What would've been, had the original Hysteria stayed long enough to play. Love it or hate it, but it ain't coming out of my head anymore, so tough luck. Either way, I need the space in my Document Manager to work on the Halloween fic. And no, I won't tell you what that's about. Not yet, anyway. Ya'll can wait five days, can't ya? :P


1 ~ First Impressions

"House, I have a new case for you."

The man addressed looked up from his magazine. With slightly graying hair and semi-shaved beard, he looked to be in his late forties. After giving the addressee a cynical look, he turned away from her, flipping the page of the magazine and continuing to read.

Lisa Cuddy gave an exasperated sigh. Shaking her head, she held up a medical file.

"Sixteen-year-old male, hemoptysis and chest pains. Already checked for bronchitis, pneumonia, and lung cancer, but the tests came up negative."

The man, House, sighed irritably and looked up. "You know, it's already been established that when I ignore you, it means that I don't want you to be here."

"House, you haven't had a case in weeks and you're shirking on your clinic duty. Do your job, or else you won't have one," said Cuddy, who tossed the file onto the nearby table in frustration.

"It has also been established that my tenure prevents that little option."

"If you're not doing your job, then the contract is null and void."

House stared at Cuddy for a long while before standing up from the examination table he hi-jacked and grabbing his cane. "Pulmonary embolism. Do a surgery to find the clot." He attempted to walk out, but Cuddy's voice stopped him.

"Already checked. We did an MRI, CT scan, even an X-ray. He's clean." She picked up the file once more and held it out to him as he turned around. "We ruled out most of the possible causes already. Nothing."

House again gave her a long look. "Aspergilloma."

"Nope."

"Tuberculosis."

"No."

"Inhaled a Lego?"

"House."

"What?" House continued on his way out of the room, ignoring Cuddy's outstretched hand and the file in it. "Just because he's sixteen doesn't mean he's not stupid enough to swallow something he wasn't supposed to."

Cuddy just shook her head and quickened her step to keep pace with him. "Just take the case. You and I both know that you enjoy a good mystery."

"And what, pray tell, would make this a 'me' worthy mystery?"

"Look at the damn file and see for yourself." She once again held the file up for him to see. Looking critical, yet still curious, he finally took it and flipped through it.

Skimming through most of the 'unnecessary' numbers, his eyes caught on one of the more unusual points. He looked back up at Cuddy and lifted an eyebrow. "This file can't be right."

Cuddy almost gave a satisfied smirk at catching his attention. "It is. Your team and I each took the test twice. Same every time."

"Then how much money does your hospital spend on thermometers?"

"Enough that it gave all of us an accurate 98.6 when we didn't believe they were correct either."

House stared blankly at her once more. "So... if the thermometers are working, and this kid's still breathing, then how come he has a 86.4 degree temperature?"

Cuddy's smirk truly did show itself when she saw that she had him at checkmate. "I don't know. Why don't you answer that question in exchange for a paycheck?"

And then she left, leaving a baffled and extremely intrigued House.

He felt heavy. Never a good sign. His brain felt foggy, his chest sore, and his hearing was as though he had fallen into the lake in the park. For some reason, he felt as though he should be afraid, but couldn't for the life of him figure out why.

Then he heard a woman's voice. Light, yet confident, but extremely familiar. But where...?

... No... it couldn't be...

"M-mom...?" He opened his eyes, blurry from lack of use, but it wasn't his mother that he saw. The only thing similar between the two was the red hair, though as she turned her head, he realized it was just a trick of the light; she was really a brunette.

She gave a sad smile at the assumption and walked over. "No, my name is Dr. Cameron. I'm one of the specialists in charge of your case."

"You're stupid. You know what happened to your mother, yet you still think she's okay? Idiot..."

His depression over the mistake and the comments of his 'second voice' clouded his still blurry thoughts before what she said made a dent. "Doctor...?" Then it hit him full force.

"WHAT!" He sat up quickly, startling Cameron and disturbing the medical equipment. He started to frantically pull at the IV in his arm and nearly succeeded in tearing the stubborn thing out before Cameron finally managed to grab a firm hold of his hand.

"Calm down," she said in a voice that froze him. "We are here to help you. You're sick and we're going to get you out of here as soon as you're better."

