Week Eight: Fixed and Broken

Allison Cameron had made a lot of mistakes in her life. Things had never been perfect, at least not at the level she had always hoped for. In the eyes of her parents, she could have always done that little bit better, gotten that A instead of a B+, and she had agreed. It hadn't stopped there, though; when that had faded away and her parents had been less invested, it had been moral dilemmas. At her part-time job, she had been the one to walk back in the rain when someone had left the store unlocked, or who went door to door to find some little boy's puppy. It just became who she was.

Maybe this was all a mistake. After all, she'd thrown away what she had had with Chase for this. Again. She remembered how after Kutner's death, she'd canceled that vacation, and Chase had been suspicious that it had been to babysit House.

She'd told him he was wrong, then.

But now here she was, babysitting House in the worst way, giving something that she was almost certain she could never get in return. What was she on about, even? And why didn't it worry her all that much?

She was lying in his bed, yet again, trying desperately to figure it all out. It would have been helpful, of course, if he had been lying in the same bed. As it was, he wasn't. He was off at Wilson's, doing… whatever it was that House did at Wilson's, and Cameron was beginning to figure that she wasn't going to see him for quite some time and that she ought to just get a move on already.

If this was some cheesy romance novel, she reminded herself, he would burst in at just that moment, sweep her up in his arms and stop her from leaving.

She paused. Counted to ten.

Nope, still no House.

Maybe she should have gone looking for him, but she was too tired. Everything they'd said about pregnancy being incredibly tiring seemed to have been accurate, though she thought that maybe it'd be less tiring if it had been Chase, the way it was supposed to be. The way it'd seemed to be pre-ordained when they'd stood up at the altar and exchanged vows; Chase wouldn't die, Chase wouldn't leave her with nothing but frozen sperm. Chase would always be there.

He still was there. She was the one who'd left. Because he'd changed; that was what she had told herself at the time. He had changed too much, was willing to bend morality and the rules too much, and wasn't the man she thought she knew, hoped she knew.

But in reality, if she had left because Chase had changed, she had come back because she had changed. Her career in Chicago had gone well, she knew all the right people and made all the right money. But each night she had gone home to a quiet one-bedroom apartment overlooking the el and had ached for something more. Some sound of footsteps beside her, the feeling of another's warmth next to her in bed.

When she first heard the footsteps, for real, she thought maybe she was imagining them, imagining it, the little sound of rat-tat-tat against the wooden floor, the clump and clatter of a cane.

"House?" she called, quietly, as if not to break the spell, as if not to let in the reality of how damaged they both were and how ill-fated this whole relationship was. If it even was a relationship at all. But for that second, as she called, she was young again, naïve again, eager to help and to save and to hold.

"Cameron." His voice appeared before he did, and it was a statement, not a question, as if he was deducing her rationale for being here still. He must have been doing internally, for he followed up, as if in mid-sentence with, "The only reason I can think of is that you can have sex without worrying about getting pregnant."

Cameron kicked her feet off the bed. She smirked, but he couldn't see it yet; he was still at the far end of the room.

"That's the best you could come up with? No digs about how I have to fix everyone?"

House shrugged.

"Too tired."

"Where were you?"

"What are you, my mother?" House snapped. "Porn shop. There was a 69% off sale." Cameron rolled her eyes.

"Seems like you're doing better," she replied dryly. "I see a little of the old House shining through."

"Until the day I die."

The words cut Cameron unexpectedly. Maybe until that sentence, so sarcastic and so typical House, she hadn't really, truly accepted it was a possibility. After all, House always made it out. House always got away at the end, like the Roadrunner slipping away from Wile E. Coyote.

The idea that he could actually die, be gone – poof – like that, was terrifying. Cameron didn't believe in God, but she had always believed in House, even when he had seemed to be actively working against it.

Her mouth was dry and she tried to come up with words, words that worked. Words that made some kind of fucking sense. There weren't any. But they were connected, whether House liked it or not. Whether Cameron liked it or not. If he went down, she went down. Together.

"Won't be so soon as you think," she whispered.

"Oh, yeah," House retorted. "Because you're carrying the second coming and all."

Cameron snorted.

"Second coming of you? I sure as hell hope not. If that's true, I'm giving it up for adoption."

"So it's an 'it', now? That's curious. Thought you were baby-obsessed." Cameron shrugged.

"Don't know what 'it' is, yet," she explained. "When we know… Well…"

House smirked.

"What about our cases? What if it's both? A he-she?"

Cameron glared at him.

"First of all, I don't think 'he-she' is a proper term in the medical community. Secondly, that's my kid you're talking about. I don't care if you're sick or not, I'll sock you in the balls."

She saw the ghost of a smile creep across House's face.

"That's the Cameron we know and love."

"Yeah, yeah," she replied, and put the pillow over her head. This was going to be the longest nine months of her life.