He thrashed, fighting, no, he couldn't, it had to let go, let go, LET GO!
He screamed, yelling, shouting, NOOOOOOOO!
"NOOOOOO!" he bellowed, fighting viciously against him.
Hands rested on his shoulders, holding him still, but they weren't the huge hands bigger than his head, small, warm, gentle.
"House! House, it's ok! It's ok! Calm down! Calm down!"
He opened his eyes, breathing heavily and covered in sweat.
Cuddy was standing by his hospital bed, her hands on his shoulders, looking extremely worried.
He swallowed, holding on to her arm.
"Hey," she said quietly, "you ok there?"
He looked at her, still panting.
She nodded, gently pulling his head onto her shoulder.
She didn't know what they were about, but she knew he had always had nightmares—violent ones.
He turned his face a little into her neck, swallowing hard.
He really didn't want to be showing this much weakness, but...
the nightmares had been getting more and more violent in the week since the crash.
He couldn't help it. He needed the calming warmth, he needed her to be there, helping him through the after-effects of the terror.
Cuddy seemed to understand all of this without a word.
Ok.... dizzy...
He gripped her arm a little harder, and she let go, hastily handing him a bowl.
He swallowed, sitting as still as he could, with Cuddy's hand on his shoulder, keeping him steady.
The bile rose in his throat, and he leaned forward.
A hot, damp towel wiped over his face, taking off the layer of cold sweat sticking to him there.
He finally handed the bowl back without using it, resting back against the pillows with a long, exhausted sigh.
Cuddy sat back down, and he closed his eyes.
Nothing happened for a long while.
Then he realized—he was scared to go to sleep.
He was scared of the nightmares for the first time in decades.
Dammit.
Cuddy hurriedly got out of the chair as House started sobbing again.
He had fallen asleep at last, but the nightmares seemed to have started again as soon as the sleep had.
She got him to wake up and leaned over him, pressing herself against his chest, one hand behind his head, the other next to her body.
"Shhhh," she said, as he held on, definitely upset.
The dreams seemed to be getting worse and worse the longer he was in the hospital... she wondered if they were about the infarction, if being stuck in bed because he couldn't keep his food down enough to be released was reminding his sub-conscious of how helpless he had been against his own body.
He finally calmed enough to close his eyes and go back to sleep, but only a few moments after he had drifted off, he was back to whimpering and curling in his sleep.
Cuddy frowned, seeing that he seemed to be trying to protect parts of his body, his stomach, head. He was shielding himself from some invisible terror.
She gently shook his shoulder, following him with her hand as he pulled unconsciously away from the touch.
He finally opened his eyes, but it was clear that his tired mind had been through enough, his eyes were wide and full of fear, he didn't seem to realize that he was back in the hospital room with Cuddy and nothing that could hurt him.
Cuddy let him cling to her, waiting for him to sort out what was dream and what was her and the hospital and safe.
He squeezed tighter after a while, holding on.
"It's ok, House. It's ok, you're in the hospital."
His face was pressed into her shoulder, but she could feel the tears soaking into her shirt. He was still scared, still crying.
"I didn't mean to. Mom, I'm sorry."
Cuddy pulled back, blinking.
House had fallen asleep again, too exhausted to stay awake, even despite how strung out he was.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have climbed that high, I'm sorry, please don't be mad...."
Cuddy bit her lip and gently shook House's shoulder again. He was talking perfectly clearly, like his mother really was in the room.
"No! Dad didn't have anything to do with it! Please don't tell him! Please! I know he has to know I broke my arm, but he doesn't need to know I fell, please!"
Cuddy frowned, shaking House.
He wasn't waking up.
She looked at his status monitor.
He had a fever.
He wasn't asleep, he was hallucinating, some mix of his childhood and the current situation.
"House, it's ok. House, you're in the hospital, it's me, Cuddy."
House pulled away, opening his eyes and staring at her.
"Look out! Mary, no!"
He dived at her, knocking her over and landing next to her on the floor, scrambling to his feet and turning around, staggering and dizzy, arms out as though he was protecting something.
"No! Don't hurt her! It's my fault! It's my fault, dad, it's not her fault! Don't hurt her, dad, please!"
A nurse rushed in, hurrying past the oblivious House and kneeling next to Cuddy, looking for direction.
"Ativan and an anti-pyretic, he's got a fever."
She nodded, turning to go.
"Oh, and... a soft towel?"
The nurse nodded, smiling a little as she left.
