A/N: Thanks to everyone for sticking with the story and leaving comments. Much appreciated!
Disclaimer: House belongs to David Shore and Fox. The excerpt from "I Am The Walrus" was written by John Lennon/Paul McCartney and was used here for a bit of spooky effect.
Thanks: to NaiveEve for being (as always) a wonderful and insightful beta.
-11-
How could you let her do this to you?
Yeah, how could he? He remembers the way she drew him in, how her eyes grew huge and round until they were not like eyes at all but two vast indigo seas. Those waters merged, shimmering aquamarine and gold, enveloping him, caressing him in their tropical warmth as they carried him off.
It was undeniably pleasant. He found it easy to set his mind on autopilot and just...enjoy the feeling of floating off to who knew where. It was only when the Liz Taylor girl decided to go the extra mile and become part of him that the experience became a teensy bit
(weird, disconcerting, harrowing, horrible)
terrifying.
Now he is the light...the...air...the entire friggin' universe-a part of everything there was, is or will be. Ultimate, infinite...
Woah. Beautiful, just beautiful. Applause, applause. Not a dry eye in the house.
"You like?"
...too much, too much. He is glad when it is over, happy to be careening, swirling, tumbling back to white robes and fragrant, violet eyed...
Wait!
Ye-ah. It would be nice to stay this way, wrapped in her embrace, feeling the ripple, flow and ebb of her.
You're lost...
No!
Somehow he manages to escape, to stumble backward, taking step after stuttering step until he feels the wall at his back. Those maniacal panels of time and space are restless, chattering and clattering, so glad to see him. They rub against his shoulder blades, preparing for another episode of Let's Take Greg On A Trip.
"No, I don't like!" He jabs an elbow at those panels, sending them chittering and screeching back where they belong.
"No?"
She floats toward him, closer and closer until he can smell that fragrance again- flora, exotic, intoxicating, sweet but never cloying. He looks into those indigo eyes and finds himself sinking deep, like before, those waves cresting in anticipation of his surrender. Somehow he manages to catch himself before he drowns.
"Methinks thou doth protesteth a bit too much."
"I don't want to go there again." The words seem to have come from outside of him, as if this simple act of rebellion should be wa-ay beyond his current capabilities. He feels the tug. She is pulling him apart as she is reeling him in. The feeling is disconcerting but not unpleasant. Surrendering your will, losing yourself is always a kick, a special kind of freedom.
"He wants you to." Her form is shifting, changing once more into that white filmy fluttering thing.
The wind.
"He wants you to be happy."
"No, he doesn't. He wants to keep me here so I can amuse him when he's bored." He lifts his chin, twists his head to avoid those eyes. "But you knew that."
"I am he..."
It is happening again.
"...as you are he..."
She wafts cool against his face.
"...as you are me..."
Plays with his hair.
."..as we are all together."
Caresses his lips.
"You remember my name?" The breeze coos in his ear.
"No."
She flows inside him, cool, golden and pure, inches at a time, just enough to send him soaring into the upper atmosphere. He knows the flight plan from his last excursion. The moon would be next before a trip around the solar system, then a tour of the entire friggin' galaxy...
...far, far away.
"Don't do this," he rasps.
"Why?"
"It's too much."
"I give you the ultimate high and it's too much?" She wraps her form around his legs then glides snakelike up his body. "Say my name." The voice is teasing, seductive.
"I...don't remember your name."
"You know, if you stay with me I can teach you to do this. Wouldn't you like us to flow together? It's always more fun together?" The breeze is warm, balmy, as fragrant as an Egyptian garden in summer. He can see it, all sunny and green, rife with Pentas Lanceolatas, exotic star shaped flowers blooming in an explosion of whites, lavenders, purples, reds and pinks. He feels himself sway but the wind flutters around him, holding him up.
"Can you imagine it?"
Unfortunately he could.
Give her what she wants and you're gone, Casanova.
