Week Twenty-Five: One Step Closer

House considered reproduction – when one really thought about it, none of it made much sense at all. From an evolutionary perspective, he supposed it did – people had to make more people and cats had to make more cats and ladybugs needed to make more ladybugs. But people had been recommending that cats be spayed for quite some time now.

Maybe people should be spayed, too, he mused. Maybe the entirety of human should just die out and then the aliens or whoever could come down and start over with whatever raw materials were left.

Maybe he should just give up on all of this. He'd have already stuck Cameron with a kid, though, and now he had to be invested in one way or another.

He had never thought of himself as someone who would be a father one day. He had tossed it around in his head when he had been dating Cuddy, of course. But there it was more separated; he could be a step-parent, which was a clear "step" away from any more commitment than just being a useful babysitter.

He and Wilson had done all right, that one time. He figured he could have replicated that success if necessary.

But being an actual parent, where you had to care and be supportive and, worse, do all of the family get-togethers and ass-kissing your partner's worst family members? That, he could not and would not do.

He was going to tell Cuddy that, he had been. But she hadn't given him the chance to fail, and that wasn't fair. She should have at least let him come to a standstill, to bow out when he realized that he could not be the man that she wanted or maybe needed.

She had made that decision before they had come to the necessary stalemate; she had made that decision completely alone.

And maybe that had been what had hurt the most, in all of it.

And yet she had still stuck around to care. Maybe that was the worst – maybe it was, in its way, all the worst. One on top of another, cascading into space.

Maybe he should cut and run, go back out again somewhere and ride off into the sunset – vanish. His way of telling everyone "thanks for caring, but no thanks." Showing everyone that he wasn't really worth caring about.

Because he really wasn't. He broke everything that he touched into a million pieces. He just give up.

The Caribbean was going to be beautiful this time of year, wasn't it? Why not just go out on a win, save everyone the trouble? Why not just be the person that he knew he had been all along? That was easier…

But that wasn't the way to survive.

Chase paced his lonely apartment, all over again. He could feel traces of Cameron everywhere – in the walls and the bedroom, the chairs and the sound of the wind rustling the curtains. Had he, after all, managed to make all of his father's mistakes? Had he chased away the only woman he had ever truly loved?

And now she was pregnant with another man's child. Chase's boss' child. How was he supposed to cope with that, even if he could rush back in, in some kind of grand gesture to win her back?

He hadn't pictured himself as part of some kind of weird, patchwork family. He could remember how jealous he had been when he'd found out that Cameron still had her ex-husband's sperm.

Well, this was so, so much worse. This was going to be a living, breathing, thinking being that had somehow been formed of Cameron and House. It would have to be some kind of anti-Christ, honestly. Maybe Chase should call out an exorcist to solve the issue. Or maybe he should exorcise himself, get rid of all the memories of Cameron and start all over again. He was a good-looking guy, it wasn't like he couldn't find a girl somewhere who would want to be with him; he was a doctor, it wasn't as if he couldn't find someone who was interested.

Even within Princeton-Plainsboro, there would be women who would want to be with him… Why was he still trying to hold on to Cameron, after all of this?

Maybe he had to see her one more time, and then he would know what to do. Maybe that would be the answer. Something in his heart would know, and then he could stop wondering about it all.

So he would go see her. He wouldn't get sidetracked by all of this, he would just go see her and talk to her and figure everything out once and for all. There would be a deciding moment, and it would be a deciding moment with incidental music; it would be one that he couldn't miss, even if he was as dense as House said he was sometimes.

House. How was he supposed to keep working for House, after all of this? Was it normal that he hadn't walked out yet, or hadn't strangled the man yet? Maybe Chase was everything they said he was. Maybe he was just a doormat that let people do whatever they wanted, just so that he could think that he was wanted.

Or would it be taking the higher ground? Was his career the most important part of any of this? The good that he could do for the world? Would that make everything else worth it? (He wasn't fully pure either, he reminded himself – he had done things, he had done a thing, he would have to take to his grave.)

Maybe he should just call Cameron and talk to her about everything. Every last part of this whole sordid story.

Maybe that was the answer. All he had to do was pick up the phone and dial.

He picked it up with his hands shaking, swallowing hard, running his hands through his hair. It was going to be hard; it was going to be impossible.

But he would have to talk to Cameron if he was ever going to live with himself ever again. If he was going to move on.

Unless, of course, he didn't want to move on at all.

He scrolled down to Cameron's name and hit "Call".