A/N: Ack, I have no free time. I just finished my research paper on the impressionist movement for French and started tutoring again so my afternoons are pretty much filled with explaining proverbs and adverbs and why plagiarism is BAD. Seriously, I've got a third grader who thinks no one will notice if she rips off T.S. Elliot and a fifth-grader who scares the crap out of me. (She knows where to hide the bodies. o.O )
Sorry for the ramble, I'm just kind of swamped.
X O X O X
"So this is my life?"
"The highlights really, just the importan' stuffs ya really needsta see."
"Need for what?"
"Shh, Blondie. Ya'll see."
Chase shifted awkwardly in his standard sort-of comfortable Middle America movie-theater seat, wishing he had some fake-tasting popcorn to get the taste of bile out his mouth.
"Sorry," he muttered, more to himself than the child beside him, "I've already seen this one."
The nine-year-old Tony Camonte beside him snorted loudly. "And you think I ain't? Shut up and enjoy the show, narisch."
Chase sighed inwardly, shifted again and looked back up to the too-young teenager that he once was pushing open the front door of him Melbourne home only to find among the spilt gin and broken glass the sudden understanding that of all the times his father hadn't come home, this was the last.
"How come there's no sound?" Chase asked softly, barely daring to breathe.
"Do ya really need sound?"
No, he didn't.
He didn't need to be reminded of his mother's drunken sobs echoing throughout the hallway, how every subaudible resonance had seemed deafening, how silent his breath seemed among the noise of the world, his invisibility undefined and indefinite.
He remembered it all perfectly.
"Can we skip this part?" Chase asked in a sort of forced lightness, his fingers taking a vacant interest in the hot-pink hair ribbon currently taking vocation as his belt. "You can watch the present too, right?"
The child shrugged lightly before reaching behind him and pulling out a dull rectangular remote.
"Where'd you get that?" Chase asked in slight surprise.
"God's back pocket," the kids deadpanned, smirking darkly, hitting a square black button.
The screen was instantly filled with an odd-angled shot of Chase's body, unconscious in a hospital bed, an unrecognizable rag doll; torn, broken and bruised. Wilson sat beside him, filling out drug trial application while Foreman sat across from him, dozing in a stiff blue armchair.
"Do I get one?" Chase asked nonchalantly, nodded toward the remote.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Hot damn, ya hard to please. And I thought blondes was supposed to be easy."
"You're under eighteen. Stop trying to get in my pants."
"'Cause who wouldn't want to hit that?"
"Nurses," Chase laughed, "and nuns."
"Eh, watch it. I like nuns."
"I bet."
Chase listened for a moment as the soft laughter of a child filled the air, not completely innocent but blithe all the same.
"So does this mean-"
Chase cut off, suddenly aware that the child beside him had vanished.
There was a soft clicking noise and the screen filled again with a new image, this one of an eighteen-year-old Robert standing, staring beside a priest at his mother's casket, the first and last time he ever wore that ill-fitting suit that hurt his shoulders every time he shrugged when asked if he really was alright.
He hadn't been.
He wasn't now.
"I don't need to see this," Chase called loudly to the empty theater, "I remember it just fine."
Another click.
Another scene.
He was fifteen, on the ground in shock and pain, staring up at his father, the cool gray hospital behind him a somber companion to the strange, damp earth beneath him, his sight slightly blurred by the blood dripping into his pale eyelashes.
"This isn't funny," he called again, standing arduously.
White noise blared for a moment before the chapter changed again.
This time at a vaguely familiar apartment, a strange girl pressing him to the wall, kissing him, kissing back.
My God, it's Cameron.
Chase stood frozen, staring up at her, fragile and lovely.
This wasn't how he remembered her. In his mind she had been so strong and wild, twisted steel against glass, but now she seemed to very breakable, a porcelain doll rocking at the edge of the table, mechanic and stiff and so very ready for shattering.
Had he shattered her?
Chase sat back down limply, watching in ignominy as their clothing hit the floor, their bodies pressed together and they both gasped for air, the silence of the film louder than any scream that had escaped their lips that night.
