WARNINGS: major character death; season six spoilers; addiction; sex; violence
NOTES: Posting this chapter a day early since I'll be traveling all day tomorrow and won't have access until late.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The apartment is empty. Chase feels it as soon as he wakes up, before he's even opened his eyes. He's not entirely aware of what's awakened him this time; he's filled with anxiety as always, but the images have not persisted for once, leaving him in a void of faceless fear. It's been a week since his test results, since he's stopped taking Valium entirely. Withdrawal this time has been an entirely different experience. Instead of craving the drug directly, he feels its absence in the increased panic, the way the edges of his dreams seem to blur into his waking consciousness so that he's living in a nightmare world, never entirely sure of what's real.
He's in the bedroom—in Cameron's bed—with the door closed as has become their recent sleeping arrangement, but it's much later than he's accustomed to waking up. Sitting up, he tries to shake off the hold of the unremembered dream, but the apartment is too quiet, and the tendrils of fear linger at the back of his neck. Cameron has given him nothing but space over the past week, often staying as far away from him as possible in the apartment, and leaving him to his own devices unless he absolutely needs help. Now he senses immediately that she's farther away than the other side of the door, absent from the apartment entirely.
Chase sits up quickly, forced to pause for a second when the room swims around him and his head feels like it might not be attached to anything. The dizziness is an effect of withdrawal, he knows, reminds himself constantly, and yet it only adds tot he panic, to the sense that the entire world is reeling out of control, too fast for him to follow. Finding his balance at last, Chase retrieves the crutches from where they lean against the wall next to the bed, and hauls himself up. His head is pounding, but in comparison to the past few weeks, the pain is hardly noticeable. The living room is empty, as he's expected, and there's a note stuck to the refrigerator door: gone to work. No further explanation, no time at which to expect her home.
Swallowing a fresh wave of panic, Chase simply stares at it for a moment before pulling the paper down and crumpling it in his palm. Instantly the panic transforms into anger, and he throws the wadded-up note at the wall, watching it bounce off and roll a few feet on the tile floor. It isn't like Cameron to leave him alone without giving him plenty of warning first, and a lengthy apology besides. It's only been a little over a month since he's come to stay with her, but he realizes now that he's grown used to the routine, used to having her around despite all of his protests. She's been noticeably distant since his test results, since he allowed himself to be lost in sex, to show her too much. Something between them broke that day, he knows, some last semblance of their old relationship, or perhaps the fragile beginning of a new one. It's for the best, he keeps trying to remind himself, the only safe way. And yet now he misses her, more intensely somehow than when she was seven hundred miles away.
Suddenly Chase is certain that she's finally realized the full horror of what his life has become, has spent the past week in preparation for another departure. The note is a lie, he's sure, the knowledge burning itself through his mind like a red-hot poker, silencing the tiny voice of reason that tries to tell him this is all because of the Valium withdrawal. She's taken off again, isn't coming back, because he's let her grow too close to the evil that's taken up residence in his soul.
Adrenaline forcing him into blind motion, Chase makes his way around the kitchen, throwing open the refrigerator and then the cabinets, sweeping things off shelves with a clatter of destruction. His search is half in vain, for alcohol he already knows he won't find, and half in pursuit of some kind of proof, knowledge that she has to come back yet. From the kitchen he moves to the bedroom, knocking hangers out of the closet and yanking drawers from the dresser so that their contents spill onto the floor. Finally, when there is nothing left to do but stand and stare at the chaos and destruction he's created, his eye is drawn to a single item: Cameron's wedding ring, glinting in the sun streaming in through the window.
Unable to look at it, to be in this place any longer, Chase moves as quickly as he can out of the apartment, just barely remembering to grab his wallet and keys off the nightstand on his way. Cameron's new apartment is in the center of town, and it takes him no time at all to find his way into a liquor store, to hail a cab and blurt the first directions that come into his mind.
House is buried in the graveyard nearest the hospital. It's oddly fitting, though Chase is fairly certain his former boss would have wanted to be cremated. But House, stubborn to the end, never wrote a will, successfully alienated all living family members, and so ended up here. Chase has been here enough times in the weeks following House's burial that he can find the headstone instantly and makes his way straight to it with no trouble despite his injured foot. It's been raining on and off all day, and the grass is soggy, but Chase sinks down onto it, letting the crutches land haphazardly to either side. He's exhausted suddenly, and in pain, panic still churning his stomach.
He's bought two bottles of whiskey at the store, and there's no one else around in the graveyard to take notice. Opening the first, Chase swallows as much as he can immediately. It's like the first breath of air after drowning for a very long time, the burn against the back of his throat an immense relief. Everything else falls away, all logic, all the reasons why this is the exact last thing he ought to be doing. The alcohol quiets his thoughts, the voices of his demons, and for a while Chase forgets everything but how to drink it as quickly as possible. There is no future, no consequences, nothing—only his need and this moment.
"You were right," he tells the headstone, when the first bottle is gone. House never believed in the afterlife, he knows. But even now, even after all these years of disillusionment, Chase can't help believing that there might be a way for House to be listening, and he has no one else to talk to besides. "She was never gonna forgive me. Don't know why anyone would. Anyone sane, anyway."
