Story: London was more than he could handle. More than she could handle. And problems just won't go away. Still doesn't mean they have to give up…
Author's note: Yep, I know, there's missing a lot… hey, it's not my fault that there's more House than JAG on TV recently… and I need my men for inspiration…
Warning: Well, since that is the sequel of 'Games against God'… expect the two of them to continue just how we left them…
Disclaimer: I don't own House or any of the people or episodes I've written about (btw… spoiler alert for whole season 3). The McLachlans are mine except for Vegeta. He belongs to Akira Toriyama.
Date: 04.09.07 – xx.xx.08
Map of the Problematique
Chapter 1: After the storm
The stewardess didn't sense the awkward atmosphere around the four passengers entering first class. She didn't react to the hidden glances between all of them, nor did she seem to be interested. It had been a long day, it would be a long flight, and she just didn't have the nerves anymore to be interested in their passengers' problems. So she just let the four of them figure out on their own who wanted to sit with whom.
When the woman with the auburn hair wanted to pair up with the other woman, the man with the cane just looked at her and growled. That caught the stewardess' interest.
Maybe she wasn't interested in problems.
But relationships abord her plane were her daily soap.
The redhead joined the man with the cane without a word, while the blonde man and the brunette walked to another row of seats.
Hannah wordlessly shoved her luggage into the rack and then sat down at the window, failing to ignore House sit down next to her.
How could she ignore the almost healed bruises in his face, or the dark spot on his lower lip, where the terrorist had hit him? All the time she had to fight the urge to hug him and never let him go.
All the time she was asking herself how he would decide.
All the time she feared he would decide against her and she had nothing to hold against that.
And still she knew she wouldn't have changed her reaction to the threat the terrorists displayed in this hospital where they tried to save the witness' life.
Should she have let them kill the man after they had failed to poison him slowly?
Was she supposed to watch the man she loved die just to keep her secret?
Watching him sit down out of the corner of her eye she decided that she would accept anything he decided.
The most important thing was that he was alife.
Greg House on the other hand couldn't decide about what to think first.
Terrorists shooting his angiologist to scare him away from healing the patient?
Cameron injecting one of them with a deadly dose of painkillers to save Chase's life?
The woman he loved going berserk on the rest of them?
Oh, and by the way, darling, I'm an alien…
He nibbled on the spot where his lip had been split, waiting for the pain, but it didn't come.
He still had problems believing it.
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her looking out of the window and replayed her actions that day. They had been so happy at the wedding, who the hell would have thought that one of the doctors in the hospital was trying to kill their guy and hired half of the taliban army to stop them from curing him?
Hannah had extinguished them as if they were cockroaches.
The alien thing could be interesting…
The violence thing was scaring as hell.
They were flying for four hours when he spoke up for the first time.
"You got any clue when Cramer's coming home?"
Sad black eyes looked at him, making him want to reach out, reassuring her that everything was alright.
"I'll make sure he gets shipped home as soon as he's transportable…"
They fell silent again for a while, House tapping his cane to the floor, Hannah looking out of the window.
"When would you have told me?" he suddenly asked, causing the Saiyajin to face him again.
"Or would you have hid it as long as possible?" he added, scrutinizing her.
He could see her mind working, realizing that before this incident she hadn't even thought about it.
"I don't know", she admitted, crossing her arms before her chest.
She was clenched since he refused to talk to her after they had survived everything. When she clenched, he clenched, and it was worse than with him and Cameron.
"Maybe you'd have found out when our children would start to fly around the…"
She interrupted herself abruptly and turned her head to the window again. Tears burned in her eyes, urging her pride to let them out, to let her for once be the weak woman and not the ruthless warrior.
Just as always the pride won.
Of course she had thought about it.
And she had feared the moment he would find out what she was.
Then she had pushed it into the back of her mind, telling herself that her times as warrior were over, that she had nothing to fear.
That she could be normal, finally.
"I'm sorry… I should have…", her voice caught.
She didn't know what she should have done.
How could she even think she could be normal? How could she think she'd have a future with this man?
While she was battling even harder against the tears, still facing the window, House next to her sighed heavily.
"I guess there just never was the perfect moment."
She just nodded a yes, not trusting her voice to articulate the shortest answer.
Her mind was already ordering a U-haul to get her stuff out of his apartment.
"Tell me now", House demanded, making her face him again.
"What?" she asked confused and ashamed of the rough sound of her voice.
"Tell me now", he repeated, captivating her black gaze in his dark blue one, never missing the shining of unshed tears when he continued.
"I want to know everything about you before they start to fly."
While he kissed away the first tear that made its way down her cheek his mind told him that this was a bad idea.
By the time he took her in his arms to soothe her it was screaming at him, telling him that in his arms was no human but an alien that had killed several people with her bare hands, some of them without even touching them.
