Disclaimer: I do not own House M.D. or any of the characters from the series.
Rating: This chapter may lean more toward an M rating for some people. It depends on your personal conviction. I still think it's T.
A/N: I apologize for taking so long to update. I had to go to Charlotte, NC for the weekend and didn't get back 'til a few hours ago. So the majority of this chapter was written in a hotel room at three o'clock in the morning.
Disclaimer 2: No offense intended toward anyone with a Southern / Western drawl.
Chapter 13: Freedom?
It was the longest drive he'd ever taken. The most rigid stairs he'd ever climbed. The hardest he'd rapped on anything with his knuckles since before he was awarded a cane. When all else failed, he couldn't even get the stupid key in the stupid hole in the door, without shaking from worry and pain.
"Cameron?" Hollow reverberations, signifying wasted breath. "Cameron!" Echo, like it doesn't hurt him. Echo, like it doesn't rip at his soul and scream that he's all alone. Just four more slaps to the face:
Stained . . . Helpless . . . Empty . . . Silence.
One for every white-painted wall surrounding his frantic yelling. Emphasized by the lonely overtones. Different walls this time, but walls were the only variable. Pain was forever the constant.
A little, white tablet in the palm of one hand
All her hopes and her dreams in the other
She's crouched in a corner
She's afraid to stand
You were too scared to tell her you love her
"Damn you, Cameron! Damn you!" He opened a door. He slammed it shut. He kept moving down an empty hallway. "This is what you think you deserve? This is what you think is right!" He barged into the bedroom. Just another pillow. Just another sheet. Just another wad of blankets. "Don't swallow them all, Cameron. Leave enough for me!" It was the voice of betrayed speaking now. "You are a murderer - and you're killing me!" Echo, treason is righteous? Echo, if only he knew.
What have you done
What have you said
What made her cry
All alone in her bed
He'd always thought she was the golden girl, but she was no more than another him. Joining the ranks of deception - gashing another human being and imagining he won't feel a thing. She was gashing him; she was destroying him. A poignant payback of his own medication. If only it could drown the pain.
She'll close her eyes
She'll count to ten
And then you can't hurt her
Ever again
A ring. It was piercing. It was shrill. It was unwanted and unwelcome, and only reminded him of yesterday. Another daughter-less father, demanding to know the truth. But truth was clearly intangible. An abstract idea in a sea of assumptions that leads to who-knows-where.
He didn't believe that. He never had.
Limping to the phone, he cursed every step, and hated himself all the more. Dr. Cameron may find it depressing, but House found it fuel for his rage. A rage that would one day implode and destroy his very shell of a core. Possibly soon. Possibly very soon.
The phone was torn from its cradle. "What!" House shouted at a world that was all too brave. Brave enough to disturb his search for the one thing that kept him alive.
Dead silence resounded through the speaker.
"House?"
". . . Wilson?"
"What are you doing in Cameron's apartment?"
"I'm . . . She left her keys – What are you doing calling Cameron's apartment?" He hid his worry with an agitation he hoped was fairly plausible. It was an emotion less dangerous, an emotion less true. An emotion he couldn't fake forever.
"I mean, I know she was with you last night, but I was so sure you'd take her back to – "
"Answer the question!"
"Damn, House. I was just calling to see how she took it . . ."
"Well how do you think she – Took what?" Took it?
"The . . . you know . . . well . . ."
"Wilson, a sleepy, intoxicated Texan could get a sentence out faster than you."
"How she took the news, House. I just called to see if she was okay."
"The news . . . Specificity isn't your strong suit. "
"Stop being an ass and hand the lady the phone."
House tried to open his mouth. Tried to keep the sarcastic comments flowing and filling, and freeing his tortured soul. The way he saw it, as long as he could block the world with his lineup of biting remarks, he was free - free to refuse to care, free to ignore the trivial, free to never be associated with life and love and regret.
But there was no freedom like the freedom found in bondage - the freedom of being able to accept. The freedom of knowing your boundaries and being happy to frolic inside of them. And this - he couldn't accept. He forever refused to frolic.
He wasn't free. He was enslaved to his own bitter tears - tears he would never release no matter how hard they pushed and pulled. Tears whose salty redemption could heal his infected wounds. If only he would let them fall . . .
He was the slave and the master. The whipped and the whipper. The beggar at the gate and the rich man with the keys to the palace. He held himself captive - day in and day out. Half of him stood waiting for deliverance from the dark; the other half - he'd lost long ago.
"House . . ."
If he could find Dr. Cameron, maybe he could find himself. Maybe he could try, at the least. He had to find her. He had to. "What?" The edge was gone from his voice. Only the truth was left. A truth he would never know or understand in the realm he was sentenced to live in.
"Oh." Wilson sighed. "For once I thought you'd actually done something I asked. Please hand the lady the phone?"
"Cameron isn't here . . ." No emotion. No detachment. Just air. Air and sound and a distant longing for something real and touchable.
"You ran her out of her own apartment?"
"I woke up in my bed, and she wasn't there . . ."
"Should she have been?" His tone held a hint of amusement.
"And neither was my Vicodin."
"So, Cameron refused to indulge your fantasies, and your Vicodin walked away. Seems you've had one heck of a morning." Then he paused. Sudden realization smacked him between the eyes. "Oh. Oh . . ."
"'Oh' doesn't begin to cover it. Strike me dead now and spare me the horrible ending, maybe. But not 'oh'."
"So, Cameron did hear the news, or she didn't hear the news?"
"What NEWS!"
Wilson was dumbstruck. He was so sure House would have known by now. Hadn't he received a phone call? "Channel eight."
Immediately, House understood. "Oh no."
"I can't believe you lost her, House."
"I didn't lose her. She ran away."
"And why do you think that is?"
"I don't know. You tell me. You tell me why she won't let me touch her - why she can't stand me all of a sudden. You tell me why she hates my guts for saving her freaking life!"
"Saving her life?" Wilson gasped. Apparently, House hadn't told him the entire story of what really happened that night. "Saving her life from what?"
The hush of the two men breathing became the only sound on the line.
"Leave us here, and take the Corvette," House's voice was gentle and cautious, pleading. "We have no phone and no transportation, so you can't be followed."
"And the girl?" he demanded.
House looked from Cameron to Rachel, then back to Cameron. His breath caught in his chest. "Which girl?"
An evil, torturous grin crept across the gangster's face. "You tell me."
All he had to do was say the words.
"Take her," House pointed a sloppy finger at the sixteen-year-old, clutching his cane and refusing to look his young 'victim' in the eyes. He looked at the ground, at the rain puddle gathering near his feet.
This sin would not be forgiven.
"House?"
"You're right." He was suddenly far away. "I wasn't saving her life. I was saving mine."
The phone was returned to its resting place and the remote control was located. He didn't have time for this. He didn't have time to be watching TV when, for once in his life, he was needed - for something other than a medical mystery. Life and death - he'd assumed - had always been black and white. Never a rainbow of color. Never meant to be.
But his convictions were dying. All of them.
Life was a purple haze, and death was a dwindling sun. A sun now setting and casting dull shadows out across a barren land. Once it got beyond the skyline, there was no hope of getting it back. The skyline was any man's limit.
Take a deep breath
Release it slow
Kiss the sky
One last time
Right before you go