His eyes, previously wide from shock, quickly narrowed as he recognized the tone of voice that she had accidentally used. He yanked his arm from her grasp. "Don't treat me like a child," he growled, his life experiences being the only thing that kept his sky blue eyes from adopting an abnormal green. "I'm sixteen! I know full well what I'm here for!" He lowered his arm, but didn't break eye contact with the once-again startled woman. "Every time I've been in a hospital, bad things have happened. So either tell me the bad news or leave. Now."

Cameron, who didn't think that she would upset him that badly, shook her head and stood up. "T-there is no bad news," she began, pausing slightly when he broke his gaze only to roll his eyes, "but you did collapse after you coughed up blood. There's something wrong, so we're going to find out what."

He scoffed, but didn't say anything. Instead, he turned away from her and laid back down. Satisfied that he was calm enough, she left the room, barely hearing him mumble under his breath.

"Something's wrong? Of course, something's wrong! You, the little half-ghost freak who fooled himself into thinking he was still human, have the nerve to exist!"

"As if you could help me..."

House entered the meeting room with his usual flair; interrupting his team's current conversation while dumping his book bag on a nearby chair. The three looked up while House got himself settled in. By the time he had finished, he looked up to find them still staring.

"What?" he said, wiping at his chin. "Do I have Cheerios stuck to my face?"

A tall, dark-skinned man, Dr. Eric Foreman, just shook his head. "I'm still surprised you even took this case. Unless it was some unexplainable anomaly, you usually wouldn't even bother."

"Well, technically, a 86.4 degree temperature kinda is unexplainable," said House, walking over towards the coffee maker. "Unless he was dead when you took his temperature. Then the fact that he's alive now would be the unexplainable part."

"We did take his temperature while he was sleeping," said a blond man with an Australian accent. Dr. Robert Chase sat with his arms crossed. "Maybe it's only his basal body temp."

"That's still too low," said Cameron. "And we can rule out hypothermia, since he woke up well enough to try and escape the hospital."

House turned towards her, coffee in hand. "Escape? What is this, a prison camp?"

"It might as well be, with the look he had when he learned I was a doctor. Nearly ripped his IV clean out of his skin."

"So, not only is he sick, but he's also suicidal," said House, taking a sip of his coffee. "You did tell him that the sharp needle in his arm was keeping him from having a stroke, right?"

"... No, it's not," said Chase.

"But he doesn't know that," said House, pulling his 'Are you stupid?' look. He turned back to Cameron. "Well? Did you?"

"Never got the chance. He went berserk as soon as he woke up." Cameron cringed slightly at the memory. "And I think he might have family problems. He woke up mistaking me as his mother, and almost looked depressed when he realized I wasn't."

"As far as we know, he doesn't have a family," said Foreman. "It was a security guard who called the hospital after he tried to shoplift the store she worked at. Looked ragged enough to be a runaway, at least."

"Then that means we have no family history," said House, leaning on the white board. "Anyone try to get finger prints yet?"

"We need the patient's authorization first," said Chase, his eyebrow raised.

"Then hop to it! You just said he was awake. And while you're at it, get a core body temperature this time. Wouldn't wanna screw up, would we?" With that, House set down his coffee mug and retreated to his office, leaving his team to their own devices.


2 ~ Nightmares

The boy sat in bed, reviewing his options. Since he collapsed in Princeton, he assumed that he was in Princeton-Plainsboro. It was the biggest and the closest. He also knew that he was probably on the second floor, if his lungs were the problem. Unfortunately the female doctor, Cameron, he remembered, didn't say anything about his condition other than that he was coughing up blood. There could be tons of other things wrong with him, the way he was living.

He held his hand up and attempted, for the fifth time, to create an ectoblast. And for the fifth time, the ball of concentrated energy formed, bringing with it a stinging pain. For the fifth time, he hissed in discomfort, and for the fifth time, he grabbed onto his wrist with the other hand to keep it from shaking. But for the first time, the glowing green ball didn't disintegrate. He kept it steady, embracing, if not enjoying, the pain.

