First of all I just wanted to say how overwhelmed I was by all of the responses to the last chapter. It was obviously the big tipping point in the story, and I'm glad everybody seemed to like how things panned out, even if it was heavy on the angst and Julia's (understandable, but nevertheless annoying) meddling. Even though we're getting closer to the end now, it's still great to know that people are not only reading, but letting me know what they think. Thank you.

I just wanted to pick up on a really valid point that someone made about Cuddy not asking House to hand himself in, or getting him a lawyer. I kind of wish I'd made it more explicit now, but I do think she was on the verge of suggesting that when she asked him what prison was like a couple of chapters back, and him admitting that he'd had a hard time was what put her off. I also think it's worth reiterating here that not only did House evade arrest, but he also switched dental records and consequently had someone buried in his place, which are obviously serious offences and would boost the amount of time he would spend in prison. I think I've found I've found a fitting way to get around that, but one where someone doesn't just wave a magic wand and House does actually have to face 'some' of the consequences of his actions.

Not sure what you guys are going to think of this one. Trust me though, it's not over yet.

The show and the characters don't belong to me.

As soon as House spotted her filing in with everybody else he got up from his chair nervously, and waited for Cuddy to look in his direction. In those brief few seconds where she turned her head from side to side and scanned the large room with its rows of tables and chairs and other prisoners waiting for their visitors, it occurred to him just how incongruous she looked in these surroundings. Instantly he felt guilty and ashamed for being the reason she was there. Finally he saw her clock him and reciprocated when she smiled at him with genuine warmth. For two long months he'd held off on this moment, and now here she was walking along the makeshift aisle towards him, looking a little tired, but her usual elegant and beautiful self.

When Cuddy got a foot away from him she stopped, and he saw her breath catch in the back of her throat as she looked at him; clearly she was just as nervous about this as he was.

"Hi," she offered quietly, pressing her fingers down onto the table next to them and looking around at the various couples, family members and friends embracing, her gaze settling on a heavily tattooed inmate who was passionately sticking his tongue down his wife or girlfriend's throat oblivious to the people milling around them, as their two small sons sat on the plastic chairs and were taking it in turns to hit each other on the arm.

"Hi," House replied, drawing her attention back to him.

For an awkward few seconds they just stood and regarded each other, neither one sure who should make the first move until she decided to take the initiative and close the gap between them, her arms encircling his torso and pulling him into a tight hug that literally forced the air from his lungs.

"You fucking idiot," she whispered into his chest just loud enough for him to hear amongst the chatter and scraping of furniture on the waxed floor.

Smiling to himself at the reprimand, House chastely kissed the top of her forehead and invited her to sit down, which she duly did, and he followed suit using the opportunity to take her in.

"You look great."

"Thanks. So do you," Cuddy responded. She hadn't known what to expect when she saw him, but he seemed to be ok. "Aside from the whole double denim thing. That's not a good look for a man your age."

Exaggeratedly he tutted and rolled his eyes.

"Nice! Let's all pick on the outfit choices of the old, incarcerated cripple."

"You've been critiquing what I wear for years. This is payback, House…"

"Touché," he responded, smirking and realising how much he'd missed having a proper conversation with someone whose IQ didn't make them borderline retarded. "How was the flight?"

"Ok. I took a red eye and slept for most of it… I must look a mess."

"Trust me you don't," he said with an intensity that made Cuddy shift awkwardly in her seat and look down at the table. Soon though, her embarrassment turned into a mixture of concern and curiosity, as she caught sight of his bandaged hand for the first time.

"What happened?"

"I punched a wall," he answered matter-of-factly, examining the strapping and tentatively trying to bend his fingers with a slight grimace. "Broke a couple of knuckles."

"Why would you do that?" she inquired incredulously.

"They have a drugs programme here. I was detoxing… The wall was pissing me off so I punched it. Hard. More than once." House looked up and saw that her mouth was visibly hanging open as she looked at him. "What?"

"You're clean?"

"Uh-huh. For the past 4 weeks, 2 days and…" He stopped mid-sentence to look up at the clock on the wall. "And 3 hours… It's part of the reason I didn't ask you to visit until now."

