Sorry that it took so long to get this chapter out! Hopefully everyone is still enjoying the story. Let me know what you think, and please pass along any criticism especially.

Chapter 3

Thick clouds hung low over Princeton, all night long, covering the college town in a thick blanket of snow and announcing that winter had truly begun. The last snowfall had faded away in a week of sunshine, but this snow would be on the ground until March. Just before dawn, the clouds began to part, shifting and rolling until they had dissipated completely, leaving the sun to rise and turn ice into sparkling diamonds.

Sunshine and reflected light poured into Cameron's bedroom and she rolled over and threw one arm across her eyes to block it out. Too late; she was already awake. Blinking the sleep away, she propped herself up on her elbows and looked out the window and into a clean white world. She slipped out of bed and went to get a closer look, admiring the way the snow clung to every tree branch and coated every house.

Her warm breath left a fog on the window and she swept it away with the side of her hand, feeling like a child again and remembering long-distant days when the first real snowfall meant sledding and snowball fights and warm hot chocolate after being forced back inside. Hers had not been a perfect childhood, and those moments of innocent joy were the ones she tried hardest to remember. She'd always thought that she'd be making her own happy memories by now. Strange how things never turned out the way she planned.

Turning from the window with a sigh, she grabbed her robe from the chair in the corner and slid her feet into a pair of well-worn slippers. Time to take care of the rat. Sadly enough, babysitting him was going to make this weekend considerably more interesting than most.

"Ready for breakfast, Steve?" she called out as she scuffed down the hall. If you're good, I'll give you part of my bagel."

She entered the living room and knew immediately that something was wrong. It was far too quiet. She hurried over to the cage and felt her blood drain from her face. He was gone. No. That was impossible.

"Steve?" She rattled the cage, expecting him to emerge from under the bedding, or from the little house in the corner or the soft pouch on the third level. Cameron's heart was pounding. How the hell could she be getting so upset about a rat? And how had he gotten out? The door was still locked!

That was when she noticed the twist-tie; or rather, the remains of the twist-tie. It was still partially wound around the top bar of the cage, and she remembered that it had been holding the roof of the cage closed. The damn rat had escaped by chewing his way to freedom.

Damn. Damn! How could this be happening? And who used twist-ties to secure rat cages, anyway? House, that's who! It was all his fault. No way could he blame this on her.

But of course, that didn't matter, because she would blame herself.

She quickly opened up the front door of the cage, in case Steve wandered back, and then she dropped to her hands and knees and started looking under all the furniture, calling his name out and feeling like a complete idiot, because what kind of rat answered to his name? Not under the sofa. Not under the chair. Not under the end-table, or the bookcase, or behind the standing lamp. Nearly breathless, she rose to her feet and scanned the area, then started pulling the cushions off the sofa and chair and moving the books on the bookcase, looking behind and under everything that wasn't nailed down.

Nothing.

Next stop: kitchen.

"Ste-eve," she sing-songed as she slowly made her way into the room, looking on the counters for tell-tale crumbs, and tilting her head to glance under the table.

She was half-way through tearing her cupboards apart when the phone rang.

"Hello?" she practically shouted into the receiver.

"Good morning to you, too, Pollyanna. What? Did Steve keep you up all night?"

"Wh-what? No! No, he was fine." Why was House calling her? "Did you want to talk to him?" she asked, schooling her voice to what she hoped was an approximation of his snarkiest tone.

"No, just checking to see how the slumber party went. I'm sure he's enjoying breakfast by now. Little Jimmy forgot to go before we left, so now we're at a rest-stop just over the border."

"So now you don't think I can take care of a rat?" Cameron accused, defensively, despite the fact that apparently she couldn't.

"Of course not," House replied. He was surprised by her vehemence, and they were both surprised by the fact that his voice sounded almost gentle.

There was silence over the line for nearly a minute until House spoke again.

"So, no nightmares last night?" he asked, voice low.

Cameron didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "No, I'd say he had a fine night."

"I meant you."

Her slow breathing was the only sound that met his ears.

"You haven't been sleeping well."

"I'm fine."

"Of course you are."

"I am," she insisted, feeling less fine by the second.

"No you aren't," he said firmly. Then, more gently, "But you will be."

"Yeah," she replied, unconvincingly. "Why are you--" she shook her head although he couldn't see it. "What are you--" She released a loud sigh. "You haven't even--"

"I don't apologize." House cut in on her rambling, and it was obvious that his statement meant the opposite of its literal definition. They were silent as that realization settled in. "It's been a hell of a long two months," he finally said, as if that explained everything.