He wasn't sure why it hurt. He couldn't even go invisible or intangible without feeling almost unbearably hot, but it wasn't as bad with those as it was with this. And this probably wasn't as bad as cryokinesis, or duplication. Not that he tried; he could barely form ectoblasts without someone noticing, let alone any of his higher-level powers.

Suddenly, he heard the door opening and he let his hand drop. The bedsheets burned for a second and a half before he remembered to let the ball of energy disperse. The door opened and three doctors appeared, one of them Cameron. She caught his eye and squirmed for a split second before looking away. She was obviously still shaken about that morning. He didn't feel guilty; he hated doctors.

"Good afternoon," said one. He had an Australian accent. "My name is Dr. Chase. This," he motioned to the other new doctor, the dark-skinned one, "is Dr. Foreman. You've already met Dr. Cameron."

He looked at Cameron, who was trying her best not to return the favor. "Yeah," he said, ice lacing his voice. "We've met."

Chase flinched a little at his tone, but didn't say anything. Foreman tried to break the silence. "We never did learn your name. Care to fill us in?"

He looked towards Foreman and stared. It was a simple enough question, to be certain. But he wasn't ready yet. So, like every other time the subject popped up, he lied. "Aiden."

Foreman raised an eyebrow. "No last name?"

"Why do you need to know?"

"We're doctors. We help you. You help us help you. If you don't help us, we can't help you." 'Aiden's' eyes narrowed. Like Cameron, he treated him like a child.

"What do you take me for? An idiot?" he snapped, temper flaring. "I know the basics of what is or isn't required. A last name is not on that list."

"A last name is required to find your parents. They need to know that their son is in the hospital and they need to tell us if genetics is why you're sick." Foreman became almost as angry as Aiden. Chase and Cameron were stuck like deer in headlights, watching the argument ensue like a tennis match.

"If there's one thing I could tell you, it's that it's not genetics." Aiden was livid, yet composed. His voice barely rose as time passed. "My parents do... did lab work. You honestly think they would care to be around dangerous and radioactive chemicals if there was a chance that they would collapse in the middle of it all?"

Foreman didn't say anything. A few seconds of tense, burning silence had Aiden's nerves collapsing on one another.

"This fool of a doctor thinks he can treat you like a criminal!" said one of the voices.

"He is a criminal," said another. "Or he might as well be. If he wasn't around in the first place, none of this would've happened!"

Foreman's advances combined with the internal argument with himself of all people caused his composure to quickly break. "I've been on the streets for a year! Whatever I have, it happened out there! So why don't you do us all a favor and stop prying!"

A crack developed on the heart monitor's screen. Everyone, including Aiden, jumped at the noise and Aiden, being the only one to know what caused it, quickly calmed himself, rubbing his head due to the instant headache.

"Fool," said the second voice, and Aiden could hear the sneer in it, "are you trying to kill yourself, now? Or maybe you're just trying to get attention that no one should bother to give you!"

"The former is far more likely," said the first. "It'd be the only way to end whatever pain you so enjoy putting yourself through."

Attempting to quell the tension, Chase spoke up. "Anyway, Aiden, we need to take your temperature, in order to determine if you have a fever."

Aiden looked at Chase for a long time before agreeing. If anything, it would let him know if things were bad. After Chase applied the thermometer, he led the other two out of the room. As soon as the door was closed, Chase rounded on Foreman. "What is the matter with you?"

"What do you mean 'what's the matter with me'? He's the one who blew up!"

"You shouldn't have provoked him. He's a teenager in a bad way. He didn't need you talking down to him!"

"Guys..."

"I don't care! And you shouldn't either! No last name means he's lying about everything else! We can't treat him based on lies!"

"Guys...!"

"If he doesn't trust us, he's going to lie to us anyway! And if we treat him like he's half his age, he won't talk to us at all!"

"Guys!"

"What?" The two men finally turned their attention to Cameron.

"Don't you notice anything strange about our patient?" She turned back to the window, this time with Foreman and Chase's attention. Aiden was keeping the thermometer in his mouth like he was told, but he was extremely pale. Every few seconds, he would cough into his hand, though he didn't cough blood. He seemed very sick.

