A/N: A short one. More like an intermezzo. More soon!
CHAPTER 14
Between the moment she thought they were the ancestral one and her cold disillusionment eternity lies lazily, stretching the bridge in between, making it impassable for her, dark and dangerous and ugly. Was it real? Did she ever think that he could, just might, truly care for her, and see her as she was, not as she was wrapped, like a perfect, jolly Christmas gift? She did. She remembers it clearly: she saw it in his eyes, his passionate abandon and his sincerity. She was happy then. Accepting the fact that he might, after all, be fond of her in his own way had come so easily to her: he was House, the person she saw daily, the doctor she looked up to every minute of her working time, the man she longed for and loved every moment of her conscious and unconscious existence. That he did love her was supposed to be so obvious.
Trailing to the bathroom, locking door, sitting on the toilet seat, numbly staring at nude, shaking hands- useless actions in the gloomy evening. Loathing herself is bound to surface shortly, disgust at her silly need to get what she wants (what is that? she is unsure as of yet), hatred of the man she adores. She hears his perplexed impatience grow through the door, then a final grunt, and a slam of wood against wood.
He is gone.
She is left behind.
Shame at seeing herself on the next day, amidst staring eyes, inquisitive glances, and all the while, his gaze on her. This last thing she hopes for, yet she fears the probable: that he will not even want to talk to her again. He had her, once more, and it seems that in his eyes she's not good for anything else: work and sex. A slave at work, a slave at home.
She hates her body, so perfect and lithe, slim and feline, all the softness and femininity that must have enticed him to want to fuck her. Nothing more. He did not see her, and did not even care.
A sad reflection of her own lifts its gaze in the mirror and stares back at her. Beauty is merely an illusion. Beyond all that, she feels repellently ugly, and everything around her changes colours and shapes and looks. Softness becomes angularity, and certainty, fear. She had succumbed to her physical needs, her greedy appetite, because she thought she could lure him with her body and keep him. That she failed seems a welcomed tragedy: she wants to feel misery crawl up in her veins, inducing self-loathing and loneliness. Knowing unconsciously that she deserved all the suffering.
Her clock (her clock? nothing is hers anymore) strikes. Time? Unknown. Unwanted. A persistent tingling in her legs tells her she had been sitting there for quite a while.
But going back to the living-room would mean coming face to face with the void he left behind.
The void that is herself.