Chapter 2

In separate rooms, Chase and Cameron were each asking a Winchester brother, "When did the symptoms begin?"

"About four days ago," Dean was saying to Chase, as Sam said to Cameron, "Uh, two days ago? He woke up covered in bruises."

"Where have you travelled in the past five years?"

"Every state," said Dean. "I'm like a sailor in that 'every port' kinda way."

"How much time do you have?" said Sam. "I could maybe give you a list tomorrow, if it's important."

"Have you every travelled outside the country?"

"Mexico. Canada... Cuba but wasn't there very long," Dean said. Sam had made him promise to tell the truth if he could.

Chase blinked. "Aren't you American? You're not supposed to go to Cuba."

"If I told you about it, I'd just have to kill you." Dean flashed one of his most charming smiles at Chase. The truth really could set you free sometimes. With the apocalypse to deal with, the fugitive thing was the least of their worries. Lying was exhausting, and he could finally distance himself from it a little and relax. The sad thing was that he was still kind of lying: the monsters bit was just too much to share.

Chase swallowed. Why did he always get stuck with the violent ones? In this case, the alternative had been letting Allison be alone with this guy, who had smiled at her a bit too much. It was a tossup.

Cameron gently repeated to Sam, "Have you every travelled outside the country?"

He blinked, startled, and brought his eyes back to resting on her. "Yeah... twice. Just to Mexico, though. Dean wasn't even with me one of those times." Cameron thought she could see the beginning of tears in his eyes.

"Hey," said Cameron, "I'd love to say that we could wait and do this later, but we want to do everything we can for your brother. The more you can tell us, the more we can do."

Sam gulped.

"Have you suffered any major wounds or accidents?" Chase asked Dean.

Dean took a while to answer. "Shot, stabbed, electrocuted - damn well gave me a heart attack." He grinned. "I'm kinda like 50 Cent."

"Oh come on, you're having me on," Chase burst out, unable to keep up his professional demeanour any longer. "What do you do?"

"Bounty hunter. Why? Got a job for me? See-" Dean ripped and yanked down the neck of his hospital gown to show the scars on his shoulder. Chase noted the tattoo and scribbled on the chart.

"You're serious."

"Again - stab wound right here."

Chase looked a little closer, then noticed something else. "Wait a minute." He pulled the left side of the gown a little lower. "How did you get this?" It was the weirdest burn he'd ever seen, shaped like a handprint curving around Dean's tricep. It boggled the mind trying to understand the logistics of it.

"Honestly, I have no idea." Dean paused before adding, "It's probably from the volunteer firefighting." Okay, maybe he didn't mind lying when it involved sounding freakin' awesome.

House swung his cane at their awesome, newly-reinstated, see-through diagnosis board. He'd made Foreman steal it back from the OB/GYN lounge while they were waiting. He missed being able to spy on the denizens of the parking lot while writing up symptoms, and he was in good with Cuddy because of this new case anyway.

"What else did our mystery man tell you?" he asked his staff. There was a long list of mundane, if painful, symptoms on the board for patient "John D'oh".

"Our patient came in with a brother and a friend, and none of them have a fixed address," said Chase.

"So Foreman can't feed his urge to break and enter... and knowing our luck, it'll be environmental," said House. "Run some cultures - seems more bacterial than viral to me, no matter what The Cuds says - and check for immunodeficiency, AIDS especially - how old is this guy?"

"Thirty," Foreman read off the chart.

"Nice try, Man Friday, like you did any of the work."

"Is today rag-on-Foreman day or something?" Cameron asked.

"Hey," said House. "Foreman kicked back with a cuppa joe while you guys were busting your asses out there."

Cameron glared at Foreman, who shrugged defensively. "Carry on."

"Any changes in personality?" House continued. "Anyone interview the brother?"

"Other than increased irritability, no," said Cameron. "But he didn't notice his brother was sick until two days after the symptoms started."

"Patient's on the rag, case solved. Cameron and Chase can go spend a Very Special Moment with him. Everyone not bleeding, get to the lab and run the tests. Just kidding, didn't want to lose that line. Now: let's go through the symptoms. How bad is the bruising?"

