Here's the next chappie, as promised. :D R&R!!!
12 years later
Cuddy's door slammed open and she looked up. Standing in front of her was a harried looking man, dressed in a black turtleneck and cargo pants. He's young, has a ridiculous hairstyle and giant brown almost-Wilson-sexy brown eyes. He's panting and she waits for him to talk. "I've got it. I've found the evidence." Cuddy begins to feel worried. Is the man insane? And following her thoughts, two heavily muscled men stride in and lift him clear off the ground.
"I've found it!" the man repeats, clearly trying to illicit a response. Cuddy doesn't know what he's talking about, and looks blank. He rolls his eyes, and she is startled. It's been a long time since someone rolled their eyes at her. "I've got the evidence to frame the bastard who hurt him as a child." The way he says bastard, she thinks he has a personal hatred. She doesn't know why she should have thought otherwise, but she does. She motions to let him down.
"What's your name?" she asks, trying to understand what he's saying.
He looks at her incredulously, as if he cannot believe he's having this conversation. Suddenly Wilson bursts into the room, panting, and slams into the man. He has a panicked look in his eyes, and though it's been many, many, years since Amber died, she thinks he looks like that. She wonders if he thinks he's loosing her, if this man is hurting her.
She shakes her head and he is visibly relieved. He stands beside her, some twisted type of shield. "What's your name, and why are you here?" she repeats.
"I'm Edward… Edward Evans?" still no response. He sighs heavily and dramatically, and she finds herself suddenly and painfully reminded of House. "I'm the PI they hired to find the bastard who hurt him as a child."
"You'll have to be clearer," she says, Administrator Cuddy now.
"Do you even know House?" he demands, turning it out as an insult.
They both freeze, and their posture becomes defensive. It's still a raw wound.
"Did House hurt someone?" Cuddy asks, because she knows Wilson won't, and someone has to. "Hurt a child?"
The man looks at them in complete shock, as if he's been thrust into a situation he had never, in his wildest nightmares expected.
"No," he says, as if explaining to children. "No, I found evidence against his father," he says the word slowly, trying to ease them into it, "who hurt him as a child… Why do you not know this?" he asks, suddenly worried he's talking to the wrong people entirely. "You are Lisa Cuddy, aren't you?"
She nods, but both her and Wilson are still not absorbing what he's just said.
"Who hired you?" Wilson asks, and somehow makes it sound like a plea rather than the demand it is. The man—Edward, is taken.
"Dean Richardson did. From Hopkins. She saw that Greg hadn't really cheated. She said she wouldn't believe he did such a thing, that he was above it. And then she had noticed that he displayed all the gazillions of symptoms of child-abuse, so she looked it up on the internet and trusted her gut instinct, and got me. She had loads of money and nothing to do with it, and she really liked Greg, so she thought, ya know, heck care, let's do it. I've been working on this case for eight years! And I've finally got it! I can sue the bastard, and even if he doesn't want to, I sure as heck want to kill the farking son-of-a-biatch who could do such things to a small child!" The man had been getting more and more animated, before finally exploding into a violent mass of waving limbs and loud noises and bad words. "She told me to come and tell you, because she said if some amateur could see it, there is no way doctors could have missed it."
Cuddy and Wilson were shocked into guilty silence. This man who had never even met House was able to get this worked up about it, and they hadn't even known. They hadn't even noticed.
"Well, so where is he?" Edward asked.
Wilson and Cuddy simultaneously uh-ed. This was getting better and better.
Well? How is it? I'm thinking I'm missing something in this chapter, and I'm just not seeing it. But I don't know. Let me know if anything jumps out, kay?