Cameron and the others made their way into Aiden's room, and Chase went the rest of the way to Aiden's bedside. "The temperature should be set right about now." He took the tool from Aiden's mouth and looked at the temperature. "92.4. That's not too bad-"

"92.4?" said Aiden in a raspy voice. He seemed surprised. "That's not normal..."

Chase turned towards him. "Well if it's not, then we can get you some blankets and meds to get your temperature back up to normal-"

"No," said Aiden, once again cutting Chase off. "It's too high."

All three doctors whipped their heads towards him. Aiden didn't flinch. "My normal temperature is 81.3."

Silence, again, reigned over the hospital room before the silence was broken once more, this time by Cameron. "Well, if that's the case, then we need to give you some drosastyline, to cool down your core body temperature. All of our normal medication won't work since your fever is already above normal." She marked something on Aiden's medical record, then turned to leave. "I'm going to get the drosastyline. You two take care of the rest." Then she was gone.

Chase, Foreman, and Aiden stared off after her, but eventually Chase focused enough to return to the task at hand. He turned back to Aiden. "Well, now that your temperature's taken care of, now we need some way of identifying your parents."

Aiden's demeanor changed instantly. Still slightly off-guard from Cameron's sudden departure, his comically blank face flashed with an emotion neither Chase nor Foreman could identify, before switching almost immediately into one that they could: anger.

"What the hell would you need them for?" he asked, in a voice that was eerily quiet compared to his earlier outbursts. Chase and Foreman exchanged glances. Aiden continued as though nothing happened. "You shouldn't bother. They won't answer the phone whether you know who they are or not." His blue eye's flashed with emotion, but, again, neither doctor could identify it.

Foreman decided to brave the overly-sensitive waters for the first time since their argument. "If we can get your fingerprints, we can find out who your parents-"

"Didn't you hear what I just said?" Aiden growled, still in that quiet voice, but the tone somehow gained a new level of ferocity that had Foreman taking an involuntary step back. "It wouldn't matter. They won't answer. No one will."

"And it's your fault."

His eyes hardened, yet somehow softened at the same time. After a few minutes of baleful glaring that had the doctors shivering in their lab coats, he sighed mournfully. He dropped his gaze, shutting himself away from the two scared-yet-confused doctors. He didn't look back up. "Leave," he said, his voice still soft, but with an undertone of pain rather than anger, "... please."

With no further cooperation, Foreman and Chase had no other option but to leave the teen by himself.

Aiden watched as the sliding door closed shut behind the two men. He watched for a few more seconds as they disappeared from view, then lifted his hand up to perform his now regular self-harming ecto-blast.

However, something caught his eye. As he raised his palm up closer, he could see a barely noticeable scorch mark on his hand. To any human, it wouldn't be noticeable at all. But he was far from human.

He dropped his hand, forgetting his previous goal and sighing to himself. Human... he gave a humorless chuckle. What I wouldn't give to be human. Maybe then I wouldn't be in this living nightmare...


3 ~ Lion's Den

"He's mentally unstable," said Foreman at their next differential. "Even if we had pressured him further over his identity, he would've burst into another fit of anger and then cried crocodile tears."

"So you're saying you think it's a symptom?" asked Chase, who, once again, had his arms crossed. This time it wasn't exactly from boredom.

"I'm saying that it's possible."

"He's a teenager with a screwed up history with his parents. Of course he's going to have a few mood swings, especially if he doesn't want to be here."

"Who said he had a screwed up history? He could very well have great parents and been kidnapped. I don't know and I don't care. I just want to know who the hell he is!"

House and Cameron stood to the side of the room, watching the argument. One was more than upset about the subject matter, yet unwilling to do anything about the two men's argument. The other, however, was thoroughly enjoying himself at the expense of his team. But soon, he got bored, and he brought the feud to an end.

"Yo!" he yelled, gaining the attention of all three. "Here's the deal." He held up his hand and counted off. "Either A-Chase is right and he's sad 'cause Mommy and Daddy don't love him no more, B-Foreman's right and he was stolen away by the Big Bad Wolf, or finally C-he's really an alien from outer space and he didn't adapt all that well to our atmosphere."

As Foreman, Chase, and Cameron stared, he spoke again, "Now, as much as I enjoy watching you two bicker, recess is over. What did you uncover about his temperature?"