"He's basically one giant bruise," said Chase. "I transfused one unit already. There's probably internal bleeding that we'll have to check for."

"The aching bones - X-ray and biopsy."

"Are we going to diagnose him anytime soon, or just run tests?" Foreman asked.

House pointed at him. "Don't think I don't know your motivations behind this one, young grasshopper. The patient apparently has a virus - but I'm not convinced. And most of his symptoms point to a few common illnesses that look more bacterial than viral. I want to see what the common factor is before trying to narrow it down to just one disease."

"And what if it's not?" asked Chase.

"Then we treat for five," said House. "Nothing we haven't done before."

Chase scowled. "This case is strange. The patient was pulling my leg the whole time I was in there, his life is as easy to investigate as a tadpole's, and we aren't even going to be able to MRI him."

Someone knocked. They all looked up to see a tall, lanky frame filling the doorway.

"Oh, look, it's the BFG." House wondered how much mileage he could get out of that... and whether any of them had even heard of the Big Friendly Giant. Maybe Chase. It was kind of a British thing.

"House!" Cameron chided. "We were just discussing your brother's case, Sam." She smiled at him.

He nodded. "Do you have any ideas? Or treatments? Anything?"

"We might have if Bambi wasn't still in here," House said, then looked around. "Oh! I guess I was the only one talking about the elephant in the room." Were elephants ever named Bambi? If not, he was mixing metaphors really badly. Oh well.

Foreman stood up. "Your brother's in good hands, though it may not-" he glared at House-"look like it. We're going to run some tests, see what we can do real soon."

"That's great," said Sam. "Is he always like this?"

"Yes, always" the team said in an out-of-sync chorus, drowning out House's, "If you mean virile, brilliant and cuttingly incisive - pun intended! - then yes!"

"Okay then." He turned to Chase. "Look, my brother told me a little about his session with you, and I feel bad that he kept jerking your chain like that - I know you guys are just trying to help - so I got a list of his medical records going back to when he was a kid."

House switched into professional mode. "So some other hospital gets to have his full medical records while we get stuck with a page of chickenscratch?" Well, professional for him, anyway.

"We... ah... when we were young we went through a lot of different insurance companies-"

"And, let me guess, a lot of different names." He knew the type. Sam dropped his gaze and scuffed his toe along the carpet, as if it was best not to say any more.

"Anyway, so that's Dean's, and if you need any other records for our family you can ask, we might have those too," he said in a rush, making a hasty exit.

"Oh my God," said Cameron, frowning. "There are a lot of injuries on this list. A lot. They don't start til his teens or so, but I'm thinking maybe abuse."

"That he just admits to on paper? Who do you think wrote this all down?" Chase asked, peering at it over Cameron's shoulder. Foreman drew next to them to see as well.

"If he gets up to this much on a regular basis, I think we can discount the bruising as a symptom," said Foreman.

There was a flurry of paper as House snatched the list to look at it himself. Really, where were the days of bosses getting everything first? He compared it to the forms in the patient's charts.

"Looks like it was written by the patient, unless messenger boy is really good at faking big bro's handwriting. Which no one is. You fake a signature, you go for the big guns - Mom or Dad." He scanned through the information further. "Not much mention of either here except for cause of death, immolation and complications from a car accident. Oho! Maternal grandparents were murdered. All fairly young. Wow, this family is totally cursed." One... two...

"House!" said Cameron.

He smirked. Like clockwork.

"As long as the patient doesn't decide that's why he's dying and refuse treatment," said Foreman. "That happens so much more often than I expect."

"He didn't give any reason for his injuries in the file," Chase said. "Maybe we should get a bigger family history."

House nodded. "Since Cameron has touchy feel-good crap ready every time she sees him, she can go ask... and distract him while I go talk to the patient." Cameron got up. "Ubububub!" He cut her off. "Not yet. I want to see if there's any more to find out about the patient."