The other part was that he knew he needed the time to adjust to prison again, and come to terms with the fact this was going to be his home for the duration of his 20 month sentence. Letting himself see her again too soon would have been too much to bear.

"That's… That's amazing!" She stuttered, genuinely blown away by what she'd just heard.

House shrugged.

"I figured it's one less reason to have the crap beaten out of me. Not sharing your candy with the bigger boys is not an option here." Processing what he was saying Cuddy looked at him horrified. "I'm fine," he felt the need to reassure her. "Nobody's touched me. I've been keeping my head down and my mouth shut for a change."

"Promise me you'll keep on doing that."

Despite himself, he snorted in response.

"You're basically asking me to promise not to get beaten up. Any idea how stupid that sounds?"

"House…" she pressed warningly. She'd known what he was like for far too long to leave it at that.

"Fine! I promise to do my best not to come into contact with anybody's fist, knee, elbow or forehead. Ok?"

She nodded, but inwardly it frightened her that he was constantly at threat any one of the other inmates. Sure there were guards to protect him, but she'd heard stories about these places just like everybody else. Watching him adjust the position of his prison-issue cane which was hanging on the table, an awkward silence fell between them as they both dipped into other people's conversations for a minute or two.

"Foreman rang and invited me to a memorial service they had for Wilson at PPTH," Cuddy finally ventured, consciously changing the subject. "It was about a month ago."

"How was it?"

"Good… I mean it was strange for me to be back there…" She paused as she saw House guiltily look down at his hands, before continuing. "The service was great though. The place was packed; family, former patients and the majority of the medical staff were all there."

"Well I hear this kind of thing happens if you actually take the time to be nice to people." Watching a guard walk past them, he couldn't help but think about the paltry turnout to his own funeral and surmise that difference in numbers was absolutely warranted.

"I met his brother. Danny."

House looked at her quizzically.

"Danny as in 'locked up in a looney bin Danny'?"

Cuddy sighed and shook her head at the insensitivity of his words.

"He's not anymore. He was discharged a little while ago… We had a fairly long chat, and he seems pretty together now… He said Wilson talked about you a lot when he visited him and he'd like to meet you. I haven't got it with me, but if you want I can get his address and pass it on to you?"

He paused to think about it for a second. Wilson had offered to let him meet his brother the night they'd driven to New York when he'd first been admitted, however that had never actually materialised. He had to admit he was more than a little curious. Sure he wasn't keen on people he knew seeing him in here, but he didn't exactly have much to lose by letting Danny come and visit him. If he didn't like the guy then he just wouldn't have to see him again, it was as simple as that.

"Ok."

"Ok," she repeated, smiling at him. "Foreman showed me around the hospital by the way… What the hell did he do to my office?!"

House chuckled. More than once he'd found himself wondering what she'd have made of it when he was still working there. There was no way she'd have allowed the revamp of his office and the DDX room either. When she was his boss, on the whole, she knew when to put her foot down and when to give him the leeway that he needed. On the other hand, Foreman was far too keen to exert his authority at all the wrong times and then let him get away with things that he shouldn't. In hindsight, even if things had turned out differently with Wilson, he knew that his job at PPTH would have gone the way that all the other ones had before Cuddy had taken him on sooner rather than later.

"He got a designer in so he could have a workspace that reflects his personality, which unfortunately for him is boring and depressing."

"Well let's put it this way, I've frequented more cheerful mortuaries… I have no idea how he gets donors to give him any money if he takes them in there."

"He sleeps with them," House chirped in without missing a beat. "The men and the women. He let me feel his ass for ten dollars once." Smirking, Cuddy raised an eyebrow at him in. "It's ok. Your ass is way firmer and I didn't have to pay for the pleasure."

"They have an infirmary here, right?" she inquired with mock serious, warning tone, her tongue tucking into the side of her cheek.

"They also have lots of pairs of handcuffs and batons… You'd be in your element."

Cuddy sighed and wondered how rich she'd be if she had a dollar for every time he'd made a bondage joke at her expense, resolving to steer the direction of the conversation to something more suitable for their surroundings.

