A/N: Thanks for all the kind reviews. I'm mightily chuffed.

Warning: I have gathered from the reviews that some readers who ship Huddy expect something neat, tidy and romantic. Although I ship Huddy, I'm not a fluffy kind of person at heart. I'm nicer than the creators of the characters - I won't put cars through walls or the like - but we're still in the 'Now What?' phase of this fic. It won't stay like that. Also please note that the fic isn't tagged as 'Romance'.

Part I: Bristol

Chapter 4: A Short Rest

He surfaces slowly from the cocoon of sleep enveloping him, unwilling to leave its warmth and contentment. He's pleasantly relaxed, and a warm shape is bundled up against him, a warm, good-smelling body. That body, however, isn't quite as serene as he is. She's whimpering and murmuring in her sleep, her limbs twitching in agitation. It was probably one of those uncontrolled jerks that woke him in the first place. He moves his arm around her to pull her closer, hoping that his proximity will calm her - he's really too comfortable to want to deal with her dismay when she realises what she's done; time enough to deal with that in the sobering grey light of morning. Her unrest increases despite his tentative efforts that he augments with little caresses along her back and arm and noises that he hopes are akin to soothing growls. Judging by her increasing level of agitation, he's doing it all wrong.

"No!" she moans, "No! No, no!"

He freezes, even though he's reasonably sure that her negations aren't aimed at him. Then he gives her a gentle shake. "Wake up, Lisa."

Her eyes open and gaze around blankly. When they alight on him, she sits bolt upright gasping, "House!"

"Wake up!" he repeats, annoyance tempered with a twinge of guilt beginning to take hold of him. He should have known better, of course, than to go to bed with a woman who's been in some sort of abusive relationship. Still, it's bloody annoying and not his idea of two a.m. post-coital bliss.

She stares at him with widened eyes - he still isn't sure whether she has recognised him or knows where she is - before rolling out of bed and gathering up her clothes in frenetic haste. Gentleman that he is, he turns on the bedside lamp to facilitate her search; from what he can remember, neither of them exactly placed their clothes in a neat folded pile on their way to the bed. If she's grateful, she hides it well.

"Why did I do it?" she mutters darkly as she fastens her bra. "Why the hell did I do it?"

There's an obvious answer to that question. "Sexual frustration - although starvation is more accurate in your case - leads to loss of inhibitions, culminating in spontaneous and frequently ill-judged mating choices."

She glares at him. "Starvation, huh? You don't know crap about my sex life!"

He recounts what he noticed earlier on, when her body's traitorous responses gave her away. (He'd have blabbed it out like an idiot right then and there and ruined all his chances of getting laid, but luckily sexual arousal tends to cut off the blood flow to his speech centre, so all he'd uttered had been formless grunts of satisfaction.) "You were totally wet, totally tight, which means: no sex in a while. And you orgasmed almost immediately when I touched you down there; much as I'd like to take credit for that, a Rottweiler probably would have elicited the same response." He scrunches up his face. "Hmmm, not a nice image."

"You're an ass!"

He should have left out that Rottweiler bit, but she'd been angry before he opened his mouth, so tact probably would not have helped matters much. He leans back with his hands clasped behind his head, pondering why her feelings in this matter are a source of discomfort to him. It isn't the first time that bed affairs have ended badly with the lady in question stomping out in a rage; he's an unquenchable source of tactless and crude remarks once the endorphins wear off.

The thing is, he realises, that he's as much a victim as she; a victim of the brutal idiot who did whatever it was that makes her wake up shivering with fear. Her anger isn't directed against him, it's directed against herself for getting herself into a situation that triggers her nightmares. He ponders the likelihood of being able to get her to come back to bed, but she's unlikely to repeat the same mistake twice within a few hours, so he may as well not bother. It's not as though he'd be able to get it up again even if she came back to bed, but that's an eventuality that is becoming ever more unlikely with every article of clothing that she finds and dons.

