Disclaimer in part one. Looking like four/five more chapters and maybe an epilogue? Thanks guys!

We're Not the Same, Dear, As We Used to Be

The Seasons Have Changed, And So Have We

--Death Cab for Cutie, "The Ice Was Getting Thinner"

"We're not discussing it," House announced as they stood on the Cameron-Chase family porch and watched Wilson drive off, one family of five and seven suitcases in tow.

Lisa looked at him. There hadn't been a good moment to say more than hello between the hugging and the car-switching and suitcase-loading. "Excuse me?" she asked.

"We're not discussing Florida. Or argument-inducing things," he announced. "We're going to lunch. Duchovney's, in Pennington, in fact, is where we're going."

"Excuse me?" she said incredulously. "Where did that stroke hit again? You love fighting."

"Wrong," he said. "You love fighting. I like to be right. And I usually am. But that's kind of moot. The point is, we're going to lunch. You're driving."

"Why aren't we discussing Florida?" she asked, guiding him toward the car.

"Because right now you don't know what you want, and you'll do that prickly moody defensive schtick, and then you'll start a fight—you like fights, remember—and I'll make an inappropriate crack about your cleave still as perky as ever, and you'll get madder and then we'll just be arguing and I want to enjoy my pastrami sandwich."

She stopped. He did have a point. "Duchovney's, then?"

"Best pastrami south of the Upper East Side."

"Doesn't sound like a restaurant that would make good pastrami."

"Don't worry; this place makes better matzoh ball soup than your grandmother did."

"Wanna bet on that?"

"Sure; I've had both recipes," House said. "I win. You can pay for lunch now."

She rolled her eyes. "I see how it is."

"If we're not dating, we take turns. Yours just happens to be first."

"Lucky me," she said, propping open the door as he used his grip to pull himself up and slide into the passenger seat.

And, surprisingly, the drive and the lunch were pleasant, almost suspiciously so. House studiously avoided snarking or berating her for the move. He was being charming, dammit, reminding her of what she'd loved most about him. But he was also confusing her; his constant mind games—and not knowing if he was playing a mind game, thus making everything a mind game—had never been her favorite part about House, and they were coming full-force right now. Sparring with House had always been, internally, a grim affair; her stomach cramped as she tried to outmaneuver him, a little voice in her head mocking that it was fruitless. That voice was practically shouting at lunch. But he remained pleasingly snarky, mocking Hartmann and stupid patients and everything innocuously funny.

She finally got the courage to say, "You're doing this on purpose," when they were back at the Cameron-Chases' and watching television.

He looked straight at her. "Of course I am. You're babysitting me. I've learned something over the past several years," she couldn't help it, she leaned forward, imperceptibly but eagerly, "that if I'm nice to you, you give me pills. Two, please."

He held out a trembling hand, and she reluctantly grabbed his Vicodin bottle and unscrewed it. She used her fingers to fish out two pills and held them out to him, grabbing them at the last minute so he couldn't get them. "Why didn't you go to the hospital these last two weeks?" she demanded.

"Because nobody would drive me. Wilson got to the kiddies."

She pulled the pills farther from him. "Is that the only reason?"

"Yes," he said. "And, yes, I knew about the bet from about the first day I felt well enough to go into the hospital."

She handed over his pills and turned back to the television, reaching for the remote to raise the volume. "I knew you would come back," he added after swallowing the pills.

She shot him an annoyed look. "I did not 'come back.'"

"Yes, you did," he said. "Remember when I'm always right?"

"You're not. You think you're always right. There's a huge difference."

He shrugged. "I'm not wrong this time. I know you, Elisa Ruth Cuddy, and you came back."

"To visit," she emphasized.

"Why visit two weeks after your last visit? You miss me."

"No, House, I don't," she said, trying for wide-eyed convincing honesty. "I'm sorry."

He sighed, and scooted over toward his wheelchair, sliding into it. "If you'd stop bullshitting to yourself about how happy you are in Florida and how being retired and old and out-of-the-loop and out-of-control makes you happy, you might actually be happy. Just a thought. I'm not too good with the happiness thing."