Cuddy stood, carefully putting her hands under House's outstretched arms, around his waist.
"Hey there big guy. Let's get you back into bed, ok?"
"Get out of here!"
Cuddy blinked, unsure wether he was talking to his 'father', 'Mary', or herself.
"Mary, get out of here! Get away! He'll hurt you, I don't care what he does to me, but you didn't do anything wrong, so get out of here before he starts hitting!"
Cuddy stopped.
So far this had just been House falling out of a tree, breaking his arm, and not wanting 'Mary' to get in trouble. But that....
That sounded like he was reliving something else entirely.
"House, it's me... Cuddy... come on, Lisa Cuddy, dean of medicine, your boss...."
He didn't seem to hear her.
The nurse came back in with several medications and a bowl of towels.
Cuddy carefully took House's arm, pushing on it until he was unbalanced enough that he had to take a step or fall.
He stepped towards the bed, and she slowly maneuvered him onto it, then stuck the ativan syringe into his arm.
He slowly fell into a drug-induced sleep.
Cuddy gave him the anti-pyretic, then climbed up and sat on the bed next to him, her arm around his shoulders, his head resting on her chest. She hoped that the contact would give him better dreams.
Twenty minutes later, she was still sitting there with him close against her body, dipping the cloths into the bowl of slowly cooling water and gently running them over his flushed face.
She hoped he felt better soon, that this was just a fever he had picked up because his body was a little stressed.
Cuddy awoke to House screaming.
He was curled on the floor, he must have fallen out of the bed, shivering, curled into a tight ball.
"NO! PLEASE, NO!"
Cuddy hurried off the bed, gripping his shoulders and pulling him close.
He opened his eyes, staring up at her for a brief moment before tangling his hands in her shirt, still feverish and scared.
"House... what are you dreaming about?"
He lifted his head a little bit off her stomach, face flushed and eyes red.
"Dad."
Cuddy bit her lip, nodding, and gently ran her hand through his hair as he pressed his face back into her front.
It took two nurses plus Cuddy herself to lift House back onto the bed, and by the time they had done so he was dreaming again.
Cuddy managed to wake him before the nightmare got too violent this time, and he seemed to be a bit clearer—he refused to talk to her, which was actually an improvement.
"Ok," she said, after a particularity long series of unanswered questions and unresponsive glares, "you don't want to talk about the dreams. Can you at least look at a case?"
He seemed to perk up just a little at that, but squashed it as soon as the light flared in his chest. He was feverish, he was hallucinating more often than not, and he didn't trust his own mind.
Cuddy shook her head, a small apologetic look on her face, "it's not actually a real case. I just..."
He looked at her silently for a while, then nodded, "you know I'm going crazy just sitting here."
She nodded.
"What's the 'patient'?"
Cuddy smiled, taking a sheet of paper out from under her chair. A standard hospital chart, with values and symptoms filled out in her distinctive, slightly slanted writing.
House tilted his head, watching her.
"How long did it take you to come up with this?"
"You were unconscious for three hours and I was bored."
House frowned, looking at her.
"Why are you even here?"
She blinked, "I'm always here."
That reply struck a chord in his memory... the dream he had had when he was treating that marine guy.
"No, you're not. Wilson's always here, but he's not speaking to me. You don't get off on caring for helpless people, so why are you here with me?"
She sighed, "because I'm worried about you, and you're really not doing well."
That made a little sense, but...
"Why am I hallucinating?"
His fever had to be down. Not even Cuddy could screw up the medicine that bad. But he was still hallucinating.
That meant...
It was his brain.
Not because it was slowly being cooked, but because there was something wrong with it.
He looked at Cuddy.
She sighed, nodding.
"You've got a brain infection. I didn't... I didn't want to tell you. The nightmares... I thought...."
He understood that immediately.
Along with being absolutely and completely alone because he had pushed everyone away and his life no longer had any meaning, his greatest fear was losing his mind. That... dreaming that would be ten times worse than real physical things like beatings and ice baths.
Cuddy knew him well enough to know that.
"Get out."
She nodded, getting up without protest and turning to go.
"Wait."
She turned back, looking at him.
He swallowed, looking utterly alone and defenseless.
She realized what he needed, and that he would never, ever ask for it.
"I'm not leaving."
"Go away."
"No."
She sat down, taking his hand.
He glared at her, but behind the show of anger and offended pride, she could see just a tiny glimmer of relief and gratitude in his eyes.
