A/N: Hey all. I greatly apologize for how long it has been since I've updated. School and living in a new city take up a lot of my free time. This chapter was mostly written already, so I decided to finish and post it tonight as I've gotten a few reviews lately that have reminded me that people are still enjoying this. I know this chapter is a little devoid of action, but I promise I've already got the next one in the works and I'm going to try to have about one a week up from here forward.

Anyways, since I know its been a while you might want to flip back and read the last few paragraphs of chapter 38, as this one picks up directly where that left off. Thank you to those who have been here since the beginning, and those who just picked it up, and all in between. Your feedback is what keeps me inspired with my busy life. So with that, Read, Review, Enjoy!

-ASG

"You know, I can feel you staring at me… Still."

Rose's voice hisses from beneath the blanket in which she'd cocooned herself on the couch, startling both House and Wilson into guiltily looking down at their beers as she ever so slowly sits up, stretching and groaning as she extracts herself from the pulls of sleep.

After blinking and rubbing at her eyes for a few moments, she looks to the two men across the room from her, both of whom look similarly baffled to how they did several hours before.

"What on earth is so peculiar to you two that you didn't take your eyes off me the entire time I napped?" She demands, scrunching up her nose at them quizzically and yawning again, waiting for an answer.

Wilson, looking as though he'd hoped House would speak up, begins to answer. "He didn't shoot you. You just… took his gun."

Looking back and forth between the two men's questioning affects, Rose sighs. "He only had one bullet!" She exclaims, gesturing, "The second I pushed him to what should have been the breaking point he crumpled because he had no more defense."

"He only had one," House begins, clearly still puzzling the situation in his own head, "so it must have been for himself."

Rose nods in affirmation. "For himself, but he accidentally wasted it."

"That wasn't an accident!" House exclaims, "He was going to kill you!"

Rose laughs, sobering when she see's House's face. "He wasn't going to kill me," she answers softly, "He was just threatening. You startled him and he flinched. The bullet didn't hit the wall anywhere near me. He legitimately fired on accident."

"But you were trying to provoke him to shoot you?" Wilson questions, not entirely sure of all the events that occurred.

Rose folds her legs underneath her and sits facing the men, ready for a long explanation. "Look, I've dealt with this situation before. Usually, if an armed captor actually wants to hurt people, he'll shoot someone within the first half hour just to establish dominance. Since this guy didn't, I figured he was pretty reluctant to actually shoot anyone. Why? He's a coward or he only intends to kill himself. Either way, I figured I would provoke him, he wouldn't be able to actually shoot me, and he'd be forced to drop the charade. Instead Dr. Heroic over here made the guy jump."

Wilson smirks and is immediately fixed with a silencing glare from House.

House ponders more, trying to follow Rose's train of thought. "The bullet did hit the wall nowhere near in line with you," House agrees, still thinking, "But once he shot at me how did you know it was his only bullet? His fidgeting could easily have been just a product of the shock of having killed someone."

She nods. "I didn't, really," she admits, half shrugging and continuing. "The way I looked at it, there was still a chance he wouldn't hurt me, one way or another, and I took it. The closer I got the clearer it was he didn't have a way out. He just seemed to be more afraid and more afraid when he should have been angrier and angrier." She glances to the men before continuing. "I knew I was right a second after it was too late to turn back and give him what he wanted."

Wilson squints. "So you'd have just let him kill you?"

"I suppose, yeah. I wasn't really thinking about it like that though." Rose pauses, surveying the two men. Wilson's curious face depicts him as a boy watching an action movie and House's contemplative state has turned icy. "I was about to pass out again from the Adenosine. The guy had his diagnosis and a death sentence, and he certainly wasn't going to make it to radiology. At that point, he had nothing more to lose and I wasn't going to be able to intervene much longer, so I acted on the best option- he no longer could harm anyone, and it was time to end his game."

"And what if he had shot you? Straight in the gut."

Rose looks questioningly at House's hardened gaze. Rising to get herself a beer and a snack, she throws over her shoulder, "I've been shot there before. It's not pleasant. Bleeds a lot. I knew what to expect."

Wilson, still looking almost giddy upon Rose's return, asks, "How many times have you been shot?"

"What is this?" House demands, suddenly animated and raising his voice, "A Sixty Minutes interview?"

"Aw come on House, he's just curious," Rose lilts, smirking as she adds, "not everyone gets to see all those traversing scars on full display. Unless you'd prefer I just show him?"

Rose, not even receiving a disdainful look from House, turns to Wilson, dropping the faux sexy drawl. "Two times seriously, once in the hip and once in the lower rib. Several grazes here and there too, but I never kept count. And three or four times hit with a vest on, so just bruises in those spots."

Wilson nods, apparently deciding to not risk voicing any other curiosities. Instead, he squints at Rose, slightly tilting his head toward House- silently asking after his weird behavior. Rose blinks slowly in reply, signalling her lack of knowledge on the subject. She and Wilson beyond used to communicating silently, Rose can't help but smirk at the thought of how much information could be passed with just a few micro expressions.

After a few moments of silence, Rose grabs her phone off the coffee table. "I'm ordering pizza. Mushrooms and onions good for you?" She asks, glancing to House, knowing those are his least favorite toppings.

"Whatever." He replies curtly, his gaze fixed on the wall just past the muted television.

Shrugging, Rose calls and orders, then tosses her phone onto the couch and looks at House.

"Okay." She says, challenging, "Who put a bug up your ass?"

"Yes. Surely if I'm being silent I'm brooding over some existential issue. God forbid I just don't speak." He quips back in a low growl.

"Oh please, you're doing a lot more over there than just not speaking. Seriously, what's the issue? Why is everything a discussion these days. We can't just have fun with something?" Rose demands, rolling her eyes in exasperation.

