THE FATHER WHO MUST BE KILLED

House hesitated before knocking on the door. The last time he had seen his mother had been his father's funeral, and it hadn't gone particularly well. That was also the last time he'd spoken to her. He turned, prepared to return to his hotel and the mini-bar until Cuddy pushed passed him and rung the bell with an exasperated sigh. "Really, you're a grown man."

"You don't know…" House never got to finish that thought. The door had swung open and his sweet faced mother was staring up at him in near tears. "Gregory!" She put out her arms and threw them around her son.

House could see Cuddy smiling as he looked over his mother's head. He grimaced at her as she mouthed the words 'this was your idea'.

"Oh, where are my manors? Come in, come in." Blythe House smiled politely at Cuddy. She knew Lisa Cuddy as her son's boss, the one he was constantly complaining about. She had met her a couple times and found the younger woman quite lovely. She had gone so far as to ask her son if there was anything going on between them. He scoffed.

"It's lovely to see you again Mrs. House." Cuddy had brought a bottle of wine and she handed it to Blythe.

"You to my dear. What have you been up to? Still trying to keep my son in line?" Blythe looked back at House proudly but he missed it. He usually did.

"Trying." Cuddy smiled back at House. She saw him disengaging and took his hand. "He probably hasn't told you, but we are living together." Cuddy wasn't afraid of parents. She wasn't worried about Blythe getting 'the wrong idea' about her or disapproving of living together before marriage and all that. She could feel House's large hand closing tightly around her in disapproval but she stood her ground, knowing he would have dragged his feet or maybe not told his mother at all.

"Oh!" Blythe's hands went up to her face. "Oh," she said again. She looked at House accusingly.

"I was going to tell you," he said meekly. He hated how she made him feel like a child. That's why he avoided her. Not because he hated her. It was because he lost all his confidence around her. She made him feel small. She made him feel insignificant, which was ironic, since he was the most significant person in her life.

"No you weren't," Blythe frowned. She knew her son well enough to know he didn't share personal information with her. He never had, even as a boy.

Oh the countless days he'd come home from school with a scowl on his face. She'd always make him something to eat and would sit across from him at the table, trying desperately to get him to tell her what was wrong. "Noffing," he'd say with his mouth full of peanut butter and jelly and the Wonder Bread he liked so much. She'd keep trying until he was done with his sandwich at which point he would dart out of the room as fast as he could claiming he had lots of homework to do.

House shrugged. His way of telling her was to bring Cuddy here. He figured the rest would work itself out, and look, it did. "Are you going to offer us something to eat?" Blythe was an excellent cook. It was his favorite thing about coming to see her.

"Oh, yes," Blythe dithered about a bit. House had called to tell her they were coming, but she hadn't believed him. At first she hadn't even thought it was him, then she imagined Wilson holding a gun to his head and forcing him to call. Now, seeing Cuddy, she realized why he'd called. "I am so proud of you honey." She put a hand on his cheek and looked deep into his eyes before turning and hurrying away.

"I should go help," Cuddy said tentatively, not moving toward the kitchen.

"You'll just be in her way." House took her by the hand and led her to the couch. "I'd show you my childhood bedroom but I don't have one." He said it simply enough, but there was a lot of pain in his words.

The pronouncement led to an awkward silence. Cuddy studied the photos on the wall. "Is this your uncle?" She pointed to a tall, uniformed young man who was the spitting image of House.

House studied the photo. He'd never seen it before. His mother had probably been hiding it from John House for years. And he hadn't seen the man in the photo, the man he called Uncle Paul, in over thirty years. "He's my father."

"It doesn't look anything like him." Cuddy had met House's father before he died. His father was a stocker, rougher looking man. This guy had House's grace and length. She leaned in closer, trying to see some sign of the man she had met, thinking perhaps she had remembered him wrong.

"My mother had an affair." House was numb to it. There was no bitterness or anger in his voice. He hadn't liked John House so there was no point in getting worked up because his mother had the sense to cheat on him. Good for her, House thought, though deeper in his thoughts he wondered why she didn't just leave John and spare her son a lifetime of belittlement and abuse.

"…" Cuddy was speechless. Normally she would respond to such news by asking if the person revealing it was okay or if they wanted to talk about it but House was House, and he seemed oddly fine.

"I used to call him Uncle Paul. He would come over, mostly when John was away. I was eight when I finally figured it out."

"You knew?" Cuddy was horrified. She scratched the surface of wondering how and when she would tell Rachel the truth about her own family tree. Eight seemed entirely too young.

"Of course." House was mildly insulted that she didn't think him every bit as capable as a child at reading people as he was now. "They weren't terribly discreet."

"Did your father know?" She wasn't yet comfortable with calling him John.

House hadn't really given it much thought, so he thought about it for a moment, gazing at a photo of John and Blythe House, standing side by side, barely touching and staring sternly into the camera. "He must have."

"About the affair, but, but not about you, right?" Cuddy couldn't imagine the kind of animosity that knowledge could breed.

"He knew." House had to believe that it was the very reason John House was such a jerk to him his whole life. He was taking out his anger at his wife on the helpless little token of his wife's infidelity. "And he took it out on me." House didn't look at Cuddy, but he felt her arm slip around his waist and her head rest against his shoulder. He also felt his arm, with no direction from him, slipping around her and holding her close.

"I'm so sorry."