Cameron had dropped down into one of the kitchen chairs and was cradling her forehead in her hand. "Yeah. It has." She didn't have the energy to say any more.

"Take care of my rat," House snapped back into his usual persona.

"Right," Cameron replied, feeling her stomach fall to somewhere in the vicinity of her heels.

"I'll call tomorrow," House told her, and then hung up before she could reply.

She set the phone on the table and used both hands to hold up her head. He was finally acting like a human being, and now she was going to have to tell him that she'd lost his rat. Perfect.

Five minutes of sitting in silence, staring at the top of her kitchen table, failed to make Steve materialize. All she could think about was the how House was going to react. Sure, he'd probably start out raving, move on to snark, and then concentrate on just insulting her, but she knew that his insults would have as much to do with hiding his own hurt as with mocking her apparently poor rat-sitting abilities. He might then brush it off saying that Steve was a wild rat anyway and not a pet and that he was planning on releasing him anyway, but she would know the truth. He hadn't spent an exorbitant amount of money on a king-sized cage for a rat he intended to set free into a cold New Jersey winter.

He'd probably accuse her of being the sentimental one.

Then he'd mention the incident at every opportunity just to see if she'd cry over it.

So much for getting back to their fairly comfortable, if strained, camaraderie. She had already told herself a hundred times not to hope for anything more than that. She'd better finally do so, because there was no way he was going to want anything more than professional courtesy after this. Hell, she'd be lucky if he didn't stick her with the crap jobs he currently reserved for Chase. Chase. Great. There was something else she didn't want to think about.

Wearily, Cameron rose to her feet and started putting her cabinets back in order. She didn't want to think anymore, and keeping busy was the best remedy. After putting everything away, she went to the closet and dragged out Steve's smaller cage. She put it on the floor in the corner of the kitchen and then scattered some of his treat food around and in it, along with a handful of yogurt covered raisins, the only thing close to junk food that she kept in the house.

The living room looked as if a small hurricane had passed through it. A five foot, five inch, brunette hurricane, to be exact. With ridiculously hopeful eyes, she checked the cage one more time. Still empty. Her arms and legs felt like dead-weight as she pulled the room back together, replacing the books on their shelves, putting the cushions back on the furniture and settling the small assortment of knick-knacks back in their places.

She knew she needed to eat something, and a shower would probably be a good idea as well. Instead she lowered herself to the sofa and sank into its welcoming embrace. With her head tilted back, she stared up at the ceiling for a few quality minutes of self-recrimination. Eventually, her neck got sore and she rolled her head forward to be greeted by the site of Steve's depressingly empty cage. He was out somewhere reenacting scenes from "The Great Escape" while she contemplated how to tell House that he was gone.

Tears formed a film over her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She was not going to cry. Not over a rat. Not over House. Not over something that probably never would have amounted to anything anyway.

She was concentrating so hard on staring straight ahead that she almost missed the shadow of grey that flashed at the corner of her eye. She didn't have time to do more than register movement before the grey blur had moved up the arm of the sofa, across the back cushions, up her shoulder and under her hair.

If she had been a more girlie sort of woman, she probably would have screamed, reached up and flung Steve McQueen against the wall, ending his triumphant return scene in a most untimely death. Luckily for all concerned, Allison Cameron was made of sterner stuff than that.

Her scream was kept at a mild shriek and she barely moved. Honestly, she was half-petrified that any undue movement would send the furry little creature back to parts unknown. She felt the prickle of little toenails along the neckline of her robe, and then the insistent sniffing of a tiny nose at the back of her ear. Fine whiskers tickled her skin and as her heart rate returned to something close to normal she slowly reached up and gently plucked Steve from his comfortable little perch.

Once he was actually in her hands, and her eyes had checked every inch of him for possible injury, she quickly put him back into his cage, locked the front door and piled her dictionary, her Grey's Anatomy, and her world atlas on top of it. Her relief was palpable, draining her body of its adrenaline rush, sending a tingling sensation through her fingers, and a prickling sensation along her scalp. She fell back onto the sofa and just stared at Steve, happily running around in his wheel as if nothing had happened.