He was terrified, not of a memory or nightmare, but of reality.
The least she could do was let him hold on without forcing him to admit he needed to do so.
House opened his eyes.
Dammit, he must be hallucinating again—otherwise he
wouldn't be there.
Though Cuddy was still holding his hand in
this hallucination, so it wasn't that bad, compared to the other ones
he had been having. At least his dad wasn't present.
"Go away. I don't need my sub-conscious taunting me, my memory is doing that well enough on it's own."
Wilson blinked.
"What are you talking about?"
"My hallucination that you're here. I want it to stop."
"Why? Cuddy said you were really lonely, told me I needed to see for myself what was going on."
"Great, now my sub-conscious is lying to me. Cuddy's right there. She didn't go anywhere, I would have noticed, cus I've been trying to go to sleep. That doesn't make any sense. Whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm hallucinating, I doubt my sub-conscious cares if I phrase things well. Go away, I don't like getting tortured by my own mind."
Wilson looked at Cuddy.
She bit her lip, nodding.
House was confused.
"House, you're not hallucinating."
He looked at her.
Then at Wilson.
Then he sighed, resting his head back into the pillows and looking up at the ceiling.
"god this sucks."
Wilson swallowed, walking hesitantly inside and tentatively placing his hand on House's shoulder.
House looked at him, startled.
"I..."
House's eyes widened, and he shoved Wilson away.
"I am not so desperate that I'm going to let you come back out of pity!" he yelled, obviously truly angry at the thought, "get out! Don't come back until I'm dead, healthy, or forgiven!"
Wilson swallowed, nodded, and left.
House laid back into the pillows, panting.
Cuddy stood, wiping the sweat off his flushed face.
"The infection isn't responding to the antibiotics... are you sure..."
He looked at her.
"Am I sure that I don't want the last memory I want to have of my friend is him pitying me? That'd be a yes."
Cuddy bit her lip, nodding.
She looked like she was going to cry.
He sighed, looking back up at the ceiling.
"How bad is it?"
"Not... not necessarily.... you know... but... bad."
He nodded.
"My head's killing me."
Cuddy looked at him strangely, hand halfway towards the bottle of Tylenol on the table next to her.
He sighed.
"It was a joke. I'm not completely out of it yet."
She blinked, then laughed a tiny bit.
House was still House.
...at least so far.
Cuddy yelled for a nurse as House started seizing, lowering the head of the bed and placing her hands on either side of House's head, trying to protect it from further damage.
House slowly opened his eyes, swallowing at the pain.
Everything hurt, ached, throbbed...
He looked to his left.
Cuddy was asleep, sitting on a chair instead of the recliner, her upper body on the bed, her arm across his chest.
Something bad must have happened.
He slowly shook the arm, too weak to do much more than that.
Cuddy jerked awake, looking at him.
"What happened?"
"You had a seizure."
He groaned.
Then he started shaking again.
"House."
"House."
....
"House."
"House."
....
"House."
He opened his eyes.
"Welcome back."
Huh? Back from what?
"What happened?"
"You slipped into a coma."
He looked at Cuddy.
She had tears on her face.
"How long?"
"Three days."
He swallowed.
No wonder she was upset.
But... wait, he was awake now... wasn't he?
No, he wasn't.
Mom and dad were in the doorway, there was no way that was real.
Was he in a coma?
Probably.
He was really starting to dislike comas.
"Hello figments of my sub-conscious."
They waved at him.
Yep, definitely not real.
He stood up, walking over to Cuddy.
Hey, as long as he was stuck here, he might as well get some self-introspective crap out of it.
"I love you."
She looked at him.
"Duh."
That wasn't very helpful.
"That's all you've got to say? Duh?"
"Hey, this is your sub-conscious. You don't know how I would react. You can't gain insight into other people's minds while you're trapped inside your own, moron."
Huh, she sounded more like himself than he did.
He looked at his mom and dad, walking over to them.
"Hi Mom."
She smiled, holding out her arms.
He rolled his eyes.
"How long have you known me?"
"I'm your sub-conscious, what do you think?"
"The same thing you think."
"No, you're your conscious. We're your sub-conscious. We have different thoughts. We're smarter than you."
"No you're not."
"Yes we are."
"Whatever."
He walked through them, out into the hall.
An elevator was there, though he knew there wasn't one across from his room in the real hospital. Who cared, at this point?
He pressed the up button.
This was stupid. He was waiting for an elevator in his own mind.
