Retrospect

by GVBW

Summary: A last case, a last redemption. Wilson looks back and tells the final story of House. Set POST whatever Season proves to be the final one. PRIMARY CHARACTER DEATH.

4. Chapter 4

RETROSPECT

Part IV

By GeeLady

Summary: A last case, a last breath, a last redemption. Wilson looks back and sets things right. (This is not a House's Head/Wilson's Heart related fic', it's something else altogether). Set POST Season 5 or 6 or 7 (or whatever number proves to be the final season).

Pairing: H/W slash implied.

Rating: Mature. Language.

WARNING! Primary character death - that means, yes, Gregory House! But please try it out anyway.

Note: Some of the medical terminology and situations are made up. Some of this story is set five years from now and some forty years from now, so I'm allowing myself the space to be creative in what I think might someday be.

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"Greg once told me that diagnostic medicine was a crap shoot and he was a professional gambler."

"He was lucky?" Maria raised her eyebrows. "So his genius was irrelevant? Did he gamble with that kids life? If he did he is responsible for his death."

"That was just his take on it. House didn't gamble with patients' lives unless there was no other step to take. Nothing that would lead to a cure. Diagnostic medicine - hell - any practice of medicine is part knowledge and part letting God sort it out."

"He was a drug addict. And, from what you've described to me, an alcoholic. He took risks. He played the odds. House was right calling what he did a crap shoot."

"House trained under the best medical minds of the last century. He cured almost every damn case sent to him - most of them considered insolvable or hopeless. His kind of medicine wasn't luck, it was skill."

"Then why did he fail with this one?"

"I keep telling you - we failed! House wanted to treat that kid - help him - and we took it upon ourselves to stop him."

"You can't know the kid would have survived if House had been allowed to treat him. You said yourself that House was barred from the kid and the kid died. If House was so damn right about everything - why is that kid dead?"

Doc' gave her an telling wink. "You're a sharp one. All in good time. House was so adamant about everything. He had a unique up-bringing, a sweet mom and a lousy father - abusive son-of-a-bitch. I never learned any of that until House came to live with me right before he got sick. I mean really sick, not just Gun sick."

"What did the Gun do to him? I've read very little about it."

Doc' Wilson fingered the wool blanket draped over his knees. Maria felt the dampness in the air. So many long term geriatric care facilities were in such a state - breaking down all over the country with taxes higher than ever. No wonder Doc' was so opinionated about the current state of the Union.

"We named it, you know. I mean, not me and Cuddy or Plainsborough. But the medical community. Street hypes' think they came up with the moniker."

"It fits. Taking any kind of heroin is like playing Russian roulette. It really is like holding a metaphorical gun to your head."

"And a non-metaphorical one. We labeled it Gun for that, and for a very different reason. A far uglier one than any image of a drug addict holding a needle to his arm, or a suicidal addict holding a gun to his head. Gun heroin is a genetically modified opiate derived from poppy seeds just like any other. But a real ambitious scientist decided to modify it a little more to see what he could come up with. To see just how potent, how harmful he could make the shit. I hope someone fed him a bowl of it for breakfast."

Maria was silenced by the venom in Doc's voice. She could see and feel the rage behind his words, his un-quelled sense of outrage at the damage the substance had introduced into his friend Gregory Houses' life.

"Gun works by entering the human D1 dopamine receptor gene that's located on chromosome 5 at q35.1." He knew most of that meant little to her so he explained further. "Subtype D1 is the most prevalent type of dopamine receptor in the bodies central nervous system. It stimulates and regulates, among other things, neuron growth. Dopamine as you may know is one of the so-called "feel good" chemicals our bodies produce. We can't live without it. More to the point, without these feel good chemicals, we wouldn't want to live. Without them, the neurons in our brains begin to malfunction. Our behavior malfunctions.

"Gun goes in and modifies D1 but it does it in a very, very specific way. With the first hit - we in the medical community called it a "bullet" - Gun enters the D1 dopamine receptor gene and makes a hole. Not a bonafide hole like a bullet makes but a marker - an "announcement" or a sign to indicate to its pals that will soon visit that it was there before them - like a gang member spraying graffiti on a fence or, in the case of Gun, a greeting from a stranger to the occupant.