The laughter that bubbled up from her chest was completely involuntary, but she was helpless to prevent it from spilling out of her mouth. It seemed to echo off the walls, and back to her ears triggering even more laughter, until her eyes were squeezed shut and her cheeks aching. The laughter died down slightly and she opened her eyes to look at Steve again, surprised to feel the wetness of tears clinging to her lashes, and although the last of that semi-hysterical laughter spun out, her shoulders continued to shake. Her thin frame seemed wholly inadequate to have ever contained the emotions currently wracking it as a stream of tears led into sobs that had her holding herself and rocking back and forth.

They were sobs that had little to do with a grey rat and his miraculous reappearance and everything to do with the rest of her life. Flashes of childhood and college and marriage and death were swirled together with House and monster trucks and a date that never should have happened. There were images of House, bent and grey, staring into a dimly lit hospital room, at a lost loveand memories of her heart breaking when it had no right to. More memories of her husband and lives only half-lived, hers and his both, and the overarching but continually denied possibility that this short span was all she was to be allowed. That her life could effectively be over and she couldn't think of a single thing that had gone exactly as she'd planned. That a life spent trying so hard to be good and helpful and truthful and kind could amount to nothing more than a handful of inconsequential memories and a flood of tears.

She curled her feet up beneath herself as her burning throat and empty eyes signaled the end of her breakdown. Slumping to one side, she rested her head on a throw pillow shoved against the arm of the sofa. Her eyelids felt gritty and swollen as she blinked slowly and watched Steve run up and down the ramps in his cage. The sound was soothing to her ears. At least it wasn't silence. At least she didn't have to listen to her ragged breathing all alone.

After a few minutes, Cameron sat up and swept her hand through her hair. She took a deep breath and noted that Steve's food bowl was nearly empty. His food was in the kitchen and she went to get it, noticing that she felt lighter than she'd expected to. Her chest wasn't heavy and her stomach wasn't twisted into a Gordian knot.

Taking the broom out of the closet, she swept up the scattered rat food and raisins, and then tucked the cage out of the way again. There. Clean and neat again.

Steve's bag of food was hanging on the back of her chair and she picked it up as she walked into the living room. Time for breakfast. Maybe she'd take a shower and even eat a little something herself.

A frantic scattering of bedding greeted Cameron as she approached Steve's cage. Apparently he had a pretty good idea of what she had in her hand. His hopeful little face pulled a tiny crooked smile out of Cameron and she knelt next to the coffee table and stared at him for a minute before reaching for the cage door.

"Oh yeah, sure, now you're happy to see me. If you'd just stayed in the cage in the first place you would have had breakfast an hour ago. Of course your father never does anything the easy way either, so I guess I know where you get it from." The fact that she was now attributing a genetic connection between House and a rat was not lost on her. It was just talk, but it settled her to hear her thoughts said aloud. Normally they just spun around in her mind before being pushed aside to make room for more important concerns. Patients, co-workers, friends, family, House. They all ranked higher on her list of priorities than she herself.

She knew that was wrong. She'd been practically forced into therapy after Matthew's death, and her therapist had told her repeatedly that she needed to take care of herself first or she'd be useless to anyone else. The problem, of course, was that those were only words and she'd already proved them wrong. She'd been putting herself last for years, and that arrangement seemed to satisfy just about everyone. Even her.

Taking care of people, seeing other people happy, and knowing (without having to be told) that she was responsible, gave her intense satisfaction. She didn't consider it selfless or overly-altruistic. She didn't consider it much at all unless someone mentioned it to her, and then the feelings were closer to guilt. Wilson telling her she shouldn't get involved with patients. Chase teasing her. Foreman telling her to watch herself. And House. House most of all; acting as if he understood when he cornered her over a centrifuge but then crushing her for it four months later.

How could House think she wanted to fix him when it was so obvious that he thought she was the one in need of fixing? In the middle of the night, in her pitch-black, grave-silent room, she knew he was right. She wasn't broken, but she was cracked, and she'd thought that House was the one who could hold her together. A year ago she'd thought that they could hold each other together. That had been post-monster trucks and Christmas gifts and averted eyes as she resigned but pre-date-date and psycho-babble and Stacy. Cameron had given up despite the fact that sometimes she still felt a connection when he looked at her.

And now here she was, watching his rat, and she didn't know anything anymore, and she was too tired to figure it out.

"Now don't even think about trying to escape," Cameron admonished as she raised her hand to the locked door.