"Chase took over your department."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. He's doing a good job too… And apparently he does his paperwork."

House leant forward and rested his head on his good hand. He and Chase had had several ups and downs over the years, but all in all he felt like out of all of his research fellows, he was the one who'd grown and matured the most under his supervision. Him taking over the reins seemed fitting.

"He's a good choice," he admitted. "At least Foreman got one thing right."

"Walking around after all this time felt really odd. I spent years pouring everything into that place… Now without you there, without Wilson, it just seemed strange. Like I didn't belong there."

"It changed after you left," he confided, noting the curious the look on her face. He hadn't even admitted to Wilson how diminished the hospital felt after he'd returned from his first spate in prison. Usually he'd sniff at people who said that building had a certain aura, but it had felt different in her absence. The energy had been sucked out. "If it hadn't been for Wilson, I probably never would have gone back."

"It's a good job you did," she said quietly, leaving him not quite sure if she was just referring to him consequently being able to look after his best friend.

"You do know what he did?"

The question was asked cagily for obvious reasons. Cuddy nodded and left it at that, casting her mind back to the day she'd switched her the radio on in her car, and heard them talking about a doctor who'd handed himself in in LA, four and a half months after his terminally ill oncologist friend had switched his dental records with those of the deceased heroin addict whose body had actually been found at the scene of a fire, and then organised his funeral; subsequently confessing what he'd done to his lawyer on his death bed.

Of course she knew this wasn't really the case. Wilson had told her what had really happened a few days before he died: about House being in a bad way over being sent back to prison and the genuine fear that he was suicidal, only for him and Foreman to turn up and see him in the burning building just as everything came down, and then ultimately his best friend texting him during his own funeral.

What she didn't know though was the extent to which Wilson had plotted things down to the last detail. From the fact he'd stressed in his confession that she didn't know anything, to him feigning that faking House's death was his idea because he didn't feel his friend was mentally capable of going back to prison and that he'd been the one to encourage him to flee arrest on the night of the fire when he'd turned up at his home. Just before his death Wilson had also given House the number of the lawyer and told him to ring him before he said anything to the cops if/when he was caught or handed himself in, a request which luckily he'd respected. As a result he'd shaved at least three years off his friend's sentence.

"That's not all he did. I got a visit from his lawyer a couple of weeks ago," Cuddy eventually responded, purposefully keeping her voice low.

"Everything ok?" He was concerned there'd been some ramifications from the case.

"Yeah," she nodded. "Wilson split everything in his will between Danny and me."

"The boy wonder was full of surprises, huh?..." He paused for a second and smiled at her. "He appreciated what you did for him. You deserve it."

The woman across the table sighed in exasperation. For a man who'd spent a lot of his life studying human behaviour as a hobby, sometimes he couldn't see the wood for the trees.

"It wasn't really for me you moron!" Checking herself she lowered her tone again and continued. "The money's for you… He wanted me to look after it for you." She'd known that even before she opened Wilson's letter, which the lawyer had held onto for her. "It's a lot of money, House."

"How much?" he asked out of interest.

"After the sale of the condo, his shares and the settlement of his life insurance we're talking the best part of a million dollars."

"Jesus!" he croaked, genuinely shocked.

"When you get out of here it's waiting for you. It's more than enough to help you get on your feet again." She paused seeing that he didn't exactly seem over the moon for someone who'd just been told that amount of money had been left to them. Clearly everything Wilson had done for him wasn't sitting well with him anyway, and this further act of benevolence was almost too much for someone who'd experienced so much hardship in his life. "You might never have given him a minute's peace, but he loved you like family, and you being there at the end was the difference between him having a miserable death and one where he had some dignity, beside someone he trusted… All of this is him saying thank you."

House mulled over what she said and offered her a weak smile. He guessed she was right, but he'd have readily taken a much longer sentence and lived in poverty if it meant he could bring Wilson back. There was only one thing he wouldn't have changed about all of this.

"Finding a way to get you and me in the same room again was more than enough," he stated, his eyes demonstrating his sincerity, as he saw a whole gamut of emotions flicker across Cuddy's face and she shifted awkwardly in her chair. He wasn't sure if it was just down to her not being comfortable with the environment, but something wasn't right. "How are the kids?"