"Gun says Hello to the D1 genome, and leaves it's John Henry behind for the next bullet - the next arrival of its gang. Then it -" He made as though his hands were two leggy bugs crawling away across the floor "goes away. It dies like a spider after it's laid an egg sack.

"When the junkie takes his second Gun hit or bullet, that bullet goes in, "sees" the hole, recognizes that it's fellow gunslinger was there ahead of him and settles down beside that mark - the hole that was made from the first bullet. This new Gun bullet makes a second hole. But it also deposits a part of it's own genome sequence into the first hole and the second hole it just made. The it goes away and dies. Gets eventually flushed out of the hosts body like aspirin would be.

"Now Junkie takes his third bullet and this one goes in, sees the first two holes and attaches the next part of its' mutual genome sequence to the first and second holes and makes a third one. Then it goes away and dies. And on and on down the line until bullet number six.

"Junkie liked those first five bullets. Oh, he liked them so much he just can't quit. Here's the rub. If Junkie decides not to take that sixth bullet or hit, he could still recover. Hard as hell rehab - the worst - but he might make it because the partial genome sequence those bullets fired will remain inert. Inactive. Dormant.

"But shoot that sixth bullet and Gun deposits the final part of its own genetic sequence and there's almost no turning back. At this stage, Gun is active within the junkies system, re-writing his D1 dopamine gene and making itself invisible."

"How do you mean?" Maria was impressed and a little horrified by what she was hearing.

"It's trying to tell the D1 receptor to ignore it. Do you see what that means? It means the body soon will be unable to "see" Gun. It'll feel it. It'll make junkie feel good. Good for as long as a Gun high lasts. A high dose might put the addict in the pain-free clouds for a few hours at best. The body will feel it, use it, obediently distribute it to the brain cells, even eventually - a long time down the road - flush it out so the junkie can feel the next effect of Gun - a long, hard, miserable crash filled with a physical agony of a description I can't imagine. Pain beyond the Ten scale. One medical journal I read once reported a subject - a junkie - describing the pain as though his bones were trying to crawl out of his body. Terrible pain."

"My god."

"The worst part about Gun is when the Junkie takes his seventh hit - we called it "the one up the pipe". The one that flushes your life away - that last bullet goes in, deposits the remainder of its mutual genome sequence through the first six holes, makes it own seventh hole, leaves its mark behind there as well, right onto the D1 receptor and then it plugs all the holes. It plugs itself in, like a socket into an electrical outlet or loading new software of the worst kind onto a previously well functioning hard drive. Gun acts like a virus only it doesn't just hide in the cells or the DNA or the genes, it becomes part of them. It becomes alive but invisible to the bodies defenses. No amount of morphine injections, no amount of detox will get rid of that new genetic code. Now the junkie can't live without Gun. For Gun to continue to make the high it needs more of it itself just like any narcotic but because the junkies D1 receptor no longer works without it, the junkie is trapped. So the junkie can't stand life without ever increasing doses of Gun. If he doesn't get Gun, not only will he feel the worst pain imaginable, but he'll go mad."

"Who in their right mind would knowingly create something like that?"

"Anyone with the funding and the knowledge. Thing is, the guy who designed it probably didn't know exactly what it was he had created until well into the experimental stages. Rats, frogs, rabbits . . .by that time, it was too late. Though you haven't heard the worst part yet."

Maria stared at old Doc's grey face. His red rimmed eyes spoke almost as much as his dry, cracked lips did.

"Because Gun can't been seen by the immune system or any of the host's physiological systems, but can only be felt by the host himself, the body's defenses can't find it. Even if the immune system had a defense against it, it couldn't use it. Gun kills by tricking the body into an insatiable need for more Gun while preventing the host from ever being able to flush it out. It rewrites specific genetic code to protect itself while it kills."

"It sounds like a genetic weapon."

"Might have been funded that way, but no one outside the military really knows."

"I'm a bit confused. I understand why the junkie gets trapped into the ever increasing need for highs, but in laymans' terms, can you explain to me exactly how Gun kills the host?"