"Different things make you happy at different points in your life," she protested, watching him wheel away. "And where are you going?"

He stopped, and shook his head. "I'm getting a beer from their fridge. And maybe you like heavy metal when you're 20 and jazz when you're 50, but not really. People adapt to circumstances but you don't change. You're still the same person."

"I'm the same person, but my needs changed, so I adapted," she said, getting up and following him. "I needed to retire so I did. I needed to relax so I moved to Florida."

"Did you? Relax?" he artfully maneuvered the wheelchair and the fridge door, and grabbed a drink.

"Yes," she snapped, grabbing the container of pomegranate juice from around him. "I drink wine, I play tennis, I go out to dinner, I run along the beach. I'm thinking about getting a dog."

"Very suitable companion," House said, pushing himself over to the drawer to get a bottle opener. "Whom do you dine with?"

"Friends. Tennis association members. My sister." She grabbed a glass and poured it full.

"Again, such a lovely, lovely time," he said. "Exactly how you want to spend your last twenty or so years on earth."

"Yeah, I do!" she shot back, her voice rising. "I just moved there six months ago; I'm not saying it's not hard or new. But I want a fresh start, a real retirement, and eventually it will feel like home. I'm not going to be stubborn and cling desperately to my old job and my old life. My life was bigger than the hospital and the puzzle, even if yours wasn't," her last words were filled with acrimony, and she tried desperately to keep her old wounds closed. "I chose this; this is how I choose to be happy. You chose this too, but you're choosing to be unhappy."

"I hate to tell you, but I'm not unhappy," he shot back, suddenly on the rare defensive.

"Oh, really?" she laughed bitterly; she couldn't help it. She was escalating everything and she didn't know how to stop and slow down and divert this argument. "Because suddenly, you're alone again, and you hate that. You're mooching off Chase and Cameron, for god's sakes! No wonder you're at the hospital all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if you go up and visit Foreman at this point! But will you ever come down, visit me, look around, give it a chance? No! You've been completely careless with the line between life and death for almost forty years now, and I've stuck by you, scared as hell half the time, and somehow you got lucky and have the chance to go gentle into that good night! You're lucky! You know how many times you should have died? And you don't take it! You'd rather be here! Why? You like your condo that much?"

She knew it was mean, but she flounced off into the living room and turned the volume on the TV up even higher. Eventually, sans beer, he came back into the living room and positioned himself in her life of vision. Arms crossed, he said, "I stayed because I knew you would eventually get unhappy with all the nice weather and the calmness; you won't be happy there until you start a free clinic and found a cure for disease. You're just as bad as Cameron, or Wilson, in your own special way: You need to be in charge, and you need something to be in charge of. And I was just supposed to subject myself to that?"

"You had for years!" She yelled. "We had a good thing, a working thing. And it's extremely insulting for you to say that I couldn't retire. If anything, you being an ass has, somehow, prevented me from retiring! You turned my happiness into a damned self-fulfilling prophecy, and I'm a little tweaked about that."

"We were working, that's why it worked," he shot back. "We had things besides each other, that's why we worked. And I'm sorry if being confronted with the reality of your life hurts. It's a lot better once you accept it: You can't just 'retire.'"

"I'll find other things to be involved with in Florida. You find new interests, new things, new causes, charities."

"Who says Florida is the best way to do that? You can do that here."

"It just … is. It's a break. Not a permanent vacation, but a clean break from your working life. It gets you away. You start over."

He laughed harshly. "You're sixty-five, Cuddy. You qualify for Medicare. You're not going to change. And those charities, those causes? There are a lot more around here, where you have people to call on and your network and god knows what else, to be more effective. You like effectiveness," he shifted, his look the intense, scary one she simply couldn't turn away from, and changed the playing field again. It was unfair, she thought, the way he could just command the entire board while she was still trying to figure out one of his tactics. "I miss you."

"I miss you too," she whispered, desperate and weak. "I would have been so much happier if you would have just moved down with me. But I'm not moving back for you. I had to move for me."