"Say...my...name."
"Sera," he moans, suddenly remembering.
"Good boy. I like that."
He closes his eyes, winces and waits for lift off. But it doesn't come. Instead he hears a weary sigh, sensing Sera's reluctance as she eases away from him.
"He is going to be so disappointed with you."
Could be a trick, old son. Sure, open your eyes. Take a chance. What could possibly be in store for you this time?
House takes a chance, blinks his eyes open.
Everything seems copacetic. Sera is by the wall, a safe distance away. Her arms are folded, robe fluttering in the non-existent breeze.
"It's amazing you have any fight left," she says.
"I'm an old pro at fighting back," he tells her with a slow grin.
"Mmm, I can see that." Sera approaches, lifting a hand to trace the outline of House's jaw, his chin. "Do you really want to go back to what you had before?"
The panels on the walls tickety click, mumble and murmur, waiting for his response. "I was free to do what I wanted there."
"You were in pain."
"Sucks, doesn't it?" Now he moves in a slow circle around her.
Rotating in place, she follows his movements. "I wouldn't know about being in pain."
"I meant it sucks to not be free." He stops, planting his hands on his hips.
"I'm free."
"No, you're not. You're beholden to him." House shrugs. "If that's how you like it, fine." He wanders the corridor, his gaze drifting over the lifetimes and lives: pompous dudes in powdered wigs, a war ravaged field, a young woman hunkered deep into a shadowy corner, sobbing.
"I'm an extension of him, there's a difference." She closes the gap between them, moving in tandem with House again. "The seven of us are each a part of him. He made us.
"Oooh. You nasty little death spawns." He bares his teeth and waggles his fingers in her face. "You like doing his grunt work?"
She tilts her head, giving him a thoughtful look. "I don't know what that is."
"Slave labor. You and yours are nothing more than glorified slaves."
"It's better than what you are."
"And that is?"
"You're a slave to your pain," she tells him. "I know, I've seen how it makes you crawl, how it makes you yearn for your pills." The gold flecks in her eyes flash at him. "Pathetic."
"Better to be a slave to pain than to him."
"You can't avoid him forever. Eventually he'll get what he wants."
They stare at one another for a long moment.
"Can I go now?" he asks.
"There's the door." She floats behind him, indicating a blinking red 'Exit' sign with a wave of her hand. Below the sign is a gunmetal gray door with a push bar. It looks suspiciously familiar, kind of like that funny old stairwell door.
Oooh, now that wasn't there before. My, my. Things come and go so quickly here...
"Gee, thanks." He is moving at a good clip: a half run/half trot.
"You'll be back."
The smirk in her tone offers House his first icy taste of fear since he arrived.
"And then you'll have to face him."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One key is in his left hand, one is in his right.
They are two keys with a common anomaly.
Wilson holds them up to the ceiling lamp, inclining his head, squinting as he studies them. "I'll be damned."
"What?" Foreman is on his knees, working on the lock. The soft sounds of snicking and clicking clash with the early morning quiet. But they don't seem to bother Foreman, who sets to his task with a diligence he usually reserves for differential diagnoses and neurological maladies. He uses a slim metal tool, most likely left over from some long lost time in his history. Digging into the guts of the sturdy lock, he listens to the secret language of metal against metal, waiting for the telltale click that will announce his success.
"Both keys have been filed down in exactly the same place." Wilson lowers his hands, continuing to gaze at the keys as if they hold the answer to...everything.
"You think House did it?" Foreman asks.
"Who else?"
Foreman pauses to wipe his forehead on his sleeve. "How would he get your key?"
"House is a crafty son of a bitch, you know that."
"So if he took the trouble to file the keys, he must have known we would try to get in here."
The men look at each other. Wilson has no intention of owning up to the fear riding on his shoulders, snapping its whip against his flanks. It is not difficult to see that Foreman feels that trepidation too.