"The kids are great," she responded, her face rapidly lighting up. "Rachel lost 2 of her baby teeth, and Jacob won't shut up about his birthday party next week."

"It's his birthday next week?" It seemed absurd to him that he didn't know when his own son's birthday was.

"Yeah… Our boy's going to be two next Friday."

House fidgeted for a second, completely uncertain of what was expected of him. To say that this was new territory for him was an understatement.

"If there's anything he wants, like a big present, just use the money."

Cuddy chuckled to herself.

"House, he's a toddler. All he wants are toys, candy and someone to tickle him… We can leave off buying him a car, at least until his feet can actually reach the gas."

"I want to be involved in his life." He'd had so much time to think things through and that was something he'd remained certain of since the morning he'd walked out of her home. Knowing he had a child and not having input into his life didn't even feel like an option. "I know I'm not much use in here, but I still want to help."

Reaching out over the table, Cuddy squeezed his hand reassuringly.

"And I want that too… I haven't said anything to him yet, to Rachel either, because I wanted to talk to you first… I asked about bringing him here and…"

"No!" he interjected firmly. "I don't care what you tell him about where I am for now, but there's no way I'm letting you bring him here."

Even the thought of it bothered him. He hated thinking about her being subjected to the security checks on the way in to see him, let alone a little two year old meeting him for the first time in a building that was surrounded by high fences and barbed wire. First impressions counted and he didn't want his son's first memory of him to be as someone who had to be locked away from the rest of society.

"You've still got another eighteen months left in here," Cuddy protested.

"And he's survived the first two years of his life pretty well without seeing me."

"But…"

Before she could finish her sentence he jumped in again.

"No!" the former diagnostician maintained, and then pointed to the family with the two boys who they'd both watched when she first came in. "Do you really want that?"

She looked over at the couple who seemed oblivious to their children, one of whom was kicking his feet aimlessly up in the air, as the other leaned his head over the back of the chair and appeared to be gawping at the ceiling with his mouth hung open. Thinking about it, she wasn't sure if it was the fact that they seemed so bored, or that they were so accustomed to visiting their father under these circumstances that they were capable of being so fed up, that bothered her more.

"No," she eventually admitted.

"I'll write a letter for you to read to him… If that's ok?"

"I'd like that," Cuddy said warmly, and then pulled back on her chair taking a deep breath that seemed to change her whole demeanour. "We need to talk about what happens when you get out of here. There have to be ground rules if this is going to work."

"We've got a year and a half to talk about that. Right now I want to talk about you." He leant towards her, and dropped his voice to near a whisper. "I've been thinking about you a lot… Specifically you naked to be completely accurate."

"House!"

"Oh come on!" he pleaded. "It's been two months since I last saw you… Two months!"

"There's stuff that needs to be said now."

"What? You want to give me the whole 'not getting him drunk or taking him to strip joints until he's at least 12' pep talk now?"

"I'm serious…"

From the look on her face he could tell she was too. There was something she needed to get off her chest and he was best off letting her do so.

"Fine. Shoot!"

"I was going to say something about the Vicodin, but that's not even an issue now…" Absently she rubbed her temple, as she appeared to be searching for a way to put what else she had to say. He knew she'd probably made of list of the things she was going to put her foot down over, and his pre-emptive strike seemed to have thrown her. "When you get out of here I'll help you look for a job, but we can't ever work together again… We're both incapable of keeping our personal and professional lives separate."

"You honestly think I'd get my medical license back now?"

"I don't know," she answered. "You could try."

House shook his head.

"Nope…"

"Then what are you going to do?"

"The thing that I was going to do before Foreman dragged me back to PPTH kicking and screaming… I want to go back to college. Get another PhD… It's time for a change."

She paused for a moment, as if she was considering the information he'd just given her.

"Ok. If that's what you want to do, we can work with that."

"Mazel tov!" he re-joined, light-heartedly mocking her need to plan ahead like this. "What's next on the agenda?"