Steve had no such ideas. He was much too interested in the food that was fast approaching. Cameron reached in and dumped a cup of food into his little clay dish, and then rustled around in the bag for the treat food. Steve was clearly used to the routine, because he ignored the plain food and stood by the door with his nose halfway out and sniffing towards Cameron's hand as she brought a scoop full of less-than-nutritional seeds and fruits and artificially colored pellets. Once that was in the dish, the rat immediately set upon it as if he hadn't eaten for a week. Cameron stroked his back gently a few times and then withdrew her hand, glad to see him content.

Outside, the sun was still shining brightly, but a harsh wind blew errant snowflakes from the trees, making it look almost as if it was still snowing. That same snow muffled the sounds of the few passing cars, and the fewer passing footsteps. Once more, Cameron was grateful for Steve's company. Aside from his presence, at that moment she felt utterly alone on the planet. That feeling was one she'd had many times before, and while sometimes she reveled in her solitude others had her retreating for the kitchen for a glass of wine and a hope that sleep would come quickly. She had an idea that without Steve, this time would have been the latter, and it was entirely too early to drink.

The sound of Steve running around in his little wheel followed Cameron down the hallway to her bathroom. Soon lime and verbena scented the steam-filled air and she stayed beneath the pounding spray much longer than usual. The water trickled down over her closed eyes and sluiced off her body carrying away her tension if not her cares. She rolled her shoulders experimentally, glad to feel them looser than they'd been in a week. If standing in the shower all day had been a possibility, she would have jumped at it, but unfortunately she could already feel her fingers beginning to prune, and the steam was beginning to make her feel light-headed. She'd never been so sensitive to it before, but her medication brought with it a half-dozen side effects that she tried hard to ignore. Dizziness was one of the least of them.

The pipes clunked in their usual hollow rhythm as she shut off the water, and the shower curtain sounded like dull chimes as she pushed it back and grabbed her towel. She was humming to herself as she entered her bedroom and pulled worn jeans and an oversized sweater from her dresser drawers. She had planned on running errands and cleaning the apartment, but had instead decided to spend the day lounging on the sofa with a book and a cup of tea instead.

By the time she wandered back into the kitchen, it was closer to lunch than breakfast, so she made a sandwich, along with her tea, and carried it all to the living room. Steve was curled up and enjoying an early afternoon nap. Cameron decided not to take any chances and added another book to the stack already on top of his cage. She curled herself up on the sofa and was finished eating and ten pages into her book when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Steve napping?"

Cameron didn't want to smile, but she did anyway. "Yes. Out like a light. You guys make another pit-stop?" She was shocked that he was calling, but she wasn't sorry to hear his voice.

"Yeah. Wilson's got a bladder the size of a pin." He wouldn't tell her that he needed to stop every couple of hours to stretch his leg.

"So, are you planning on calling every few hours? I got less check-ins when I babysat infants."

"Well, what is there to taking care of an infant? If it cries, you feed one end or wipe the other. Steve is much more complex."

Eyeing the rat in question, Cameron had to agree, but she wasn't about to tell House that. Steve McQueen's little adventure would remain just between the two of them.

"How are the roads?" she asked, to have something to say.

"Fine, and I'm pretty sure this SUV can just run over any cars that get in our way. We may have to enter it into the vaulting competition when we get up there."

"Those are pretty cool," Cameron said, voice low as she remembered a warm fall night and the smell of diesel, popcorn and cotton candy.

"Yeah," House said and it sounded like he was remembering the same thing.

"Did you really just call to check on your rat?" Cameron asked, her voice still soft, but edged with a mix of hope and wariness.

"Of course," House replied, but after a breathless silence, he continued, gruffly, "Wilson said you're having some bad reactions to your meds."

Cameron held the phone tighter and pulled her knees to her chest. Yes, she had mentioned it to Dr. Wilson. She had wanted his advice and although HIV wasn't exactly his specialty, he did know a lot about the side effects of powerful drugs. She didn't know if she'd expected him to share that information with House or not. Maybe she had secretly hoped that he would.

"A few. It's no big deal," she told him, her stockinged feet digging into the sofa cushion.

"Right."

"I… You… Thanks for asking," and the gratitude was real.

House was quiet for a minute. "I should have asked earlier," he said, and then, "Here comes Jimmy now. I'll call tomorrow."

He hung up before Cameron could say anything else but she held the phone for a few seconds longer, listening to the dial tone and then set it back on the table. She picked up her tea and took a long sip, but she was already feeling warmer before it ever crossed her lips.