"How's it coming?" Wilson tilts his chin at the lock.
Foreman returns to his negotiations with the pick and the metal. "Almost there, I think."
In another moment the lock surrenders to Foreman's expertise. "We're in," he announces without a trace of a smile.
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"House?"
Wilson is the first to enter, his footfalls loud against the hardwood. He traipses through the brightly lit room, through lamplight, ceiling light, the reading lamplight by the desk. Attempting to keep up, Foreman stumbles, nearly tripping over the stepladder by the bookcase.
"Damn!"
Pausing in mid stride, Wilson thinks there is only one reason the stepladder would be set up in that particular spot. He steps back giving himself a better view. His gaze moves up, up to the very top of the case, where House stores his 'serious' stash. Morphine. As far as he can tell, the box is gone.
Toolatetoolatetoolatetoolate...
"Morphine."
It is all he has to say to put a fire under both their butts, impelling them to race into the bedroom to see...
...House, fully clothed, splayed across his mattress. The bedding is a tangled mess, one blanket by his head, one wrapped around his arm and a portion of his torso. It looks like a battle zone, man verses comforters. The sheets seem to have been wrenched from the mattress, tossed to the floor in a heap; one lonely edge of material clings gamely to the bed frame.
Wilson squints. The room is suddenly too bright. His anxiety now overrides all other emotions as time stretches and slows to a snail-like creep. He takes two lumbering steps to the side of the bed, images impressing themselves into his brain like crime photos.
Click.
The metal box is here, its lid open, its contents rifled through.
Click.
One syringe is still in its wrapper.
Click.
The other (three quarters full) is on the bed, poking from beneath the blanket.
Click.
Two morphine vials lay above the syringe, one empty, one partially full.
Click.
Wilson's two fingers press against House's neck, feeling (hoping, wishing) for a pulse.
Click.
A dot of blood has dried in the crook of House's arm, just below the rolled up sleeve and tourniquet band.
Click.
Wilson lifts up first one of House's eyelids, then the other.
Click.
Pupils are constricted.
Wilson gathers the vials and the syringes, tucking them away in the box. Later he will dispose of the syringes properly. Now it is best to simply keep these and the medication out of sight. "Breathing's shallow, his pulse is steady but slow. Looks like he tried to give himself an extra dose but passed out before he could do much. Still...we should bring him in, give him a thorough once over. It'll teach him a good lesson to wake up as a patient.
"Maybe we should give him a dose of Naloxone just to make sure. Is there any in his stash?" Foreman says.
"Why would he keep an antidote for morphine poisoning around?" Wilson searches through the box, checking under a package of cotton balls, an extra tourniquet, a small plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol. "I mean, it would only be the sensible thing to do. But it doesn't matter. We couldn't administer it to him without knowing how long he's been out, anyway."
"That's true."
"Donwanna."
House stirs, swimming against the tide of blankets and pillows.
Wilson places a hand on his shoulder. "House."
"Mmm. I don't wanna go." After two failed tries, House pushes himself to a sitting position.
"We thought you might have over medicated yourself," Foreman says.
"Ohhhhh, ye of lit-tle faith." House scrubs a hand through his hair. "When am I ever not careful?"
"Careful? You left a syringe on the bed like a fucking junkie. You've got a bloody hole in your arm."
House seems surprised, raising his brows at that smidgen of rust colored blood just below his bicep. "Jus' a pinprick."
"Why the hell did you feel the need to do morphine?" Wilson asks. His left fist clenches, his breath catching in his throat. What he would most like to do right now is lay his friend out with a powerhouse punch to the jaw. "Were you in that much distress?"
"You dunno anythin' 'bout it." His eyes close. He runs his tongue across his lower lip, head nodding, chin bobbing against his chest.
"You planned this." Wilson jabs House's shoulder, causing House to flinch, gasp, and lurch forward. "You filed down your spare key and mine so I couldn't get in." Wilson's tone grows higher and shriller. "What were you thinking about?"