Visibly he saw her steel herself for what she was about to say, and straight away his jovial mood began to melt away. His instinct had been right about there being something wrong.

"I know you use hookers to massage your thigh and… and whatever else," she said quietly, fumbling through her words. "But under no circumstances will you let Jacob either come into contact with them, or even mention them to him. I don't want him growing up thinking that's normal behaviour."

House observed the resolve on her features with complete bafflement.

"Like that's even going to be a problem if we're together." As soon as the statement left his mouth, he saw her look away and he knew what all of this was about. His heart began thumping in his chest. "Cuddy?"

As her gaze met his again, he saw her eyes had glassed over with the start of tears beginning to form in the corners.

"You and me… We can't."

"Why?" he pressed.

"Because it wouldn't work."

"Why?"

"You can't just keep asking why!" Cuddy exclaimed, her frustration plain to see.

"I can and I will," he countered adamantly. "Why can't we work? Things are different this time."

"I know they are, but there's even more at stake now."

House leaned back in his chair and gulped. He couldn't deny that she was right, but what she was saying now didn't seem to tally with the conversations they'd had back at the house. Something had to have altered.

"We talked about where we went wrong… Jesus! Cuddy we talked for hours and hours. We know what we have to do to make things better… Someone or something has to have changed your mind."

"I'm seeing someone," she blurted out.

For seconds that seemed to stretch out like hours House was literally rendered speechless, as her words hit him like a punch in the gut. His head was swimming and he could feel the sick rising from the pit of his stomach. He'd laid in his bunk every night since he'd come here thinking she was his, but now somebody else had her. Without even realising it his hand gripped tightly onto the table leg until his knuckles turned white. He should have recognised that was too good to be true.

"Well that didn't take you long," he spat sarcastically, intentionally trying to cover the raw hurt he was feeling.

"What?" Cuddy asked, her brow furrowing into a confused expression until she realised what he meant. "I'm seeing a therapist, House. I'm not with anybody." With the clarification she saw him exhale, and the relief become palpable in his posture. "Julia recommended her to me."

"I should have known your sister would pop up in this somewhere… She's been dripping the poison in your ear for the last two months and you've actually listened to her."

"If that was the case I wouldn't even be here!" she fumed, her voice loud enough to attract the attention of the inmates and their visitors either side of them. Taking a breath she began again more quietly this time. "Julia thinks I'm insane coming anywhere near you, let alone giving you access to Jacob."

"Fine," he conceded. "But what about what happened between us?... I know you never expected me to hand myself in, but all of that meant something… At least it did to me."

If he'd have slapped her in the face he couldn't have shocked or wounded her more.

"Of course it meant something!" she insisted.

House's attention dropped to the table, and a small gash in the wood, which he ran his finger along.

"You told me you loved me," he muttered.

"I did… I do," Cuddy stammered in response, her fingers searching out his and gently ghosting over his bandaging. "I'm always going to care about you, and not just because we've got a son."

Looking like a puppy who'd been kicked, he lifted his head and his eyes were pleading with her long before he opened her mouth, reflecting the pain she was feeling herself.

"Then why?"

"Because when we're not living in a bubble like we were for those few days, when reality starts niggling away at us, we're toxic together."

"It wasn't all bad," he objected.

"No it wasn't," she agreed. "When it was good it was amazing, but when it was bad it was like a warzone…. Then it got even worse after we split up. I can't put the kids in the middle of that."

As if someone had switched on a light bulb in his head, his eyes lit up in realisation.

"You're scared that I'm going to hurt you again… I've already told you I'd never do that."

"I'm completely sure that you really believe that… Ninety-nine percent of me believes it too, but there's still a tiny part of me that can never be entirely certain you won't lash out again one day if we break up." She paused for a moment to let the air filter in and out of her lungs. "I can't take the chance of things blowing up again, because if they did everything would be over. You and me. You and Jacob… I need to protect all of us. It's better if we stay friends."

"Yeah because we do the whole friends thing really well, don't we?"

"Then maybe it's about time we did... All I want is some stability for all of us."

Watching her grip his fingers more tightly, an idea hit him like a freight train. It seemed like the perfect solution.

