Catness: I guess the answer is yes. I hope you enjoy it.

In a situation not so dissimilar to the one Cuddy had faced on Friday, she found herself wading through papers on her desk, turns it out it would have been more helpful if she had of completed them the week prior.

A small sigh escapes between her teeth before she can restrain herself. Sighing is just an expression, a waste of energy to convey how you are feeling at this current point in time, Energy that could be used for more important things like paper work. Cuddy vaguely thinks life should be easy and then digs into the hours of a potential headache that is laid out before her.

It seems like an age before she is finally finished up, sorting through important things and the shocking amount of complaints against House.

She flicks through them:

Doctor House called my son a sniveling whining brat…

Doctor House ignored…

Doctor House was sleeping during…

Doctor House laughed inappropriately when I told him…

The list goes on and on, it seems that that could be all her life consists of.

Cuddy realizes that she has worked through her lunch hour, when she feels a yawning emptiness in the pit of her stomach. She grabs her handbag from under the desk hoping to find some kind of energy bar to keep her running until dinner.

She finds something remotely healthy looking peels back the wrapping and nibbles somewhat hesitantly at the corner. It seems fine.

The door to her office swings open, no knock. And everybody's favorite cripple comes loping towards her. This isn't good she decides, can't be good at all.

House doesn't say anything just deposits himself on one of the comfortable chairs near the wall.

Cuddy is confused but she won't let him win. The best course of action would be to ignore him until he either stars speaking or leaves, which is frankly just a hopeful wish on her behalf. House never goes somewhere without some kind of purpose, which makes her question why he is here.

"I hope you know those things are full of sugar and calories… but I guess you're too far gone to care right?" He leers at her experimentally while she drops the bar back into her bag.

"What do you want House, why are you here?"

She needs him to leave so she can get back to doing important hospital things, not sure what exactly those things are right now but she will find something she is sure.

"I'm bored" his bottom lip droops towards the floor as Cuddy stares at him trying to dissect his mental sate.

"That's a lie, if you were bored you wouldn't come here because you know that I know that you haven't done all you clinic hours for last week" She blinks manically checking her last sentence made sense, she is lucky.

"Why are you here?"

She is growing evermore suspicious, obviously something terribly wrong is happening in the hospital and he is distracting her from it. This could be disastrous she gets up and starts to pace, Cuddy is the queen of pacing.

"…well my job here is done"

House solemnly nods at her and limps back out again.

She barely registers as she runs through a mental list of anything that might go wrong.

It takes Cuddy almost the rest of the week to be certain that House was just playing mind-games with her, her hospital is under no threat.

She also realizes that she has been so preoccupied that she didn't hound him about his clinic hours. It worries her a little that she was too distracted to get Greg to actually do his job.

Thursday night and she is seated in her office, just as she had been many times before. She wonders if she could write a biography and have a picture of her trusty desk on the front of it instead of a candid shot of herself. It would be brilliant symbolism and she wouldn't explain it but let the public try and dissect its meaning.

She has no time for writing.

Cuddy secretly hates unnatural lighting, she knows that it's a completely useless hate but there it is all the same. This is how she ends up sitting in her office with the lights out, gazing through the window behind her desk, in search of the moon.

The night is cloudy and her search is fruitless but she doesn't move, she thinks that looking for the moon in an odd way would be just as important as finding it. At least she can give herself a purpose.

She sits and looks and this is how House finds her, hair tangled and loose and eye cast at the night sky.

He had been walking past her office when he saw a movement, ever curious he came to the glass of her door and peered in. He had been hoping that it was burglar or something of interest but then he had found something more intriguing; Lisa Cuddy sitting in her office with all the lights turned out so she could observe clouds.

He shunts the door with his body and swagger in, from the tell-tale footsteps Cuddy recognizes his uneven gait. She doesn't need to turn around. She knows who it is.

"What do you want Greg?"

It's funny how when they are alone, which isn't often, they call each other by their first names. At college they had all joked around by calling each other doctor, referring to their fellow students using their last names. The trivialness soon wore off after they graduated and became professionals, it wasn't fun anymore.

It just was.

House ponders, she looks tired, perhaps this isn't the best time for juvenile comments, and if he really wanted to upset her he knows that this would be the perfect time.

Fortunately he doesn't want her broken. His games aren't as entertaining when the opposition doesn't play back and she is very good at retaliating but only when she wants to.

Slowly he walks until he is beside her, his pace entirely different now from what it had been before. Now he walks with his age and burdens pressed beneath the soles of his feet.

"Lisa… Why are you sitting alone in the dark?"

He hastily glances towards his watch, 9:27; she should be at home resting and reading some of that terrible chic-lit that he knows she sometimes dabbles in.

A sense of despair descends on her weary brain

"I truly do not know"

The words come out on their own accord, though she does not wish them back she wishes that she had prepared herself for the finality of letting her words solidify, letting them slide out of her thoughts and into reality. She hadn't anticipated letting her unconscious get the better of her.

"Are you alright?"

He is being serious with her, it's not just one of those throw away questions that no one expects to be answered.

"Just tired, that's all"

She leans back into the chair and pretends not to notice his hand on her shoulder.