Title: The Things They'll Never Know
Author: morningafter
Rating: PG
Summary: All the things she never told anyone, the things she kept to herself. Because Allison Cameron is anything but naive.
Author Notes:
Disclaimer: I don't own House or any of the characters. Never have and never will.
Spoilers: None.
House, M.D.
Cameron knows they all think she's naive. That they all think she's just too nice, too sympathetic, too idealistic.
And she has almost convinced herself that they're right.
But lurking deep in the back of her mind are the things they don't know. Things she never told anyone, and never will.
House knows about her husband, but he doesn't know everything. He doesn't know how things changed after the wedding. That as he got closer and closer to death, he got angrier and angrier. At her. And how she always felt it was her fault. Not that she couldn't save him, but that she couldn't even stand up to him when things got out of control. That she wasn't strong enough.
And that when she teared up the day she told House about him, she wasn't mourning her loss, but regretting having to bring up the memory.
And no one knows about her childhood. And they never will. They'll never know that every morning after her mother's death when she was seven, she picked up after her father.
They'll never know that she used to count the bottles every morning. One, two, three, but she always stopped there, because it was too much. Instead she would think of other things as she cleaned the bottles, threw them away. Erasing all evidence that it ever happened. Pretending that the abuse wasn't real.
They'll never know how many years she spent denying that her father had a problem, until a drunken accident took him away.
Or that she spent her free time as a child locked in her room with her books, desperately wanting to be anywhere but there.
They'll never know of her terrible eye for men. How every boyfriend she's ever had was abusive or addicted to some drug or another, or broken or damaged in some other unexplainable way.
House was right: She doesn't love, and she never really has. She needs. Needs to fix the broken, heal the ill. And as long as she can do that, she can make it through the night.
The truth is, she isn't naive. She hasn't been for years. But if she works hard enough, she can make everyone believe she is.
If she works hard enough, maybe she can even make herself believe it.
.:End:.