House eyes the lone jack on his desk, halfway wondering where the other pairs are and where the marble has run off to. It's easier to think about that than the boy sitting opposite him.
Chase rises, his hands rubbing his face as he walks across the room, his hand on the handle before he hears House's voice.
"What's this supposed to change?"
A few errant strands of long blonde hair travel over his eyes before he answers.
"For the longest time, I figured because you were right about everything, you were someone I wanted to be like. Things do change, House. I'm not afraid of you anymore, and I don't even hate you now. I just…I just don't care.
"You're having what should be my child with who should be my girlfriend. I don't really cares if it changes anything. If it wasn't for her baby, I wouldn't want it to. But you should know. You like to know everything."
He doesn't exactly know what he's doing. That's becoming an increasingly familiar feeling. The rattle of his vicodin is comforting until after he's swallowed two for courage and he still hasn't moved. House can see her from here.
Her hair is wrapped in that all too common bun, her bangs barely behind her ears, the white lab coat thrown carelessly on a chair, her fingers typing a few strokes before staring at the computer screen and moving away to look under a microscope. She's got that signature waddle and he almost wants to smile, except that's when she spies him standing out in the corridor.
Opening the door to the lab, House glances at her a few times before finally picking the centrifuge as his designated staring spot.
"From head of an entire department to token intern. Figured Cuddy would turn all Delta Burke like in that Lifetime baby movie."
Cameron doesn't move a muscle.
"Watch out for shopping carts. Actually, look out for syringes, or stretchers, or defibrillators, or pills, or – I didn't realize there were so many ways to kill someone in a hospital."
House shuts his mouth, only realizing at the last that he's rambling.
Frowning softly, Cameron takes off her glasses and sets them on her small stack of papers.
"What are you doing here?"
It'd be really great if he knew, but he doesn't.
"I don't know,' he replies before thinking and mentally guffawing at himself.
Instead of trying to figure out anything, Cameron blinks before turning around to situate herself on the chair and continue her tests. She can feel his awkwardness radiating outwards like tiny tendrils of heat and untethered gas, but the time for needing to care has come and gone with his insistence.
"Can I help you with something, House?"
Yeah, talk to me like you used to. He watches her, noting the well played apathy, and shakes his head.
"No."
When she puts her glasses back on, House lowers his chin, counting the seconds to when she gives in. Reaching fifty-four, it starts to dawn on him that she's not the same woman he remembers. She's not giving in so easily. Good for her. Not so much for him.
"House, what do you want from me?!"
He starts as she slams her pen down beside the mouse and takes a deep breath as she pulls herself out of the chair. She braces her hands on her hips as best she can, her glasses slightly angled on her nose, as she waits for his answer with pursed lips.
"What is it, House?" She scoffs roughly. "What are you doing here?"
They've done this long enough for him to know that the truth won't get him anywhere, and neither will the lie. Maybe, if this had been sooner and he hadn't said this or that, either choice would have pulled them forward. But right now, as her upper lip twitches in anger or sadness, or probably both, he's as damned as he'll ever be.
"You want to tell me how wrong I am?" She reaches for the papers she's been hoarding. "I know how you feel. Okay? I get it." Clipping the pen onto the pocket of her scrub top, she shakes her head. "I'm selfish. I know." She grabs her lab coat with a jerk and finally looks up at him, her eyes more shiny than she realizes.
"So, what do you want from me? You want to hear 'sorry?' Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I thought I could leave you, the almighty House, in the dark. I'm sorry for trying to be your friend. I'm sorry for thinking you might care one bit for my baby. I'm sorry, damnit."
"Good."
It's the first word that slinks through, a little too sarcastic and not quite abstract as it had sounded in his head as he'd thought it. Though, he'd never had the intention of saying it to begin with. It's been too taxing a day for him, and it's just become one for her as he sees her jaw drop just the slightest. Not good.
"I didn't –."
"You know what?" she smiles tightly. "Save it."
"Cameron!" he shouts as she walks past him. "Damnit, I didn't mean to say that. I came here to call a truce."
Cameron halts, her back still to him, her eyes closing as she bites her tongue. When she turns around, she doesn't know what she's going to say, but she does know what she won't. The repressed moments of wanting to tell him 'I love you' are behind her, lost somewhere between a drugged kid and a string of barbs directed at her. She's quit trying to pick them up. She's got other things to worry about now.
"You call truce?" She hopes the mirth in her voice doesn't slip past him. "How very gallant of you, House."
"I mean it. I…figure it's all amniotic fluid under the pregnant bridge."
"What's changed?"
"What?"
"What's changed?" Cameron steps closer to him, needing to see every little fleck of deceit or honesty cross his features.
"Why the sudden change of heart, House?"
"Besides the face that I gave back the presents to the kids in the oncology ward? Nothing."
"You don't change your mind unless something changes."
"I do too."
"Which means you're just saying this for some twisted reason just to torture me."
"I berate you and you get mad. I try to make things better and you get mad. Maybe you're the one who's the sadist."
"Kick a dog long enough and it'll finally stay away."
He's slightly taken aback for no other reason than the fact Chase is right. Which certainly can't be right, but there's no denying that resilient look in her eyes, the only kind of resilience that comes from being beaten by him. He can't even find anything to say, other than 'I'm sorry,' though he's really not and a lie will only complicate things.
It's the first time she's admitted anything like this aloud, the rejection, at least. The moment the words leave her lips, so does the fight, the energy, the bark. She stares at him, her breathing becoming even in the aftermath of frenzied anger, her shoulders losing the tension that makes her back tighten, and then she sighs.
"House, I – I don't know what kind of game you're tryin –."
"I'm not." He focuses on her shoulder. "You screwed up. I screwed up. Everyone keeps telling me to get over it. I'm just jumping on the bandwagon for the little shots of tequila and the off chance it tips over due to Cuddy's breasts."
She doesn't believe him. Not even nearly. But this is the first ray of light at the end of a long tunnel, and while every fiber of her tired being is telling her to leave him be, she just can't. Not yet. He hasn't quashed all her hope. It doesn't mean she's an idiot, though.
"What does this truce mean?"
"It means we don't hate each other."
He can't give her too much, and he's not even sure he can take what she wants to give. He hopes she doesn't misunderstand it.
"I never hated you," she whispers as she turns her head.
House lets his thumb brush the curve of his cane. "I can't say the same."
The last thing she should feel is relief, but there it is, soaking through her bones. A lie means he's lied this whole conversation; the truth means some of it's been real. Cameron catches the flicker of his gaze travel beyond her and she taps the papers in her hands softly.
"Okay. Truce."
She walks out then, leaving House to deflate subtly in the absence of her tattered guilt, in the absence of her hazy fire, in the absence of her. It's the first time since he's found out, that he accepts their past, accepts that he used to love her, and accept that sometimes he misses her. Or it could just be the slight guilt talking.