A/N: Okay, so this is an idea I've had since I saw "Last Resort" but I was kind of hesitant to write it, because I've never written a Huddy before. It takes place directly after Last Resort. Just a quick thanks to Revengent who encouraged me to write it and read over the first part for me. Yeah… here it is.
He knew exactly where to find her. It wasn't one of those things where he just had an intuition but when he got there, there she was. He first went to her office, which was stupid because he knew it was destroyed. Then, he checked the clinic and the ER where the patients who hadn't been shipped off to other hospitals already were getting checked back in. When he hadn't found her there he went to the Pediatric ward. It would be just like her to be checking in on all the little kiddies while the hospital was bouncing back from a hostage situation, but he only found Wilson, checking in on some of his younger patients. A few snarky comments, some deflections, and he was off again.
He did know exactly where to find her…most of the time. This time it was purely luck that after he had exhausted every other possibility he found her, leaning against a wall, staring at the identical wall opposite. He was going to make some stupid remark, something that would piss her off, but he saw the area around her eyes was red and inflamed. Now he was curious. He glanced at the door to the room behind the wall she was looking so intently at. Through the window he saw Thirteen lying in the bed, still unconscious. He bowed his head and walked over to her, leaning on the wall a few inches away.
"She's going to be fine" He said finally when it was apparent she wasn't going to talk.
"I know."
"And yet you're still here." He looked over at her, but she didn't look at him. He could see the tears building up in her grey eyes, but she blinked them back. There was information she wasn't willing to tell him, not yet anyways.
"Kutner's in there with her now. She should be waking up soon." Cuddy mumbled, trying to deflect House's focus.
"And you're still here." He repeated. She shrugged, and he saw more tears in her eyes. This time a few got loose, tracing familiar paths down her cheeks. There was more to the story, he knew there was, and he was determined to get it out of her.
"It's not your fault." He tried.
"I know." She said, unconvincingly.
"Right, you don't blame yourself at all, you're crying because you don't like the paint on the walls. I agree! I think a nice vibrant red would have been more appropriate, I mean we're in a hospital after all..."
"House." She turned and looked at him for the first time since he had arrived. The pain on her face was more apparent now, he was breaking her down, he was weakening her defenses.
"Sorry, that would be insensitive…black?"
"House!" She wiped her tears with the back of her sleeve. He sighed, turning and staring at the wall like she had been doing.
"You blame yourself because it was your office, because you weren't there when the crazy gunman came in. Just so you know, there's probably not much you could have done except maybe convince him he actually walked into a brothel and wasn't really in the hospital."
"I don't blame myself." She said, waiting for him to look back at her, but he didn't. He continued to stare at the wall.
"She was an idiot." He replied, matter of factly, "There were plenty of other people in there, probably healthier than her. She didn't have to take those meds, but she did anyways. She had a chance to run, and she came back. She was asking for it. If she had taken the last dosage of meds she would have died. She should have died. She-"
"She's pregnant."
There was silence. For once he had been taken by surprise, but he wasn't about to let her know that. He picked up quickly, making it seem like he had just taken a dramatic pause.
"She was an idiot."
"She didn't know." Cuddy defended weakly.
"You don't know that."
She was quiet for a moment, letting that sink in. Was he actually implying that Thirteen had known about the baby when she had taken the meds? That was ridiculous, Thirteen was a doctor, she knew the risks. She knew it could kill her baby.
"She wouldn't-"
"Kill a baby she didn't want? No, that doesn't sound like her."
Cuddy froze, trying to compose herself. Thirteen couldn't have, she wouldn't have, but what if she would? House looked at her now and his face darkened.
"House…are you trying to say that she took the medicine because she knew?" Cuddy's voice shook with horror and pain, and House lowered his eyes, shaking his head,
"She didn't know."
"But you just said-"
"I didn't say anything…I would have known if she knew she was pregnant. There would be signs, big giant neon signs that would practically scream, I'M PREGNANT," his last two words were directed at a nurse walking through the hallway, who scurried off, "If she had known, I would have known. It doesn't matter anyways, there's no way the fetus survived all the medicine she took."
Cuddy sniffled slightly, "It did."
"Impossible."
" We ran the tests five times, we did an ultrasound, she's definitely still pregnant."
"Huh… so much for doctor patient confidentiality." House said, hesitating slightly before speaking up again, "But it still doesn't matter. I give the thing another week at the most."
"What do you mean? We're filtering her blood now, when we did the tests the baby didn't seem to be in any kind of distress, of course we'll check again when she wakes up, but there's no medical reason why anything would happen that would cause her to miscarry."