"Maybe if you just let things be every once in awhile we wouldn't have to have so many damn discussions!"

"You're the one who has a problem with this not-discussion about the shooter today! So now it's a discussion."

Both Rose and House turn sharply to Wilson when he loudly clears his throat.

"Do I need to get going or something?" He asks, clearly annoyed.

Rose sighs, closing her eyes and regaining composure before answering. "No James. I apologize."

"No Jaaames." House mocks. "Its okay Jaaaamessss. I apologize, Jaaaammmmesss."

"Seriously!? How old are you?" Rose demands, shouting now. "What the fuck is your problem all of a sudden? And don't say it's the pizza toppings!"

House fixes her with a cold stare. Roaring, "You're the damn problem! Risking your life and acting like the fucking hero of the story. Why don't you ever do the sensible thing and not intervene in everything?"

Rose grits her teeth as Wilson rises, paying the unfortunately timed pizza delivery boy and snatching his coat as he exits the apartment simultaneously.

"I'm sorry," she growls, "Next time someone wants to shoot you, I won't try to stop it. Didn't know saving your life was so selfish."

Without another word, Rose storms to the back of the apartment and slams the bedroom door shut behind her, flopping onto the bed with an infuriated snarl and staring up at the ceiling, lying motionless for quite some time.

When she finally feels most of the tension dissolve within her, Rose fetches her laptop from across the room and pulls up the email Cuddy had sent a few hours before, requesting she fill out several incident report forms. If only for distraction, Rose begins typing out her version of events for the paperwork, her fingers forcefully clicking along the keyboard.

When House makes his way into their bedroom later, half expecting a verbal assault the second he opened the still trembling door, he's surprised to find Rose asleep, slouched against the headboard with her now dead laptop sliding off her lap.

He picks up the computer and shuts it, setting it on the nightstand and shrugging out of his clothes. He glances to his pajamas on the other side of the room, then sets his cane against the nightstand resignedly and climbs into bed in his boxers.

Rose, half awakened by House's entrance and knowing she's hogged all the blankets, tosses his half over her shoulder without rolling towards House, and she feels him take them and settle down in the bed.

After a few intense moments of silence, Rose slips her hand under the covers and reaches over, brushing her fingers over his. "I had the situation under control and you knew it. You can read a room as well as anyone."

"I didn't want him to shoot you," House answers, sounding almost bored.

"No," Rose challenges, taking a dangerous road. "You preffered he shoot you."

"Between the two of us-" House begins, and is immediately cut off.

"No!" She exclaims, flopping around to face him. "Don't you dare turn this into an altruistic act. I won't debate whose life is more valuable with you. You saw the opportunity to put yourself in harm's way and you took it."

He shakes his head in slow disdain. "That's not what I was doing, Rose, I-"

"We've had this conversation so many times, Greg. You always agree that things have to change and anytime I try to follow up or suggest a solution you blow me off. And here we are again, and still nothing's changed."

"We are not 'here again'," he answers, squinting at her, "I'm not suicidal, Rose."

"You're not self preserving either." She replies, staring at her lap.

"It's not like you are, putting yourself in front of potentially loaded guns."

"I was saving lives. And I'm not the one who got shot."

"What!" House demands, "You want me to just walk into a therapist's office tomorrow? Tell some yuppy with a masters degree that I have daddy issues and a inferiority complex because I'm handicapped?" His lip curls at the thought, somehow managing to mock everyone who had ever sought out mental treatment, ever.

Rose squints at House- his dubious tone clashing in her ear with the painfully obvious statement he's just made. "Most people who've been involved in a hostage situation do, yeah."

House shuts off the lamp without another word. Soon after, Rose can hear the rattling of a pill bottle but, done with having the same arguments, chooses to leave it alone, not bothering to knowingly cause more strife between them.

HWHWHWHWHWHWHWH

"What the hell was that last night?" Wilson asks, plopping down in the eames chair adjacent to Rose's desk.

"You tell me. He just started being an ass out of the blue. I'd dealt with enough crap yesterday and I didn't want to listen to it."

At that, she glances at her watch, wondering precisely how late he'll be today.

"Has everything been okay between you two?" Wilson asks, leaning his elbows on his knees.

Rose nods. "Yeah. Things have been fine. He's been slightly more possessive since you leaving after Amber and since Patrick popped up again. But possessive for House still isn't even close to what the average boyfriend is like on a normal basis."

"Well House is anything but average, Rose. Slightly more possessive for him holds astronomically more motive than the average boyfriends overt possessiveness."

Rose sighs, scrunching her face in an attempt to refresh her mind and going back to whatever busy work she'd been distracting herself with.

"Are you sure things are okay between you?" Wilson asks again, pausing to give a Rose a look when she started to defend her previous statements. "You seem to be more and more annoyed with him these days."

"I'm not annoyed," Rose replies, swiveling to face him. Wilson's skepticism anything but subtle, she continues, "I'm concerned. But I'm always concerned, James. Nothing has changed. A few weeks go by and it's all great. Then he's in more pain. Or he's taking more pills. Or he's withdrawn, angry, depressed."

"You argue over a case. He takes work drama home. You want to break routine and he turns into the introvert of the year. Yeah, I got it," Wilson answers. "Nothing's changed, and that's the problem, right?"

Rose sighs just as House walks in the office, going straight for coffee without saying anything to either doctor and picking one of the case files Rose had left on the table.

"Exactly." She answers, picking up the phone to page the team for the first differential of the day.

Wilson nods knowingly, striding out the door- the start to their day the same as it always had been, to go along with everything else: a pattern holding true.