What If
Chapter Sixteen - Tiny Little Fractures
Cameron couldn't help feel like everyone was watching her as she made her way through the hospital lobby, her daughter on her hip and House at her side. She wasn't sure whether they were staring because they knew about her psych stay or because House was carrying her bag and that could most definitely be classed as a phenomenon to behold. He didn't seem to care regardless of the reason for their interest, but she felt increasingly uncomfortable and was very relieved when they got into the parking lot.
"Sprog's alright on the bike, right?"
He said with his best poker face. When she shot him a cautious look, mostly sure he was joking but never completely convinced, he smirked and she shook her head with a tired smile. He nodded over to a car parked in the pickup bay, its engine running.
"Commandeered Wilson to be our chauffeur this morning, madame."
He said in his best English Gentleman accent. She smiled again and as they approached the car, Wilson climbed out, opening the door to the backseat for Cameron. She thanked him and climbed in with Elle as House rounded the car to the passenger seat.
The drive was taken in comfortable silence. Cameron could tell Wilson was fighting back the urge to ask her how she was feeling and she appreciated it. Foreman, Chase, Cuddy and three nurses had already fussed over her between the third floor and the lobby and she was glad she didn't have to go through the motions with Wilson too.
As they pulled up at 221B, House climbed out of the car first and opened the door, taking Elle from Cameron and hoisting the little girl onto his left hip. She contentedly sucked her thumb, the big blue-green eyes she'd inherited from her mother looking back at him from under long lashes. Wilson watched in amazement. He'd never seen his best friend look so natural in such an easy interaction with the child. He saw Cameron smiling at him and tried to quickly wipe the shock off his face.
"It surprised me too," she admitted, "but she's pretty attached to him now. And he's taken to having a baby around a lot better than I thought he would."
"I can hear you, y'know," he leaned over to give them both a mock-withering look, "Now come on, Cameron, before I change my mind and send you to a hotel."
They all knew he'd never do that, but nevertheless, she thanked Wilson again and climbed out of the car, waving as he drove off down the street before following House up the steps to their his apartment.
As they sat on the sofa together later that night, the TV on but neither of them really focused on whatever sitcom it was, House turned to her. She didn't meet his gaze right away, keeping her eyes on the TV until the intensity with which he was looking at her made her accept defeat.
"Ask me whatever you're gonna ask me."
She said, assuming it was something to do with the events of the previous week. Everyone apart from the psychiatrists had been tiptoeing around the subject, scared she'd break at the slightest mention of her dead husband or the circumstances surrounding him.
"Why did you come to me? When you walked out on Andrew, you could have gone to the lake house but you chose to come here. Why?"
The question took her by surprise. She could see he'd been puzzling the question over in his mind for a while and she wondered why he hadn't asked her before. She had a simple answer and a more complicated one.
"I knew that'd be the first place he'd look for me, but he didn't know where you lived."
He regarded her sceptically. That wasn't the whole story. She should have known by now that he could read her better than anyone else.
"And...?"
She frowned, seemingly confused by his reply. He shook his head and continued.
"You know he could have figured it out if he'd really wanted to. Or he could have just bribed a janitor at the hospital to find out that information. If you really wanted to lose him, you could have chosen any number of hotels in Princeton and used a false name. But you came to me. Before you were even in a rational state of mind to drive, you came to me. You-"
"Stop psychoanalysing me, House. I came to you because I feel safe when you're near me, okay? And when you kissed me that night I came to pick you up from the bar...I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time. Or ever, really. Every...every time you stood too close to me at work, and every time your eyes burned holes into my back when you thought I was oblivious...I was fighting everything you made me feel. And when you kissed me, I knew I'd never come back from that. So when I left him, before I was even in my right mind, I found myself here. It wasn't a conscious choice, but it was the right one."
He nodded, choosing not to pick apart her answer, much to her relief. Instead, he draped his arm around her and pulled her closer to him. She rested her head on his shoulder and felt him kiss the top of her head gently as she closed her eyes. For a moment, she didn't feel quite as hollow as she had done since the incident.
House awoke in the middle of the night, not knowing why, only knowing that an inexplicable uneasiness had taken up residence in the pit of his stomach. Wiping his hand across his face to push away the last remnants of sleep, he squinted and found an empty space where Cameron should have been. The side where she had slept was cold to his touch, so she'd been up a while.
