A/N: I haven't been very good with posting this fic regularly, have I? My apologies. I had a few issues with betas (one of which got it confiscated by the Housemaster...skills, Katie. Skills.)

I'll try to do better. I really like writing this and have been messing with the plot a bit. Okay, new chapter. I hope you enjoy.

x X x X x X x X x X x

When Chase was fifteen, he had gotten into a fight.

It was just outside the hospital where his father worked, the hypocritical fumes its employees seemed to breathe with every word choking him with each breath he dared to take.

He had been sick, the kind of sick hospitals couldn't, wouldn't fix.

He had been sick of hiding and lying and smiling this goddamn fake smile. That act, that pantomime was killing him.

He was sick of pretending.

He was arguing with his father over some long-forgotten matter, something unimportant they only fought over to have a reason to scream.

He had been angry for too long to remain trapped in that deluded silence of thought, his stiff upper lip softening, the curtain screening his everything-is-alright matinee collapsing down on its one-man cast.

He had shoved it in his father's face, the fact that he was an adulterous bastard, whatever girlfriend he had that week suddenly out of the shadows of all things unacknowledged where all his father's vices kept a comfortable home.

He lost it.

He swung.

He hit his father, clear across the face.

What's worse came next.

Rowan Chase swung back.

It's funny how that stupid fight was all he could think about now, how the floor felt strangely familiar beneath his back, how the bitter after-taste was the same. Back then, he used to wake up with dried blood in his mouth from the wound on his swollen lip re-opening. Now he couldn't get that strange poison out from between his teeth.

Who wanted to attack him here, now?

His mind reeled, stomach churned. The faint light burned his newborn eyes as his lids fluttered open.

Weird didn't even begin to describe.

He glanced down at himself, at the sweat that glazed his skin, the dirt coating the bottom of his socks, the ballpoint pen messages scrawled across his dirty palm in his own handwriting.

Don't go through the door yet.

Yet?

So much for getting out.

He stood his legs surprisingly awkward beneath him.

Why shouldn't he go through the damn door?

Yet, huh?

When then, if not now?

Where did it lead, not just behind the door but this whole stupid dance between life and death? Would he still be stuck here if he, his body, didn't make it down there on Earth?

And what if he did survive?

How broken would he be?

The tears in his shirt claimed devastation, something sharp and flat having been driven its way straight through his body, his back. Would he be crippled or worse? How banged up did his head get in the crash? Dare he consider brain damage?

Here he was functional. He could walk, talk, breathe on his own.

But what if he didn't want to be painless?

Chase stared at the doorknob.

He had never been brave. What did he have to loose now, apart from everything? Everything wasn't worth much to him anymore.

The handle felt cool and grainy beneath his fingers, danger in stride under his command.

Don't go through the door yet.

Screw it.

Screw it all.

Turn the doorknob, a final rebellion against all things proper and pedantic only the find it locked.

Of course it was.

Even dead his luck was shit.

Suddenly he hated himself, hated his hypocrisy and weakness and every inch of him that felt relieved for not having to risk it.

Turn around, walk away. It was so like him.

The ballroom had long-since emptied; pallid streamers of pale gold and white lay scattered across the scuffed black floor among forsaken gems and shattered masks, the ghost of the near-forgotten gala still dwindling in the midst of dying candlelight.

The echo of his footsteps across the soulless hall was a sullen sort of comfort, a soft and forbidding reminder of home.

It was too damn quiet, too safe. He didn't want to be a sheep, one in a million followers destined to follow blindly.

"You hear that?" He called to no one in particular. "You hear me? I'm done being blind. I'm done not seeing! I'm bloody done-"

His breath caught in his throat, burning his lungs from the inside out. His legs couldn't hold him; his eyes couldn't see.

"House, stop messing with the morphine. He was just in a car crash that could leave him-"

"Brain-dead, leg-dead or just the boring kind where he just stops moving and Cuddy makes me wear a suit? Cool it Cameron, we need to check for brain damage before his it's too late to fix."

"That morphine's not just keeping him sedated, House. Without it he'll be in-"

"-complete and absolute pain?"

It felt like an explosion, a bomb igniting beneath his ribs, every inch of him praying for insensitivity.

"House, you can't just-"

"-cut his morphine? Oops."

A scream exploded from Chase's lips, agonized to the last.

"At least we know his vocal chords work."

"House!"

Cameron's voice rang with horror.

Bandages help his broken body together, the soft sheets of a common PPTH post-OP room laying heavy on his torn skin shattered bones.

"Hey there Wombat, we need to make sure you didn't bang up that that pretty little head of yours too bad. What's your name?"

"House," he choked, fingers curling, crumpling the sheets beneath him, swollen eyelids sealing shut, distant tears burning raw skin across his face.

"Not mine, yours."

He tried to turn his head, tried to see his colleague.

Cameron, oh God it was Cameron. Help, God, Cameron, somebody, help. Help...

