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: If you have not read Not As All Seems, this chapter will mean nothing to you. All of the italics below are from Not As All Seems - from that fateful night in the ghetto.

Chapter 14: I Have the Keys

She kissed the sky. "I'm not afraid to die . . . I'm not afraid to die."

Cameron stepped from the parked cab and cautiously peered around. It was just as her dreams had remembered. While closing the bright yellow door, she had flashbacks of closing a white one - the white and black door of a cop car. Then flashbacks of the night when a dangerous man had forbiddingly closed a red one.

The last living glimpse of Rachel came as she threw her hands out to stop the car door from slamming, from sealing her certain death. "Change the world for me!" she called out toward the sobbing huddle of Cameron in House's arms. Then the stone was rolled over the tomb and the car sped out of sight.

House wouldn't let her watch. But the echo in her mind of those struggling sounds was worse than any image could render. She remembered how calm the sixteen-year-old had looked, right before she was dragged away. Right before House had allowed her to be; right before Cameron messed up.

Rachel stepped forward. Cautious, but defiant. She channeled everything this moment would mean - everything it would mean a month from now when she was gone. This neighborhood; this stupid, screwed-up life; this vision of greatness and aspiration to change the world - it all came rushing, mercilessly, and a clarity so profound bound her captive. Or maybe loosed her free.

Only a week had passed. Only one short week. Yet Cameron already knew the meaning of all that had happened - on that night that had chosen her fate. It was so clear in this moment, and her heart cried for final conclusion.

Her mind was spinning, and the flood gates were opening. All her numbing soul could feel was a cry of soothing undulance, a rhetorical meter . . . a poetic prose that she couldn't control.

It's cold.
This feeling.

Cameron pulled her jacket tight around her shoulders and wandered towardthe empty court.

Rachel shivered and looked to the sky. It held life immortal. Single acts of kindness, and choices that made a difference, were written in the stars. There was even a star for her. But she didn't know it. She knew she was cold, and she knew it was raining. She knew it was dark.

She looked toward the sky and forgot what if felt like to believe in the notion of belief. She lowered her head to gaze at a spot of sunshine - where it peeked through the trees in the distance to rest in a lonely pothole. A plastic bottle stashed away where no one but her could find it. A memory in her head that consumed her life and refused to frolic away.

Rachel lowered her head to gaze down the barrel of a gun, then to gaze into the eyes above it. Cameron was still. House un-crumpled himself. All attention rested on Rachel as she fought with visions of the future, and then as she lost.

They were visions of a grieving brunette. A bottle of pills in her pocket and only time left to squander away. The cold zipper of her jacket clutched in her hand and a perfect picture of where they would find her.

Yet here you stand - cold metal in hand.
Dead body on the floor.
In your head - this war,
That never will end.

Because redemption is nowhere.

She saw it all from eyes that were not her own. Someone else's. Someone else, just as hopeless and helpless.

It wasn't from a book. It wasn't from her mind. It wasn't just a catchy rhyme.

The body wasn't there. But it would be soon. And Cameron could already see it.

She held a hand in the air, pointing a finger toward the sky like a gun, and cocked her thumb back. In a loud, dramatic whisper, "Pow! . . . . . . . . Pow!" she imitated the sound. It rang in the ears of all present - quietly, solemnly.

Cameron could still hear the whispered vibrations of Rachel's prophetic 'pows'. She sat against the chain-link fence and wondered why no one was there. Perhaps gray ghosts could be scarier than street-ballin' thugs. She opened the bottle and rattled the contents inside. The pills clapping against one another resembled an array of explosions - tiny gunshots - resounding into the neighborhood. Just as deadly. Not as kinetic, but sleeping and waiting. Waiting for their moment to shine.

Waiting for the trigger to be pulled at the start of a race for time.

Again, Rachel saw the scene. She saw the future. She felt the regret, as if she'd pulled the trigger herself. Her eyes dilated, her fists clenched, her head spun a 360 circle.

It wasn't wrong!
It was right!
Don't back down.
Hold your fight.

She wouldn't back down even if she thought it was an option. This battle was hers to fight. This battle was hers by right. She wasn't given a choice the first time, but this time Cameron would chose.

She stepped forward again, stepping into the gun - still raised. The cold metal pressed tight against a droplet of sweat on her forehead.

Tiny, white tablets were poured into the sweat on her palm. They were melting. She was melting. Life was melting away. The sun was now setting and casting dull shadows out across a barren land. (Yet no one told the morning horizon.)

"I'm not afraid to die," she attempted in a hollow voice. It wasn't quite as convincing as Rachel's assertion had been. She took a deep breath. She released it slow. She kissed the sky, one last time, and then she was ready to go.

"You can't kill yourself on a bright, sunny morning. It's contradictory."

Suddenly frozen in place, her hand stopped its progression to her mouth.

There was a cage of metal between him and the girl. "How does it feel to be in prison?"

She lowered her gaze to the blackened pavement - smushed against the bottoms of her thighs. How could House have found her? She was alone in the world, and she wished he would stop pretending otherwise. House couldn't be alone, because House couldn't have regret. Only regret could truly confine him to a world where nothing is true. A world where nothing is real. A world where only his fears and his doubts would be there to keep him company.

How naive she was. How naive she would always be.

"There's a door on the other end of the court," she responded finally with a sloppy gesture and an obvious disappointment in his presence. There is no prison where there is a door - an out, an escape.

"I wasn't referring to the fence." He linked his fingers with the diamonds of metal on a cage that was all to familiar. "How does it feel to be enslaved to your own lack of teardrops?" He wasn't sure whether he was asking Cameron, or whether he was asking himself. "To be the slave and the master. The whipped and the whipper." He rested his forehead on those same metal diamonds and peered through their translucence at Cameron. Like looking through precious Jasper or seeing though a costly Sardine stone - rusted metal never was so shiny. "To be the beggar and the rich man with the keys."

"I was the beggar. But now I just have the keys." She slightly lifted her palm. Powdery pills began to glisten, like brand new keys to a tempting gate that lead to another realm. Be it paradise or purgatory - the ground, or a fiery pit - it was simply the lesser evil, and she was willing and ready to go there.

Can't be damned if you don't believe.

Can't believe if you refuse to think.

"How many?" House choked out with a small voice above Cameron's head.

For the first time since House had arrived, Cameron twisted her torso and squinted to look up at his face. He was standing directly behind her - his forehead on the fence and his fingers intertwined with the metal. "You mean – "

"I mean, is there enough for me?" The words sounded hesitant, like he hated to say them. He pursed his lips and blinked down at Cameron, waiting for the answer he needed.

Her eyes drifted back to the pills, and then to the bottle beside her. Slowly, she nodded a 'yes'.

He made his way around the fence and limped through the rectangular opening. His leg was in a pain he could hardly even cope with, let alone actually walk on. He gritted his teeth as he slid his back down the fence and sat beside Dr. Cameron. A moment of silence passed - as he closed his eyes and breathed - and then he turned and held out his palm. Waiting for his share of the pills.