A/N: Thanks for the well wishes. Dad's last family Christmas on earth went as well as it could, but I have no doubt it was the last one; he has lost a lot of ground just in the last four weeks since I last saw him. I think he knows it himself. My stepmother definitely does. Continued thoughts and prayers are appreciated.

Now, to House and Jensen. Part of the session; I'm too tired to go on too far tonight. But hopefully an update won't be quite as long coming this time.

(H/C)

"Dr. House, good to see you." Jensen gave his usual greeting as House entered the office. House sometimes wondered how the psychiatrist managed to always make the same words sound sincere, never formulaic. House dropped into his usual chair with the ottoman and positioned his leg as Jensen got both of them coffee, then came across to join him, pulling the nearest chair closer. "How is Dr. Cuddy?" Jensen asked first.

"Physically, she's doing fine. The pain is pretty much gone at this point with the fracture fixed with the screw. It's just the awkwardness. She is doing a great job improving with the crutches, though."

Jensen smiled. "I have no doubt she's as efficient there as she is in most areas of her life."

"Yes. Absolutely determined to make the crutches cooperate." He paused, suddenly remembering his own early days.

"You had a harder time with them, didn't you?" Jensen asked. House nodded after a moment. "You do realize, I'm sure, that makes perfect medical sense. It's just hard to apply medical knowledge personally."

"Yeah. I had an awful time with them. Which, as you pointed out, does make sense medically. For one thing, there is a lot of difference between a high and a low leg injury; with an injury at the bottom, you have a lot of your leg function as usual. It's just a matter holding the foot up a little. But in getting up from a chair, in balance, and in maneuvering, your leg can still help you a good bit. With a high injury and especially with a significant muscle injury involved, even partial weightbearing just wasn't working. I had to discover a whole new balance on a whole new leg. But I did get annoyed with it, probably even more annoyed that she is." He rounded back easily to the topic of Cuddy. "She's trying not to see this as a personal failure, but she has a tendency in that direction anyway, as you know. Mistakes shouldn't just happen, at least not to her."

"How are you responding to her worries on that?" Jensen asked.

"Just trying to remind her that everybody screws up. I definitely ought to know on that subject." Again, a flicker of doubt on a different mental subject from the last few days returned, and Jensen saw it.

"What is it?"

House shifted in the chair and dodged. "What would you recommend with Lisa?"

"I think you're both handling the situation as well as you can. No advice, just sympathy."

House shook his head. "I'm paying you for advice," he reminded the other man, but he felt relief at the same time. It helped to have a professional opinion that he was apparently doing okay regarding Cuddy's injury, at least so far.

"Sorry," Jensen shot back, watching for reaction. House didn't even flinch and showed no signs of revisiting the staircase of his childhood mentally. The reprogramming of John House's former tools of abuse was working very well. Jensen felt a moment of pride himself at that strategy, then pushed it aside. "What were you thinking about a minute ago?"

"Which minute?" House asked him, dodging again.

"You know good and well which minute. Have you told Dr. Cuddy yet whatever it was you said on the phone last week that you needed to tell her first?"

House gave in. "Yes." He reached in his pocket and pulled out his grandfather's piano key letter opener, starting to fiddle with it.

"Is that topic related to what you thought of a minute ago?"

"In a way." House studied the opposite wall, gathering himself, and Jensen gave him a minute this time. He was no longer evading the issue, just collecting himself for the jump. "Back at Christmas, I forgave Thornton," he said finally.

Jensen smiled. "Wonderful. Well done, Dr. House. I thought you had, but I was letting you bring that topic up." He reached out and gave House's right arm a squeeze. "Very well done. I'm proud of you."

"But was it well done?" House asked.

Jensen didn't track there. "Why would you doubt that? What happened to make you question it?"

House shifted ground again. For some reason, he needed to discuss his worry about whether he actually had forgiven the old man before raising the topic of Stacy, even though it was Stacy that had made him think he might have failed on the other. "In general terms, how do you know you've forgiven someone? How do you know you've done it right?"

