Chapter 5
A Battle of Minds

Aiden Gray sat on the bed with his knees drawn up to his chest, taking joy in the simple act of breathing. It didn't matter now what they had done to him; what could he do to change it? Instead, all that mattered right now was that he was alive and still well in control of the situation, so long as he didn't allow himself to slip into the Darkness again. He let loose a smile. He took pleasure in the power of being the one.

Suddenly the door knob turned, which drew Aiden's full attention, and in stepped Dr. Gregory House, eyeing the young man with his arrogant eyes. As carefully as he opened the door, he closed it again, and then faced Aiden in full, shifting his weight to his left side. It was clear that the diagnostician would much rather be somewhere else at this time, but he remained by the door, not daring to come any closer than he had to. Shortly, a pall fell over the room; both of the occupants staring down the other.

It was Aiden who smirked and broke the silence. "I'm rather surprised to see you here all alone," he said in his quite savage voice. "Your kind has a tendency to travel in packs around me. Apparently, you people find strength in numbers. I don't know why. It's not like it would save you in the end…" The thought trailed off ghostly.

"Why are you here?" House asked, cutting straight to the point.

"Why are you here?" Aiden inquired back. Neither made a move to answer that question.

"Well, you're here for a reason; whether that reason is that your mother is making you, you find it entertaining, or you really are sick is all up in the air at this point. We have evidence to fit all three."

"Do you?"

"Yes, we do. You're mother brought you in here, you've been smirking since I walked in this room, and you've collapsed several times due to unexplained outbursts of pain."

This last comment made Aiden's face darken. A short while passed in which he absorbed himself in memory. "It steals in as if from nowhere. I can never tell when it's going to strike and when it's going to stop, but it renders me useless. I hate that. It makes me feel…weakened; like I can't go on. I know it sounds insane, because I've been told time and again that I'm special or I'm unique, or I'm dangerous…but I still can't help that I feel…at a loss…without it…" Another silence closed in.

"So there is something else going on here," House stated with a sense of finality. He gave a brief nod and turned to leave.

Just as the man's hand touched the door knob Aiden stated, "You don't accept that answer." House turned around; the young man was watching him carefully. "You and I both know it."

"But you just said-"

"I know what I just said!" Aiden snarled. "The point was you were looking for an answer, and I gave it to you. You're ready to get the hell out of here as soon as you can, so you take the first thing that sounds like a confession and run off with it. But we both know you don't believe it. So why do you run? What's the point? I've already been penned up for most of my life, injected with solutions beyond imagining. I know that you're all afraid of me; that I might hurt you at any given moment."

"Then why don't you? If your life is so horrible, why don't you snap like anyone else?" House asked.

"Because if I did I would be stuck here forever."

"But that's not all of it." House slowly approached the bed. "There's something else."

Aiden's face twitched. "If I snapped the Darkness would never go away."

"The Darkness?"

"That's what I call it: the pain. I know there's something out there that can get rid of it; someone that can take it away. If I let my anger control me no one will dare help me, and I'll be stuck with it."

"I'm stuck with pain all the time."

"Wouldn't you want it gone?" Aiden asked. The silence that followed answered his question. "And it isn't that it would be there all the time…it would take over me. And then…"

"Then what?"

Aiden fixed House with his relentless stormy eyes. "Then there would be hell to pay."

"Just like I said before," House muttered. "There is something else going on here." He turned to leave.

"What?"

"You could have let me go with my original belief that something more than the apparent was taking place here, but instead you decided to play with me. And now I have all the info I needed in the first place." With a self-satisfied sigh, House went for the door, but the knob wouldn't turn. A menacing chuckle from behind caused him to turn.

Aiden's head was dropped low so that his face was shrouded in shadow save for his eyes, lending them a demonic glint. "You may be powerful in your intelligence, House, but I've got a power that yours simply can't compete against."

"You've already confessed that you won't hurt anyone."

For the second time in twelve hours, House's cane was ripped from his grasp and pinned him against the wall. "It was you who decided you wanted to wage this war. You think you've won the battle, but you're still fighting deep in my territory. And that, my friend, is a dangerous place to be."

Aiden released his hold on the doctor's cane, and it fell harmlessly to the floor. House bent to pick it up, never releasing eye contact with his patient, then silently left the room.