Cuddy kept stealing surreptitious glances at House as the plane hurtled through the sky toward the new crisis. Not that she really had to be surreptitious. He was staring out the window, obviously lost in thought, and he'd barely said anything to her since they had left her office. He gave perfectly pleasant responses to questions, went where he was told, ate the lunch she purchased at a drive-in on the way to Newark without complaint, but his mind and personality seemed completely elsewhere. In Lexington, no doubt. He hadn't made a single snide remark during the entire process of security check and boarding.

She knew that he and his mother had been talking at least weekly since Blythe had left Princeton. Cuddy had stayed at a distance on that one ("Afraid of what you'd say to her if you got started," Wilson had commented once, fairly accurately), but she had followed the situation with interest and with regular and thorough updates from House. Blythe had started therapy herself, and it apparently was doing her a world of good. She was less demanding, less naive in her expectations, and she and her son actually had grown closer the last several weeks than they ever had been. House had even told Cuddy once that in a way, he was glad now that Wilson had filled Blythe in, even though he still would have picked different methods and wished he had been forewarned. But good had come out of it. For the first time, Blythe knew all the facts even if not yet all the specific details, and House no longer had to protect her.

To protect her. Cuddy gritted her teeth. She still could not believe that John House had bought his son's silence for all those extended years by the threat of killing his mother in front of him if he revealed the abuse. The message had been drilled deeply into House, lasting far into adulthood, the habit of silence finally even outliving John House himself. Her heart broke all over again thinking about the frightened, lost little boy who truly had been raised to feel alone in the world, in spite of surface appearances of a family. Family to him was almost defined as pain, suffering, and deception. No wonder he had always held people away.

He was letting her in these days, though, and he was improving steadily with Jensen's help. She never tired of watching him with Rachel. Still, she sensed that something had been bothering him the last few days, before his ankle, before Blythe. She was worried about him. Physically, too, he did not seem quite right lately. He was normally the most graceful cripple she had ever seen, but his entire balance had been slightly off.

Right now, even as his thoughts were elsewhere, his hand was resting on his leg, rubbing it slightly. She knew the plane trip, even in first class, would do him no favors. At least they weren't in economy and had more leg room. She was sitting on his right, providing a buffer to protect his leg from the aisle traffic, and she reached out suddenly and put her hands on his thigh. It didn't seem to be cramping up at the moment, but it was clearly hurting him. She massaged it gently, and for the first time in the last hour, he looked away from the window to his left and turned his eyes toward her. They still looked stunned - and shielded.

"You okay?" she said softly.

"Fine. Planes aren't the most comfortable method of travel ever invented."

She worked gently on his leg, watching some of the lines of pain - but certainly not all - disappear from his face. She took her hands away for a minute and picked up her purse from under her seat, pushing it forward and raising his splinted right ankle gingerly to place the purse as a prop underneath it. It wasn't as good as truly elevating it, but it might help some. She fussed over placing that for a minute, then straightened back up. "Does that help any, Greg?"

"Yes," he replied.

She returned to resting her hands on his thigh, making herself a human heating pad. "I know you've got a lot to deal with right now, but I really do think it might be a good idea to have your annual physical when we get back to Princeton. I'm worried about you lately. You seem off."

He looked at her. What was that look behind his eyes? Normally, his eyes were a dead giveaway, the one thing he couldn't totally control, but lately, she felt like she was missing a piece of the puzzle. She simply wasn't reading him. He finished whatever internal differential he was running and then said, "Actually, I had a full exam from Wilson this morning. MRI and everything. Just to make sure there was nothing wrong with the leg besides the ankle at the moment."

She felt a surge of relief. "Seriously?"

He nodded. "Ask him yourself. He took forever running that scan, looking for anything. I didn't think he'd find anything new, just wanted to rule it out to cover all possibilities."

"So last week really was the weather bothering your leg?"

"Apparently. Of course, the ankle is affecting everything now. You don't have to worry about the leg. Other than a badly sprained ankle, there is nothing new wrong with it. Ask Wilson. Look up the scan yourself."

She smiled at him. "Thank you. You don't know how relieved that makes me."

He looked back toward the window. "If I really thought there was a new major physical problem with the leg, like a clot or something, I'd take myself to the ER. Like I said, today was just for reassurance. I didn't think the MRI would show anything."

"Still, thank you for getting it." She hesitated. "But please try to move a little more slowly on turns and such, especially now with the crutches. Your body can't keep up with your mind at times. And that's not just because of your leg; my body can't keep up with your mind, either."

He turned and gave his first real smile that she had seen that day. "Your body has plenty going for it. Don't feel bad."

She smiled back, partly in relief at the flicker of usual House there. He met her eyes for a minute - then turned away again, looking out the window. She kept both hands on his leg, trying to provide some connection, but once again, even through the relief of learning he really had been checked out, she felt left behind, his mind miles out in front on whatever road of the moment. She sensed he didn't want to talk about his mother. In fact, she sensed that he didn't really want to talk at all. Still, she was glad she was with him on this trip. Having some support would help, and part of her still felt like it was a good idea to keep an eye on him.