"It interferes with correct dopamine production. The body, though, can't see what's interfering so it sends out a massive assault on the bodies systems. An immune reaction begins which escalates over a very short time. The bodies muscles, joints, blood vessels, organs, even the fat cells come under attack. Gun kills like AIDS used to, only within months. Not years or decades - months! Eventually the immune system - and remember it's a hyper-immune response, not a collapse of the immune system like in AIDS though the result is one and the same - becomes depleted and crashes. The body begins to break down. It can no longer fight infections, no longer absorb nutrients. Gun addicts usually die of starvation before any other complications become bad enough to kill them."

"Is that how Greg House died?"

With a great shuddering intake of the room's stale air, he said, "That's how his body died." Doc' Wilson began to weep silently. "But we killed the rest of him long before that."

XXX

"Will the defendant please stand."

Wilson watched with a sinking heart as his best friend and colleague stood before the judge. His lawyer and the plaintiff's lawyer and the plaintiff - Mister Parks, father of dead Jason Parks - also stood.

Parks' face carried the stony look of the man in the right. Righteous vengeance. Justice. All those things were clearly evident in his expression.

House stood like a man who had been forced to quit a foot race just as he was about to cross the finish line. Jason Parks was on his mind. Not the boy Jason Parks but the patient. Houses' dead patient. Wilson knew this time there would bo no Cuddy able to rescue House from his punishment. House was about to be found guilty - they all knew it - and the judge would set a date for sentencing a few weeks down the line.

House was moments from losing his license to practice medicine and his freedom to live as he pleased. He would be spending those few weeks in a Remand center and no one knew how many years in some other prison facility.

The court room air felt oppressive and all eyes were on the accused.

Judge read the verdict brought to her by the Bailiff. "On the criminal charge of Involuntary Manslaughter the jury has found you Guilty. On the criminal charge of Abuse of a Child under your care, the jury has found you Guilty. On the final charge of ignoring a court issued order to Cease and Desist of treatment of the patient Jason Parks, the jury has found you Guilty. Therefor it is the judgement of your peers and this court that on all three counts you are guilty as charged."

The judge completed her reading of the verdict against Doctor House. "Do you have anything to say before I proceed?"

House did not look at the judge or his lawyer. He didn't glance around to see Cuddys' stricken face or Wilsons' guilty one. House didn't look at the floor. He didn't look anywhere. He shook his head No.

"We will reconvene for sentencing in two weeks time. In the interim Doctor House you will be incarcerated in the local Remand until that day. Please take Doctor House into custody."

Wilson and Cuddy watched the handcuffs placed around Houses' wrists and he was lead away. He never looked at either of them.

XXX

"Doctor House was sentenced to ten years and sent to jail. A year later, a few of us got together and filed a motion to lessen the first charge to Reckless Endangerment. We also managed to have the Abuse of a Child charge reduced to Departure from Appropriate Care. It shaved six years off his sentence. But his medical career was still over."

"Doctor House ignored a court order. He attempted to treat a patient while under that order and did so behind the parents and the Dean's back. His experimental treatment of that kid resulted, as far as I can see, in the kids death. That's criminal." Maria insisted.

"Yes! - House did everything wrong. I already said that. You were here - you must have heard me. I'm not defending his wrong actions, I'm telling you why that kid died. I'm telling you why House died and why it was our fault. And his final treatment of that kid was not experimental."

To her if Doc' Wilson was trying to prove House deserved everything he got, he could hardly have chosen a better story. "Then explain it to me so I can understand."

"That's what I'm doing. The experimental treatments were supported by the parents. Try and remember the facts I'm giving to you and stop assuming House was some kind of villain with a bowl of leeches and a cattle-prod. Every damn reporter who ever covered that story assumed he was guilty before turning on their damn computer. If you're going to do the same bloody thing, you can go home."

Whew. Old Doc' was very protective of his former friend and colleague. But despite Doc's outburst, she wasn't going to assume House was innocent either. "What happened after he got out of jail? I mean after you saw him at the clinic that first time?"

"One day the doorbell rang and it was House."