"You made a deal with Wilson, to come back in two weeks," he said. "Make a deal with me." It was a bold statement, the closest he'd come to an actual romantic declaration in a long time, and it took her aback.

"A deal?" she asked skeptically.

"Three months in Florida. Nine months here."

"What, you want me to take care of you again? You wouldn't've made this deal three weeks ago."

He shrugged. "Probably not. You know Wilson, with his morals, denying me the things I'm addicted to so I know the things I need," he looked like he was contemplating that statement. "He's good at that."

She sighed. "And so three months in my new, expensive condo is a compromise?"

He shrugged. "Worth it for twelve months of happier-than-you-are-now-ness. If it gets icy we can go down sooner."

She looked at him, his eyes open and clear. Such a rare thing. He really was offering it up, really was asking to be with her, really was making the big step. The we, for the first time since this miserable fight exploded almost a year ago, was back. She wanted desperately to curl into him, to have him be long and expansive on the couch again, instead of shriveled into himself in a chair, hug him, touch him, connect to him. But she was suspicious. She stood abruptly instead.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why the change of heart?" she demanded. "Why now? Why did you just say that you could move with me, live with me, make things actually happen, now?"

He shrugged. "I figured you had to get something from winning the bet."

"House! Not an answer!"

"Because … let's face it, I'm not going to get my legs back to the point where they were. I'd rather have the highest level of mobility that I can for as long as I can. Ice doesn't help that. Because I missed you. And because you're sort of right with the whole point-making earlier."

"I'm right?"

"Yes, but I knew those things before you said them. So I'm still right, first."

She shook her head, trying to shake her thoughts out. "I … I need to go for a walk. Are you okay here for a bit?"

His eyes closed up like a vault, and he nodded. "I have beer. I have chips. I have the porn channel."

She made a wide loop around their neighborhood, waving to the few people she recognized but mostly keeping pace with the drumbeat of House's words. Three months in Florida, nine months in Jersey. Would she really be happy with that? She liked Florida, she honestly did. She would be happy there, alone, eventually. His reasons and his pseudo-apology sucked, but he had known about the bet, had wanted Wilson to win, had wanted to stay away from the hospital. The way he'd acted the first time around … not acceptable. Most of the way he was still acting … not acceptable. His smugness, the way he could anticipate her moves before she could, his insistence that he was right—as well as the fact that he was right—were all negatives. She didn't know why, or when, she depended on House for her happiness, and she knew that he was possibly the worst person in the world to be an emotional crutch. Maybe she'd been right to leave him the first time around. She was still young, there were probably some nice … widowers … in her area.

But maybe this was the point where she stopped fighting it, just give in to his terms and live with them. Her mother had always said she fought too much to have a husband, that she could only drive people away. The statement had dogged her from the time she was 17 to her mother's death. This could finally take off and be a semi-successful relationship. House was anything but perfect; now, weakened and old, he was even less so. There'd be a lot of too-gentle sex, a lot of taking care of him, fights when she nagged him about his pills. And she really, truly, did not want to be in Princeton so much.

But it was better than being alone at this point, and she knew House completely, loved him still, for some reason, and now, six months after she left, she considered the possibility she'd made a mistake. She didn't want to tell him he was right, because he would doubly win (in the fact that he was right and because it meant she lost) but she could do charity and things from Princeton; she could still play tennis in Princeton. She could give a little.

She contemplated it; it wouldn't be giving in, so much, more like letting go. This could work. Lisa allowed herself to feel giddy, an emotion she'd worked her whole life to suppress. They would have to work to make it work, but it could work.

She walked back at a much quicker pace, let herself in through the unlocked back door. He had managed to ease himself over onto the couch and had a bowl of chips in his lap. He looked up as she came in. She thought his expression was hopeful but she couldn't quite tell.

Impulsively, she slid into the space next to him, filling it up and wrapping her arms around him. "So, I get three months in Florida?" she asked. "Which three?"

He smiled at her, surprised. "Whichever ones you want," he said carefully.

"I'm thinking January, February, and March," she said, trying to look thoughtful. "But I'm reserving a freak-storm-in-April clause." Her expression turned serious. You could—can—be happy with this?"