Foreman spoke up. "When he found out that his core body temp was 97, he freaked and told us that that was a fever. We set him up on drosastyline, but so far there hasn't been any improvement."

House looked up. "Drosastyline? How much of a temperature did this kid have?"

Cameron volunteered for this one. "He had a four degree temp. He said his normal temperature was 81.3."

House looked at her for a short while before pulling his prescription bottle out of his pocket and popping a Vicodin. Then he spoke. "Cool."

The three just stared similarly for a while before Foreman snorted. "Only you, House... only you..."

House turned to the whiteboard and, under Hemoptysis and Chest Pains, wrote Fever. "So..." he said, capping the marker, "any ideas?"

"He could have pulmonary candiosis. It would account for the hemoptysis, and more often than not cause the chest pains," said Chase.

"That doesn't include fever, and he would've been experiencing hallucinations by now," said Cameron.

"Who says he hasn't? He may just be hiding more information from us."

"He's been here for a few days already. If hallucinations were a symptom, then he would've had another one. And a fever still isn't on the list."

Chase took the argument and said no more about it. Foreman, however, had another idea.

"What if it it isn't his lungs? What if it's his heart?" he said, earning looks from both Cameron and Chase, as well as an amused smirk from House. "Think about it. If the heart is pumping excess blood, then the strain against the lungs could cause chest pains."

"And what about the hemoptysis?" asked Chase, interested in spite of himself.

"Any normal infection could cause small fissures in the alveoli and cause the bleeding, as well as the fever."

House looked pleased. "Alrighty, then, get a blood sample to find the infection, and make sure that drosastyline works."

As the three doctors gathered their things and left the room, House began to think deeper about the mysterious teen. Perhaps it would do well to pay the kid a visit...


"So, are you going to kill yourself anytime soon?"

"No."

"Well, why not? You'll be rid of the guilt. Of the shame. Of us!"

"Because... they wouldn't want me to."

"You don't know that. And they can't exactly tell you to commit suicide, can they? Not when they're-"

"Shut up! Just shut up! No one cares what you think, least of all me!"

"Aw... and here I thought being your doctor pretty much required you to care very much what I think."

Aiden jerked around, making eye contact with a man in his fifties holding a flame-patterned cane. He narrowed his eyes at the intrusion; if he was stuck here, the least he could have was some privacy.

"So, do you often talk to yourself when you think no one's listening?" he said, stepping further into the room. Aiden scowled.

"You're my doctor? You're House?" he snorted. "Right. And I'm the Queen of England."

"Just like I'm not Dr. House. I'm actually Will. I. Am," said House, taking Aiden's protests in stride. "But then again... everyone lies."

Aiden's eyes narrowed. "Who do you think you are?" he growled, barely keeping his eyes from shifting.

House could only look amused. "I already said. I'm your doctor. And seeing as you're not an old lady with her face printed on the English pound, I would have to say that you're... Aiden, right? Or is it really Aiden?"

Aiden growled softly. "Huh. This doctor isn't an idiot like the others. I like him," said the first voice.

"Why? A smart doctor is almost worse than a dumb one! Liking him will only get us into more trouble!" argued the other, and Aiden barely kept himself from yelling at them to shut up or clutching his head in annoyance. He settled for ignoring them instead.

"Of course my name is Aiden," he said, focusing his attention back to House. "Why would I tell you a lie about something as stupid as that?"

"Ah!" House cried, lifting up his cane in a fancy gesture that just barely managed to not hit anything. "That's the question, isn't it? Why would a kid like you, with obviously nothing to lose-" Aiden growled at this, but said nothing, "-lie about your name?" House dropped his cane and limped over to stand at Aiden's bedside. "Perhaps because you don't want us to know where you came from? Or who you really are?"

Aiden gave a snort. "What is there to tell? To you, I'm just some stupid kid who ran away from home and got himself sick."

House raised an eyebrow. "Is that the story you're telling? Is it true?"

"Does it matter?"


And so the muse left the building. These few chapters by themselves have potential, and since they have nothing to do with the new idea, feel free to adopt. Poor thing...

Keep on keepin' on!

~Foxxi