"Funny ain't it?"
Chase jumped at the sound of the child's voice.
"Where'd you come from?"
Brooklyn Boy ignored him, leaning forward into the row before him, next to Chase, looking up at the screen.
"She's pretty," the kid stated simply. "She ain't the best I eva' seen, but pretty all the same."
"What are you trying to prove?" Chase asked sharply, "that she was the one, my greatest mistake? You think I wanted-"
"I ain't sayin' nothin'," he cooed with false timidity.
"You're obviously trying to make a point. What is it? That she'll never forgive me for dying?"
"She seems pretty forgivin'. What's got ya so worried?"
Chase glanced back up at the screen, to Cameron cradled in his arms, shaking like a broken child.
"I don't know anymore," he laughed, voice unstable, "not that I ever really did."
The boy's smile shifting to that of a proud father.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the epitome of humanity."
Chase shook his head, annoyance working its way through his body.
"So where did you go?"
"Heaven," the kid stated coolly, "there was a small disagreement between Gabriel and Michael."
Chase stared at him incredulously. "Angels?"
"Eh, Mikey's an archangel."
"Oh ya, right, my mistake."
"Don't go all sarcastic. It's true. Ya get it wrong infronta 'im and he gets all may-the-Lord-rebuke-you on ya sorry ass. Gabe forgot. He's good guy, but a little flighty."
"Unbelievable," Chase breathed.
The kid shrugged cheerfully.
"Ya thought ya was alone in this sad excuse for a universe? Naw, the only way anythin' could be this screwed up and still spin is if there was a greater bein' around 'ere to spill coffee on the blueprints then scotch tape it togetha' when it don't work so well."
"Don't you mean up there?" Chase nodded, indicating past the ceiling.
The kid snorted lightly. "It's borin' up there. Too much cream cheese."
Chase smiled again, suddenly aware of why children laughed four times more than adults. The world was a hell of a lot funnier when there was world of hell you were entirely unaware of.
"So what's all this...this Waiting Place? A second Earth?"
"More like Eden," the kid said, beaming like a child showing off the macaroni picture frame he made for grandma, "less perfect, more real."
"So where's Adam?"
"Tryin' to get his rib back from Eve."
Chase laughed.
"Sounds like Earth."
No response came. Chase tore his eyes from the now-blank screen to find the child had, yet again, vanished.
Chase stood, waiting for more unsettling memories to fill the empty theater but none came. It remained silent, empty, somehow much more threatening.
He shuffled out to the hallway, uncertain of exactly which way he'd come.
There was a small crowd circled around something at one end, obscuring his view.
Slowly he turned and walked towards them, a wasp to their social flame. It wasn't until he got close that he could hear the sorry, drunken sobs.
The bile that had been burning his throat for so long rose again.
X O X O X
Somewhere in the suburbs of Princeton, two doctors sat on the hood of a slightly abused red convertible watching the sun's daily suicide settle into the horizon before them.
"You're not eating," House noted flatly, taking another cheerful bite of his tuna taco.
Cameron stared at her nails, trying to remember the last time she painted them.
"You're not going to fall for him, are you?"
"Who?"
House examined her face carefully. "Chase," he said slowly, "he damaged enough for you now?"
Cameron gave House a small, forced smile. "You don't care about him at all, do you?"
House took another bite, giving himself an extra few seconds to answer.
"I care," he resolved softly, "enough to make sure he got a room with a Cuddy escape exit so we could do illegal tests on him without getting caught."
Cameron laughed to herself, soft and sick.
"Like I said," she whispered, "you don't care at all."
X O X O X
Random pop-culture reference explanations, as requested by my beta:
Tony Camonte was the name of the original Scarface in the 1932 film Scarface, Shame of the Nation.
The cream-cheese-in-heaven snark was a reference to the Philadelphia cream cheese commercials, which I've seen way too many of.
I don't like writing dialogue. It's really not my thing, and pretty much the hardest part of writing for me and this chapter had a lot of it. I cannot put into words how much I would appreciate comments.