"Why? You didn't do it. My mother did." It was the first time he had put any of the blame on his mother. During his childhood he had needed her to be the good one. His father demanded too much of him and his father's form of discipline sometimes bordered on military torture. He never hit his son, never raised a hand to him, but the things he would do made young Greg cry just the same.

His mother, therefore, became his sanctuary. She was the only person he could turn to for affection. She tried to make up for the discipline by being overly affectionate, but smothering her son with love and attention, but he knew her heart wasn't in it. He could tell by the difference in her face when she looked at him and when she looked at Uncle Paul.

Her face would light up when she looked at Paul Hart, the tall, dark, rugged Marine Captain who doubled as John's boss. Even when she mentioned his name little Greg saw the love in his mothers eyes. He didn't see that, at least not to the same unbridled extent when she looked at him.

He didn't doubt that she loved him. He never doubted that. She had to, he was her son and that was how she was raised. Plus there was a little piece of her precious Paul in him. That had to make her feel some affection toward the boy. But it wasn't as strong as she pretended it was. House could tell. He felt it when she tried too hard. She wasn't the only one who could spot a lie.

"I'm fine," he said apologetically. He didn't mean to snap at Cuddy. None of this had anything to do with her. He pointing out another picture. "This is the man who raised me. For all intents and purposes, he is my father. His blood may not be running through my veins, but the lessons he taught me have been burned into my brain. He did a crappy job but there is nothing I can do to change it."

"But don't you wonder…"

"It's pointless to wonder. Nothing can change the past." House turned and headed for the kitchen.

His mother was slaving over the stove. She was making jambalaya. Greg always loved her jambalaya. She'd learned it when they spent that year in Parris Island. "Can I help?"

Blythe didn't really want her son to help. She had a flow when she was cooking and a pair of helping hands would only disrupt that flow, but it was so rare that her son offered to help her with anything that she quickly said yes and set him to harmlessly setting the table.

"She's a lovely young woman," Blythe said casually.

"She's not that young." House found it amusing to hear Cuddy referred to as a young woman, especially since she was his boss.

"How long have you been together?" Blythe finished chopping the sausage and tossed it into the pan.

"You mean biblically?" House was setting the table with care. His mother liked things just so.

"Don't say such things!" his mother said scoldingly and House smirked with amusement.

"We just moved in together a couple of weeks ago," House mumbled. "It's not a big deal."

"Not a big deal?" Blythe stopped stirring the rice long enough to look at her son. "You love her don't you?" House nodded silently. "Then it is a huge deal!"

"Whatever." House hated that expression. He hated the disaffected teens who used the expression and he hated himself now for using it, but, like all those teens he loathed, it was the best answer he could give his mother, something between dismissive and submissive.

"And don't you 'whatever' me either." Blythe went back to cooking. That was about as stern as she ever got with her son, or with anyone. She seemed formidable, but deep down she hated confrontation. It was probably the reason she never talked to her husband about his treatment of her son.

"Did your husband know?" House asked, thinking about that picture in the living room.

"Know what?" Blythe genuinely had no idea what he was talking about.

"Nothing." House once again sounded like a disaffected youth. He didn't really want to have this conversation with her, ever. There was not point to it. It's just that seeing that picture, well both pictures really, his two father's standing side by side forever in their little silver frames, it just got him wondering if Blythe still saw Paul, if she knew where he was, what he had done with his life.

It didn't matter. Paul Hart was just an old family friend to House, nothing more. He was a kindly uncle who came and brought Greg books and trinkets from overseas, something House's father rarely did. He was the guy who taught the boy House once was how to play ball. In many ways, he was a father to him, at least, that's how House remembered it, and that was enough. He didn't want to shatter the illusion of his distorted memories by discovering the drunken arse his biological father really was. "I'm gonna go check on Cuddy."

"Cuddy?" Blythe was taken aback.

"Yeah, Cuddy." Had his mother already forgotten the woman he came with? Cuddy was the only reason House even came to visit his mother.

"You live with her and you call her by her last name?" That didn't sound right.

"And she calls me House. It's our thing. Leave it alone." He could see the spark of interference being ignited in her eyes.

"Sometimes I just don't know about you." Blythe shook her head and continued to mumble under her breath about her strange son and his bizarre habits as House left to find Cuddy.

He didn't have to go far. Cuddy was sitting on the couch flipping through an old scrap book. She closed it when she saw him coming. "Did you two have a nice talk?" She assumed Blythe had given him the third degree about them living together.

"Not if you mean did we talk about my fathers." House sat beside her and took the book.

Cuddy watched him open the scrap book. "She's keeping tabs on you." She smiled. "Every article about you, every paper you've written."

House looked once again at the cover. It said My Son, The Doctor in big blue letters. House wasn't surprised. He knew his mother was proud of him for being a doctor. It was the one thing she and John always complimented him on. It was about the only thing they complimented him on.

He flipped through the book silently, Cuddy leaning against him, looking over his shoulder and pointing out some of his finer moments. For just a moment he wondered if Paul Hart knew about him. Had he known, when they were playing catch; that he was playing with his son? Is that why he came around so often, even when Blythe was too busy to 'entertain' him?

He shook the thought off, and joined Cuddy in reminiscing about their first medical conference together, when House had to give a speech on diagnostics. This was before she had hired him and he was pleased to hear that she had gone just so she could hear him speak. She was his family now. He didn't need a father anymore, but he was going to make damned sure that, if she let him, he was going to be a better father to Rachel than either of his fathers ever were to him.