Heaving his bad leg over the edge of the bed, he sat up and glanced around the room. The bedroom door was cracked open but there was no light signalling she was out there for whatever reason. He waited a few moments, just in case she'd gone to the bathroom. When nothing but the deep silence of the early hours moved around him, he pushed himself to stand, making for the living room.
He saw her immediately, perched on the bench of his baby grand, her face turned to the window, her profile illuminated by the soft glow cast from the street lamps outside. She looked ethereal with that mystical glow seemingly emitted from her entire being and he couldn't help but be struck by her beauty. Her features were soft in the dim light, but he could see she wasn't as peaceful as that glow belied. She was an angel who had travelled through hell and made it out the other side, scarred and tormented but with her wings just about in tact.
"You okay?"
As his voice shattered the silence, she turned her face to him and he recognised that glassy pain in her eyes. He knew that pain all too well; wondering if the ache would ever abate. She was fighting an internal battle, struggling to take back her place in a world that offered no time for adjustment.
"I will be."
She replied softly, absently running her thumb over her wrist as though seeking assurance her heart was still beating. She didn't know anymore. Her mind wouldn't slow down long enough for her to catch the sleep that was evading her. She shivered. He was waiting for her, so she relented and followed him back to the bedroom.
As they lay together, neither of them able to submit to sleep's promise of peace, Cameron moved closer and settled into the crook of his shoulder. Just the simple feeling of his warmth pressed to her, surrounding her, made all the tension in her body melt away. She could feel his body relax too and no words were needed between them. She would be okay. So would he. They'd be okay in the end.
"I'm gonna go view a few apartments today."
Cameron sat across from House, perched at the kitchen island while she fed Elle her breakfast. She stole a glance at him as she spoke, to gauge his response. She'd mentioned a few times about finding a place of her own since she'd been living with him, though she'd never actively looked for anywhere because, truth be told, she didn't want to move anywhere. She'd never felt as at home as she did living with him. But living in a one bedroom apartment with an almost-2 year old wasn't getting any easier. She wasn't, however, prepared for the hurt that flashed across his face. She moved her gaze to him but the flash of instinctive emotion was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. So fast, she wasn't quite convinced she'd seen it at all. He took a drink from his coffee mug and gave a quick nonchalant shrug, but his avoidance of eye contact reaffirmed the fact that she had seen the fleeting hurt pass over him.
The words were dancing on her lips but she couldn't vocalize them. Can we find a place of our own? You, me and Elle? She didn't want to spook him. She hadn't yet broached the subject of what they were, or where they were going, and she knew his defences, his aversion to relationships, would be rattling the moment she got to the heart of it.
But she was conflicted too. He'd advocated for her and freed her from the suffocating confines of the psych ward, and he'd done so on the premise that he would look after her. That didn't sound like House at all, yet it was what he'd done. But in the month that they'd been living together (sleeping together), they'd danced around the subject of labelling it. She wasn't sure who was more afraid.
"So, how soon am I gonna get my apartment back to being my apartment?"
His words were carefully measured to inflict as much poison as possible, but she wasn't surprised he'd retaliated. Self-preservation at it's finest. That's what House was made of, after all. He told her she was a stuffed animal made by grandma - sugar and spice and everything nice - while he was the antithesis of her. But opposite poles attract, right? And neither could deny their attraction, they didn't even bother to try anymore.
They'd take one step forward, open up to one another in a way that never stopped amazing her, but then it was two steps back. More often than not, she'd say something to push him further than he was comfortable with, so he'd hit out with words, put her back in her place, bring those grey walls back up around him. They fought with as much passion as they loved, but with passion like that, someone was bound to get hurt. She'd already had enough pain and drama to deal with without having her heart broken again.
She didn't know why she was pulling away from him, when she knew all she really wanted to do was stay as close as she could, steal warmth from a man who seemed so cold. Maybe his primal self-preservation instincts were rubbing off on her.
Nothing more was said between them until House was heading toward the door, leaving for the hospital three hours later than when he was supposed to be there. Old habits. He paused as he opened the door and looked over at her for a moment. She waited, but she knew the words that eventually fell from his lips were not the words he'd stopped to say.
"Good luck with the house hunting."
