Title: Running Off Empty

Chapter: 2

Summary: "Amber. I'm so sorry. I know I was only trying to save you....but I never meant to kill him in the process..." (Brain damaged House; spoilers for after Wilson's Heart)

Authors Notes: Each chapter is going to be pretty short, but there will be many of them. Please tell me if this line of writing ever gets boring or if you have any ideas on where I should take this/critique you'd like to offer. I know I've been slow and for that I am sorry, but I do hope you guys like this regardless. I'll keep updating hopefully, and definately a good shout out to those fanfiction writers who are still working and trying to write decent and well developed fanfics. :) I give kudos to you all and a special thank you for all the great reading you've given and writing you've all inspired.

A lonely figure against a white stark room, the faces of flashing colleagues and moments seem to be a blur of motion and time. I can't see anything through the blurred tears and the flower like smell of the shoulder I'm crying against. While standing there, Cuddy's arms embracing me while I cry--all I can think about is how much I messed up. How much I screwed things up for her.

How much I was at fault.

How this was my fault.

I don't want to remember but I cried with her that night, I held her when she died.

Her eyes still haunting me with that beautiful smile and brilliant voice.

I know deep inside I would never let her go; her warmth still...leaving me dead inside. It should have been more but while standing in front of your hospital room House, all I could think of was the death I had caused. The one on the bus wasn't me. It was her.

I don't think I can forgive myself.

Haha...I don't think I can forgive you. All of it is so meaningless now.

The motion of other nurses, the stark white room you yourself lay in meant nothing to me. It all just meant nothing. I wanted no part of any of this.

I don't want to think about the moments that she faded from me, I don't want to pause. She was my world. She was my life.

I don't think you can understand what that meant. There was nothing else. I don't think the pain would ever go away. And begining to cope with it? Begining to let it go? I couldn't even imagine. Her breath still felt like it was right against mine, still like she was breathing beside me. I don't know if I can face you, House.

Nothing else makes sense--nothing else matters. I wish I could say otherwise, wish things would make sense. Leaving you behind as you open your eyes to the world--I only see the flicker of blue from deep, exhausted eyes while turning away from it all. I can't look at you right now, House.

I can't look at...myself right now.

The streets were dark. And the night longer than anything in the world. Not something you can understand. Not something even I can wrap my head around.

I'd rationalize all sorts of things, but walking to my car I was really just in a daze.

At the time...I'd thought that by going home maybe I could get away from it all. Amber. Amber's face. Yours. The crash, the images that run over and over into my brain like a nightmare.

In reality I know I was just going on autopilot, unsure of where to go. I think I'd left everything on that bed in that white room. And when midnight came around, wandering around like I was lost, finding myself back at my apartment with nothing but a dazed feeling and an empty mind; I realized that in some ways I was still back there.

It was like stepping into another world. The apartment still exactly the same.

Bed sheets still haunted with her smell, her feel. The apartment no different than when I left it the other day, mocking and all so wrong. While I fell into bed, all of it feeling so wrong, I lay there. I fell and I just lay there.

As...if maybe she would just walk right back in.

As if I thought it could be done. Maybe I was wrong, it was all a dream, I was just crazy and she'd be there waking me up. Smiling and hugging close to me. Her warmth. Her life. Amber.

I know if you had been there. I know if you had been a different man you would have been glad to share a dose of reality, House, but.

Then. Then I couldn't take it all. Reaching over to find a note at the side of my bed.

Off to pick out House. Be back later. ~

It was so much--too much to bare. And though I wanted to hate you. I wanted to blame you, I couldn't. All of it coming back to me, all so much. So much. I couldn't take any of it. Breaking down against the pillows of the bed.

The one thing keeping me grounded to the truth of her absence, the note folded in my hands.

All of it felt so wrong and crazy; so out of control. I didn't think I'd make it that night. All alone, my best friend lying in a hospital bed so far away it could've been in another world.

I knew then you were going to be okay, I knew then that things would never be the same and that we'd never rebuild anything without her. I think even more I didn't want things to ever go back to normal, I wanted things to keep changing and keep life from being so goddman hectic and insane. None of it made sense. I needed sense. I needed her.

But she'd never be there. And she'd never be there ever again.

All I found myself doing was crying and realizing with painful clarity...just what I'd done all along. To her.

...It was only an hour or so, breaking down into those bed sheets did I get the call.

The hospital checking back in I'd figured but at the sound of Cuddy's voice, I knew it was so much more.

And lying against that bed, one hand against the phone--my eyes staring off into nothing I heard the news. So clear it rang for hours in my head. Her voice filled with fear and pain, speaking so gently but for all it mattered House, she could have shouted.

"House....has brain damage, Wilson. I...I'm so sorry."