"I don't think you'll find much. As you pointed out with the medical records, we don't even know his last name, maybe not even his first."

"Dean Winchester."

His patient tensed, tucking an arm behind him. "Where'd you hear that?"

"Oh, calm down. You and Paul Bunyan out there aren't that hard to identify, you know."

Dean - or Lara Croft, as House had nicknamed him after reading his rap sheet - watched him warily. "What are you going to do then?"

"First, I'm going to treat you. Then, I'm going to annoy my boss. After that, a reuben. Finally..."

House was drawing it out on purpose. Okay, he often hated his patients. But this one? Between the criminal record vile enough to unnerve even him a little, the military air that reminded him of his dad, the feeling that Cuddy might somehow be involved with this scumbag, the lies more outrageous than any they'd ever gotten, the complete mystery all of it entailed, and then... for a moment, House could do nothing but stare, names of untraceable poisons and laxatives running through his head.

The patient had STOLEN HIS CANE.

No one had ever abused his cane, and by extension, him, so much in so short a time. Even Wilson had built up slowly. Dean had just wrenched it away in one fell and unbalancing swoop and was now holding it like a spear at him. It was going to take a lot to make up for this insult.

House said, "Oh, you are so dead." There were some great things you could unleash upon a patient with a mysterious illness and carte blanche for funding. Catheter. Cytoscopy.

"Kinda thought that was a given."

House's mind raced, back on the case; it was either that or shoot the patient with a gram of adrenaline. "It is, isn't it? Wouldn't be the first time. Tell me: how do you keep on coming back? Unless you're secretly a cockroach, I could really use a tip on the resurrection thing." Dialysis. Chemo? Nah, Wilson would bitch.

"Bad timing and an evil twin?"

"You think you're going to die," House surmised, pouncing on Dean's earlier words. "You don't expect anything from me at all, do you? You've been lying through your teeth your whole stay and stole my cane. You don't want me to cure you." Lumbar puncture. Something involving needles in eye.

Dean raised a finger. House tried to determine if his grip was loose enough to steal back the cane yet. "It wasn't my idea to come here, all right?"

"Whose was it?" He'd been shot, right? An MRI might get those bullets out.

"Sam, my little brother."

"Little like the Hulk maybe," House muttered. He considered assigning the patient bone marrow biopsies and exploratory surgeries before turning to another train of thought. "If you are a bounty hunter like you say, then what have you been doing with all your money? Saving up in case of illness to hand it over to Cuddy?" Breast implants. Patient looked like a girl already.

The patient leaned forward with interest. "What's Cuddy?"

House snickered. 'What' indeed. He was shocked, though, that their Very Important Patient was unaware of her. Relieved, too. "Cuddy is the fire-breathing dragon who guarded the hospital entrance fiercely until piggybacking you right through."

"So he's your boss."

"She, although that's a new development." There, that should keep his patient away from Cuddy. She'd probably come by to snoop. "Where's all your money going? Your clothes look and smell like they came off a homeless corpse."

"Ammo, weapons, travel costs... hey, cut the crap. You calling the cops or not?'

Colonoscopy: two birds with one stone. Leeches... no, maggots.

"I told you, treatment first. Only the best for our serial killers." The patient looked bow-legged; maybe he could recommend some resetting of bone.

"And then?"

"I can't exactly tell you, can I? You'd escape as soon as you got the chance."

"Look, buddy, you want your cane back or not?"

If he needed a transplant, House would make sure the organs came from a pig, and the surgery had no anesthetic. Plus he hated being called 'buddy'.

"I'll call once I've solved your case."

Dean swallowed and tossed the cane back to House. "Then you're right, I'll be gone. And Cuddy may not be very happy about that."

House frowned. Something was definitely very wrong with this. Not just Cuddy's instructions so far, but the fact that she wouldn't want him doing the right thing. Since when was that Cuddy?

"What do you have on her?" Dean could get a needle to the heart every time he needed an injection. Or, more fittingly, to the dick. Cameron could do those.

"Dude, I still don't know who she is. What's your deal with her?"