"House, stop it. He's barely stable. He can't think past the pain. Put him back under."

"We can't MRI. You think he'd prefer his own comfort over not being able to remember his childhood, med school? You think he doesn't care about the little things like how to walk and talk? You think he could survive as something useless?"

It was amazing how they could ignore the screams of a dying man, so lovesick, so tortured everyone in the hallway had stopped to stare at the source. Cuddy had cut-off mid-sentence to attack the door only to find it locked.

Oh, the irony.

Chase gasped, his inarticulously fumbling over his mottled words.

"What's he saying?" House asked impatiently, glancing at the rattling door.

Cameron needn't have leaned in, putting her breath close to his.

His words were clear.

"Kill me."

"Chase-"

"Kill me," he whispered, gritted teeth filling with blood.

Cameron looked up in dismay. "House, put him under." House didn't move. Her voice turned sharp. "Find another way to get your answers. Knock him out."

Chase felt the cold reality slip away, a warm sort of darkness hollowing him.

What a familiar friend this emptiness had become.

x X x X x X x X x X x

"Oh, you don't suppose-"

"-Simply can't be-"

"Why, I never-"

Voices swirled around him, vacantly drifting through and throughout his mind, beneath his bare skin, easily visible in the cheap light of appraising eyes. He was on the floor again, suddenly aware of every inch of skin exposed, every inch of skin he had.

"-Natural blonde-"

Chase's eyes snapped open. He really didn't want people looking at any hair of his that wasn't on his head.

Was dignity such a distant dream?

His eyes skimmed the scuffed black lacquer floor and above, looking around at the somewhat faceless crowd. Most still bore masks, some broken; missing noses or cracked from forehead to poised lips. All stood staring in the now dimly lit room, the strange and familiar comfort of judgment softening the shame of this foreign infamy now working its way through his body.

He dropped his gaze back to their shoes before squeezing his eyes closed, praying they'd all just go away, his lips pursed as he forced a moan back down his throat.

"Ya all standin' 'ere waitin' for him to do a trick? He don't look like a dog to me. Go play dead with all the otha' gufs."

Chase flinched silently. He knew that voice.

"Eh, coopies, you all stupid? Scram."

There was no pause, no hesitation. Brooklyn-Boy said scram and they scrambled. Shuffled feet and hushed voices were suddenly amplified and muffled all at the same time, an orchestra of blithe preparing to play, each pause peppered with the sound of cloth hitting the ground, offerings of attire left to one without.

"Hey kid, roll ova' or somethin'. You don't look so good all twisted like that."

Chase felt a warm cotton jacket drop over him, its seems stretched and worn from wear, its angles odd and tired.

Slowly he sat, careful to keep himself covered. His head was spinning, muscles aching. He wanted desperately to go to sleep, to disappear in his own shadow and let his body heal where his mind could not.

He wanted to turn off, let this mess subside for a few hours where all this wasted time stood at a stand-still.

He just wanted peace.

Instead he opened his eyes.

"Got a name yet?"

Chase's voice was quiet, his words sharp.

The kid smiled a crooked smile, his too-white teeth bright in the dimly lit room.

"You needsta work on ya thank-you's. Didn't nobody ever teach ya no manners?"

"A triple negative; impressive," he said loudly, his tone edged with a harsh sort of humor. The boy's smile only grew further.

"Well, ain't you a little ray of sunshine! What eatin' you?"

The boy rolled is eyes in a way he should have been years away from mastering, ignoring the lock of dusty copper hair that had fallen into his line of vision. He hastily looked Chase over, the elegant bones wrapped in pale skin, soft features hardened with the uneasy air of someone who knew both feast and famine and the instability in-between.

What kind of life had this man lived?

As if he didn't already know.

He can't be over thirty, he thought vaguely, but he looks seventeen.

"Nothing," Chase shrugged, staring at the floor, "Sorry."

Probably feels seventy.

"Bull," the kid called flatly.

Chase merely shrugged, leaning back on his elbow to reach a pair of yellow pinstripe pants that looked to be about his size.

"So how dead am I exactly?"

"In a coma."

"That why I'm...you know?"

"In ya all-together?" Chase nodded. "Pretty much."

"Groovy," Chase muttered through the gritted teeth of a forced smile.

The kid smiled again, looking, for the first time, like he believed some good might come out of any of this.

"C'mon," he called his voice quiet, "Let's go see the movie."

What a dangerous thing hope is.

x X x X x X x X x X x

'Ello luvs.

Just a little bit of clarification; in the realms of Yiddish guf means corpse, while coopie is slang for 'little piece of shit' (and apparently my family's nickname for me through kindergarten. I am LOVED.)

Hey everybody, point out any typos to me. I stepped on my glasses and broke them so there might be some mistakes. Sorry. I have Microsoft Word blown up to about to about two-hundred percent but I still probably messed up in typing corrections. That and the fact that I'm not so sure about this chapter makes me kind of desperate for comments.