"I din't do that."
"Then who did?"
House mumbles something unintelligible, then giggles, favoring both men with a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth grin.
"You erased Foreman's number from my phone." Wilson is yelling now.
"Did not...girly." House giggles again and juts his head up and back like a chicken pecking.
"Girly?"
"Yeah, girly." He makes prancing motions with his fingers. "Li'l pretty shoes, lacy collar, cutesy pigtails all tied up with bows."
"Call Cuddy at home," Wilson hisses to Foreman. "Let her know what's going on."
"No ambulance?"
"No. We'll bring him in."
Foreman cautiously pulls out his cell, while Wilson throws him a nearly imperceptible nod.
"You cheated for me, thank you ve-ery much," House continues. "Pushed your answers right where I...where he could see 'em."
Wilson folds his arms, raises his brows.
"Sooo long ago."
Foreman ducks his head, turns his back to the bed and murmurs into his phone.
"You better not be calling an amb'lance." House shakes a finger at Foreman. "'cause I won' go."
"He's calling Cuddy." Wilson taps his foot; Foreman continues his call. "We're bringing you to get checked out."
"Nawww. Fore-man...I'm your boss," House says with a bit less conviction. "Yer s'pposed to listen to me."
"She'll meet us there in fifteen minutes." Foreman says, tucking his phone away.
House watches them, a wary, fearful look in his eyes.
"What happened to you?" Wilson sits on the edge of the bed. "What could have compelled you to do this?"
That wariness on House's face hitches up a notch. His eyes widen, whatever color might have remained in his cheeks drains, leaving them a pasty white. He is obviously terrified...of something. He trembles, clutching at his blanket, dragging it up to his chest, as if to ward off something very, very bad.
Wilson kneels on the bed, grasping him by his shoulders. "Talk to me."
"Sorry," House's voice is a thin raspy breath in the wind. "Gotta go." His head jerks up to the right, then to the left as if being pummeled by the fists of a welterweight. He moans, his eyelids fluttering closed as his head lolls to one side.
"House?" Wilson checks his pulse again and finds it racing like a thoroughbred in the final lap of the Preakness.
"What the hell was that?" Foreman's tone is jagged, edgy. Frightened.
"I have no idea." Wilson attempts to tug the blankets away from House's somnolent form. But as out of it as House is, his body is too stiff, the majority of blankets remain trapped beneath him, except for the portion he clutches desperately to his chest.
There is nothing more Wilson can do except make sure the metal box isn't on the bed when they carry House out of here. He sighs, hefting the box under his arm, his gaze falling on the sorry looking man on the bed. Yeah, Wilson knows he shouldn't let the situation get to him. What he really should do is package these sick, sad feelings away until he is alone in his room, Then he can have an enjoyable hour, sinking deep inside their murk until he is saturated in every last inch of their dankness. Alone in his room he can toss away the brave face and allow himself some tears. Until then, there is no sense dwelling on House, his demons and his stupidity. Just do the job that needs to be done. No time for self pity. No time for pity at all.
"It's probably a good idea to wash that blood off his arm," he tells Foreman, making his way to the bookcase and the stepladder. He climbs up and pushes the box as far back as it will go. "Let's not give anyone any additional reasons make to make snide junkie diagnostician jokes."
"Bad news travels fast, you know that." Foreman says. "In a few hours House'll be the talk of the hospital."
"Yeah." Wilson climbs down the ladder and heads toward the unconscious man on the bed. "And I don't doubt for a minute that the stupid ass will get off on the attention. It'll probably be the goddamn highlight of his week."
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"This could have been so easy."
House rubs his jaw, wincing at the soreness, remembering how the dude's fists came at him from nowhere. The guy had some powerful one-two punch.
Pop! pop! Stick and move, old man, stick and move.
"But you had to complicate things, didn't you?"
