Thank you all for your reviews, and thanks to everyone who's read the first part.

Here's part 2. I hope you'll enjoy it…

** THE FIRST TIME - EPILOGUE **
- part 2 -

[1999]

It isn't long before House proves himself to be the riskiest choice Cuddy has ever made in her professional life.

Of course, he doesn't do his clinic duty. She's lucky he even shows there at all half of the time. But (God only knows how he does it) he manages to nose about in patients' files, or sneak into the Lab and steal test results, and he solves cases; difficult, tricky cases that other PPTH's specialized physicians are unable to handle past the medical care they would usually administrate to patients lying in bed with a death sentence hanging above their heads.

House quickly gains some notoriety in the hospital. One that is rather lukewarm, though: His methods are definitely unconventional (not that Cuddy wasn't prepared for it) but despite his results - or because of them - he predictably irks the ego of several doctors in her staff.

Cuddy had suggested he be under her supervision as a bargaining strategy to hire him, but the truth is, it takes less than a few months for her to become the only one who is willing to do it. More than that, the only one who can.

In any case, House seems to enjoy challenging her, specifically, and no one else. Whichever crazy idea he has in mind, he goes to her, and their interactions soon become verbal sparring matches that can have the power to suck all the energy out of her. But verbal sparring that also have the power to excite her like nothing else in her job does.

Yes, House stirs up controversy, and he's a giant pain in the ass, but there is something unique about him – something she can't explain – that carries great potential and Cuddy knows it better than anyone.

As a doctor, she admires his incredible intelligence. It is impossible for her to ignore the way his brain works, and the passion that drives him when she remembers how truth, and answers have always mattered to him. He may be unconventional, but she knows his motives are noble, and that he will eschew no means to get what he wants, which will ultimately benefit patients.

As the Dean of Medicine, consequently, she believes he's definitely an asset for PPTH, like no one else in her staff can be. After six months – ironically according to House's initial negotiating terms – she finds herself speaking in his favor in front of the Board to grant him tenure. She's convinced there is a way to use his extreme, but unique talents for the hospital's benefit. She's ambitious, and probably still a little bit utopian, but she has a plan: A Department of Diagnostics. Something revolutionary that will allow House to express his talents where he's best at. She knows she can count on his friend to ensure House will not become unmanageable. James Wilson (who she hired as an oncologist soon after him) is indeed an ally. The two of them have become friends, and when it comes to deal with House, Cuddy knows she can rely on Wilson to defuse the worst crisis before they come blowing up in her face.

And as a woman...

As a woman, she can't ignore the fact that working with House every day, listening to him grouse, being challenged by him, never knowing when, or how, are undeniably part of the reasons why she gets up in the mornings and goes to work with an extra dose of excitement she wasn't feeling until then. He's forty, and radiating an unmistakable alpha-male confidence that appeals to her more than she's willing to admit. But it's there all the same: the way he barges in her office with that self-confident smile that shouts: "Let's see how you're going to deal with what I have for you today;" the way he forces her to be more assertive, more aware of her feminine power, somehow; the way he makes her feel like she can understand him better than anyone else can, with that piercing blue gaze of his, staring at her with an intensity she can never really decipher.

Yes, as a woman, she's very aware that having House around isn't just a professional challenge. And because it sometimes feels so easy to let herself be sucked into the dangerous spiral of the past, where intoxicating memories of him mixes with the present, she's careful to keep her emotional distance with him the best she can. He's with Stacy now, anyway. The lawyer is a beautiful, brilliant woman, and there's no doubt House is crazy about her. She's seen the two of them together at Fundraising events organized by PPTH (House in a tuxedo is one unique image of its kind). On several occasions, they've even had dinners together, with Wilson and his wife Bonnie, at one or the other's place.

And it doesn't matter if, in these moments, Cuddy is the only single woman awkwardly sitting at the table. She doesn't care. She's become friend with Stacy. They can talk about House together, and joke about him being a jerk. And House rolls his eyes, but laughs with them. Cuddy realizes he's no different in a more private setting than he is at work, somehow. She realizes he's no different than she remembers him being, over a decade ago, when he used to piss his professors off at UMich but truly fascinated her with his charms, his wit and his scandalous, non-conformist manners.

She still dates men, though, but never seriously. Most of them are just sexual partners she meets in a professional context. She doesn't have time for a serious relationship, anyway. That's what she tells herself when she goes to sleep alone at night, lying in her king-size bed, with a little silver flask that she's kept all these years carefully hidden in her nightstand's drawer.

There is no doubt House is the riskiest choice Cuddy has ever made in her professional life. But, in more than one way, he's also undeniably the riskiest choice she's ever made on a personal level…

# # # # #

He's got tenure. Cuddy has miraculously managed to convince the Board to offer him his own Department (something about that woman's determination never ceases to amaze him). He's talked James Wilson into quitting his job at Pennsylvania Hospital to join him at PPTH. Stacy is happy. And Happy Stacy sure does make him happy.

