her table telling Jeffrey she needed to find a quiet place to study and left the cafeteria. As she passed by their table, she gave Susan a hard stare. Susan watched her pass by and asked, "What do you suppose that look was for?"

"Who knows," House said as she stole more fries from Susan's plate. Susan pushed her plate toward House. "They don't taste as good when it's OK if I take them," he said.

Susan grinned at him, "I'm full."

Jeffrey sat back in his chair and watched Martha walk out of the cafeteria. He saw the look she gave Susan and knew he was well on his way to having an ally on House's team. One way or the other, he was going to find a way of getting back at House for all the abuse that House gave him.

Martha wandered over to the medical school library and found a comfortable chair to read and study. She decided to check her email before she started reading again and got out her laptop. Wireless internet access was available for the students and staff in the library. She had several emails from fellow students in her class concerning their group project and one from a professor outlining the requirements for the next paper. At the very bottom was an email with an attachment. She didn't recognize the email address, but the attachment was a photo of Dr. House with Susan at the jogging park. This must have been the photo that Nurse Jeffrey was referring to. Martha enlarged the photo on her screen so she could see it better. In the photo, Susan was visibly upset with tears running down her face. Dr. House had a very gentle look on his face as he spoke to her. Martha supposed that Dr. House had a gentle side to him, but she never saw it. Apparently Susan was privy to a part of Dr. House that most people weren't. Maybe Jeffrey was right, maybe there was something going on between the two of them. Martha closed the email and shut down her computer. She needed to study and not involve herself in things that did not concern her.