"I have one excellent reason, although I'm not sure it's medical." House said, pausing as Cuddy stared at him in confusion. He sighed, "Thirteen's going to terminate."
"But…" Cuddy trailed off, a lump rising in her throat. She looked at House for some sign that this was just another of his sick jokes, but he was looking down, not meeting her eyes. Her mouth opened as she grasped for something to say, and then she shut it again, her bottom lip quivering.
"Why?" she whispered finally.
"Because when she was nine, her mother died."
"That's completely irre-"
"She died of Huntington's chorea, the same disease that's going to kill Thirteen in about ten years."
"Huntington's only has a fifty percent chance of being passed on from a mother with the gene to any children she has," Cuddy said ignoring the new round of tears streaming down her cheeks, "There's a fifty percent chance her baby won't have the disease! There's a fifty percent chance that she would be killing it for no reason!"
"There's also a fifty percent chance that it will have the disease, in which case killing it would save it from a slow painful death later on." House looked up now, but still refused to meet Cuddy's eyes. Instead he turned back to the wall and took to staring at it again.
"There's no way to know if she'll pass the gene on! She's going to kill her baby without knowing!" Cuddy cried, trying desperately to make House look at her, if even just for a second so she could tell what he was thinking, "She doesn't know."
There was silence after that statement during which Cuddy stared uselessly at House who stared uselessly at the wall. She wanted nothing more for him to say something even remotely human, to show her he actually cared about what was happening to one of his fellows.
"House." She said finally, trying to prod him into talking. He let out a breath and turned towards her for the first time. Cuddy gasped quietly, there was an odd look on his face, was it, it couldn't be…sadness?
"Fine, she doesn't know if the kid's going to inherit her sucky genes, but there are a few things she does know. She knows that genetics have screwed her over in the past, I mean she had a fifty percent chance of not having Huntington's too, things didn't really work out in her favor." Cuddy had to bow her head slightly, the intensity of his glare getting to her, "And she knows that she is going to die, probably before the kid becomes a teenager. She also knows how much it sucks to lose your mom, even though Kutner can't be that much worse of a dad than her dad was."
"Kutner?"
"And if that kid does inherit Huntington's she knows it's going to be miserable. She knows it will hate her just like she hated her mom," his voice was rising, "she knows it's going to die the same horrible way she's going to." He slammed his cane on the ground violently, ending his angry speech. Cuddy simply stared at him in shock, not sure what to say. She glanced at the closed door to Thirteen's room, then back at House, who seemed to be calming down now.
"Do you think he'll want her to keep the baby?" she asked quietly. House nodded, knowing perfectly well who he was.
"Of course he'll want it. He'll try to convince her not to terminate, give her the same statistics you gave me, maybe throw in the 'it's my baby too' argument, but eventually he'll give in. She'll tell him exactly what I just told you and he'll fold."
"But if she knows he wants to keep the baby, that he wants to help raise it won't she-"
"It won't make a difference." House interjected, "Her mind's going to be made up the second she hears she's pregnant."
"But-"
"Look," House said, now slightly irritated. Cuddy sniffled and shut her mouth obediently, waiting for him to talk.
"Normally I'd leave the advice to Wilson, but he'd probably side with you on this issue."
"Okay…"
"You need to stop crying and go home. Forget about her, forget about her baby."
Cuddy rolled her eyes,
"House I'm her attending. I have to be the one to tell her she's pregnant, I can't just forget."
"Well make Cameron do it!" he rolled his eyes in a similar manner back at her, "She's better adjusted anyways. If you don't move on now, you aren't going to. Go home, read a book, take a bath, I don't care, just get away from here. And when you come back tomorrow don't go checking in on her, forget about her. Forget about her now and forget about her in six months when she's still skinny as a rail. Don't make her problem yours"
He didn't wait for her to respond, simply grabbed his cane from where he had rest it against the wall and limped off the way he had came. Maybe he was going to find Wilson, or one of his fellows, she didn't really care. She stayed glued to her spot against the wall, the flow of tears slowing and then stopping entirely as she contemplated House's advice. After awhile the door to Thirteen's room opened and Kutner walked out. He seemed slightly confused to see Cuddy standing there, but smiled politely and nodded to her as he walked off. By the time he came back just a few minutes later she was gone, the only evidence of her ever being there the mark her shoes had left on the floor as she had walked away.
She soon found herself in the ER, which had almost returned to it's normal rhythm. She stood by the front desk, waiting until she saw the younger blonde doctor coming near,
"Dr. Cameron," she called. Cameron walked over obediently,
"Yeah?"
"I need you to do something for me."
A/N: Okay, well it wasn't really Huddy, but I tried. Please review and umm yeah, I'll be writing more stuff soon.
-Remy