By midday, Cameron had viewed four apartments and was quickly starting to realize that she couldn't see herself and Elle living anywhere if House wasn't there with them. But his apartment was much too cramped for the three of them, as they had discovered over the time they'd lived with him, and she didn't feel like she could just ask him to move in with her either. He didn't cope all that well with changes like that, and getting a place together...that would be a gigantic step in a terrifying direction for him. She didn't want to ruin what they had by pushing him into a commitment like that.
Returning to his apartment, nothing but silence there to greet her, she sat down wearily on the sofa. What a mess. She'd upset him (not that he'd ever admit to being upset) by bringing up the prospect of moving out, yet she couldn't imagine not waking up beside him every morning if she did find somewhere. There was always the lake house. But she hadn't been there since that day...and Andrew's blood was still on the drapes. She'd come to the conclusion that she'd sell the house, but something was holding her back.
She had so many wonderful memories from their summers and Christmases spent there over the years, playing happy families, and some small part of her wanted to cling to those memories. But that place, those memories, had been tainted by one single day and she wasn't sure she could ever stay there again without being haunted by the sound of the gun, the echoes resounding in her head, the feeling of her legs giving out beneath her and the heavy thud of her husband's body dropping lifelessly to the floor. No matter where she went though, she was still haunted. Tiny little fractures etched into her once-treasured memories.
What had happened at the lake house had been all over the local news, but hadn't made it to national news, and she was grateful for that small mercy. She hadn't called her mother yet and she surmised that the lack of concerned phone calls meant that Rachael hadn't heard about the death of her son-in-law or the circumstances surrounding it. Andrew's mother had died two years previous and his father was deep in the throes of Alzheimer's, so even though he may have been informed, he wouldn't remember for long. Maybe he was the lucky one.
Picking up the phone, she dialled her mother's number from memory and held her breath as she figured out what she'd say. She had to tell her sooner or later. On the fourth ring, Rachael picked up.
"Mom, hi, it's Allison."
"Ally! Oh, darling, it's so good to hear your voice. You never call your old mom anymore! To what do I owe this pleasure?"
She closed her eyes for a moment as she tried to choose her words carefully. Her mother's bright mood would very quickly burn out once the words had left her lips.
"I...I'm just calling...Andrew's dead, mom."
So much for choosing her words. There was a gasp on the other end of the line and then silence for an endless few moments.
"I just want to hold you right now, sweetheart. Are you coping okay? What happened? The last time I saw him, he looked so healthy!"
Cameron wondered how she could possibly begin to explain what had happened. To come clean, she'd have to go into what caused them to separate in the first place...and she wasn't sure if her mother's heart could take finding out what her youngest daughter had been doing with her older daughter's husband.
"He...it's a long story. And it's still kinda raw. It's been a little over a week and we're still, y'know, adjusting. It was sudden."
She decided to be intentionally vague and hope her mother would accept the weakness of her response without further probing.
"You should come home, at least for a little while. Let me look after you, or at least let me look after Elle while you come to terms with this, Ally. You shouldn't go through this alone."
She didn't reply right away. How was she supposed to tell her own mother that she wasn't alone, that she was living with her boss and that she'd been living with said boss for over a month? It would lead to more questions than it would answers. But she did need to tell her the truth eventually. Just...not over the phone. Maybe going back to Chicago for a couple weeks wasn't such a bad idea. She'd have time away from Princeton and would be able to tell the truth about what had really happened. At least if her mom went into cardiac arrest from the shock of it all, she'd be there to sort her out.
"I think I might come home. Just for a week or two. I've got time off work, but I'll need to speak to my psych...erm...my..."
"You're seeing a shrink? Ally, that's nothing to keep from me, or be ashamed of. It's the best thing you can do after a loss like this. I thought you'd bury yourself in your work and refuse to see one, insist you're totally fine like you always did as a kid when you were upset. I'm proud of you."
She couldn't help but smile sadly. She'd been about to say that she didn't have a choice in the matter, but she resisted. If her mother felt reassured that she was looking after herself, then she'd let her have that peace of mind.
"I'm gonna book a flight for next week, that's not too soon, is it?"
"Don't talk nonsense! It's never too soon to see you and that beautiful little granddaughter of mine!"
So, it was settled. They said their good-byes and Cameron booked a flight before she couldn't overthink it and change her mind. Chicago would be good for her and Elle, even just for two weeks. The anticipation knotting in her stomach as she confirmed the flight was to do with House though. She didn't know how he would take news that she was taking off.