A/N:

First, thank you! It's always great to wake up to reviews!

Secondly: yes, I will keep updating the other fics, although this week may be a little rough. I have finals and we're getting a new room mate… a friend of ours is moving in and really, I had expected I was too old for room mates, but I wouldn't let a friend get chucked out onto the street either.

Lastly, remember that in my AU, Amber is still alive because I think she's much more fun to have around and I really hated what the writers did to her character.

Also, no real knowledge of House should be necessary… since Bobby hasn't been in Jersey in my AU, he's going to have to be filled in on what's been going on, too ;-)


Chapter Two:

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

Norman Cousins


Wendy took Bobby's hand as they stepped off the plane and into the busy Newark International Airport terminal. Their only sleep in the last forty eight hours had been a brief nap in the Cardiff Terminal waiting for their plane and then on the flight over. Wen was holding up all right, owing to a much greater stamina, but Bobby was running on emotion and adrenaline alone; she knew he was going to collapse any moment now, just as soon as the adrenaline wore off.

She could feel the nervous quaver running through him when the entered the terminal. It had been just over a year since he'd left New Jersey, but she knew it must feel like a lifetime. Maybe two.

He had told her that after Alison refused his marriage proposal—his love—he simply threw his clothes into a duffle bag and headed to the airport. When he got to Cardiff, he went straight to the Hub. Just a few days later, they met. Neither was quite sure when they'd gone from friends and flatmates to friends and flatmates with fringe benefits to being bone fide lovers to falling in love… she never would have expected to be capable of loving a human. But she did. Best of all, he loved her back, accepted her. Wasn't afraid of her, even when she was wearing her other skin.

He had never come back to New Jersey clean up his apartment, he simply hired a cleaning company over the phone and told them to toss out everything he'd left behind. There was nothing he needed that couldn't be replaced. He was sure that someone was enjoying his flat screen TV and stereo. He didn't care. "It isn't like any of us has to worry about saving for retirement anymore," he'd explained to Wendy when she questioned his decision to just leave it all behind. His predecessor, Dr Owen Harper, had only lived for five years after joining Torchwood, he sometimes reminded her. Wendy knew that Bobby only got like that when he was feeling melancholy. He was very melancholy at the moment. They all saw so much death, every day… every week. Bobby in particular seemed to get the brunt of it. He got the remains of aliens and humans alike on his autopsy table. He visited the facility out on Flat Holm Island at least once a week to check up on patients. They weren't dead, but they were dying. Fast or slow, all of them were dying… of course realistically everyone on the planet was dying, one day at a time. All but Jack, of course.

Wendy gave Bobby's hand a gentle squeeze.

He smiled. "Thanks. You really didn't have to come with me."

"Yes I did." She was just glad Jack had given them both the time off—not necessarily surprised, but glad just the same.

"Don't worry about the Hub," the Captain told them. "We've manned the fort with fewer people. Just go. The Rift will be here when you get back, I promise."

Bobby leant over, "there she is," he said, to Wendy, nodding towards a ginger haired woman who seemed to have just seen them, too.

"Amber!" he called out her name, but before he could say another word, she had pushed her way through the crowd and was wrapping her arms around him in a very un-Amber-like display of warmth. He dropped his carry on bag and hugged her back, held her tight. Neither of them had known Kutner well, but she had worked with him, interviewed with him for the fellowship under House.

"I'm sorry," Amber apologized as she pulled back. "I'm not usually like this," she flashed an embarrassed looking smile in Wendy's direction.

"Don't be sorry," Bobby told her. "It's all right to be upset."

"Damn it. Damn him!" she muttered angrily. "I'm not upset, I'm pissed!" she informed them.

Bobby smiled. That was the Amber he knew, the woman House had less than affectionately nick-named Cutthroat Bitch.

Of the twenty or so doctors who had interviewed for only three openings on House's team, she was by far the most ambitious. It had never particularly surprised Bobby that she hadn't gotten the fellowship position (one thing House couldn't stand was someone more ruthless than himself), although honestly he liked her better after she'd been refused the job than he ever had when she was trying to get it.

She forced a brighter smile, though clearly it was forced. "I'm Amber Wilson," she held out her hand to the woman standing next to her former colleague. Or… almost colleague.

"Amber, this is Wendy Shutten," Bobby finished off the introductions even as the two of them were shaking hands. He'd been invited to Amber and James Wilson's wedding, of course. He would have taken Wendy if he'd gone. But in the wake of the Dalek attack on earth, neither of them could get away. It wasn't just the UK in pandemonium, it was the whole world; with regret that was obvious, Jack had to tell them he needed them in Cardiff. They both had understood.