This place is nothing like the white wonderland of towers and tents he had visited earlier.
"I tried to make the experience as pleasant and interesting as possible."
This place is a cold corridor of emptiness, brown walls shot through with pulsing shades of purples and reds. The colors undulate and writhe like long flowing strands of DNA, like images from a 1968 Jefferson Airplane lightshow. An underlying rhythm of a beating heart is pervasive, all encompassing, a shout out to the fact he is still very much alive.
Somewhere.
Psychedelic, ma-an.
"But you didn't care about that, did you?"
Legs splayed, House sits in the center of the pounding, the moving, dancing, sensuous flow of dark twisted color. He kind of likes the beat and is actually enjoying the moment until a realization hits him. With an odd twinge of regret, he notices that he is no longer wearing that white robe of privilege.
Bad sign, lummox.
Now clad in everyday Greg garb, Nike Shox, Old South t-shirt beneath the wrinkled blue dress shirt, gray suit jacket and faded jeans, he feels oddly out of place, a stranger in a strange land. He senses he is being observed, ogled, judged by a thousand prying eyes.
But he is alone, except for the colors...and the voice.
"You are selfish."
"Like you aren't?" House shouts to the air. The temperature drops. His breath frosts, swirling in slo mo before him. Shivering, he wraps his arms around his torso, rubbing his hands up and down his shoulder blades. Squeezing his eyes shut, he conjures up images of his bed, his office, his desk, the diagnostics room, a bag of chips and a turkey sandwich on Wilson's lunch tray.
"I get what I want."
"Fuck yo-oooou," House sings.
Snow mixed with hail is in the updated forecast. The nasty weather pummels him, drenches him as he covers his head with his hands, leans over and realizes...
...a slow throb has started in his right thigh..
Pain. It's baa-aack!"
Force of habit commands him to look for his cane. But it is nowhere to be found in this universe. And his pills?
Oh, really now. You think they're going to be waiting for you in your front jeans' pocket like good little pills should?
No, he's not even going to bother checking because that is exactly what Mort, the evil dude of weather, life and death, would like him to do.
"And why," House thinks, "should I give any more than I'm forced to?"
A bit of rebellion is good for the soul. But, hey, you'll end up doing that slave labor cha-cha in the end, just like your groovy pal Sera.
He bends his left leg and presses his forehead to his kneecap. The cold is digging deep now, pushing in on his extremities and his thigh, which has begun its trademark caterwauling.
The storm intensifies, sleet mixing with hailstones and blinding snow. He breathes slow and easy, conjuring up North Carolina summers and thick slabs of heat rising from golden Cairo sands. The self hypnosis is beginning to work its magic, little by little, but now something is stirring against his right thigh, thrusting him out into the cold again. Slick, slimy and cold, it makes it way down his leg and slips out of his pants leg.
Why it's your old pal, Black Unctuous Thing!
He blinks at it in disbelief as the mess of precipitation pelts its slick skin. The liquid sizzles on it like an eggs on a skillet before evaporating in clouds of rust colored steam.
The frigid wind picks up, bellowing and howling as it slams into him. He cries out, slapping his hands against his ears, making a valiant but futile attempt to block the sound.
He hardly notices as The Black Unctuous Thing slithers on top of his right thigh and coils around itself.
"Are you ready to try again, Greg?"
His teeth chatter, sneaky tears slip from the corner of his eyes before he even realizes he is crying. The sub freezing temperature and the brutal elements tear at his exposed skin, making it sting and burn. Slowly he lowers his hands, letting his trembling fingers run lightly over his friend. The Black Unctuous Thing shows its appreciation by rubbing against House's legs and stomach like a loyal puppy.
"Are you?"
Weariness and intermittent jolts of fear quickly take their toll. The pain in House's thigh blossoms and sprouts like some grotesque, massive weed, making his final decision for him.
"Yeah," House manages to reply over the wind's raging aria. "I guess so."