Disclaimer: If I owned them, Stacy would still be on the show snogging House's face off. They belong to David Shore and his minions, the cruel geniuses.

Greg's apartment is dimly lit, yet she can still find her away around without any trouble where most would stumble. She gracefully weaves her way through the many piles of medical journals (heavily contrasted with the stacks of expired gossip rags), forgotten stacks of sheet music, poetry books (she loves that he reads it, but he's never been the type to read it to her) and all the other objects he keeps around to distract himself. These things are just as much a part of him as she is.

It's not just his apartment anymore. No, the rooms of 221B hold her memories as well. As she walks through the hallway she drags her hand along its wall. It's smooth and cool to the touch. The walls hold thousands of memories that she never wants to let go. Long suppressed memories come rushing back in this place. The memories are so clear that she can almost relive them. The feeling is addicting. He wouldn't be so hard to let go if she wasn't addicted to this feeling.

She sits down on the floor, her back against the cool wood of the apartment as the tears begin to flow with the realization of what she's started again and what never should have been forced to an end. Her elbows rest on her knees and her hands rest on her head as the guilt hits her. The teardrops fall silently, they leak out one by one. She's held them back for so long she's amazed at the silence. This catharsis of emotions should be a violent torrent… her body wracked with great heaves of exhaustion as her heart overflows and empties emotions long reticent … but it's really more like the summer rain. It drizzles slowly and you can almost feel every individual droplet hit your body. She lifts her head upwards and keeps her eyes squeezed shut. She grips the cross around her neck. She's never believed in any religion, she just wears it because her mother gave it to her. She doesn't know if she's looking for punishment or redemption; she doesn't even believe that either will really come, but sometimes she wishes that someone else would make the hard decisions for her.

It was a selfish decision. She's tried to tell herself different all these years but as skilled as she is in convincing her clients, she can't lie to herself. The middle ground surgery had little to do with Greg's happiness and so much more to do with her own. She was saving his life. What she failed to realize was that everything was going to change because of it. She still lost Greg, at least the Greg she had known, the Greg who had talked to her, held her, and loved her. She had lost that.

This wasn't supposed to happen. She didn't expect to find him again after the infarction. She had thought the Greg she knew was gone forever. She's come back to discover him hidden deep inside the walls that pain and regrets construct while you're not looking. One thought gives her more hesitation than all the others. While she has found the man she knew, he is still changed. She knows, that as much as he tries to hold it back, she knows, that deep inside him, every time he has to take a pill, pick up his cane or look at his own hideously scarred leg, he will secretly blame her. She knows this because there's no need for him to look at her with that pained and broken face; she feels that blame in every silent moment between them.

The last thing she planned on was falling in love with Greg all over again. Like everything in this world, retrieving and reviving this love will cost a price; or maybe it already has. She's already in too deep to avoid making anyone hurt. Greg expects to pick up where they left off; she knows she's led him to believe that, and if she does go back to Greg as she so desperately desires, Mark will be left broken and alone. Someone is going to get hurt.

She knows she's not the only one to blame herself for Greg's pain.

"The last time you left, I was the one stuck picking up the pieces!" Pieces, pieces of what? When she left there were no pieces of Greg. He wasn't broken. He was just gone. She would've stayed for pieces.

"Oh right. He cried himself to sleep every night. That so sounds like him." She deflects Wilson's pleading and questioning with sarcasm. Even though she knows Wilson knows him as well, if not better than she does. She doesn't want to remember that in five years House hasn't moved on while she got married.

"He's been pining for five years!"

"You're being dramatic."

"No. Actually, I'm underplaying. This is me being restrained."

"It was one kiss." Then.

"Are you being intentionally thick? This was not just a one-night stand. You can't toy with him."

"I'm not. He's probably toying with me. I don't know what I'm doing." If he is toying with her he's a much better actor than she though. Wilson has a way of drawing the truth out of people and he'd succeeded once again with Stacy. She doesn't know what she's doing, she still doesn't. She only knows that Greg still feels right, but right and easy are not two things that often go together.

She's at an intersection now. Past, present and future are colliding and after this, nothing will ever be the same again. Not with Mark and not with Greg.

At 4 AM she gets up and prepares to leave the apartment that her mind has already slipped back into calling "home". She gathers her things from the apartment she expects to come back to all too soon and walks toward the door. On it, is taped a note from his prescription pad. "Prescription for heart condition: Roof at sunset".