A/N: Just a drabble. I wouldn't say it's one of my better ones, but oh well. Please review.

Warnings: Some spoilers. Nothing you shouldn't already know.

Song: "A Decade Under the Influence" by Taking Back Sunday. Just because I've got a bad feeling about this, too.

Disclaimer: I don't own House. I think you could have guessed that on your own.

Name

Allison.

If you went back and traced it, my first name would lead you to "Adelaide," the Germanic form of another name meaning "noble kind."

My name was supposed to mean that I was noble.

As I took the meth, I didn't feel very noble. Just spineless. I was taking the easy way out. Steal a guy's drugs to make myself feel better.

I might as well have been House.

Callous, devious House.

I shook him from my mind and sat back, waiting for the pill to take it's affect.

I thought about the many times throughout my school career when my teachers would stress the danger of drugs. I never thought then that I would be a widow (already), working for a manipulative jerk and dabbling in drugs.

I looked at the clock. Chase was coming over soon. I reprimanded myself at that thought. 'What the hell were you thinking?'

But I turned up my stereo, and the music drowned out my thoughts. The drugs began taking over.

"Come on, Chase. Don't turn into a good guy on me now."

xxx

If you asked me the next morning, I wouldn't remember many details, just that it hadn't been my worst experience with men. Except for the fact that it was utterly stupid and I had been high.

House knew what happened. I hated him for knowing. He was too smart and too uncaring to be human.

He knew that I was just as miserable that morning as I had been before. And it just made him happier.

The day was torturous, too long and frustrating. All I wanted to do was go home so I could feel pathetic and cry myself to sleep.

Then, as I took a patient's stats, a thought struck me:

I could have HIV.

I damned that man for coughing blood on me. And then I damned myself for not really caring.

I could die. I could live in fear of sickness for the rest of my life. I could spend my time trying to remember to take pills to keep the sickness at bay. The reasons for worry swam in my head, but I couldn't really grasp them. I couldn't really care.

So what if I died?

'So what?' my head screamed back at me. 'So what? You won't be living if you're dead. You won't be helping anyone if you're dead. Who will keep House in check?'

It all came back to him. My head filled with thoughts of him. I could have cried right there, in front of that patient. But I didn't.

I would keep my head up, keep doing my job, keep pretending not to care about House, keep in mind that I could die.

And after it all, after the negative, and House being him usual self about it all, I realized that what I had hated most had kept me alive.

And what I hated most was pretending that I was okay.

But life continued and then came the day I knew just what House had done to me.

I looked in the mirror that night. 'Where's your nobility now, Allison?'

I helped that man kill himself. And House seemed so proud.

'You knew it would happen sooner or later. House rubbed off on you. You'll turn into a cold, callous, pathetic human being, just like him.'

No. I wouldn't. Because I still cared. That was what separated me from House. I still cared about my integrity.

My nobility.