"How was he? He was a hype by then. Addicted to Gun." She shivered at bit at the thought of the stuff. "How did he look?"

Doc' had calmed down. He looked at the floor and then at her, his wide brown eyes full of pain. "I hardly recognized him."

XXX

"House!?" Wilson had made himself a mid morning snack of scones and blueberry jam and was trying out a new coffee. At seeing Houses' gaunt appearance he suddenly felt guilty for the crumbs on his lips. He waved him in. "Jeez - House - come inside."

The air was mid-November chilled and House wasn't dressed for it in his knee length thin summer rain coat. It looked like it had been sewn for someone else, someone far wider in the shoulder than he. Its hem was frayed from being stepped on. House smelled like a still water ditch. He shook his head at Wilson's offer. "I need some money."

"Of course but-"

Wilson could see House needed much more than that. A decent meal, a bath, a warm place to sleep. "Please come in?" Wilson asked his friend. "I'll help you any way I can."

"I can't, Jimmy." House had not looked into Wilsons' eyes yet and Wilson was suspect something was seriously wrong - more wrong than just House being an addict or a man with the appearance of living on the streets.

Wilson almost couldn't stand what had happened to his friend. Almost couldn't bear what was still happening. He reached out a hand for House to take it.

But instead House shifted his feet, actually took a step back. "It wasn't your fault." It was the first time House had spoken to Wilson of the trial and all the things that had happened to put him where he was now.

Wilson felt the guilt, the shame, the helplessness anew. "Maybe not. But if we'd just seen-"

"-Parks would have eaten you too." House coughed and now looked at his old friends concerned eyes. "Can you spare any?"

The tender moment was over but House had exposed himself. Wilson could see a desperation in his eyes born of something other than street hunger or a junkies need for a fix. "What's going on? Please let me help you."

House almost shouted it. "You can't." Then he put dirty hands in torn pockets and sighed. "Please."

Wilson's resolve to be strong buckled under the weight of Houses' obvious torment. That he was in agony was plain. Pain from what - other than his leg - wasn't. Wilson decided to outright ask, "I'll give you whatever you want if you'll tell me."

"You'll give it to me anyway won't you?"

Wilson had to admit that yes he would and said so with a tiny nod. But from years of friendship he knew House would confess if Wilson asked him without design - without the need to fix. As long as House believed there was no obligation to social knots of repentance or apology, he would tell him. But for some undisclosed reason House wouldn't allow any assistance, even on his own terms, which terms Wilson would adhere to no matter how nuts. Wilson decided he would adhere to almost anything to keep House within sight and willingly do all things for the knowledge that he was safe. "Why won't you let me help you?"

"It's Gun." House said looking directly at him. "Gun. Okay? I'm on Gun."

Wilsons' knees almost folded beneath him and his eyes watered on their own. If his love and concern for House made House uncomfortable, he didn't care. He wanted House to know that. House needed someone to care. Decades of denial had failed to erase that basic human requirement of all: the need to be needed. House, despite all protests, was subject to his humanity just like everyone else.

But Gun? Gun wasn't just an addiction, it was a death sentence. It was a marked ending to a horrible route. It was a death car on rails and you couldn't help but turn with it down the littered empty streets to the graveyard.

Wilson wanted to embrace him but was afraid House would run. "G-gun?" It must have happened while he was in jail. The pain or the loneliness had gotten to him. Parks counter-appeal of their appeal to reduce the charges must have, via his court-appointed outclassed lawyer, reached Houses' ear and made off with his hope. A man of fifty-four with no career or purpose waiting for him upon release at, the earliest, age of sixty would find it easy to turn away from unfounded hope and toward anything that offered relief.

Wilson could well imagine the aspirin that had been offered by the penal system to ease the pain in his leg, an analgesic not remotely strong enough to touch Houses' damaged, twitching nerves.

And Wilson could see in his minds eye Parks' personal signature on his secretary's type-written letter stating his intent to see that House remain incarcerated until he was a crippled old man.

When all was said and done, Parks' threats had proved weightless, but Gun had found House and hit its mark, straight to whatever motivations he had managed to preserve and cutting them down in their infancy.

