54 – "Cause I remember all the times I tried so hard and you laughed in my face 'cause you held the cards. I don't care anymore." – "I Don't Care Anymore" – Phil Collins

How could he have been so stupid? Of all the things he could have done and said why had he done that? She would never forgive him. Never.

And Lucas couldn't blame her either. There were no excuses except blind drunkenness and complete desperation on his part. And those were pathetic reasons, not excuses.

He hadn't slept at all after last night's horrible altercation with Lisa. Lucas had come home, thrown himself on his bed and wept until nausea drove him to the bathroom. He'd spent the rest of the night alternating between retching and crying until the icy fingers of a winter's dawn had stabbed their silver knives through the blinds of his windows.

He couldn't go back to her and apologize. He couldn't go back to her at all. There would be no second chances, no heartfelt reconciliations. There would be for him only loneliness and isolation and recriminations for what he had done and what he had tried to do.

He sat on his couch, looking at a picture of Lisa, Rachel and himself taken by a friend at Thanksgiving. The three of them were smiling, looking happy, looking like a family.

His own smile in the picture was a little broader perhaps with the knowledge that even as the photo was being snapped, Gregory House was somewhere on the road engaged in a six-hour round trip drive to nowhere. House had thought that he could easily intrude on the little family scene that Lucas had worked so hard to achieve. How wrong he had been.

Knowing that House would show up to a cold, dark structure with no family or friends to celebrate the holiday and then would have to face the drive all the way back to Princeton alone with nothing for company except the amplified throbbing of his crippled right leg gave Lucas an unholy feeling of satisfaction. And not a small amount of pride at personally being the architect of the entire plan.

Just a little more than a month ago, he had been in the catbird seat and it had been House on the outside looking in. Now he was the one who had been ostracized and it was House who knew the complete delight of holding Lisa Cuddy in his arms, kissing her, making love to her.

With a sudden violence, Lucas raised the photograph high above his head and hurled it against the brick wall of his apartment. The sound of shattered glass and splintered wood carried across the room to the man still seated on the couch. The noise broke through his silent reverie and made him regret this latest of his reckless actions.

Lucas hastened over to where the picture and broken frame lay. He picked up the photo by a corner, tenderly brushing the glass from its surface. After lovingly clasping it to his chest, he returned to the sofa and the easy reach of the beer bottle on the nearby coffee table.

He began to sniffle as the tears slid down his face once more. His reflection in the photo's slick surface gave him a hazy impression of himself, swollen and bruised, with dark circles under his eyes and his nose crooked from last night's fall. He grabbed the bottle from the coffee table and leaned his head back, touching the open neck to his lips. The beer's slightly acidic taste seemed to revive him, to focus his thoughts and his anger.

Lisa was not to blame, had never been to blame. It had been House all along who had manipulated her, had pulled her into his web of lies and deceit for his own amusement. She was simply a pawn in yet another long line of distractions he'd created to occupy his brilliant mind and to avoid focusing on the pain in his leg and the futility of his miserable life.

As soon as he was done with her, after he'd used her for his own licentious purposes, House would toss Lisa aside, like any other game that no longer amused him.

And little Rachel! Lucas swallowed the lump in his throat. House never cared for the child, had only ever seen her as an impediment to his having a sexual relationship with Lisa. God only knew what would happen to Rachel when House casually tossed both Lisa and her daughter aside.

He had to do something but what, he had no idea. Lisa wouldn't listen to reason, not now, not ever when it concerned House. She was too sensitive and tenderhearted, that was her problem. She allowed her emotions to easily sway her. It was her own sympathy that allowed her to be tricked into going to bed with House.

Lucas took another, longer pull on the bottle. He kept reliving last night over in his mind. As soon as he arrived at Lisa's house and found that she had not yet come home, he immediately set to eavesdropping on the condo.

His hands clenched and he ground his teeth as every word House and Lisa had spoken to one another came back to him in almost perfect, agonizing accuracy. His brain created the visuals to accompany the soundtrack as he played back every word, every sigh that passed between the couple as if he were watching a movie.

And finally, the sound of silence as House moved Lisa into his bedroom, undressed her and began to make love to her.

The memory was killing him and yet he persisted. Remembering the grunting, the gasping, the moaning, Lisa's whimpering cry, like nothing he had ever heard before from her. Again and again, her rapid breathing and then her voice raised into a euphoric shout made him double over in nausea and anguish, as if his own body was being pummeled by a huge invisible fist.

And then finally, Lisa's sultry voice, raspy from the cries of her own orgasms, speaking to House, encouraging him with the words, "Come now my love, my only love." Those words had driven a stake through his very heart. House's own triumphant shout of climax minutes later was merely the final nail in his coffin.

He continued to listen as they talked and came together in pleasure once again. Lucas wanted to stop, needed to stop but something inside drove him onward, obsessively monitoring the voices and sounds until the bitter end.

It was as if House, the puppet master, was able to reach inside him and control him, forcing him to hear the seduction of his girlfriend for some insane added pleasure of his own.

Of course House had known. Everything the night before had been an act designed to conquer Lisa, get her to sleep with him there in the condo so that Lucas could hear them. The bastard was too smart to have put on that whole performance and NOT know that the place had been bugged.

That was particularly evident after Lisa left. Just when Wilson and House began talking, Lucas' bug in the main room had gone suspiciously silent.

Damn House. Damn his miserable hide to the darkest reaches of hell.

Lucas realized sullenly that he'd finished the latest bottle of beer. That was okay. He had a lot more where that came from.

As he got up, he continued ruminating on his predicament and his adversary. House ALWAYS caused other people pain while he seemed to walk away scot free.

Only once did fate appear to provide the proper penalty to his selfishness. But right now it seemed to Lucas that House's crippled gait was not enough, not nearly enough punishment for the man.

House needed to be taught a lesson. He needed to be severely and irrevocably put down. And it needed to be done soon before anyone else, especially Lisa or Rachel, got hurt.

As Lucas sat down with what promised to be yet another in an unending line of six packs, the beginnings of a plan took form in his mind. He popped the lid and felt refreshed as only the drunken can while adding more fuel to the fire.

He finally got it. He understood. Lucas grasped the essential concept. It was he, Lucas Douglas, that had been injured the most by House's recent game playing. So it was he who was just the right man to pay out life's ultimate retribution on Gregory House.