(H/C)

Cuddy insisted on picking up a quick dinner at a small diner after they landed, knowing that first of all, House was due for meds anyway and especially needed them after the trip, and second, once he got to the hospital, she would be doing well to drag him out of there at all tonight. He didn't resist the meal, just ate with the same distracted compliance he'd shown with her all day since leaving Princeton, but he astonished her as they finished. "We might call around and book a hotel room at the nearest hotel to the hospital, too. It would be nice to have somewhere to come back to and rest later, get away from the medical environment."

She stared, then reached across to lightly brush his forehead, checking for a temperature. "YOU are suggesting we might want to get away from the medical environment to come back and rest? Voluntarily? With your mother critical?" Hospitals were his natural habitat, even with his mother the patient. She had been building ammunition for a fight later to get him to leave and abruptly found herself left alone on the front lines and discovering that the war she'd prepared to wage didn't exist.

He looked at her and simply nodded. "You look tired," he said.

"Would you rather get a hotel room than stay at your mother's place?" She regretted the question instantly as she saw the visible shudder run through his body. To him, it wasn't his mother's place. His father's personality would still fill the home to which he and Blythe had retired, even with his actual presence long gone. The fact that House himself hadn't lived there wouldn't matter. He had been such a nomad through childhood; home had been defined by the people, not any one building. "I apologize. Of course you don't want to stay there."

"Hotel room is closer anyway," he said, trying to sound logical. "Easier to come and go to the hospital."

That was true, but something about the way he said it rang oddly. She studied him more closely, and he ducked away visually, avoiding her gaze, reaching for his crutches beside his chair instead. "Wait a minute, House. You weren't thinking about slipping back out to the hospital after I was asleep, were you?"

"We need to get going," he scrambled desperately, hauling himself up onto the crutches, moving a bit too suddenly and wavering for a second. Pain stabbed up his leg, and he gritted his teeth. Cuddy jumped up from her own chair and quickly grabbed an elbow to steady him.

"You listen to me, Gregory House. Don't you dare try to lose me in this. I'm going through it WITH you. Every step."

"You'll need to rest at some point."

"So will you, and you're the one who's hurt. You are NOT going to spend all night at that hospital tonight, even in stages, unless Blythe's condition is so unstable it really merits it. And if it does, then I'll be there with you all night. And if it doesn't, we'll give the hospital our cell phone numbers, and you are going back with me to a hotel room and getting off that ankle for several hours."

He sighed and started to awkwardly limp toward the door. She quickly paid their bill, then followed him to the parking lot where their rental car waited in the handicapped spot - House always carried a portable tag in his wallet. He was already getting in the passenger's seat when she caught up with him. She went around to the driver's side and slammed the door with more force than required, and he looked over at her, startled. He'd already been drifting off into deep thought again. "Greg, promise me that you won't try to ditch me in this. Not even temporarily." He hesitated. "PROMISE me. I won't sleep at all wondering if you're plotting sneaking out."

His eyes met hers and ran one of those silent differentials again. "I promise," he said softly. "Let's get to the hospital."

Having won her point, she turned her attention to driving in the unfamiliar city. House was silent most of the trip, either sulking or just distracted, she thought, but when she parked at the hospital and turned to him, she could see that he was sweating, his entire posture tight and pained. "Greg? What's wrong? Is your leg hurting? Cramping up again?"

"Just . . . a little." One hand crept toward it, and she realized that up to that point, he hadn't even been trying to massage it out himself. He had been sitting totally still, almost unnaturally still, the whole trip, not even doing what he could have done to help. What the hell? "It's okay," he insisted.

"You should have said something."

"Stopping would have just slowed us down," he said. He opened the car door, started to lift his leg out, and was unable to suppress a whimper of pure pain that time, although he obviously tried.

Cuddy was around the front of the car in a flash, bending over by his side, her hands on his leg. "Sit still for a minute," she ordered. "You can't walk like this." The leg was indeed in a full spasm, and she worked on the muscle for several minutes, slowly working the knot out. He sat back and closed his eyes. Finally, she felt him start to relax. "Is that better?"

He nodded and opened his eyes again. "I'm okay," he repeated. "The plane trip . . ."

It was certainly a reasonable excuse. So why did she feel like it was only an excuse? "You did say your leg was checked out thoroughly, right?"

"I swear. X-rays and workup on the ankle Saturday from Kutner, who is a sports medicine specialist, you know. Exam and MRI this morning for the entire leg by Wilson. It's a bad sprain, nothing else. Ask Wilson; he'll verify it." She dropped the subject, although she did make a mental note to do just that.

Slowly this time, he levered himself up out of the car onto his crutches, accepting her support. Together they headed into the hospital.