Disclaimer for the entire story: I do not own House.
Warning: Character death
Parts: 6 … possibly 7
Reviews: are love. Make my day!
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A.D.: Part IIII watched Wilson brush his fingers briefly over House's coffin, lowering my lashes briefly as he turned and walked down the aisle towards me. He glanced at me and hesitated, shooting a brief look back at where House lay.
"Let him go, Wilson." I told him, holding his gaze for a moment. He glared at me in a manner that was painfully reminiscent of House, before nodding slowly and exiting through the door. I bowed my head and expelled a breath of air I hadn't realised I had been holding. Chase raised his head from where he sat in one of the back pews and looked at me, signalling for me to go ahead and not wait for him. Flashing him a small smile, I nodded and headed up the aisle as he lowered his head again, lips moving in a silent prayer to a God I hadn't known he believed in.
Thoughts raced across my mind as I took each steady step closer to farewelling House. We had known each other for longer than it seemed possible to know any one person. I had first heard of him at Hopkins, just before he left. (Gregory House knows everything, you think as you walk out of the lecture theatre) Already he had been a legend. I had thought that was as close as I would ever get to knowing him. But somehow, the medical profession was only so small and years later I had met him again at a conference. (Serendipity … for him or for you?) He had been dating Stacy at the time. They had been perfect for each other – she had been slightly selfish and he had been slightly cynical – and somehow they clicked. (How did a relationship based on faults work?) Their relationship had lasted longer than House's parents would have liked, longer than Wilson expected and longer than I ever thought a relationship could last for.
Of course, the infarction had changed all that. (Just how much, you never really comprehended) I remembered looking down at the once invincible Gregory House and mourning. I hadn't known what I was mourning at the time, but after surgery, it became apparent. It was the light, the spark that made him, despite his brilliance, human that had gone. And all that was left was an angry, bitter shell. (shells fragile crack)
I offered him a job at Princeton, because I knew he wouldn't survive anywhere else. (You had a brilliant doctor, albeit a crippled one and one that couldn't start work for a while, but a brilliant doctor all the same.
He accepted, and for a while, everything was calm. Sometimes I looked at him and realised that he never really forgave me for seeing him in his moment of weakness and 'pitying' him enough to offer him a job. (He never really forgave himself for his weakness in accepting the job.) But the calm was always on the surface, because beneath his thin layer of protective ice, the water had already started to boil over.
He had been barely halfway into his rehab before it became apparent that something was wrong. (Afterwards something was always wrong) He seemed to be angry all the time, frustrated and, upon occasion, viciously cruel. Soon afterwards Stacy left.
I looked at House's expressionless face, and realised that she had been the cause of that lack of expression. (Twice over) There was once (upon a time) when I had thought that he would recover entirely, but after Stacy's abrupt departure, I realised nothing would ever be the same. He had given up.
And so I fought him. I forced him to do what he hated to do, blackmailed him, verbally sparred with him and never gave him any inkling that I pitied him in any way. (You had learned your lesson) I mocked him, insulted him and got in his way, because I knew that as long as he had a challenge, House would continue fighting. I didn't want him to give up and sink into that black abyss Stacy had left behind. I didn't try to make him happy, just to keep him sane.
But the only other person apart from Wilson who had tried to make House happy was Dr. Cameron. Idealistic and naïve, my first impression of her was fragile. She wouldn't last long, I decided, as House made his usual infuriating remarks about how I had some competition when he'd first hired her. (She was beautiful, more beautiful than you ever were.) How wrong I had been! She not only lasted her complete fellowship, she had it renewed along with the boys. And sometimes, when I looked through the glass windows of the diagnostics department during a quiet period, I could see something in House's eyes as he watched her, lazily throwing his blasted oversized tennis ball (that he wouldn't tell you the purpose of – it'd always infuriated you) up and down. Or perhaps he'd be watching the television – one of his mindless soaps that he only watched when he needed time to think. And I'd look at him and wonder what he was thinking so hard about (because he'd be concentrating ever so hard on the television). And then his gaze would flick momentarily to Dr. Cameron's figure on the other side of the glass wall, and I'd go along on my way.
At least House cared about someone, reluctant as he was to show it.
I looked at him again, trying to recall how his voice sounded. Funny how quickly the mind forgets. But as I sifted desperately through memories (you had never been desperate any other time in your life, had you?), a thought drifted from my subconscious.
Now that House was gone who was I to fight?
(Because ultimately it didn't just keep him sane, it kept you sane too.)
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