House, Wilson calculated, had been out of jail less than a year and that meant he had already lived out most of his remaining life. Gun took no prisoners.

Wilson now could see what the desperation in Houses' tired blue eyes meant. The missing question was answered and the answer was House was in extreme need of a bullet. He was late for his next hit of Gun and if he didn't get it soon would be in unimaginable pain.

Parks had held no bars to ruin House. They had been forced to testify to the truth of Houses' past actions, his antagonistic personality and his unlawful actions prior to his conviction. All of them together had sent House to jail. Parks had done his best to keep him there. Now Gun was finishing the job.

If only they'd had the courage to stand up for House and tell Parks to take his contribution millions and go straight to hell. If only Cuddy had not carried the careers of dozens on her shoulders. If only he himself had seen what Parks was doing behind the scenes - bribery, digging up old injuries to personal pride House had inflicted on people, Tritter being one. IF any of them had only seen any of it, House might have been spared, if not jail, then the hopelessness. The last strike from Parks that had taken Houses' one ray of light - that he would get out of jail early and maybe, just maybe, start up his medical career elsewhere. Maybe be re-instated as a practicing man of medicine. That last blow had done him in.

It was all irrelevant now. "Gun?" Wilson wanted to wrap his arms around his friend and squeeze the gallows from his future. Instead, with a sick heart and escaping tears, he opened his wallet and handed over whatever he had. It amounted to a only few hundred dollars.

House took it, need winning over pride. "It's not your fault, Wilson." He said looking away to the street. His home and source of his want. Bullets and no pain for a while. No pain of any kind. Now it wasn't the puzzle that enticed House. Now the street possessed everything that he craved.

Wilson was loathe to let House go but there was nothing that he could say or offer that would make him want to stay, not with Gun and its pain-free whole souled if temporary ecstacy in the offering. What Gun granted would ultimately cost House far more than the bills he held in his hand. Wilson stepped forward and quickly embraced House before he had the chance to flee. He kissed Houses' dirty, unshaven cheek and then let him go.

"If you need anything else from me - anything ever - come here. Any time of day or night. Any time, you hear me?"

House stepped back, reaffirming the space between himself and the world that had thrown him out. He nodded. "I know."

XXX

"And then he was gone again."

"How long did he have to live do you think, at that point?" Over the course of that afternoon, listening to Doc's narration of what had happened to his best friend, Maria felt the question of Doctor Houses' guilt or innocense was no longer paramount. What had happened to the man had come to the forefront of her thoughts.

"I couldn't stand watching him just walk out of my life again. So I followed him. I got in my car, waited until he was at the end of the street and followed him. I had to at least know where he was staying. Without that I didn't think I could have gone to sleep that night. Not with the thought of him out there somewhere, maybe passed out in an alley or lying on a park bench. . . ." Old Doc' shook his head as thought to dispel the image.

"Where did he go?"

Old Doc' looked at her. "To hell, Sweetie. Greg House walked home to hell."

XXX

Wilson followed House to the place he would have feared in his nightmares if he had known of it. It was a ramshackle old house left standing between two modern ten story condo blocks. It was one of the last dumps marked for destruction once the investment companies had settled an acceptable price on the absent landlord. Wilson imagined the landlord squatting luxuriously in his twenty room mansion on the Italian Riviera, sipping wine with no thought to his good friend who used to be a doctor but was now a man in a free fall to a terrible death.

"Fucker!" Wilson shouted at the imagined landlord because he had no one else to shout at. No one and nothing was within reach to blame for his friends situation or the awful place he called home.

This house wasn't even a low rental dump, it was a known flop of drugs and prostitution. Wilson knew the types that lived there. He knew of them. This house wasn't far from where he had last seen his brother, this house into which his friend Gregory walked.

Wilson had no idea what to do. He had expected a tiny, squalid motel room or cheap basement suite. Not this place. But he had to know.

XXX

"It's four hundred now."

Bud's cigar smelling breath told him. House counted out the money Wilson had given him. Three hundred, forty dollars. "This is all I got." He offered the money to Bud, his - everyone's - Gun dealer.