House's lips tightened. He was about to start threatening the patient when the brother came in. Some delaying tactics Cameron had. She was definitely on dick duty now.

"You," he said, whacking Sam with his cane.

"Ow!" He turned big, sad eyes and a comically woeful pout on his brother. "He hit me."

The patient withstood that face manfully. "Just doin' what we were all thinkin', Sammy."

"Actually," said House, "if you want to pass that whack on to Lara Croft there, I provide full medical permission. Also, I need to talk to you."

As House exited, he heard, "You stole a cane from a cripple?"

"Who else do you steal canes from? C'mon!"

Some scuffling and furious muttering came from the room before the brother came to join him.

House greeted him with, "Your brother's a criminal."

Sam's eyes darted left or right to see if anyone was listening. He sighed. "I could say it's not what it looks like, and it's true, but you're not going to believe me anyway."

"Try me."

"We... investigate murders, disappearances, stuff like that. Sometimes there are patterns to them, and when we follow them we end up at the wrong place at the wrong time." Sam was practically forcing the words out, looking extremely uncomfortable.

"I bet you were just holding it for a friend, too."

"I've told you the truth, as much as I can. What do you want from me? I looked you up; I know this won't stop you from treating my brother."

House moved closer, trying to look more intimidating. Against someone this size, it probably didn't work. "How did you get our dean of medicine to help a couple of thugs like you? She may like it rough, but this is beyond her kind of service."

Sam looked a little put out by his description of Cuddy. Good. The more to keep these fugitives away from her, the better.

"We meet a lot of people in our line of work. Someone we knew who she would trust and believe her paid a visit."

"Who. Did. You. Send?" He knew how easy Cuddy's was to break into. Anyone could've been there.

There was an uneasy silence. "That's probably something you should ask her."

He had a feeling already that that conversation would be a losing battle.

Cuddy was already there when he got to his office after a side trip to menace his team out of lunch and into administering a series of painful tests.

"House. I saw everything you scheduled for the patient," said Cuddy. She grasped his hands. "Thank you so much for all you've been doing so far."

"Did the nurses put an APB out on me again?"

"Oh, I told your team to report back to me on the progress of the patient. I feel kind of responsible for him, you know?"

Of course Cuddy would use his team as the eyes and ears on the case.

"About that," said House slowly, "have you seen him? Do you know who he is?"

"Not yet, no." Cuddy's forehead creased. "Why? Who is he?"

House wordlessly passed her the rap sheet he'd printed out.

Cuddy raised her eyebrows, but otherwise he could see no reaction from her. "What are you going to do when the case is over?" she said in a too-casual tone.

"What do you think?"

She shook her head. "Just - let me know before any SWAT team comes crashing through the windows?"

"So you can warn them. Since when did you decide to play Bonnie to such a creepy Clyde?"

"If they said they're not harming anyone, then I believe them. I know I can't ask the same of you, especially considering what you know right now, but for God's sake, House, you gave a gun back to the crazy holding up my hospital. If you could be a part of that then, be a part of this now."

"Cuddy, I know you have an insane love of feeling loved - what I think of as your mommy syndrome -"

"Not today, House."

"Why are you doing this? Is someone threatening you, holding something over your head?"

"No! I made this choice for myself."

"Because while I'd usually be happy to aid and abet that kind of situation.."

"He's just another patient that I'm counting on you to treat."

"Yeah, and watching like a hawk. The brother told me that someone you would trust came and talked to you. Who was it?"

"House." Cuddy touched his arm. "While I appreciate your concern-" House snorted- "this is just something you're going to have to trust me on. Like I trusted the... person... who came to me, whom I am not going to tell you about, no matter how much you pester me."

"I'll withhold treatment from the patient," House threatened.

Cuddy shook her head, smiling. "No you won't."

He sighed. He'd done almost he could to try and convince Cuddy to tell him the truth, but it wasn't working. There was only one option left to him, and it was really going to kill to have to use it.

"I don't want you to get hurt," he said.

Her face softened. "I'll be fine. We all will. Just - believe me on this one, okay?"