"Then marry me," House implored in almost a whisper.

"Excuse me!" Her hand shot away from his, and her face contorted into a puzzled frown.

"I know it's not practical while I'm in here, but afterwards… It'd give us all the stability we need." He stopped to look at her stunned expression, before repeating his request again. "Marry me."

More than once Cuddy's mouth dropped open as if she was about to speak, but the words didn't seem to be forthcoming.

"Are you serious?" she finally managed.

"Completely serious."

Again she appeared to be at a loss for words, until her mind seemed to settle on something that was plaguing her.

"Are you even divorced?"

Now it was his turn to be struck dumb. He'd meant to, but as soon Wilson had told him about the cancer he'd forgotten about it. His 'wife' had slipped from his mind the moment he'd left Princeton.

"No," he finally breathed after much hesitation. Fuck!

Shaking her head at him knowingly, he watched a lone tear fall from her eye, which she quickly wiped away with the back of her hand and tried to keep herself together.

"Yeah of course you were being serious," she mumbled sarcastically under her breath, as she got to her feet. "I've got to go."

"Cuddy, sit down."

Ignoring him she took a deep breath, and held onto the chair.

"I'll try and get back to see you in a few weeks, and I'll send you Danny's address," she said as evenly as she could manage, barely looking in his direction. "I've left a couple of things for you with the guards."

"Please Cuddy, sit down so I can explain," House practically begged.

"You don't have to. We're just friends." Firmly she met his gaze and offered him a fake smile that couldn't be any further from demonstrating how she really felt. "Bye, House."

And with that she turned on her heel, and walked away out of the room and out of his sight, leaving him with his head in his hands, safe in the knowledge he'd screwed up again, as everybody around him continued to chatter away.

Cuddy stepped out into the cold, crisp air and flung her jacket over her shoulders, pleased that she'd finally made it into the relative freedom of the prison car park. She'd felt like she was on the brink of a panic attack when the guards had searched her once again, and now the open air was a welcome relief. Focusing on putting one foot in front of the other she made her way to her rental car, opened the door and slumped down into the front seat, her head lolling back on the rest as she closed her eyes in an attempt to calm herself down.

What had just happened seemed unreal. She'd anticipated coming to visit him would be difficult, especially in light of what she'd come to tell him, but she'd never expected him to propose to her in a million years. For a split second she'd thought he really meant it. That it wasn't just a tactic to get her to reconsider her position on their relationship, and then she'd remembered the manner in which she'd seen him get married the first time; the agony of watching him slip a ring on the finger of someone who was much younger, and probably much prettier in his mind. He'd said it was just a marriage of convenience, but she knew he'd done it to hurt her. One more twisting of the knife as punishment for breaking up with him, and it had worked. Wilson may have done his best to cheer her up, but she'd gone home that night with the awful knowledge that, whilst she was in bed alone, the man she was still in love with would be tucked up with his Russian bride.

And yet this seemed worse. Despite her outward appearance of being content with being on her own and bringing up her children as a single parent, she knew House was aware of how deep down she wanted the security and stability of marriage. How she'd nearly sought that out with Lucas, but she'd given it up to be with him because she loved him. For that split second after he'd asked her she thought she could have both, but it'd been too good to be true. House didn't take marriage seriously, and he never would. Now she couldn't even be sure if he took her seriously either. Every time she thought she knew who he was, what he was capable of, he seemed to move the goal posts. If she could never pin him down, it really was better if they kept their relationship as complication-free as possible and remained friends.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt though. With her composure finally crumbling her body became wracked with sobs, big wet tears falling down her cheeks until she couldn't cry anymore.

House sat on his bunk seemingly transfixed by a patch of the grey breezeblock wall a few feet in front of him, his mind going over and over the conversation he'd had with Cuddy a couple of hours earlier, when he suddenly became aware his cellmate was talking to him.

"What?" he asked bad-temperedly. He really wasn't in the mood for small talk.

"I said I saw your girlfriend at visiting," the younger man repeated from above. "Man she's hot! I'd be pissed too if I was stuck in here and she was out there."

Instinctively clenching his fist, House felt a red mist descending on him.