When, some days, he's crazy enough to take a moment to assess his life, House is more than a little stunned by what he sees: He has a supportive boss; his best friend with him; a sexy, wonderful woman who happens to be in love with him; an exciting job.

Everything is… perfect.

Until, of course, it isn't.

Because nothing is ever perfect.

One Sunday in July, he pulls a muscle in his leg while playing golf with Stacy. It's just something minor, and stupid. At least, that's what he first tells himself when he comes home with a pulsating pain in his thigh. That will teach him not to try and impress his woman with his swing. He takes one pain killer and it all goes away until, the next day, the pain suddenly resurfaces, stronger than before, this time without him doing any particular effort. Working in a hospital gives him easy access to the pharmacy. Being a doctor gives him an easy excuse to write a prescription for pain killers to an imaginary patient.

It's risky, but he needs to take care of his pain, and basic antalgics don't seem to do the trick anymore. Two Vicodin a day will. When it becomes no longer enough to take the edge off, his instincts start telling him it might be more serious than what he thought it initially was.

But the first doctor he consults doesn't detect anything abnormal. Neither does the second one. After four days, three Vicodin a day aren't enough to help him deal with his pain, so he goes to a day clinic in Princeton General (doing it in PPTH seems a little stupid, even for him) and he tricks the physician there into giving him Demerol. The morphine finally relieves him, but only temporarily. There's nothing he can do but take more Vicodin in the hope that the pain caused by his strained muscle, or whatever it is, will quickly disappears.

Except, it doesn't.

After a week, like a pathetically desperate drug-seeking addict, he goes back to Princeton General for another dose of Demerol. But the attendant in charge that day isn't as keen to give him his fix as the first one was. Instead, he decides to test his urine by inserting a catheter in his urethra, without anesthesia of course, the little bastard probably thinking he's proving a point to what he thinks is just another faking drug addict.

There's blood in his urine, but the attendant still sends him back home for a minor trauma in his leg, simply advising him to take it easy for a few days.

Everyone has been missing the point from the beginning. What's worth, even House himself has. When his blood tests come back and reveal elevated creatinine kinase, it's already too late. An MRI of his leg shows what he should have suspected sooner: muscle death in his thigh. The pain he's felt while playing golf is due to an infarction. But they've waited too long.

No. Nothing in life is ever perfect…

# # # # #

[2000]

Cuddy has done everything. Everything she thought he would have wanted her to do.

Still, deep down, she knows amputation was the safest choice. Except House is a stubborn idiot who always thinks he's better than everyone else, and of course, he refused. The alternative that Cuddy has suggested has, not only saved his leg, it's also saved his life.

That's about all it's done, though.

Removing a chunk of muscle in his thigh has left House with permanent, excruciating pain. If he was a difficult, albeit brilliant, jerk until then, it's needless to say that handling chronic pain on a daily basis has turned him into a bitter, impossible to manage pain in the ass.

But Cuddy doesn't feel guilty for the choice she's made. Ultimately, it's one that he's made for himself.

What she feels guilty about, however, is the unavoidable consequences that follow.

For as long as she can, Stacy tries her best to be supportive, caring and forgiving of House's spite, but even her devoted love isn't enough to bring him comfort. House is resentful. And he blames her, while, just like Cuddy, she's done nothing but respect his wish. The fact that he's now popping Vicodin like candies doesn't make things better, either. He's irascible, vindictive, and angry most of the time. That is, when he's not just plain high, and unable to focus.

It takes barely six months after House's infarction until the poison destroys his relationship with Stacy. House is too proud to deal with his handicap, and, no matter how understanding Stacy is, he convinces himself she only stays with him out of pity. And pity is the one thing that he can't stand.

In February, after he's done everything he could to force her to leave him, bitterly arguing that she'd do herself a favor because she deserves more than a miserable cripple in her life she gives up and breaks up with him. Deliberately pushing Stacy away was a stupid, irrational burst of pride but the truth is, when she finally leaves him, it completely destroys him.

For weeks, House is just the shadow of himself, getting drunk, dangerously mixing pills with scotch, passing out in bars half of the time, when he's not getting into fights, often ending with bruises or black eyes he's completely unable to explain.

Wilson, thankfully, is here to limit the damages. He spends nearly all of his free time with House, almost moving in with him at some point, just to make sure he's not going to do anything stupid when he's left alone in his apartment. The oncologist's selfless devotion is admirable, except to his wife, Bonnie, who fails to see it that way and quickly starts blaming Wilson for caring more about his loser friend than he cares about her. Wilson tries to put the broken pieces together by returning home, but it's too late: After two months, Bonnie files for divorce and Cuddy is forced to handle House without Wilson's help.

