Title: Someone's been a bad bad boy

Series Title: The Inner Child 5

Author: Goddessof7s

Summary: A tow headed boy wanders into the Clinic and the team has its most interesting case yet.

Rating: PG

Notes: Now I would like to warn all of you fans who like plausible stories, with no fiction except characters. This is not the story for you! This will require heavy suspension of dis-belief, YOU ARE WARNED! Flames regarding scientific accuracy will be printed to be scoffed and mocked in front of all my friends!

Warnings: There is no slash in this story. It is more of a character study. Major characters are Chase and House with bit roles from everyone else. UNBETAED

A reviewer commented on House seeming too soft too fast, so I thought I would give ya'll some insight into what is actually going on in House's head. House's softness seems to happen without him realizing it. Small steps where he thinks "hell two more days with the brat and we'll have it figured out" "Just one more week then we'll pull some one else in to take care of him." In the end House is rationalizing Robbie with the time off from the clinic, food and cleaning, but the real reason he keeps him around is to solve the mystery. What I would be worried about is what happens when that mystery is solved. House doesn't look too far in the future about these things so what happens when they figure out what happened? No more mystery but will Robbie be able to be changed back?

House found that he was disappointed. Here the bad guy was all cliche and stereotyped but the inside of the warehouse just looked like a warehouse. Sure it was a little neater than expected, but there was no bubbling beakers with fun colors or cackling deformed henchmen groveling after the man. Rather than be upset he actually seemed relieved.

"So where's the tea and cookies?" The rest of the team looked sideways at House wondering about the man's mind. "Oh please. It's clear that he's excepting us. He had to know that some one would investigate a shrunken kiddified adult."

The doctor started to squirm under the collective stares of the group. "Well I suppose that's true, I have been waiting for something to happen, I just wasn't sure what to except. The lack of police was quite a relief I assure you."

House pulled out his cell phone. "Don't think that can't be remedied." House waved the phone in the air.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

House paused at the threating tone. He strode forward and poked the man in the chest with his cane. "I don't think your in the position to be making threats, bub. Oooo, I always wanted to do that. Wolverine makes it sound much cooler."

A general exclamation of "House!" seemed to focus the man.

"Right menacing and confrontational." House shifted stances and glared in that rather unique way he had. House was rarely serious. Condesinding, bored, irritating and irreverent but hardly ever serious. That's how Wilson knew that House really did care for Robbie for him to be knuckling down like this. Or perhaps it was how close the solution was that spurned him on. "Why exactly should I not call the police and have your ass locked in a cell with a large hairy man named Bubba? Don't think I can't–I have mob connections!"

The man smirked and had the audacity to not be cowed by his poking and mostly serious tone. "Actually I think that you can't afford to have the police involved if you don't want young Chase cut open and dissected." House blinked in shock and anger but managed to take a step back considering Franklison's words. Franklison smirked knowing that he had gotten the upper hand.

"Just so that we're all clear. I never meant for this to happen. It wasn't suppose to work like it did, and I can't figure out what went wrong."

"How did you even know we were here about Ro-Chase?"

Franklison's gaze swung over to Wilson. "I was watching from a window. I saw your Princeton-Plainsboro teaching hospital parking pass in the window. Why else would you be here?"

Franklison took a deep, steadying breath and House braced himself for the requisite bad guy monologue about his nefarious plans and how he was going to take over the world with an army of small children. He was going to have to resist making snarky comments if he wanted to glean any information from the scientist.

"They all said I was crazy you know. That it couldn't be done, but I had seen it work on a small scale before." As Frankilson talked his gaze seemed to turn inward and House expected that any second he would start cackling and exclaiming about how he showed them. House had to bite his lip to keep from interrupting. "I spent two years perfecting the machine. Everything was set and all I needed was little more funding and a test subject. That's why I sold my story to the Enquirer. I'd seen that young man jogging past the warehouse before so I knew he was fit. I didn't start to really think about he as a subject until I over heard a conversation he was having with an old woman in the grocery store. When I learned that both his parents had cancer I knew he was perfect."

Cancer? House's mind raced trying to put the dots together what did cancer have to do with a fountain of youth? The answer was right there he could feel it and then it hit him. It made him want to throttle the doctor even more. It also made him curious because there was no way it should have worked if Franklison did what House thought he did.

Cameron was going frustrated however with letting Franklison set the pace, "Why not some hobo or something? Why did it have to be Chase?"

House answered for him, "You needed a clean test subject right? One that was fit and wasn't on a lot of drugs. Lots of procedures would work better with a person that doesn't actually need it, like liposuction. You did something to Chase's DNA didn't you? Or at least the telomerase at the end of the chromosome. That's why you wanted Chase. With his parents history of cancer cells which have a unnatural ability to retain telomerase he would be the perfect subject. What I don't get is how you managed to actually do it."

Franklison looked sideways at House and said admiringly, "you really are just as smart as they say you are." House was not impressed in the least. After all he already knew he was that smart, it was everyone else that hadn't figured it out yet. "Well as to the answer to how, I'd better show you."

They were back in Cuddy's office, Robbie was asleep on her couch, where she had placed him. He'd cried himself out in the chapel and after he'd seemed to calm down he drifted a bit into sleep. Instead of waking him she'd gently lifted him and placed him half on her hip supporting his back. Sleepily he'd wrapped an arm around her neck and clung to her. He smelled of coconut and soap, House's shampoo. Robbie wasn't light, in fact he was getting heavier by the minute and she almost had to stop and put him down but they were almost there. The truth of the matter was that she liked that heavy warmth. That's was she was missing and what she wanted with her own child. She had to wonder if she could be a good mother. It was easy to be a mother for a few hours but she wondered if she would always be that way. How many nights might she miss working late or fixing some emergency. The truth was that she wasn't sure she would be able to put her child first.

As she stared at Robbie, who lay on the couch with his mouth open breathing softly and golden hair falling into his eyes, she wondered what would happen if they couldn't turn the clock back, or forward rather. She sat on the very edge of the sofa causing it to dip a bit. Stroking Robbie's hair softly she contemplated adoption and older children who were more self reliant.

This, this is what House was looking for. The back of the warehouse was sleek and shiny, it was obvious that Frankilson had poured every penny he could find into his research. There was no second hand junk or used merchandise. Whatever went wrong it most likely wasn't from a burnt out circuit or a faulty wire. Figured that the fix wouldn't be that easy.

"The FOY is very endothermic. Once the catalyst pushes the reaction into going it continues to absorb energy from the surrounding tissue. I slowly add electricity into the tissue to facilitate the reaction."

"You electrocuted him?"

Frankilson turned and glared as Wilson briefly, "It was less than fifty volts. Most of dispersed around his skin. No it wasn't enough to damage him, and that is the problem I believe. There wasn't enough energy to sustain the reaction on that alone."

"It started to break down the cells." House's voice filled with awe and knowledge as he thought out loud and figured out what had happened. "As Chase's mass reduced the chemical modified the cell structure and turned back the clock. The brain cells. The most complicated organ in the body and the least understood is the brain. Rather than break down the cells it might have used the electrons firing in the brain to sustain the reaction there and that could be what affected his memory bringing it to the same age as his body." House paced a bit and waved his cane wildly. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that House was right. When House spoke with that tone, confidence exuding from every pore, no one doubted him because he was never wrong. "Now." House's voice was filled with self satisfaction at a puzzled solved. "What I want to know is how do we fix it? How do we change Robbie back into Chase?"

Frankilson backed up two spaces close to a lab table that he could easily slip between himself and House. "We can't."