A/N: Thanks to all the lovely people who leave reviews! This is the second last chapter, so it's time for all you lurker to come out of the shadows!

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The rest of the day passed in a blur for Alice. She somehow pulled herself together enough to interview Dr Cuddy. Then she returned to her desk, hung a "do not disturb" sign on her back, and typed frantically for a couple of hours. The words flowed from her, the passion she felt for House morphing into passion for her story, and when she'd finished, Alice knew it was one of the best she'd ever written.

She presented it to Mad-Eye, sitting his office while he read it. She watched as he nodded, frowned and then, finally, smiled.

"This is why I pay you." It was the highest praise she'd ever received from him.

She ran the story past Max, and he changed just a few minor things.

"Alice, this is a great story. You really slayed a bad guy this time."

"Thanks Max." Alice had hurried out of Max's office before she gave in to the overwhelming urge to cry.

She made it home, sinking into a sofa, her mind a blank. She didn't want to walk into the bedroom and see the empty drawers where House's clothes had been, or go into the kitchen, where she'd see the gaps on the wall in the adjoining studio where his guitars had hung.

So Alice did the only thing she could think to do.

She cried.

She cried until her face was shiny with tears and snot. She cried until her eyes were almost swollen shut. Eventually she staggered into the kitchen, deliberately avoiding looking in the studio, grabbed a glass of water and went straight back to the sofa. Although she hadn't thought it possible, she cried some more, then pulled a blanket over herself and fell into an exhausted sleep.

In the morning when Alice woke, her previously happy home felt unbearably empty and vacant. She went into the bathroom and washed her face, not wanting to shower because it would mean finding clean clothes and seeing the gaps in her closet where his clothes used to be.

She looked at her red, puffy and blotchy face and frowned at herself. She remembered what Alice in Wonderland had said when she'd cried endlessly.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said, hands on hips, staring at herself in the mirror sternly. "A great girl like you, to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!"

Reciting Lewis Carroll's reprimand did nothing to help. Perhaps it was because when storybook Alice said those lines, she had grown so large she had a house wrapped around her. And real-world Alice was crying because she didn't have a House wrapped around her.

It was still early and she decided to go into work. There would be things to do to follow up the story and besides, it probably wouldn't be all that healthy to spend another twelve hours sitting on her sofa crying. Perhaps the office would be enough of a distraction.

The morning passed in a blur. Alice forced herself to read the paper, knowing that under any other circumstances she would be bursting with pride over the front-page banner headline: This man is why your healthcare costs more – an investigative report by Alice McKenzie.

Underneath the headline they had published a creepy photo of Simon Ferguson. Alice guessed Mad-Eye had sent the photographer out to take it after Alice had interviewed him. Of course, at the time, he hadn't realised what the tone of the story would be, so he was caught halfway between smiling and looking sick. He gave every indication of being a complete slime ball. Alice folded the paper with disgust, not wanting to see his face staring up at her and spent the rest of the morning staring out the window, playing with her Rubik's Cube, and deflecting the stream of people coming to her desk to praise her on the story.

Patricia came up to her desk around midday.

"Is your ego in any danger of exploding, or can I safely say congratulations?" she asked.

"I'm fine, and thanks," Alice replied flatly.

"Alice, darling, you look awful."

Alice gave Patricia the kind of stare that would have sent lesser beings scurrying away.

"You must come to lunch with me."

"No thanks, Patricia I—"

"I'm not taking no for an answer today, Alice. Come on, grab your purse."

Alice sighed. She supposed that listening to an hour of Patricia's whining about not being pregnant might at least take her mind off things. And although she felt as if she should be receiving sympathy instead of having to give it, she did like the idea of getting out of the office. If one more person came up to say congratulations – telling her "well done" about the story that she considered had destroyed the only good thing to have happened in her life for the last two years – she thought she might scream.

Seated in yet another of Patricia's favourite pretentious restaurants, Alice tried hard to pay attention to her lunch companion's cheerful gabbing about the latest fashion show she'd been to where a celebrity had been seen mauling a model within sight of his extremely pissed-off wife.

"So, as you can imagine it caused quite a storm, and I was the only columnist to cover it today," she said with glee.

"That's great Patricia, good for you." Alice tried hard to feign enthusiasm but she could hear the pretence in her own voice.

Patricia frowned at her and folded her arms. "Well, seeing as it doesn't seem like you're even going to ask how I am, I guess I'm just going to have to tell you. I'm pregnant."

Alice belatedly realised she should have noticed that Patricia had ordered mineral water instead of her usual chardonnay. Crap. Just what she didn't need. She wanted non-pregnant Patricia as a lunch date: someone else complaining that they weren't getting what they wanted from life was just the right sort of company for her in her current mood. Despite the fact that she was sincerely happy for Patricia, she knew it was going to take a huge amount of energy to fake the unbridled excitement that Patricia's announcement deserved.

"Patricia, I'm really, really happy for you."

