21 – "Morning has broken, like the first morning" – "Morning Has Broken" – Cat Stevens
The soft grey light of an overcast morning began to creep its way through the corners of the shaded windows. Cameron's still closed eyes became dimly conscious of the increasing light. Her body became aware of a weight lying across her breasts and encircling her shoulder. A second or two later, her ears became attuned to a light, rhythmic snoring coming somewhere in the vicinity of several inches from her face. She opened her eyes and was momentarily startled to see House's face, close to her own, half buried in the pillow. Then the events of yesterday and last night came flying back and her tension eased. She smiled.
The morning light gently caressed the multifarious planes and angles of House's face. Light and shadow played about the high cheekbones, strong jawline with its signature stubble, the finely-shaped, straight nose and deep set eyes now framed by long dark lashes, closed as they were with heavy slumber. Cameron continued to look at him, to drink him in, every line and mark, as if she had never really looked at him before. How much younger did he look while asleep? It was as if his careworn face had shed some of its lines giving him the appearance not unlike the photograph of the boy that she had once seen in his high school yearbook. Of course, that boy had looked a good deal older than a teenager.
Cameron smiled again as she realized that she was trapped by the long arm draped across her; trapped that is, if she did not wish to wake him. And at this moment, she wanted nothing more than to watch him as he slept, so carefree and boyishly handsome. She had to suppress a chuckle as she thought how like House it was that even in sleep, he had still somehow managed to cop a feel.
Just when she began to consider ways to slip out from beneath his embrace, he groaned slightly and rolled over onto his back. As he moved, she slid out to the side, freeing herself from his one-handed grasp.
She lightly rose from the bed and, after checking to make sure that he was still asleep, made her way to the bathroom. After using the toilet, she brushed her teeth and washed her face, enjoying the envigorating feeling of the cool water on her pores. She raised up from the wash basin to look at her reflection in the mirror. The water made little rivulets down her cheeks, and her eyes, framed by her dark lashes, were highlighted by the silver droplets still clinging to them. It had been weeks since she had slept so well and her eyes were brightened by the experience.
Cameron continued to gaze at her own reflection. Who she saw in the mirror was someone she knew she must make peace with, someone who always played by the rules. But where had that gotten her? Her first husband was dead and her second marriage was crumbling. What difference did anything make? Whether you followed every rule or if, like House, you stampeded through them as if they didn't exist who could say what would make you happier?
Cameron and House were in the same place, an emotional hell of their own creation, even though they had taken two very different roads to get there. At this moment, she was very tired of following her chosen path and playing by the rules. The rules had always seemed to deny her what she wanted most. And what she wanted most, right now, lay in the next room.
House groaned again, louder this time, and she opened the door and stepped back into the bedroom to check on him. He was still asleep, still on his back. The arm that had been thrown over her twitched slightly and his hand momentarily clutched the air, as if searching for something. And then he went very still again, the silence only broken by his heavy breathing and the occasional snore.
Cameron took two steps back into the bathroom and this time, stared at herself in the mirror. What could she learn to live with? Could she accept that her husband had purposely taken another human life? Would she want to have children with such a man? Was this all happening because she deserved, somehow, to be punished for mistakes from her own past?
And what of House? Her thoughts about the man in the next room seemed a little more organized this morning than of the night before. That she had always been in love with him, she now was no longer in any doubt. But why could she accept his many flaws and failings and not her husband's? Was it because that, deep down, she had never really loved Chase? Or at least, perhaps she had never loved him as she had done House?
Tears sprang to her eyes at this last thought, that she had married a man whom she did not completely love. Even though she did not believe in the soul, she still felt there was an untapped part of her that only House could reach and no one else, not even Chase, ever could.
She looked again in the mirror. She held her own steady gaze as time seemed to move on through infinity. The wheels in her mind clicked into place as she made her decision. And as she walked into the bedroom, she turned back one more time to see her own reflection smiling at her.