The doors opened immediately after that thought, revealing the hallway he wanted to be in.
He walked down it, opening the door to Wilson's office.
The familiar figure was frozen at his desk, a faceless patient on the couch.
"Go away," he told the bald person, "even if you're basically just a blow-up doll, I still don't want anyone watching."
They disappeared.
He turned back to his mind's creation of his frozen friend.
The brown eyes were full of caring and concern, just they way he hated them being.
"Hey. Stop being all caring."
They hardened, and he was able to look at Wilson's face as the younger doctor laughed at something he had said across the fooseball table they were standing at.
This was fifteen years ago, though he didn't know how he knew it.
It had been different, then.
"I love you," he told the frozen man opposite him.
Wilson looked at him.
"Maybe if you showed it once in a while, I would be able to believe that."
House crumpled to the floor, clutching his leg in agony.
Wilson un-froze, leaning over him, a horribly worried expression on his face.
"Get away from me!" yelled House, unable to stop himself.
Wilson started to fade.
House's eyes widened, and he pulled himself up on the foozeball table, ignoring the agony in his leg.
"No! Wait, come back!"
"You killed her and you've never shown me that you actually care. I hate you."
House was knocked to the floor by another crippling pain, this time in his chest.
Either he was having a heart attack, or Wilson saying that really hurt.
Or both.
A flash of light.
He opened his eyes.
He was lying on a gurney in the ER, Cameron was leaning over him, everyone else in the room was frozen.
"Why am I here?"
"You had a heart attack. You're not an idiot, so you went to the hospital."
"I was already in the hospital. Well, the fictitious version of the hospital that exists within my own mind, but other than that, I was already in the hospital."
"Well your sub-conscious doesn't agree with you. It must be very frustrating."
House rolled his eyes, sitting up and pulling the leads off his chest.
"I don't love you."
"I know. But you do care about me. I can tell that without you showing it."
"Why can't Wilson?"
"Because you hide it less from me. I'm not as close behind your walls, you feel less need to protect yourself from me. Wilson terrifies you, so does Cuddy. You love both of them, as much as you hate to admit it, almost unconditionally. And that scares the crap out of you."
"Yeah, so?"
"So shut up and listen if you want to get anything out of this other than a lot of walking around in your own head."
House snorted.
"You've changed."
He looked at her.
"You don't even know what I was like before—"
"Not from before your leg, moron. Before this year. I'm guessing that you've been going backwards just a little bit—towards before I met you, before your leg. And if you'd stop making your sub-conscious adhere to reality, I could tell you that it was more towards what you were like before your leg, before the pills, before the pain. You've been just a little bit happy. You've been changing. And you accepted Wilson's happiness with amber, which you wouldn't have done in-between your leg and this year. You've been healing."
"And if you want it to keep going, you'd better do something. You'd better do something real, something towards one or both of the people you love," said chase from behind him.
"Dude, why am I going to listen to *you*, wombat?"
"Because you've asked my advice on people for the last five years, and like it or not, you trust me more than yourself about that sort of thing."
"You are me. I was just wondering why my mind decided I would listen to that form of itself more than other forms. I mean, I'm smart enough to know that no matter what kind of form it takes, it's still my own mind talking."
"You're not invulnerable to perception, House. You're human. So humor yourself."
House snorted.
"It doesn't matter who you do it on, but if you don't want to spiral out of control into some bottomless pit of depression, you need to let either Cuddy or Wilson be able to hurt you. You need to be able to bare yourself, just once, you need to have something go right. Or else Wilson hurting you is going to destroy you."
"Ah, now I know why it's you. There's no way anyone else would say something that sappy."
"You're the one saying it, so what does that make you?
House glared at him.
"Shut up."
"You're an idiot," said foreman, coming in through the curtain, "stop arguing with your sub-conscious. You don't like what it's telling you, because you're scared. Get over it."
House looked at him.
"You can do it, honey. I know you can. You just have to let yourself."
He turned.
Mom.
"He's too scared, the pathetic weakling."
"I'm not—"
"Shut up, John," said Stacy.
John turned on her.
Mary was there, long orange-red hair coated with dark red blood.
No.
No.
No.
NO.
NO!
"Leave her alone! Don't hurt her!"
"You need to learn that you can never get attached to another person. I'm going to teach you that."
"NOOOOOOO!"
He rammed into the burly marine, but his child's body just bounced off, and he landed in the mud.
The fist hurtled towards the girl's shoulder, he scrambled to his feet, was knocked flying, but he had done it, he had...
