Pursuit of happiness

"So your cunning plan worked?" Nyx asked House when he seated himself in the gazebo lounging chair again.

"Sure did," House smiled. "I'm out of here tomorrow. Much sooner than I expected."

"I don't think anyone can put up with your version of havoc for longer than a week," Nyx observed. "You have rather honed it down to an art form."

"Thank you," House accepted the compliment. "But I did expect him to be a bit tougher cookie."

"He has other patients to think about, too," Nyx pointed out.

"I know," House nodded. "It's a weakness. But I did expect to spend a lot more time in solitary."

"I think he figured out that solitary – as you call it – was just fine with you," Nyx reminded House. "For a person who supposedly hates himself you are surprisingly satisfied with just your own company."

"Maybe I don't hate myself quite as much as people think I do," House shrugged.

"That is a possibility," Nyx agreed. "But what is your problem then? And don't give me your usual response, please."

"Why not?" House wanted to know. "I am a cripple! Nothing will change that. My hallucinations were obviously due to too much drugs so now that I'm on a different regime, I should be just fine."

"You know that is not true," Nyx sighed. "You know yourself better than that. Yes, absolutely your hallucinations occurred because of drugs and stress and all sorts of injuries to your head you had refused to have properly treated. So there is really no reason why you should have more hallucinations or delusions now. But you know there was a reason why you saw what you saw and believed what you believed. You need to make changes in your life and you can't do it alone. You need someone to point you in the right direction."

"Wilson will definitely try to do that," House said. "He has always tried to fix me. He is almost as bad as Cameron, even if sneakier."

"Wilson tries to make your life better," Nyx told him. "He needs to try and that is why you let him, even when you know he will just end up hurting you. But though he is wrong in his ways and even possibly wrong about what would make your life better, he is right in thinking that you really cannot go on as you have. Your level of misery is ceasing to be tolerable for you."

"Maybe I just need to increase my tolerance," House muttered.

"Or maybe you need to take a risk and get less miserable," Nyx suggested. "Who knows, you might survive it and even actually like it!"

"Or having tried I might get even more miserable than I am," House insisted. "You know the saying: Hell is to have seen Heaven and know you're not there."

"You already have seen Heaven," Nyx responded quietly. "And yet you survive."

"But it wasn't real," House reminded Nyx.

"No, but does it make a difference?" Nyx asked. "It felt real. You believed it was real. So it got taken away sooner because it wasn't real, but you still saw it."

"So what is your point?" House sighed.

"People have been saying for a long time that they believe that you don't think you deserve to be happy," Nyx started. "They are wrong. You know you do deserve to be happy."

"Hang on!" House stared at Nyx in astonishment. "Whose subconscious are you supposed to be, because my subconscious has always been about how miserable I want to be."

"Didn't Wilson once imply that you enjoy your misery?" Nyx smiled.

"Yeah, but that is not what you're talking about, so where do those thoughts come from," House demanded.

"Well if I'm not your subconscious mind, maybe I'm your unconscious mind!" Nyx pondered.

"That might be," House sounded sceptical. "Except that I am conscious of you and I do remember these dreams so that is not a very likely explanation."

"Well, I could always be an ancient deity," Nyx pointed out. "Choose whichever you want, but stop deflecting. We were talking about your happiness."

"Oh, yes," House rolled his eyes. "The happiness I think I deserve."

"Yes," Nyx stated simply. "You do believe you deserve to be happy as much as the next person. You also believe that, like the next person, you are equally capable of screwing up your happiness and therefore you see it all as a trade off where you eventually end up with a balance between happy and miserable."

"Just because I like to keep my misery level tolerable," House scoffed. "Does not mean I think I deserve better. It's just human nature to try and get away with as much as one can."

"Not your nature," Nyx asserted. "Yes, you do test people to see what you can get away with but you don't even try to live according to the standards of other people. Your only judge is yourself and you don't really let yourself get away with anything. You just prefer to do it all in private. This time you took on more than you could handle and therefore you ended up here."

"Maybe," House decided to entertain the thought. "But how does that tally with me thinking that I deserve to be happy?"

"You are a realist," Nyx shrugged. "You know that nobody is happy all the time. You think you deserve your moments like everyone, but when you've done wrong you do believe you deserve the consequences. Even when the consequences are totally unforeseen."

"There is right and wrong," House observed. "Even if you don't have enough information to know beforehand which is which, even if you choose your actions as best you can with the information you have, right and wrong still exist and your answer is not even ok when you got it wrong."

"And you didn't even choose your actions as best you could," Nyx accepted.

"No," House put it succinctly.

"You chose the pub because it was right there, near the bus route that granted you an easy route home," Nyx itemised. "You got yourself drunk so that you could call Wilson, as you always did. You wanted to test him; wanted to see if he would leave Amber to come and pick you up the way he always left his wives. You were going to test his commitment to Amber; you wanted to see if he had learned to say no. What you never considered was that Amber did not resent you the same way his wives did. That Amber actually liked you and accepted you in Wilson's life. That she thrived in the battles you two had and you might in fact have been an extra bonus in her relationship with Wilson even if it was Wilson she truly loved. Also it never occurred to you that this test you had designed for Wilson could also test Amber's commitment to him. You don't blame yourself because you got her out of bed and made her follow you into the bus and were not able to remember her before it was too late to do anything about the flu meds. You blame yourself because it never occurred to you that you COULD get her out of her bed to come and get you. After all your careful plans to test Wilson you had totally overlooked Amber as a player in the game."

"Yeah," House nodded. "I knew her. I thought I knew her, but I still failed to… My plan seemed so fool proof. I call Wilson, he comes and takes me home or he tells me no – finally – and I take the bus. I was pretty sure he was not yet ready to say no, so I rather expected him to come. What I didn't think about was that Amber would have known he was not ready to say no and since she didn't want him to inconvenience himself she was willing to give me a ride in his stead. Stupid mistake. Such an obvious thing to miss now that I think about it in retrospect. Such a CB thing to do. I wouldn't be surprised if she had actually figured out my plan and had decided to foil it with niceness. Such a seemingly small mistake."

"As you have said," Nyx sighed. "Our mistakes are only as big as their consequences."

"And this one was a whopper," House concluded. "So how, with mistakes like that, could I think I deserve to be happy?"

"Because it was an honest mistake," Nyx reminded him. "There was no malice no bad intentions not even any deliberate flaunting of rules or laws. Just a prank that went wrong and it didn't even go wrong in a way that would normally have had any adverse results. Yes, you put Amber in the bus, but you had absolutely nothing to do with the accident. People have the right to live down honest mistakes and to go on with their lives and find what happiness they can."

"What happiness they can…" House repeated. "Now there might lie a problem."

"With you," Nyx agreed. "Most definitely. You do believe that you deserve to be happy but you don't necessarily believe you can be happy. And that is something you need to revaluate."

"What I can?" House clarified.

"Yes," Nyx confirmed. "Because sometimes you can together something you can't alone. Just think about it."