"I know! Isn't it amazing. Finally. You can't tell anyone yet though – it's still early, but I know everything's going to be fine. Rowan would kill me if he knew I'd told you, but I knew you'd want to know." She leant in confidentially. "I think we conceived on the night of the dinner party. Perhaps the stars were in alignment that night?" She gave Alice a nudge, nudge, wink, wink kind of look.

Thinking about that night, about how House had cheekily barged in on her in the bathroom and then what had taken place next, simply made Alice have to swallow hard. Then blink. Then stare up at the ceiling. And then give in to the painful lump in her throat and yet another bucket of tears that her body had called up from somewhere.

"Oh, Alice," Patricia said sympathetically, patting her on the arm at the same time as looking around to make sure they weren't making too much of a scene in the cooler-than-cool eatery. "I know you want to have a baby too, but it will be your turn soon. You just have to keep trying, I know when Rowan and I first—"

"That's not it," Alice managed to say as she tried to reign in her tears. Trust Patricia to think that – after all it is all about her.

"Then what?"

Sniffing and trying to regain her composure, Alice slowly told Patricia the story, how she told House she wouldn't do the malpractice investigation, what had happened when she'd continued with it, how House had helped and then pulled the rug from under her – as he'd had every right to do.

Patricia listened quietly, nodding, as Alice told her lengthy tale.

"So that's it. I'm alone again. And I don't even want to go home anymore." Alice drained the glass of wine she'd ordered and waited for some brief, gushing, superficial sympathy quickly followed by a change of subject back to Patricia and her pregnancy.

"Alice McKenzie! I've never heard anything more fucking pathetic in my life!" Patricia's tone could not be called gushing. In fact, the severe, scolding tone actually made Alice sit up straight and stop sniffing. And despite the fact that any conversation in the newsroom was punctuated by swearing, Alice thought it was the first time she'd ever heard Patricia use the f-word.

"But—" Alice's first instinct was to go on the defensive.

"But nothing. You were in love with this man. He was in love with you. You have to do something to save this. Sitting here crying is not going to achieve anything."

Patricia's rebuke made Alice's bottom lip tremble. "He didn't really love me," she said, knowing that at another time and place she would have been appalled by the whiny, self-pitying person she seemed to have become.

"Of course he loves you. He barely stopped talking about you at that dinner party. And I should know. I was doing everything I could to get him to think about my fertility. But he kept going on, 'Alice'-this and 'Alice'-that. It was actually kind of annoying."

"Well, he said it, but he didn't mean it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you know, he said those three words in a row, but the situation wasn't . . . he didn't really mean . . . "

"Oh, you mean he was coming?"

Alice cringed. "Not exactly."

"Alice, take my word for it, he loves you. And even if he's not sure yet, you love him, don't you?"

Alice took in a breath. There she was, blaming him for not saying the words in a meaningful way, and she realised that she hadn't even said them at all. But did she love him?

"Yeah. Yes, I love him. In a way I never thought I would ever again."

"Right. So if something wasn't right in the world, the Alice I know would not be just sitting around crying about it. She'd be working hard to make it right. In this case: getting him back. She'd at least try, knowing that even if it doesn't work, she'd done her best, let him know how she felt, and given herself every chance to be loved in the way she deserves to be loved." Patricia looked at her sternly. "Tell him you're sorry."

Alice sighed. "You're right, but I don't know . . . Greg doesn't really go for 'sorry'. And I don't think I could even find a way to get him to listen to me in the first place."

"So find a way."

"Hmm." Alice sat back. She knew that trying to talk to him would fail. He would just refuse to listen to her, or find a way to ignore her. She had to get through to him indirectly. Suddenly, a glimmer of an idea started forming in her head.

Maybe. Maybe it would work.

Then she asked herself a scary question: What have you got to lose?

"Patricia, did the photographer take any shots of me and Greg at your dinner party?"

"Yes, I think he did. I'd still have them on file. Why?"

"I think I have an idea. Will you help me?"

--

"Danny, please, can you help me?" Alice begged. She'd spent ten minutes describing what she needed the Observer's in-house graphic designer to do.

He listened, his eyes growing wider as the implications of what Alice was suggesting became clear.

"With a masthead? And advertising?" He sounded exceptionally doubtful. "Alice, do you have any idea what Mad-Eye would do to me if he found out?"

"Danny, you can blame me. Tell him it was all my idea and, if you have to, that I forced you to do it at gunpoint, I don't care. I'm leaving anyway so it doesn't matter if he fires me." The words were out of Alice's mouth before she was aware of what she was saying. But like she'd often discovered, she found that although she hadn't really thought about it, what she was saying was true.

"You're leaving?"

"Yes. But that doesn't matter. Will you do it?"

"Yeah, but you owe me a dozen Krispy Kremes."

Alice impulsively reached over and kissed his cheek. "Thanks Danny."

She knew there was one more person whose help she needed. She picked up her phone and dialled the number he'd given her during their interview yesterday.

"James? It's Alice. Would you do me a favour?"