Author's Note: I'm usually better at writing Cameron than this, but the next chapter shall be muy good and then the one after that even better. Thanks to Amanda for correcting me about the Chardonnay…I don't drink, so I don't know.

You said always and forever

Now I believe you baby

You said always and forever

Is such a long and lonely time

Dr. Allison Cameron sat outside the hospital watching the stars. She used to stop and watch the celestial bodies all the time, but now, when life was busy and crammed into all twenty-four hours of a day, the stars were just the background onto which the loneliest moments of her life played out. It was the middle of May, so she found the Gemini twins easily and Leo the lion also jumped from the black canvas.

She remembered small bits of astronomy from the times in high school when she and her best friend used to attend the astronomy club. She liked science, but her friend did not and she always had to drag her to science-y activities. But her friend went, and they usually enjoyed themselves.

Cameron traced the imaginary lines of the constellations with her eyes. People, she decided, definitely did not stop enough to look at the stars. The universe was so infinite and many people thought themselves the center of it. She chuckled. She knew one of those people.

She did not want to "fix" House. She did not need him, either. She needed no one. In this world, her best friend used to say, no one cares about anyone but themselves.

People leave all the time. Maybe House was right when he guessed she married her husband because she needed him. But she needed him for a reason House had not figured. She looked down at her clasped hands. She wanted a baby badly and her husband and been so desperately in love with her that he would do anything he could to make her happy. So, in the spirit of being a good Catholic, she married a dying man to have a baby in wedlock. It ended up that he died before anything could come of the marriage, leaving Cameron a broken woman.

House thought she was naïve. She conceded that he was probably right. Naiveté, she imagined, was an excuse for many things. She loved a man who liked her. She sighed and got up off the bench. He should not be distracting her from the stars.

The stars reminded her of the teacher who used to run the astronomy club she and her friend had attended. She had always had a thing for older men and had had a crush on this teacher. He had a sarcastic sense of humor and was more sexist than House on bad days. But he was a challenge. He was difficult, and Cameron was not. Yes, she had a bit of a hard streak in her, but House was right. She was a stuffed animal.

But she and the teacher had had dinner when she graduated from high school. They enjoyed each other's company immensely and dated for a short time. The repercussions from the relationship made her worry about the feelings she was having for House, but she remembered all the good times she and the teacher had had and knew that it might be worth it.

She contemplated her sins in the darkness. She sat back down and looked at the white smudge of light in the sky—the Andromeda Galaxy. She wondered if there was life on other planets. She wondered whether or not there was another House and another Cameron who were not dancing around one each, but embracing one another. Maybe that House never knew Stacy and never had a leg infarction. Maybe that Cameron never got married. Maybe neither was doctors.

There were too many maybes in the universe and maybe that was why no one stopped and looked at the universe. Too much uncertainty that did not mean much to many people.

Ah, yes, her fatal flaw, she decided as a group of clouds previously unseen, rolled in and covered the stars. With these clouds came rain and lightning. The sky lit up and the droplets fell. Yes, the fatal flaw, an undying sin, was her unique interest in self-sacrifice. She'd give up herself to save an idea, a cause, and a man, to seem noble. But, here, to the hidden stars, she admitted that nobility was overrated and she needed to stop being needy. She knew that lying to herself would get her nowhere. House was right; she needed him.

As the rain fell, it washed away her make-up and have-to-prove-herself pretenses. This was simply Allison Cameron. She was weak, naïve, and scared. She needed House because he liked her. She needed House because she needed someone to give her a sweatshirt and a towel now that she was drenched. She needed him because he was as bitter and angry at the world, as she was hopeless and pathetic.

She stood up from the bench and decided to leave the stars and the rain behind. She needed to talk to House.