A/N: Thanks for the well wishes. There has been an arrest made for the murder, the real-life murder in my family, I mean, and there isn't much question (he admits being there with a gun and firing it), but the killer turns out to be a long-time friend of the man he killed. The why question is the main one unanswered at the moment, not who. But earthly justice will be done, at least, in due time. Of course, now things prepare for trial.

Meanwhile back at the version of PPTH in this story, here's a chapter you all have been waiting for.

(H/C)

House stood at the gate as long as he was physically able, and then, cursing the weakness, he levered himself down to the ground. The bars of the fence were at eye level now, and he looked through his prison. The roof was empty on the other side.

A storm of memories was gathering, dark clouds that he could almost see hanging over his head, with her words to her father a lightning flash that repeated intermittently, casting a brief glimpse of light over the scene. "This is my life. It's not yours, not any longer. I have the right to live it for myself."

There were also other words that joined them periodically. Wilson's words. "There's someone else, isn't there?"

She hadn't denied it.

She hadn't denied it.

House looked down at his hands, the hands that had blindfolded her, the hands that had played Cuddy's Serenade. Then he looked past them to his leg, stretched out straight on the ground and throbbing in protest. He touched his leg, feeling the ugly crater, feeling all that was missing. Was there possibly a chance?

Whether there was or not for him, he didn't trust Wilson. The man was too slick, too manipulative. By means of the assorted mini cameras he had stationed around PPTH with Brenda's help, House had seen him in several conversations with women by now, not just Cuddy, and it was obvious that Wilson not only knew exactly what to say to a woman and how to say it, he prided himself on that fact. Wilson actually seemed like a promising young doctor and a good friend to the other residents. He had several times helped one of them with something, but House knew for a certainty at this point that women were his weakness and that he was theirs. Thank God Cuddy had had the sense to put him off, but it wasn't the firm dismissal, the "friends and that's it, period" that House would have liked. For her own sake, he thought she needed more information on Wilson.

But was there a chance with him? And if so, why on earth would there be? Why would Cuddy, with her looks, intelligence, drive, and ambition, even look twice at him? He was a crippled fugitive wanted for murder, and even though he had dared more with her than with anyone else in the last ten years, he had always known that it was hopeless. He had simply been allowing himself to dream for once. Hearing from her lips no less the suggestion that it might not be hopeless staggered him.

And then overhearing the words to her father. They flashed again through House's mind. "This is my life. It's not yours, not any longer. I have the right to live it for myself."

The other voice was rumbling like thunder, growing ever closer and louder in his mind. The voice he knew best. The words that he still dreamed about, even after ten years. "It was your fault."

House shivered, more from memory than from cold. It seemed eons ago and yet only yesterday that he had stood there in the apartment with his cell phone to his ear, hearing his father. "It was your fault."

He had known something was wrong from the time he got back from PT. Reaching out to unlock his door, he found it unlocked already. He had opened it carefully and stared at the mayhem within.

The landlord lay on his side, his head bashed in, a pool of blood beneath him. House had limped forward and fought for balance as he bent to verify medically what he already knew. Yes, the man was dead. He had made his last visit ever up here to complain about the music and the pacing. But who had found him here? Met him here? By chance or by appointment, and if by appointment, who had made it in this apartment, the landlord or the killer? Part of House's ever-active mind was already galloping off on the case, running the differential, even while another part was in shock. He had seen death, of course. All doctors were far too well acquainted with that grim visitor making an unwanted consult on their cases. But he had never seen cold-blooded murder. Not even his father had gone that far.

As if the man were summoned by the thought, the cell phone rang at that point, and House heard his voice answer the call automatically, as if at a distance. "Hello?"

"She's dead," his father said. House changed contexts so quickly he gave himself a headache doing it.

"Mom?" He knew but grasped at that tiniest final straw that he was wrong.

"Yes. You finally did it, Greg. You finally killed her. All the worry, everything you've put her through for years. This last few months especially. She was talking to me - we were even talking about you at the time, about your leg - and she suddenly clutched her chest and fell over."

"Didn't you even try to help her? CPR? Paramedics?" House stared at the blood, the puddle that his feet and cane were actually standing in the edge of. This man's heart had pumped on long after consciousness left. CPR wouldn't have helped him, but it might well have helped House's mother.

"Of course I tried," his father retorted. "But it wasn't any use. I couldn't revive her. Maybe if you had been here - or maybe not. Doubt you could have done much, crippled like you are. When the paramedics got here, they said she was already gone. It was your fault, Greg. You've been nothing but stress to her all of your life, and then you had to get sick on top of that. You finally killed her. It was your fault."

House wasn't even aware of hanging up the call, though he worked out later that he must have. He must have washed off the blood from his shoes and cane, too, because when his mind began to function again, he was a few streets over, and there was no blood on him.

None of the landlord's blood, at least.

So he had gone to Brenda's apartment to ask for money to run - to limp - away, and she had convinced him to hide over here in the old building at the hospital until an arrest was made. Only an arrest had never been made, and little by little, this world became the reality, so much so that he wondered if that former life of medical residency, of plans for a career, had been a dream.

Ten years. For ten years, he had lived alone with his father's voice for company. He had been forced to accept some help from Brenda, of course, and he had also with her help set up the camera eyes so that he could people watch and even mentally practice medicine, trying to keep himself distracted as well as satisfy his insatiable appetite for learning. But at night, there was always the voice. "It was your fault."

Now for the first time, he heard a tumultuous trio mentally, not just one voice. Along with his father's, "It was your fault," was Wilson asking, "There's someone else, isn't there?", and above all, Cuddy's declaration of independence from whatever lay in her own past. "This is my life. It's not yours, not any longer. I have the right to live it for myself."

House sat there for hours looking through the bars. Finally, with dawn not yet visible but stirring beyond the horizon and preparing to awake, he used the fence to haul himself up to his protesting legs. He had some important research to do.