When her arms went around his waist and her head leaned on his shoulder, her tears wetting his shirt he reminded himself that she had had thousands of opportunities to crush him with just one movement and had not done it.
He had needed time to think and he had seen what it had done to her.
And he just couldn't let her go.
Not her.
Not only the nosy stewardess was watching them.
Cameron and Chase had a watchful eye on their boss and the head of Genetics, since they came out alife of this mess.
Cramer barely made it, the bullet having nicked an artery. Yet they were reassured he would recover completely.
Dr. McLachlan was silent.
House just behaved weird. For almost two weeks now.
Of course there had been questions.
There had been many of them, and it was not only the government or the police or the Navy who wanted to know what happened.
Most of the time he was sitting around, thinking, not talking to anyone.
Not that this would have been new, but he wasn't even talking to Hannah.
He especially wasn't talking to her.
"Something must have happened in there", Chase said, watching the two of them.
"I know. But I think I don't want to know what happened."
She had killed a man, and she wasn't even sorry about it. She was shocked she had the ability to do something like that.
"He would have killed me, if you hadn't injected him with the overdose", Chase guessed her thoughts, shuddering at the images in his mind. He sure as hell never again would do Anthony DiNozzo a favor.
"Doesn't change the fact that I took a life away."
"My mother came to this planet as a baby, barely a week old. My father was forced to live with the people who destroyed his planet and killed his father for twenty years… Maybe I should rent the DVDs, it's way easier to explain…"
He could tell that by now she was embarrassed by her tears, wiping them away quite desperately while she hugged one knee to her chest.
Looking at her thoughtfully he nodded.
"Maybe."
Hannah just rested her chin on her knee, avoiding to look at him.
"Somehow my parents ended up saving the world, and then… well, then my sister Delia happened. Mom and Grampa… the man who adopted her… built a lawfirm. Dad kept helping out the military when he thought his intervention was needed. They had 15 other children, made a lot of money with the lawfirm… and at some time all of us children were or will be at this point to tell the one you love the truth. If you're lucky he or she won't run away screaming…"
House surprised her by chuckling.
"You forget that I can't run."
She couldn't help but laugh, but got earnest again real soon.
"I didn't want you to find out like that… Harm had problems with finding out like that, and he's seen stranger things…" she admitted, remembering how confused her sister had sounded when she called her after the kidnapping in Baghdad. Her brother in law had killed and seen people getting killed, but the passion and violence a Saiyajin killed with was new for everybody. In the end it had turned out well, but…
"Oh, I believe he's never seen a teenage girl with a cellphone in her you know where…"
"You always say that. Have you actually seen this girl?"
House looked at her dumbstruck. Nobody until now had assumed he was making this up – mostly, because as a doctor you saw weird things all the time.
Slowly he started shaking his head.
"Nah… was a guy with his mp3-player in a really dark place."
Hannah made a face at that.
"Ugh."
"That's what I thought."
They fell silent again, House watching his hands on his knees. Bruises on the knuckles of his right hand still showed him that he had punched the terrorist who had been aiming at Hannah really hard.
The guy was aiming at him after that, and the scene in his conference room started to repeat itself in his head. Only this time he could see her face, pure rage displaying on it when she lauched herself at the man.
It had been stupid as hell. There had been two more in the room, trying to stop what they were doing.
And he knew she was not bullet proof…
Her growling at them in a language he didn't understand had intimidated him, her actions had scared him motionless.
Or maybe he just didn't move fast enough in the 5 seconds she needed to kill all of them.
Suddenly he looked at her again, eyes wide.
"That was no pressure point on my leg, was it?!"
She watched him intently. Then she shook her head.
He nodded absently. It had smelled like strong electricity in the room when she fired this glowing yellow thingy that pulverized one of the guys.
"I guess it's numbing the damaged nerves."
"Yep."
Once again he fell silent.
"You might have to do it again when we're at home…"
Big black eyes looked at him, making him want to hug her and never let her go.
"I still have a home?"
House looked at her for quite a while.
"'Course you have. It will be awkward at first. But I don't think you were playing actress all the time."
"I was never playacting!"
He frowned at her.
"Not even one orgasm?"
"Greg!"
"No, come on, I can handle it."
She just sighed.
"Not even one."
Her honesty surprised him. Okay, actually he was surprised that she didn't whack him on the arm, or just ignored him when he said something stupid…
He was startled awake by something he couldn't quite tell. Everything around him was silent, Hannah next to him sat in her chair and…
And looked quite disorientated, her fingers clawing into the armrest of her seat.
"You alright?"
She nodded a yes, her restless black eyes telling him she lied.
He nevertheless watched her lean back in her seat, turning her head towards the window.
He knew they had to talk.
He needed to talk or he would go crazy!
But not with this nosy stewardess that brought him one Scotch after the other.
That he switched off by asking her if she wanted to get him drunk so he would join the mile high club with her.
When he turned to Hannah again he could see the corners of her mouth were curled up slightly.