Jensen was getting good and puzzled now, but he followed House's lead. "Well, to give a negative first, it doesn't mean you've forgotten everything. It isn't saying that nothing happened. Forgiveness isn't even needed in the first place if nothing happened. There has to be an offense to prompt it, either something someone did or something they did not do. But we can't just forget the past, Dr. House, only deal with it. Forgiveness is refusing to let bitterness or resentment poison you anymore. It's agreeing that this bad thing happened, but you are moving on now into the future, and you aren't going to live in the past anymore. In a way, it's taking back control of something yourself. You have no control over that past event, but you can control how much you let it rule your life now. Letting it go and moving on, while not forgetting it, is very empowering."

House was looking thoughtful. "So, you would feel empowered? Relieved? What?"

"Yes to both of those. There isn't a strict formula that's the same for everyone, but in my individual case, what I've felt once I've forgiven people for something was lighter. Like taking off a heavy backpack and setting it down, then walking on without it."

House considered that. The thing was, he did feel like that regarding the old man. They were still learning how to have a relationship, and he never would be able to actually forget the past, but he did feel lighter, and he did feel more empowered the last month.

Jensen continued. "But like many things in life, it's not a straight line. Life is much more hills and valleys than smooth, straight road. If something has made you temporarily question whether you forgave someone correctly, that doesn't mean you didn't do it right. In fact, worrying about it is probably an indication that you did do it right."

He totally lost House there. "What kind of screwed-up sense does that make?"

"Excellent sense, actually. If a person in fact has never forgiven someone, if he is still carrying around the backpack full of rocks, he is usually quite aware of that fact. The typical thought pattern when you are still holding onto the past and haven't released it yet is, 'I won't ever forgive this person for that. There's nothing that could make me forgive. That's too big to forgive.' It's not, 'Did I not forgive this person correctly?'"

House's head came up as he absorbed that point. "Dr. House, the very fact of worrying about it indicates that you have made excellent progress in that department. Anything in life has ups and downs. Take your worries back before your marriage, for instance, worries about not becoming abusive to your own children and whether you could be a good father. The fact that you were worrying about that after your own experience is an excellent sign that you would not be abusive to your children. I doubt John House ever sat around worrying if he was abusive."

House shook his head vigorously. "No, I can't picture that one."

"He much more likely never let the word abuse rise into his consciousness. If it ever tried to come to mind, he would shove it back down as quickly as it could. He could never call it that, not even to himself. So for you to have raised the topic to yourself back then is much more advanced thinking about abuse than his own thoughts would have been. People who can't forgive something call that state all sorts of things to themselves, such as justified. But they do not typically think they tried forgiveness and failed. If you are worried that you didn't forgive Thornton correctly because of something that happened recently, you're probably just experiencing life, not failure. It is something that happened recently, right? Concurrent with Dr. Cuddy's injury, though not, you said on the phone, involving it?"

"Yes," House admitted. "That same day, although the timing was a coincidence."

"That same day. You said you forgave Thornton back at Christmas, and that was over a month ago. How have you felt this last month, up until that recent event?"

"Lighter," House admitted.

"And feeling like that was a change, yes? When you made that decision, you felt different than you did prior to deciding to forgive him?"

"Yes."

Jensen touched his arm again. "You're doing fine, Dr. House. I think you have made remarkable progress in your relationship with your true father, and I am very proud of you for forgiving him back at Christmas. You're just experiencing a temporary doubt, which is going to happen in all sorts of things in life as different circumstances are thrown at us. A temporary doubt is not a fact. But what made you question whether you did it right?"

House had relaxed some under the praise, but now he tensed up again. He was relieved to have the psychiatrist's opinion on Thornton, but tomorrow's conversation still loomed, and he had no idea what to expect. He hated feeling off balance emotionally. He looked over at Jensen, then said, "Stacy came to the hospital to see me."