"It's nice to meet you," Wendy said to Amber in a quiet, congenial tone. "I've heard a great deal about you."

"Oh, God, you hate me already, don't you?" the ginger haired doctor surprised Bobby by teasing.

Wendy just smiled, "It's all been good, I promise," she fibbed. She was pretty sure it had simply been honest.

"So he's lied to you," Amber favoured Bobby with a sly little smile. "And I didn't even have to bribe him."

Wendy chuckled.

Bobby cleared his throat, "We should probably find our luggage…" he began. He had been afraid that Amber and Wendy wouldn't get along at all, but having them seeming to do just fine frightened him just as much as if they'd hated each other at first sight. Perhaps it frightened him more…

"I'll get our gear," Wendy told him.

"Wen…"

She shot him a look. "I'll get it," she repeated in a firm tone.

He sighed and nodded. There was no fighting her and he knew it.

Amber chuckled as the dark skinned woman made her exit. "Wow. I'm impressed. A woman who won't be pushed over by some over macho Aussie cowboy."

"I am not…!"

She just laughed a little harder.

Bobby sighed. There was definitely no winning today. "How are you and Wilson holding up?" he asked her, as they moved out of the off to the side, to get out of other people's way.

Amber shrugged. "He's trying to deal with Cuddy who wants him to deal House, not that he can right now because he's trying to process it himself. Cuddy hired a grief councillor. None of them have gone of course. She even offered them time off. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that no one took any," she shook her head. "Damn him," she muttered again, her glaze falling momentarily to the floor beneath her shoes as she shook her head, the anger she was feeling palpable. "House wouldn't even pass on the case they started before… before that little idiot blew his brains out," she told him bitterly.

"I take it no one knows why he did it?" Bobby asked. He'd gotten call from Alison only yesterday, but a lot could change in a day. If Kunter kept a diary, or a had blog… but Amber's expression said clearly that no had any idea what had been going on in his head when he decided to put a bullet through it.

"For a while House was trying to say he was murdered. He wasn't," she added quickly to the look that crossed the blond man's face. She could see by his expression that he might not have minded jumping on that bandwagon, too. Anything to assuage the guilt most of Kutner's friends… colleagues… were feeling at not having noticed that apparently he was depressed enough with his life to want to end it.

House was right, they worked with the man eighty hours a week, and yet not one of them had picked up on the fact that he was suicidal… as if all suicides were committed by people wearing signs around their necks that read 'tomorrow morning at 9am, I'm going to shoot myself in the temple. Have a nice day.'

"He shot himself," she told Bobby in a firm tone, just to drive the point home.

"Sorry," he apologized, easily assessing her thought process. "So how are you holding up?" he asked again, having realized Amber had only said how Wilson was doing.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm with Taub. Kutner was a selfish little bastard who couldn't be bothered to reach out to people he knew would have helped him if he'd taken the time to ask. I don't feel guilty about not seeing what he didn't want anybody to see—besides it's not like I saw him eighty hours a week." She'd been fired… or not hired… although in retrospect, she was glad she didn't work for House. She was glad she'd 'interviewed' with him, however, if one could really call taking four months out of her life to work for next to nothing, for an egomaniacal sadomasochist an 'interview'. But in a totally twisted sort of way, she owed the best thing to have ever happened to her, meeting James Wilson, to Dr Greg House. Not that she would ever tell him that.

"I don't feel sorry for Kutner," she told House's former employee. "I'm just angry at him."

"That's a natural reaction."

She shot him a look.

"Sorry. Part of being a doctor is… Hell, you know what it is."

Her grimace turned upwards a bit. "Yeah. I do. Not that any of us has any idea what you're doing these days, 'Bobby' Chase," she added with an almost devious smirk. It reminded him way too much of the way Jack sometimes looked when he was up to something.

Fortunately, he was saved from having to think about it too much by Wendy's return. He stepped towards her and took his bag off from her shoulder. He really didn't mind having a girlfriend who was stronger than he was, even in her human skin, but he felt like a slob when she insisted on doing things like getting both their gear. Sometimes he wondered if she knew that and was just showing off because she knew it bothered him. Still, if that was her worst trait, he could live with it.

He leant in and kissed her cheek softly before turning back to Amber. "Thanks again for putting us up. We really could have stayed in a hotel." He had been taken completely by surprise when Amber extended the invitation to him. He'd only called to find out about the funeral arrangements.

"But if you'd stayed at a hotel, I'd never get to spend time with you," Amber flashed a sly little grin at the pair of them.

Bobby stifled a groan. He reached over and took Wendy's hand, more glad than ever that she was here with him.