"She's not my girlfriend. We're just friends."

Jumping down from the top bunk, Victor stood in front of him, poised to launch into one of the long diatribes House had become accustomed to in the couple of weeks they'd shared their cell. Generally he didn't mind him and despite his street savvy, he could see the naivety and enthusiasm of a kid who probably wouldn't be here if his home life had been better when he was a child. Now though, all he wanted was to be left alone to think.

"Dude! If she was my friend I would soooo tap that," Victor exclaimed, ducking his head under the bed frame and resting his arms on his own mattress. "I mean that ass! Jesus!... I bet she purrs when you…"

And that was when House switched off. He was too busy thinking about where he was going to hit the guy in front him to concentrate on the words that were coming out of his mouth. It didn't matter that his hand was hurt, or that he knew full well that even though he might get the first punch, the second, third and fourth would be landed on him. Victor may have been smaller, but he knew how to fight; he'd told House as much when he'd gone into elaborate detail about how he'd knocked out three men who'd tried to attack to attack him once. And yet somehow that seemed reassuring to him. He wanted to feel a different kind of pain to the one he was experiencing now, and better still he longed to feel nothing: if he was lucky he'd end up unconscious.

Just as his hand lifted from next to his leg, he saw one of the prison officers step into the cell through his peripheral vision, and dropped it to his thigh in one inconspicuous motion, his pulse thumping furiously in his temples.

"Your visitor left you these," the rotund, middle aged man mumbled disinterestedly, dropping two items onto House's bed and walking straight back out of the door.

"You should have said you two had a kid. I never would have shot my mouth off." Victor offered apologetically, picking up the photo that had just been given to his cellmate and studying the little boy on it, before handing it back. "He looks like you."

"Yeah," was all he could manage as he examined Jacob's face for himself, and the younger man climbed back onto his bunk to leave him to it. It was almost certainly a brand new picture. He couldn't remember seeing it in any of the albums and despite it only being a couple of months he recognised the change in the soon-to-be two year old. His face had thinned out and lost some of its babyish features, and as he concentrated on the toy car he was pushing along the coffee table, his brow furrowed into two deep lines in between his eyebrows, his steely blue eyes fixated on the tiny red vehicle as if it was the only thing in the World. There was no getting around the fact that he was his son, and therefore at least partially his responsibility.

Putting the photo down, House picked up the open envelope that had come with it and stared at the front. He'd expected it to be addressed to him, but he hadn't expected the familiar, shaky handwriting that greeted him. Pulling out the notepaper inside, he deciphered the laboured scrawl from the hand of someone who had quite obviously struggled to put pen to paper:

You've got a second chance. Don't screw this up.

It wasn't signed, but he knew this was Wilson nagging him from beyond the grave and he couldn't help but smile to himself. He must have written the letter, given it to the lawyer for safe-keeping, who then in turn passed it on to Cuddy for her to give to him. Right now he knew he had two options: fall back into the same pattern of misery and self-loathing, or try and forge a path forward even if it wasn't quite what he wanted.

"Yo, roomie!" he hollered, nudging Victor above him through the bedding.

"What's up House?"

"About that 'candy' I asked you to get me…" He hesitated, before going on. "Forget it."

"Sure," his cellmate responded, nonchalantly thumbing through a magazine.

"Any chance I can get my radio back?"

"You know the rules, man. No returns… This ain't Walmart."

Sighing to himself, House found he didn't really care. The photo and the letter had given him the perspective he needed on things, and he felt relieved and pretty pleased with himself he'd just dodged a bullet with regards to the Vicodin. He had a son who Cuddy was not only prepared to give him access to, but she wanted his input on his life, and although he wanted more from her, he had to be content with friendship. It was so much better than losing her altogether again. They were more than worth the harsh reality of his sobriety.

Reaching under his bed he pulled out a writing pad and unhooked the pen from the side. He had two letters to write: the one he'd promised he'd send to Jacob and another to Cuddy, which would include various variations on the phrase, "I'm sorry, I'm an asshole."

Tomorrow he'd get in touch with his lawyer too. It was time he got around to that divorce.