Title: Atonement
Rating: PG-13 (language, implied drug use, implied sex. ish.)
Notes: Cameron-centric, immediately post-Hunting (2.08), thus with some Cameron/Chase too. Quickly written.

This thing is turning you inside out. This incredibly disgusting feeling, this shameful atrocity - you don't want to name it you don't want to have to blame yourself but you've got to face up to it: the truth.

You did it. You did meth, you did Chase, and you played the blame game.

Oct. 26 - finished first bottle of pills. Only 5 to go before the TEST. Snapped at Chase. Snapped at Kalvin. I am an awful person. I am not an awful person.

Forget about what happened. Concentrate on work. Forget about that bit, too.

It makes you feel dirty, still, and you pick absently at the scab on your arm until it bleeds, and you have to quick cover it with three layers of gauze and medical tape.

---------

The day after was a misery you never want to relive. Coming down off crystal meth - oh, god, it was the shittiest you'd ever felt. Even when he died it was all predictable on your terms and his terms and you spent years thinking about it but you never felt as utterly vile as you do now. So utterly stupid. All this hatred and no good place to put it. So, because you're stupid and coming down off mountainous shitload of stupidity, you fling it everywhere. Flick little pieces of vitriol at House, Chase, and save fifty percent of the blame for Kalvin himself - the rest is for you. Like it always is. Because you are a strong person who made a stupid choice the same as this weak person lying in this hospital bed, and now how are you any different? How are you any better than him?

Chase had a small sore on his lip and then you went home. You noticed it all day.

---------

When you came back it was bigger and made his bottom lip red like fruit. It was an empty patientless day. He would have done his crossword puzzle but he hasn't much since House started getting on his case about every little thing. Instead he kept himself busy with the clinic or paperwork or whatever could be done. Chewed on his pencils, pushed his hair back, and you kept imagining the smooth broad shoulders and chest and sloping back. Kept biting your tongue, not that you'd say anything but as punishment. Couldn't keep your eyes off him, could you?

"Red for impure thoughts," House announces, striding into the room, making his grand entrance the official start of the day - the sun hath risen, ye peons. Make way, make way.

You choke and look away and straighten, wanting to shrink into your red, red blouse. Wilson blushes. Chase looks up from his crossword puzzle, totally oblivious, surprised that he's not the butt of House's joke, for once.

---------

At night in the almost-dark, in the few lines of orange streetlight that slip through your blinds, in the city-silence, you wonder if he's lonely. If he cares, and House is wrong. You wonder if you care. If you can remember what that truly feels like. If it is possible to be so helplessly, dully afraid and to care at the same time.

House is wrong about you and your caring, and that disgusts you to no end as well.

Carefully you move your hand away from your other arm. Carefully, you pick at your nails, flick your fingers. Nervous energy bubbling under your skin. Avoid blood at whatever cost.

---------

5 AM: If House is right and I care but try not to, and he tries to care but can't, what's making him so persistent?

5:06: If he cares and I don't and what House said is wrong, does that make House right?

5:15: You are so screwed if House is right.

But this isn't the first time it's occurred to you.

---------

"Haven't you washed your hands enough?"

"This is a hospital, Chase. You can never wash your hands enough."

He doesn't shrug or roll his eyes or do anything flippant. Anything normal, what you'd expect from him. He's quiet and still and you keep your head down, knowing that if you look up in the mirror you will see him worrying at his sore bottom lip. Staring at you, concerned and crumple-edged and confused. You'd do something stupid if you looked up and saw that now.

So you don't look and instead imagine this picture, how he has his hands shoved in his pockets like he doesn't know what to do with them, he's afraid they'll escape, the soft sadness in his eyes when he says "All right," in that soft voice and turns, leaves. But you look up to see his back once he's turned, watch as he walks away.

---------

If this could work out, you realize, you'd like it to. Chase was right - about two people and sex and how yours didn't suck. This could be a good thing.

Except it could also be a very, very bad thing.

So you keep counting days and downing pills until you feel numb and hateful and helpless and just like House.

---------

It's all your fault in the end - you took those drugs and you jumped Chase and you went to work while you were coming down off crystal meth. You married the terminally ill man, you insisted on self-inflicting guilt for what couldn't be changed, you shoved your nose in House's business and maybe he's right and you shouldn't have because it was none of your business, but maybe you could make things right for a change.

The only thing you didn't do was this AIDS thing, but looking back, you might as well have asked for it.