"I can't give you an advance." Bud smiled through the smoke and his tar stained teeth, knowing how lame his counter-offer was. "But I got some regular stuff I can let you have. Cheap. Two hits for three hundred." He knew it would be refused.

"I can't use regular and you know it."

Bud knew it. He also liked Scruff-man, in one particular way. "That's my offer, take it or leave it, unless you wanna pay me the rest some other way?"

House didn't but Gun was calling him, filling his head with its incessant rolling of the chamber. His body added to the internal din, fairly screaming at him with need. "Fine."

Bud lead House to his private bedroom that he kept for his own purposes. Not for sleeping, Bud did that in a very nice suburban House miles and squeaky clean, good neighbor miles from there.

"When was the last time you ate?" Bud asked not out of concern for his customers health.

"Couple of days." Scruff-man muttered.

"Good, 'cause I don't want any surprises."

House bent over the single sagging mattress and Bud unzipped the fly below his substantial belly, mounting him with no warning or subtlety. House couldn't help but gasp at the pain and clutch at the beds' dirty quilt. Silently he cursed Bud with every thrust, enduring the hated man with the knowledge that at the end of it he would have his bullet and Bud, his pain and everything else would disappear for a while.

For almost a day. One painless day out of the world was worth two shitty days in. Bud thrust and moaned indelicately, shooting, at last, his release into the condom he had rolled onto his less than impressive dick.

As a dick, he was impressive in every way.

-

-

-

Wilson nudged open the unlocked door. It looked like it had been kicked in many times and any locks had long since been removed or left to dangle, broken and useless.

The place was quiet and for that he heaved a sigh of relief. Such a place he had seen before - once - a place not unlike this but not as bad. This place frightened him a little. Who he might encounter frighted him more.

Then he heard soft, rhythmic creaking noises from up the stairs and a mans' groan and pant for air. Then voices. One, he was sure, sounded like House.

The other, "Ah, that's better." Wilson thought he heard.

Wilson reached the top of the stairs just a fat, jolly faced man exited a shabby looking bedroom. At seeing him the jolly face quickly turned mean. "Who the hell are you?"

Wilson felt the fear return. Stupid of him that he had not thought he might not be safe or be welcomed in such a place. It was probably someones' private property - if it could be called such. "Um-"

Wilson glanced back into the bedroom when his eye caught movement.

House was there.

House, standing there, pulling up his underwear and jeans, fumbling with the broken fly that only did half way up. The odor of bodies and semen reached Wilsons' nostrils and it was suddenly clear what had been going on in the bedroom. The sound of soft groaning and the panting was made evident. Wilson felt his stomach lurch.

House felt eyes on him and turned his head to see Wilsons' eyes filled with anguish.

Without thinking, Wilson entered the room and grabbed Houses' shoulders. "House - my god - what are you doing? You, and, and that . . .guy?? Are you, are you-"

House pushed passed as though Wilson was not standing right in front of him. House instead followed fat, jolly-mean man into the hallway. "Bud. I want my hit."

Bud turned to answer House and Wilson was halted by the look of fury in the mans' face. "If you know what's good for you and your "friend", you'll get him out of here."

"I will." House acceded. Quickly. Without argument. "He'll go, he'll go, but not before you pay up."

Bud drew a small plastic bag from his pants pocket. "Here." He placed it in Houses' hand and said with mocking glee, "Enjoy."

Wilson watched the exchange with a sinking heart. House had a look in his eyes of a starved, half crazed animal and the tiny plastic baggie in his hand a fresh kill.

House grabbed Wilson by the coat sleeve and steered him back into the trash littered bed room. Wilsons' polished leather shoes stumbled, kicking greasy pizza boxes and crushed drink cartons out of their way.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Wilson was taken aback by Houses' anger. "I wanted to be sure you were safe. I-"

"-I'm fine, Wilson. Go home."

Wilson stared at House who had become a stranger. "Fine?? You're on Gun. You're living in a drug den. You just let a man-"

"-It's none of your business." House ground out between clenched teeth and pushed Wilson toward the door. "Go home. Leave me alone."

