Symptom number one: she no longer stays nights.
Satisfied that he's left at least two thirds of his team to keep their latest patient alive long enough to torture him with more tests that will lead to nothing, House flicks the remote at the television, leaning back on the couch as it shoots to life in a blur of colours. Just in time for yet another rerun of General Hospital.
Luke and Laura haven't even had their first round of eye sex when the irritating rap of knuckles against wood interrupts the dialogue. House ignores it, not even drawing his eyes away from the fading scene. His Ducklings will just have to take care of the nest without him until he limps through the doors in the morning. Just one of the perks of having slept with the boss.
But then the rap comes again, not even drowned by Luke's voice as he turns the volume up as high as it will go, shaking the walls either side of it, a satisfying jeer to his neighbours. If anything it becomes louder, but the pauses became longer and then it is just a hand slapping against the door. "Go away!" he yells to the faceless visitor. "Just stick a needle in the guy and tell his kidneys to stop failing."
"House."
He freezes, even his breath halting in his throat, as if he's afraid that a single sound will drown out the next one she makes. He hits the mute button on Luke's patient. He'd watched her shrug her coat onto her shoulders and battle her way out of the doors with her elbows just moments before he'd left himself. Unless Chase has got to her first, she is not there about the patient he's left in the midst of kidney failure.
And it is the way she says it.
The soft but jagged crack in the middle of his name.
The plea, like she is calling to him from the crumbling edge of a sheer cliff.
Symptom number two: she eats lunch in the cafeteria.
He pulls himself up and hobbles to the door without bothering with his cane, a choice that he regrets fairly quickly and he is grateful for the support of the door when he finally tugs it open. Especially when it is open. It isn't just that her eyes have been replaced with glass: hazy, unfocused and only reflecting the world around her, as if nothing else exists behind them at all. It isn't even the crimson trickle that leaks down her temple and runs like teardrops down her carved out cheekbones. Or the gentle sway of her own stance.
It is the total blankness of her.
Not for the first time, he wonders if she only dances to shake off the weight of the devil.
"Sit down," he demands, in a voice that makes him feel calm when she looks as if just the force of his words can break her.
She blinks at him with those empty eyes.
He rolls his.
"Before you fall and crack your head open again. I don't want you to get blood on my carpet." He stands aside to let her in and she drags her feet over the threshold, pale fingers still clinging to the wall as if she relies on it to stop herself falling so much further than just the floor.
He wants to offer her himself to lean on, but out of the two of them she is probably the most capable of standing on her own feet. She wraps an arm around her waist as she walks and keeps the other stretched out slightly, as if reaching for something to hold on to but coming up with only air. He is relieved when she finally sinks onto the dent in the couch that he'd made minutes before.
It looks as if the leather is going to swallow her whole.
Symptom number three: she only eats a salad.
Snatching up his cane with an anger that seems to erupt from nowhere, he hobbles to the kitchen where he keeps the bag of medical supplies he's stolen from hospitals over the years. He carries them back to her, throwing them the bag down on the couch before he attempts to perch himself on the coffee table in front of it, leaving his leg splayed at an awkward angle. He holds back a hiss of pain and lifts his head from his useless limb to find she's staring straight at him.
No, through him.
He's seen the eyes of the dead. His fingers have closed the lids of corpses, patients who've died while he pounded at their chests, people who help had never even reached, whose only hope had been him. He isn't like those ridiculous over emotional doctors who blame themselves for every flatline (like her) but he can't help but wonder (dread) if the void canister on his couch is because of him. Because he is the one who pushed her into collapsing to the will of a patient who had begged for death. He is the one who'd taken her reaching hand time and time again and crushed her bones instead of slipping his fingers through the gaps of hers.
Symptom number four: circles beneath her eyes.
The cut on her head isn't deep. Whatever she's hit it against is clearly not too sharp. Thankfully strips will do in the place of stiches.
"What happened? Did you fall off your unicorn? Slide off the edge of a rainbow? Smash it against the headboard during wild sex with Chase?"
She doesn't respond and he regrets adding the last one because it should have been the one to bring out her scowl. The absence of it now is louder, screaming right in his ear in her silence.
He finishes cleaning and tapes the cut closed, moving on to wiping away the scarlet trails down her marred, beaten face.
Then his focus is on the protruding collar bone that can't be concealed by the long, baggy shirt that hangs from her frame with such little flesh to cling to. He sees the dip beneath her neck, a gorge deeper than her empty gaze and a faint blossom of blue peeking from behind the black. He hooks his finger over the slip of material and tugs it over her shoulder. The bruise continues like a map across her body, scoring a path along her bones and leading him to the answer that has been hiding beneath her smile.
"Oh God." His breath tickles the sharp edges of her bones and she shivers. He traces the path of the colours blooming across her body with his thumb as if he can somehow map out a different road. When he tears himself away to look at her blank features for confirmation, he is faced with her lids.
"House." He's never heard his name like that, so light and fragile, yet so laden at the same time. He knows without her having to form the sentence that it is both a warning and a plea. Her eyes are closed and he can feel her trembling beneath his touch.
"If you wanna have sex, I'm game," he says, pouncing onto the opportunity of returning to their usual banter, but her lids do not even twitch and even to him the words are loud and crass, shattering in the space between them and sending shards flying to slice through both of their skins.
"I have to go," she says instead of scowling. His hand falls from her chest as she stands, swaying slightly from the sudden movement and the bruise forming around the gash on her head.
"Back for round two? What will it be this time, a punch in the gut? Or maybe a pan of boiling water."
"My personal life is none of your concern, House." She sounds sharp, almost cold. More like him than herself.
He's never hated his leg so much in all of his life. Because of that, he can't do anything. She can kick him, or snatch his cane away and escape like fat from a pan. And he is just as helpless against whoever has done this to her as Chase is against the promise of promotion. But the thought of someone laying such a violent hand on someone so tender makes him want to beat them with the butt of his cane until every drop of blood in their body is spattered on the wall the bastard has smashed her head into.
"Then why did you come here?"
The bastard isn't there, so he has to direct his anger at her, at the pathetic girl who goes back to him for another serving, the smiling people pleaser who probably has his dinner smoking in the oven and his shirt pressed and hanging every morning while he thanks her with another slap; the hopeless optimist who will never stop believing that he will one day stretch out his hands to protect her instead.
Perhaps she just needs to believe in something better than her own reality.
"Why did you open the door?"
Both questions hover between them, fluttering with broken wings, searching for an answer that will not be put into words they can swallow.
But their tiny wings beat, as futile as her optimism, until her fingers twist the knob of the door and it closes behind her with the click that stills the fluttering as the questions fall as corpses to the floor.
Symptom number five: it's her who walks away now.
This is a one shot, because I am lazy.
Also, Chase is not the one hurting Cameron, before anyone jumps on the gun.
I have about as much charm as Voldmort, so you're just going to have to imagine this is a really charming and convincing request for your thoughts.