"I wouldn't've proposed it if I wasn't," he said seriously. "Three months—no ice—we'll consider it a health retreat." It was easier for him, she realized, to simply phrase it that way.

"And you won't … be …" she tried to articulate her worries. Angry? Cantankerous? Curmudgeonly past the point of no return? "Bored?" she asked.

He rolled his eyes. "Probably. But there's horse tracks down there. I'll take up … deep-sea fishing. Croquet."

She laughed. "And living together?" He'd actually done it before, she realized, with Stacey. She hadn't. She wondered what that said about her.

He shrugged. "Extra rooms for space, and I hope you like to do dishes."

She laughed. "So, what do we do now?" She realized his apartment hadn't been cleaned in months, wondered about her clothing stores, starting mentally calculating whether she could rent out her condo for those nine months.

"Well," he said, his fingers tracing circles on her lower back, "we make out like teenagers, because I have missed that," he leaned over and kissed her, and she realized she'd missed that, too. "Then I suggest you go to Wilson's and get your stuff. Then dinner and sex."

She laughed. "You really, truly just don't change do you?"

"Not one bit," he replied, shifting her farther onto the couch.

"House—not here. This is Chase and Cameron's couch. Seriously."

"This couch has definitely seen it all," he pointed out.

Two hours later, she left, ostensibly to get dinner and her things from the Wilsons'. With as much dignity as she could muster, she knocked before walking into the kitchen.

In one of the cutest scenes she'd ever seen, Wilson was gluing macaroni shapes to construction paper with Becca. He stopped and looked up at her sheepishly. "Hey," he smiled. "You wanna join?"

She was about to say no, but then she smiled. "Sure," she said, pulling a piece of purple paper from the stack and grabbing a handful of macaroni pieces.

"Aunt Lisa! Lookit mine," Rebecca crowed.

"It's very pretty, Becca. Could you pass the glue please?"

"So how was lunch with House?" Wilson asked curiously, sprinkling glitter over some glue.

"It was good," she said. "We went to Pennington's."

"He likes their pastrami."

"They do a good matzoh ball soup as well," Lisa said, trying to figure out how to approach the next bit.

"And it … wasn't awkward?"

"No. His one ground rule was that we just didn't discuss Florida."

"And you went with that."

"It made for a very pleasant lunch."

"You two … didn't talk about the main problems, then?"

"We talked eventually. Just … not at lunch," Lisa concentrated on applying glue to a shell.

James scrutinized her. "Becca, sweetheart, I think we're out of the good glitter. Can you go get it from the crafts closet? Please." As soon as Becca had bounced away, he turned to her and said, "Oh, my god, you slept with him."

"We were together for 25 years," she pointed out coolly.

"You two talked, though? Is he going to Florida? Are you coming here? Please tell me you're not stupid enough to have slept together before deciding this. Sex confuses things." He sounded scandalized in a jaded sort of way, as if he were dealing with slow-minded teenagers who were still figuring out what went where.

"James, I'm sixty-five, not sixteen!" she said. "Yes, we talked. And … we'll be living here most of the year. I'm going to need your help cleaning out his place—nobody's been living there for a month, it must be a mess. But he proposed winters in Florida, and honestly, with his leg and everything it's going to be for the best. And I'd rather be with him here than there without him. Doesn't that sound so pathetic? But I'm going to push back my plane ticket and fly out Friday, once Chase and Cameron are back, and then pack and get everything in Florida squared away, and then I'll be back," she tried to smile, but it came out more of a grimace. "I know that it's fast but we don't exactly have much time on our side."

"Are you happy? You don't look happy."

"No, I … I am. It was just so … simple and non-complex, getting to the 'agreement.' I'm not used to that from House." She grinned. "I kind of like it." She stood. "I'm going to get my suitcase, and then I'm going to go grab some dinner. You up for lunch sometime tomorrow?"

"Sure," James looked actually shocked that his plan had somehow worked, but he managed to get the words out.

"Great," Lisa smiled. "Thanks, James."