Wilson spun around. He saw the baggie clutched protectively in Houses' left hand. While House tried to maneuver Wilson to the door with his right - no easy task given the cane, it was slow going. It was a cane Wilson had never seen, more of a walking stick than a cane proper.

With a deft movement, Wilson snatched the baggie from Houses' grip, earning him a look of horror and then fury from his old friend. "Give it back!"

"No. Not until you agree to come home with me."

"Give it back Wilson." House acted like he had not heard him, his eyes never leaving his precious item - the ever so tiny amount of white powder he had earned by dropping his pants to an ugly man who hated him.

Wilson juggled the baggie from one hand to the other, each time just keeping it from Houses' greedy clutches. "Hand it over." House shouted. "Give it to me!"

Wilson could see it was a dangerous game he was playing. The House he once knew forced off Vicodin had turned paranoid and angry at everyone and everything. This House held the face of a man believing he would die without the tiny white bag of powder. That countenance was rapidly morphing into the expression of a man who would kill to get it back.

Wilson had to diffuse him immediately. He shouted "HOUSE!" and wrapped his strong arms around Houses' shaking ones, holding him in place until House was pouring with sweat from the effort to free himself and get back his precious powder.

Wilson was relentless and held on until House collapsed against the wall. Wilson let House fall gently to the floor, all the while keeping his arms around him. He held him there, still as the stale, heavy air until House slumped in defeat. House said in a weak whisper, like a child, "Please give it back to me."

Wilson hugged him still, not letting go. "I will." He assured him. "I will."

House didn't believe him. "I need it."

"I know." Wilson rubbed a gentle hand across Houses' thinning hair. "I know." He sighed heavily with the weight of his knowledge. Here or the street or with him, House was going to die. "Please come home with me. I promise you'll have whatever you need. Even this stuff. I promise. Please come home."

Wilson released his arms but not all the way, he kept his hands on Houses' upper arms, to reassure himself as much as House. Then he held out the tiny baggie of hard-won powder.

House took it with trembling fingers, clutching his dirty fist around it. He started to cry. "I don't want to."

Wilson nodded. He had expected that. "Why? Why live here if you don't have to?"

House looked up at him and for the first time in many years Wilson saw that same expression he had seen on Houses' face during the time of Tritter (simpler, easier times by comparison) when House had begged Wilson at the hospital to give him Vicodin. To give him relief from his pain, to give him anything to stop the agony.

But this agony - this pain - could not be stopped. Not by any drug or treatment program or counsel or love. Not by anything.

"I don't want to be reminded of what I had." House said, his words nearly inaudible.

Wilson realized House had been trying to protect him from this. This is why House had not come home or stopped by or even let himself be cared about - to protect Wilson from the knowledge of what House had been reduced to. House had kept himself apart so Wilson could still have those good life things and keep them untainted by the truth of Gun and a House who sold himself for a hit. House had tried to keep the ugly truth hidden so Wilson could remain free from the stink of his Gun-addicts' life.

Wilson touched Houses' hair again as House stared down at the only thing that mattered. Wilson knew House was waiting for him to leave so he could shoot up and also leave, but by a very different route.

"I love you." Wilson said to him quietly so Jolly, Ugly, Mean man would not hear the tender moment between one human being and another. "I love you. I don't care about this place, or what you've had to do or about this." He gestured to the baggie. "I don't care about any of that. I care about - only about - you. Please don't ever forget that."

House nodded but did not look up. Wilson had no idea if his head was heavy with shame or just the need to eat the bullet. Wilson kissed his hair. "When you're ready to - come home."

He stood and walked out, leaving House to do what he wanted to do, what he needed - had no choice but - to do.

House heated the water, added the Gun, drew up the magic bullet into a hype' and injected himself intra-muscularly.

His body didn't thank him. His mind didn't offer words of condolences over what he'd subjected himself in order to win the prize. All his body said was what House himself felt. A reward of sensation. . .

At last, at last . . .

As House cruised away on a pain free ocean he remembered words from a man who said he cared. Unlikely words. Words that no one had applied to him for a long, long time. Something he tried to accept as having meaning for himself: "I love you."

He wouldn't forget.

XXX

Part V ASAP!