Authors Note: Okay, this chapter has a few descriptions of child abuse from their past, as told in sorta a story format. Just a warning. Also, I wanted to mention that I know Cameron stated to House earlier that she hadn't been abused at all, and now I'm writing that she had been, physically and emotionally etc. Well, he doesn't ask her on it, but incase you guys were wondering, it's cause she really didn't think everything would come out – like they'd get this involved with her siblings again. She'd intended to just lie completely, but now it's not really an option. Her stating she hadn't been sexually abused isn't a lie though – not from her POV.

Chapter 18 - Color Coded Camerons

House sat silently on the sofa, his body tense despite the six beers he'd already downed. Ryan was asleep in his room; Wilson had found him wandering the hallways by himself and had paged both Cameron and House. Cameron wasn't able to leave their patient so House agreed to take the boy home with him. He'd told Cuddy that he had to leave; that something had come up. When she protested he told her to fire him. He knew she wouldn't so he didn't feel at all worried when he left the hospital, Ryan in tow.

The manila envelope was on the coffee table in front of him, it's beige flaps still closed. He hadn't looked in it. He knew it wasn't his business; that if Cameron were hiding things from him than that was her perogative. The beers only made it easier for him to dull the overpowering desire to pry into the deep, dark recesses of her medical history. She would tell him when she was ready. He owed her that.

It was well past midnight when Cameron finally arrived home. She'd had to phone a cab since they had taken one car into work that day; It hadn't been either of their intentions to leave early. She tossed her keys onto the island and untangled herself from her multitude of outerwear. It was only October but the weather was becoming bitterly cold. She made a mental note to take Ryan shopping for a winter jacket on her next day off.

"House?" She gasped as she turned towards the den; she hadn't expected him to still be up. She rubbed her hands together in the chill of the sometimes drafty den and made to sit down next to him when she spotted the folder. "How-"

"Kathryn came into the clinic this afternoon." House cut in, making a point to not turn to look at Cameron just yet. He knew he had done what was right, respecting her privacy, but the knowledge that she could be lying to him made him ache. Cameron sat down slowly and pulled the file towards her and then into her lap.

"Did you read it?" She asked, staring at the painfully familiar smudge marks around the spine of the beige folder. She had first seen her file when it was in the hands of her father, less than a week before CPS came for them. She'd been suspiciously ill, so he'd conned a naive hospital nurse to collect all her records and give them to him. Of course she thought she was giving them to Dr. Haught, but that was her fathers way with everything in life. If he couldn't con it out of you, he'd then beat it out of you. Mostly people responded to his con's. Good for them. Bad for her.

House continued to stare ahead at the spot where the folder had been. He could feel Cameron's tension next to him and was now wishing he hadn't drunk those beers. She didn't tolerate excessive drinking, so pissing her off now wasn't the best first step into getting her to tell him the truth. "No." He answered simply.

Cameron relaxed immediately and let out the breath she'd been holding. She ran her hand over the rough card stock, tracing her finger over her name written in large letters on the tab. "I haven't read it either." She whispered softly and then turned to House. He hadn't expected that and turned to look at her at the same moment. Their eyes connected and both were startled at what they saw. House was clearly intoxicated, though not enough to cause her real grief. His eyes were slightly glazed over and his face held a genuine expression of confusion. Cameron on the other hand was very pale, the inside of her eyebrows pushed up towards her forehead in that unmistakable 'sad puppy' expression.

"Kathryn said that there were things you weren't telling me. That they were in there." He nodded towards the folder in her lap. "I wanted to, but I didn't look, Ducky." He lifted his hand to her face and brushed some hair from her cheek, placing it behind her ear. The areas surrounding her eyes were growing red as tears started to pool in them. Cameron brushed at them before any liquid could escape down her cheeks. She'd had such a rough day: they'd lost their patient in surgery, she'd had to yell at Ryan and her boyfriend had disappeared without any explanation. She didn't need to come home to this.

"I don't know what's in here Greg." She rested her cheek in his hand when he gave it to her. "I'm not sure I really want to know, either." She closed her eyes as he brushed her skin with his thumb. She recalled how incensed her father had been when he couldn't find any explanation for her current "illness". As she thought back on it now, her father must have known what was really going on and was only trying to find proof to use against her. When he hadn't found what he'd wanted he beat her. Three days later, when she was able to walk, she'd gone to the women's clinic. If she'd only known...

House pulled her into his arms when she began to zone out; he wondered what she was thinking about but didn't ask. "Then don't open it." He said and then pulled the folder from her lap. She'd sat up at this and watched as he hoisted himself to his feet and walked awkwardly towards their bedroom. She got up and followed him, only to find him placing the folder on the top shelf of their closet. "When you're ready, you know where it is." He crossed to their bed and rid himself of all clothing except his boxers.

Cameron turned the bedroom light out and felt her way to the bed. When she'd disrobed to her underwear, she crawled in next to him. "Thank you." She whispered, snuggling close to his warm body. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled the blankets up to their necks. He sighed and kissed the side of her head. You're welcome, Duck.

*****

Two days later had the entire Cameron clan, sans Kathryn, sprawled out on their living room floor. They'd had to rearrange some furniture so there was enough room but House didn't care. He was completely enraptured by the stories he was hearing about. Stuart had brought a cardboard box with him and surprised all the siblings when he'd dumped out a giant stack of papers. It was their family album, or at least their version of one.