He opened his eyes.
He was being held close to a warm form.
He looked.
Gah, Cameron was holding him.
"Shh. It's ok. You've got a few cracked ribs and your left humerus is broken. Don't move, I need to put a cast on."
He looked up at her as she set him on the hospital bed.
"What did you see in me? Other than the whole hurt puppy thing. There's a whole hospital of hurt puppies here, why me?"
She smiled.
"Because I knew there was still a spark in you. I could see that you weren't who the layers of misanthropy made you seem to be. No, that's not true. You are that person, but there's just a tiny bit of you that wants to fight that. Just a tiny bit of you that fought to protect someone you cared about. Just a tiny bit of you that fought to protect Crandal. Just a tiny bit of you that fought to protect your patients. Just a tiny bit of you that fought to protect the three of us. Just a tiny bit of you that fought to protect Cuddy's hope. Just a tiny bit of you that fought to protect Wilson's happiness. I saw that spark, and I knew that no matter how much of you was a misanthropic bastard, a tiny bit of you was still a person that loved hero stories and fought to protect things. It's still there, House. But if you don't feed it soon, it's going to go out. It's the only thing that's keeping you from dying inside, and if it goes out... if it keeps being smothered by the pills and the pain and the anger.... House! House, you need to open your eyes. Give me some sign, ok? Come on, your dad's here. he... it's been a week, and... House, please... please open your eyes. He wants to...."
Fuck no. He wasn't going to let that bastard screw with him.
He opened his eyes.
"Get the hell out of here, you bastard! I hate you and I never want to have anything to do with you again and you can go screw with someone else's spirit and I'm not gonna let you make Cuddy cry!"
He blinked.
The room was completely full.
Cameron, Foreman, Chase, Kuttner, Thirteen, Taub, Stacy, Wilson, Mom, Dad, Cuddy.
And they were all blinking at him.
Er... had he said that out loud?
Oops.
And Cuddy was already crying, standing next to the head of his bed with his left hand in hers.
He looked at the two hands, tears dripping down onto them, then up at her face where they were coming from.
A shaking, callused right hand reached up and wiped the tears away.
"I'm sorry you had to cry."
Wilson turned away and left.
House saw it out of the corner of his eye, and immediately knew what was going to happen.
This was the last straw in his friend's miserable last two decades.
Wilson turned, as a heavy hand rested on his shoulder.
Heavy because its owner was leaning on him to keep himself upright.
"Don't do that. Please don't do that. I really don't want you to do that."
Wilson caught him with bleeding arms as House collapsed.
He slowly lowered his friend to the floor, sitting behind him with the older doctor leaning against his chest.
"Why do you make it so hard for anything to be simple?" he asked quietly, taking off his shirt and using the scalpel to cut off the sleeves, tying them around his wrists.
House didn't answer, but Wilson didn't need him to.
He passed out with a small smile on his face.
Cuddy sat down in the chair between the two beds, sighing as she looked at the two charts in her lap.
This really wasn't a good week.
Wilson opened his eyes.
He looked to his left.
Cuddy, asleep in a chair.
House, on a bed across the room, watching him.
"You're a moron," House informed him.
"Yeah, well you're not so perfect yourself."
"But I love you anyway."
House looked up at the ceiling.
Wilson stared at him.
Cuddy turned around, as someone entered her office.
House, who had apparently managed to get someone to give him his clothes.
"Discharge me."
She rolled her eyes.
"Not unless you start taking the anti-emectics."
He pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it to her.
She looked down at it.
Vicodin.
She looked back up at him.
"I already took them. Cus it'd be kind of stupid to ask you to dinner and puke it all up as soon as I ate it."
Cuddy stared at him.
"What?"
"I am asking you on a date, and after that I am going to go to rehab for real because I hallucinated a bunch of sub-conscious revelation crap while I was in the coma and I almost died and I'm not myself yet and I'm taking advantage of that while it lasts to not being completely frozen by my pride. So either discharge me and say yes, or just transfer me."
Cuddy stared at him.
Then she nodded.
"I'll get the discharge papers."
House swallowed.
"Ok."
Cuddy smiled.
"Don't worry House, I don't expect you to have a clue what you're doing."
He smirked.
She smiled, and reached for the form.
It wasn't that he had changed—she knew this was probably going to last about a day, at the most—but... she recognized that he was trying to keep from going backwards, and she wanted to prolong that as long as possible.