Yet, she cannot be with him all the time. Even if she tries her best to be a friend and help him get over his break-up, Cuddy has a hospital to run. And getting personally involved with House outside of a professional setting would quickly become suspicious to the Board.

When he had his infarction, the Department of Diagnostics she fought hard to create just for him had just been authorized by the Board. Running it in those circumstances is almost impossible for House, not to mention the fact that it would be a professional suicide, for both him and Cuddy. The Board members are as lenient with the whole situation as reason allows them to be, but they still lose patience all the same. During that period, House – even though he's no longer officially recovering from his infarction - is notoriously a wreck. He only shows up at work when the mood strikes him. Half of the time when he's there, he's too high to see patients. His days basically consist in him sitting at his desk and playing on his Game Boy, or sleeping in the doctor lounge, when he's not watching soaps on TV. Threats of shutting down the Department are regularly issued during Board meetings. Truth is, it's hard to really see the benefit of keeping it when the only doctor running it is not even doing the job he's supposed to be paid for.

Still, Cuddy remains stubbornly protective of House. More than once, she fights – and wins – not to get him fired, arguing that he's still one of their best assets. It's mostly obvious just to her, but she still manages to negotiate with the Board and buy him (and her) some time to prove to them that she's right. She's convinced that House needs something to occupy his brain; something that will helps him stop obsessing over his misery, and getting inexorably sucked into a spiral that ruins his unique talent.

In another one of her risky, gambling moves, she decides to hire two fellows to work with him. How she manages to get the Board to approve her crazy decision, she doesn't know, but there's not much she wouldn't do to protect House's job at this point, and force him to get back on track, to be the brilliant genius she knows. She can't stand to see his talent go to waste that way. And she's angry at him for not being able to get a grip and prove to her that she was right to trust him in the first place. In a way, she also probably feels guilty for his pain, and how it's turned him into someone so miserable that she doesn't recognize him anymore.

Yes, she's too proud to admit it, but another reason why she refuses to simply sit by and watch is because seeing him like that, half the man that he was, not even interested in medicine anymore, hurts her emotionally in deeper ways than what she can handle. She wants the guy she used to know in College back; the one who talked so passionately about his ambitions: Finding the truth, getting all the answers. She wants the guy she's hired back: The one who used to challenge her, and boost her confidence. She wants the jerk who laughed with her, the one who used to tease her, now, and a long time ago. She wants that smile, roguish smile on his face, and that look in his eyes, defying, infuriatingly smug, but so exciting…

So she goes to his place one evening, determined to shake him out his daze and get him back to work. It's lasted long enough now. Even she is not sure she will be able to hold the wolves back long enough to prevent him from losing his job. If he's not pulling himself back together quickly, she won't be able to help him. And just the thought that she could be unable to prevent the inevitable upcoming train wreck from happening is enough to drive her crazy.

He's predictably high when he opens the door. She still manages to hide the initial shock of seeing him scruffier and more miserable than she expected him to be. Images of him bursting out of the campus administrative building over a decade ago pop into her head and she feels a sudden urge to hug him, just like she wanted to do back then. But she doesn't. Instead, without waiting for his permission, she starts cleaning up the mess in his living room, as he stands, wobbling on his feet, and watches her, commenting with a slurry voice about her doing the dirty work, like the useless administrator that she is.

She bravely stomachs his cynical barbs without saying a word, and when she's done, she orders him to go take a shower. He briefly jokes that he'll only do it if she comes with him, and she rolls her eyes, a little taken aback, but not really upset by the inappropriateness of his remark.

It's the first time House is making that kind of blatantly sexual innuendo to her since she's hired him, and she should feel outraged, or embarrassed, but she's not. He's drunk, and visibly depressed, and even if he's sometimes ogled her in that way in the past, it's never been more than just part of their unspoken game, something she tells herself, that is just an unconscious remnant of the past. Nothing more.

When he comes back from his shower, he looks less dirty, but not really on top form, either. She notices he's kept his stubble and she tries not to think too much about how it makes him look oddly sexier because it isn't the point of her visit at all.

She tells him why she's here, and while doing so, she makes an obvious effort to stay as professional as the situation requires her to be: The Board is after him, and she's doing her fucking best not to get his ass fired, but he has to get a grip and go back to work. If he doesn't, she can't guarantee he'll keep his position at PPTH, even despite him having tenure.

He shrugs, like it didn't matter to him, and it infuriates her. She bites her bottom lip, to prevent her from puffing in exasperation and she plants her gaze in his, staring intensely into his eyes, as if she wanted to force him to obey her with the power of her mind only. She doesn't know what to say, anyway. The more she looks at him, the more she realizes how much of a lost cause he is. But, at the same time, she just can't wrap her head around the reasons why she is so desperately unable to let him go.