"Oh god, do you remember this?" Cameron laughed as she pulled a page from the pile. It was covered in blue and yellow crayon and a small amount of red paint. House had absolutely no idea what the seemingly random scribbles meant so waited in earnest for someone to explain. Stuart had pulled the page from Cameron and studied it; his eyes soon growing wide as he recalled the incident that inspired it.

"I'd totally forgotten about that." He laughed along with Nic, who had crawled over Cameron's sprawled body to look at it too. "You and I were running through the kitchen, pretending we were mom and dad." He looked up at House. "Obviously our parents weren't there at the time."

Nicoles continued the story, "Yeah, you had thrown a glass at me which shattered all over the floor." He had taken the photo from his brother and was staring at it fondly.

"And then you idiots ran right through the glass and cut up both your feet." Cameron finished the story and pulled the page from Nic to set it back in the pile. House had been watching, with morbid fascination, how all the siblings seemed to be laughing and smiling at all these horrible memories. "I had to bandage you guys up and clean the mess before mom got home."

"Yeah, and it was hilarious watching you two trying to walk without giving away that you'd injured yourselves." Jacob concluded and then took another page from the pile. This one was littered with green scratches and outlined in purple. There was no red paint, or "blood" as House had concluded, on it. He'd also gathered that each child had a specific color to represent them in the abstract images. Green was Jacob and purple was Allison. "Oh no, look at this." He turned it towards Cameron who took it greedily so she could inspect it further.

When she recognized it she glanced up in slight annoyance. "Which one of you did this one?" Jacob and Stuart turned their head towards Nicoles, who had to shield himself as Cameron playfully punched him. House took the photo from his girlfriend and studied it. He could not come up with a single idea about what it could mean. When she was done abusing her brother, Cameron crawled over to where Jacob was laying on his stomach and then climbed onto his back so she was laying prone along with him. "You guys are terrible." She snorted at Nic and Stu, who were still grinning like idiots.

House felt incredibly out of the loop so he turned to Ryan, who was creating his own 'memories' on some blank sheets of paper. He'd been too young to be involved with the making of the other ones, although he did appear as subject matter in a few. He had given up on hearing what the seemingly embarrassing picture was about when Cameron finally explained. "Jacob had a really nasty fever when he was six or so. Those two I made sleep in the crib with Ryan so they didn't catch whatever it was Cob had. I, on the other hand-" Her face was growing red as she took a breath before continuing. "I had to be a makeshift blanket for him."

This didn't really seem like something that should make Cameron this red, House thought. But then Jacob finished the tale. "It was winter so it was freezing in the room. You made us sleep naked together."

"For body heat!" Cameron insisted as Nic and Stu began cracking up. "You guys are so freaking immature." She stuck her tongue at them but didn't get up from Jacob's back. "Dad found us that morning, all entwined or something, and he nearly hit the roof." She paused. "He must have thought we were actually being inappropriate so he punished us by making us stay naked for the rest of the week. In the apartment, that is." She rolled off her brother onto her back as she herself giggled at the memory. "It was mortifying."

"I'll bet." House frowned at the laughter that surrounded the incredibly inappropriate memory. He had tried to refrain from asking, but now he really couldn't help himself, "Is laughing about it now some sort of coping mechanism? Because, and I apologize if I offend any of you, but those things you guys describe are textbook definitions of child abuse. I don't see how it can be this funny." This got the Cameron siblings to quiet down and the triplets turned to look at their sister to see how she would react.

Cameron took a minute to work out the best way to explain their reactions to the obviously abusive memories. "Coping mechanisms help you deal with things too painful to face head on. That's not what this is. We did face these things head on. These incidents are only a fraction of what went on everyday in our house. If you knew the real abusive acts we suffered, you'd find these little things funny too." The atmosphere had grown somber and House wondered if he'd ever be able to hold is tongue and stop ruining "joyful" moments.

"I'm sorry." Was all he could think of to say. "It's just, none of you have actually told me about the, well other things. From my point of view everything seems worth getting upset over." He watched the siblings share pointed looks between themselves, obviously communicating through years of experience with each other. Finally they all seemed to nod and then turned to look at him.

"If you want to know, I'll give you an example." Cameron glanced at Ryan and sighed before turning back to her lover. "Ryan was two. He was essentially a normal, troublesome toddler. At this point our parent's were actively taking their anger out on us instead of just on each other. I think he'd spilled something or made some sort of mess and as punishment Dad locked him in the bedroom closet." House turned to look at the youngest sibling who was off in his own world drawing with his crayons.

Cameron continued, "It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last, but still he kept on crying and crying and crying. This only pissed my dad off further so he kept extending his punishment longer and longer. By the end of the second day I had done everything I could to convince my father to let him out. He wouldn't." She swept a tear from her cheek as she remembered how agonizing it was listening to him scream. "I began to lay on the floor besides the door, talking to him and trying to sooth him through the crack beneath it. It really didn't make a difference but I kept it up anyway. Dad saw this as a direct challenge to his authority, so while I was still looking under the doorway, he stomped his booted foot down on my left hand, crushing it. This of course meant he had to let Ryan out of the closet so they could take me to the hospital. He had broken nine bones in my hand and it took nearly a year before I got full use of it back."

House felt his stomach lurch as he listened to this awful story. He ignored his leg as he dragged himself over to where Cameron lay, now crying quietly into her arms. The triplets watched as House pulled their sister into his lap and began to rock her soothingly. Jacob smiled at the man who was calming her; his like of the doctor growing ten fold. She'd be safe with him, he was confident now. He motioned for his brothers to quietly follow him out of the den, taking Ryan along too. The two still on the floor needed to be alone right now. His heart swelled at the thought that his sister finally had someone to be alone with.