There's no answer, of course, and Chase shifts to lean against the headstone, feeling suddenly and overwhelmingly sad. For a moment he toys with the second bottle, trying to open it, but his hands are shaking too much. Giving up, he watches the bottle roll a little ways on the grass, its contents splashing against its sides like they're trying to escape. He's filled with self-loathing, disgust for what his life has become, or perhaps was always destined to become, and hot tears sting his eyes before he can think to swallow them back down.
"What's it like, dying of liver failure?" he asks, just to speak the words aloud. They feel more real this way. "Guess I'll know soon enough now." Chase looks down at the empty bottle in his lap, and for a second contemplates smashing it against the stone. "Think you were right about the Vicodin too—speeding things along." He laughs bitterly, barely aware when the sound turns into a rough sob. "Should've known. You've always been right about everything."
"You're an idiot," says House, suddenly standing over him. "And those crutches have got nothing on my cane. Careful, people will start to call you a poser."
"You're dead," says Chase. He thinks he ought to be filled with fear, but it doesn't come.
"Of course I am," says House. "You're hallucinating."
"I'm not hallucinating," Chase insists. He's far too aware for that, barely even feeling the effects of the alcohol. In fact, it's the first time in weeks that everything has seemed perfectly clear, almost simple again.
House laughs. "You're talking to the dead. You're hallucinating. You're messed up from the Valium withdrawal, you just drank enough booze to practically kill yourself, and now you're half passed out and talking to a lump of stone because you've managed to systematically alienate every human being willing to help. It's pretty impressive, actually. Your misanthropy might outdo mine yet."
"Did you come here just to mock me?" asks Chase, though actually the sarcasm is strangely comforting. It's the first familiar emotion he's felt in weeks.
"I'm you," says House, spinning the cane in place on the ground so it makes a little hole in the waterlogged ground. "Your mind. You must really hate yourself."
Chase flinches, unable to deny the truth of that statement.
"What are you doing here?" asks House. "Other than throwing yourself a pity party."
"She left," says Chase, swept by deja vu. "Couldn't be in that apartment."
House snorts. "Bullshit. You don't really believe that. She went to work just like her note said. You, on the other hand—You've been looking for every way possible to shut her out of your life, make sure you don't get emotionally invested ever again. Last week you let her get too close. So now you've given in to your drug-induced paranoia, and embraced every destructive impulse in the book to ensure your downward spiral succeeds."
"What am I s'posed to do?" Chase asks, feeling stripped bare again, utterly vulnerable.
"Go home. Face up to what you've done and hope to god that Cameron really is as generous and forgiving a person as you've always thought. Otherwise you'll be out on your ass, and you really will be dying alone." Turning, House tosses his cane in Chase's direction.
Groping to catch it, Chase finds himself grasping only air, and when he looks up again, there's no one in sight. Overhead the skies open up again, drenching him in cold rain. Dragging himself to his feet, Chase retrieves the crutches and makes his way out of the graveyard. With effort he manages to call another cab, but the address of Cameron's apartment seems strangled in his throat, and he mumbles directions to the condo instead. The journey up the stairs is torture, his head and foot pounding, stomach already threatening to rebel.
He makes it all the way into the living room before noticing Cameron sitting on the ruined couch, obviously waiting for him. Somehow she's known he would come here before he knew it himself. She's been crying, he realizes when he comes closer, catching sight of her eyes. He can't blame her, horrified by the memory of what he's done to her apartment.
"You're drunk," says Cameron flatly.
The empty bottle is sticking out of his jacket pocket, Chase realizes, the other one forgotten at the cemetery. He shrugs, not even attempting to deny the accusation.
"Any particular reason you felt the need to trash my apartment before going out and wrecking your liver some more?" She's angry, unquestionably, but there's something else in her voice, something he can't make sense of.
"You disappeared," says Chase; the words sound foolish now, even in his own ears. "I thought—"
"What, you thought I'd decided to move back to Chicago?" Cameron flies to her feet, clearly outraged. "That I just—left everything behind and told you a lie about where I was really going so you wouldn't follow me? My life is here now! My family won't even answer my calls since I decided to move back here! What are you going to do, punish me for the rest of my life for leaving you? I've admitted I made a mistake!"
Chase shrugs, unable to find anything to say in response to that.
"I was at the hospital getting tested to see if I could give you a piece of my liver," says Cameron, sounding near tears again. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want to get your hopes up."
The words hit like a punch to the gut, an intense wave of nausea washing over him. That she would even consider doing such a monumental thing for him seems unfathomable, and he's horror-struck by his own behavior. For a long time he's silent, not knowing what to say, and incapable of speaking besides. "And?" asks Chase at last, unable to verbalize any other thought.
"And it doesn't matter." Cameron swallows visibly. "Turns out I'm pregnant. Can't donate anything to anyone." Not giving him a chance to respond, she picks up her keys and brushes past him, stopping by the front door to speak again. "I'm done trying to help when you'd rather kill yourself. If you get interested in turning things around, you know where to find me. Otherwise—As far as I'm concerned, you're in no position to even meet your child."
Feedback is always appreciated! (And please don't kill me. I promise this fic is still about closure and healing. It's just never easy.)