As she stands in front of him, they hold each other's gaze in silence and she wishes she had enough strength to do just that: Let him go. But she can't. There is something in her gaze that conveys both her helplessness and the anger she feels in that instant, and after what seems like an eternity, House averts his eyes, hanging his head in shame.

"I'm a loser," he mumbles almost inaudibly.

She wants to scream 'no' but all she manages to do is shake her head, feeling powerless. She takes a few steps in his direction and stands in his personal space, conspicuously close, until it forces him to lift up his head and look her in the eyes again.

"House, you're not a loser," she says with a hint of sadness in her voice.

Their night together, the regrets she'd felt afterwards, him being back in her life, his infarction, his breakup with Stacy, all of those things wasted for nothing, just like that. How did all of this happen? And for what?

They look at each other for a long while and then, without a warning, his lips are suddenly on her lips, kissing her. It feels instantly desperate, messy, almost brutal, even. She's taken aback by the bruising force of his claim, and she freezes inside his arms, paralyzed at first. But his hands are roaming her back, and his tongue is pressing against her mouth demanding entry. He tastes like scotch, and it feels so familiar… She relaxes in his embrace, and gives in to his kiss for a minute. Completely stupidly, she gives in.

What the hell is she doing?

There is no worse moment to be doing what she's doing than this one. He's high, and in pain, miserable, barely recovering from a breakup. He doesn't really want that. It makes no sense at all. He doesn't even really want her…

When his hand starts yanking on the hem of her shirt to find its way underneath, Cuddy grips his shoulders and pushes him away from her with might. She's panting, and her lips probably glisten with his saliva. She wants to lick them, but she doesn't. Instead, she just stands there, breathless and unable to speak, while he stares at her with an undecipherable gaze.

If he makes an uncalled-for comment, any comment at all, about what just happened, she will fire him, she tells herself. But House says nothing. After a while, she can even see panic in his eyes, as if he only now realized what he's done. He must fear she's going to fire him, she thinks, because that's surely what any woman in her position would do after an "incident" like that. Especially when she's made it perfectly clear that the reasons why she came to see him were strictly professional.

But Cuddy is more than just "a woman in her position" and when it comes to House, she knows that she will never be able to see him in that way only. Like a boss sees her employee. Like a Dean should consider his best asset. It's a curse but she knows she will always see him differently; because he's House and if she's here today, not just standing in his apartment, but here, at that moment in her life, doing what she does, part of her can't deny that she owes it to him somehow.

Just as his gaze, panicked and blurred with tears, tells her that he's painfully aware that his future is lying in her hands in that instant.

"I've hired two fellows to work under your supervision in your Department," she says, trying her best to sound unmoved and intransigent. "They're expected to start on Monday—"

"Cuddy… I… I'm," he stutters self-consciously.

"Tomorrow, you're going back to work," she continues before he can finish his sentence. "Sober, and on a dose of painkillers reasonable enough to allow you to fully function."

For a brief, painful moment, his stare on her becomes more intense, filled with too many unsaid words, and she almost loses the strength to carry on. She takes a long, wobbling breath, and juts her chin up to sustain his gaze.

"Nothing happened. Not tonight, not ever," she adds, swallowing a lump in her throat. "The Board agreed not to fire you because I told them you were the best doctor we have. And that is the only reason they need to hear."

House silently nods, because words are superfluous in that instant to express the shame he feels, and Cuddy is grateful not to have to explain to him why she indeed needs, now more than ever, to put their past behind her if they want to start over on solid grounds, if anything to be able to work together, for lack of being able to be together.

She's felt the force of his desire that night, and it brought back memories of what it is like to be held, kissed, and loved by House, powerful memories that undeniably shook her to the core. But that desire, troubling as it was, was too desperate and demanding, and it frightened her. At that moment in her life, she's not sure she's strong enough to handle the emotional turmoil that is House without consuming herself entirely, and she doesn't have the luxury to do it, no matter how dangerously intoxicating it would surely feel.

She leaves him without uttering another word, only sharing the weight of all the things they don't have the courage to confess to each other with one last longing look before exiting his apartment.

The next day, House shows up at PPTH, almost on time, sober and clean – even though his shirt isn't ironed, and he still hasn't shaved his five o'clock shadow (a look that he keeps from then on). That day, as she watches him limp across the lobby, clenching his jaw to hide his pain, but holding his head high challengingly every time someone walks past him, she knows she's done the right thing.

The Department of Diagnostics that she fought so hard to keep just for him can finally become more than just an empty office with the name of a ghost on its door…

(...)