Nevertheless, he can't help feeling miffed at her utter lack of compunction or tact in this matter. A bit more of, 'This was great, even though I need to go now,' and a bit less of, 'Jesus, this was a giant mistake!' would do no harm. After all, it isn't as though he was the only instigator of the process that ended in his bed or as though she didn't have any fun at all. Rather the opposite, if one asks him. He decides that a bit of messing with her head is quite in order, and utters the line that invariably flusters everyone he tries it out on.

"Is this because of ...?" He waves a hand at the spot where his leg used to be.

"This may come as a surprise, but the world doesn't revolve around your leg," she snaps.

She's fully dressed now, and she walks over to his bed, perching herself on its edge so she can look down at him. He half sits up to make up for the disadvantage of his recumbent posture, but she pushes him back with a fierce poke of her finger in his chest. "And don't try that 'poor old cripple' number on me." But her previous anger has evaporated, confirming his assessment that it had nothing to do with him and his multitudinous methods of fucking up his love life.

He leans back happily, delighted by her reaction. She's one of a rare breed that is immune to his manipulative use of others' guilt. Most women would have caved and stayed, just to prove that his stump didn't disgust them. She'd shown the same indifference to it earlier in the proceedings, when he'd tried to bat away the hand tugging his jeans down. (His preferred mode for sex is pulling his jeans and boxer shorts down just far enough that he can do the dirty deed without exposing his stump.)

"Don't be stupid!" she'd grunted. "I'm a doctor; I've seen amputations before. Get your jeans and that peg leg of yours off before you clobber me with it."

And she'd treated the gap in his anatomy with the same brutal disregard the rest of the night, a refreshing change to what he's used to by now. The women he's slept with so far (and the ones he hasn't) either treat it like the elephant in the room that it is, going to great lengths to ignore it, or (and this is the more frequent reaction) going to even greater lengths to reassure him that his disability does not impair his performance. He often wishes that they would treat the rest of his body with the same consideration that they show his non-existent limb.

Now she cups his cheek in her hand and contemplates his face for a moment before dropping a light kiss on the other cheek. Then she rises and goes to the door.

"Will I see you again?" he asks, hoping he doesn't come across as pathetic.

She stops and half turns in the doorway, and leaning against the jamb she gives the slightest shake with her head. "No. I have to present a paper tomorrow ... today, and I chair two workshops in the afternoon. After that I'm flying back home." She brushes her hair out of her face and gives him a lost smile. "Farewell, Pete."

He remembers something she said earlier. He can't help but ask, "What house?" She looks puzzled. "In your nightmare you shouted something about a house."

"Oh, that." She's looking at some point close to the tips of her toes. "That was ... that was my house. It collapsed a few years ago, during a storm."

"Wow!" he says. "A whole house collapsed on you?" She must be dogged by disaster - a violent partner and a house collapse.

"Not the whole house," she answers, "only one room. And not on me." She gives the last word an odd emphasis, but before he can pry some more she pushes herself upright and goes.

He spends the next morning dropping in on different restaurants and hotels, but the going is tough, tougher than he'd thought it would be, literally and metaphorically. Now that he's aware of it, he notices how he uses all sorts of little tricks to remain oriented: he makes sure at least one bus stop is always in sight; he subconsciously shows a preference for establishments that lie close to locations he's familiar with; he keeps prominent landmarks in sight. In between appointments he detours to Boots to pick up the shampoo only to find that they don't stock it. He tries a more upbeat establishment, and finally a supplier of hair care products.

The girl at the counter checks on her computer.

"We don't have it, but I can order it for you, sir. 250 millilitres - that's about eight and a half ounces - will cost you roughly thirty pounds plus shipping charges."

Christ, what does the woman wash her hair with, liquid gold? "Thanks, but no." He can order it online himself and probably get it a sight cheaper. He's miffed though, having expected to be in possession of a bottle of bliss by lunchtime.

He phones the hotel in the early afternoon. Janet is so kind as to inform him that Dr Cuddy ordered a taxi to take her to the airport at 5 p.m. Yes, that's Bristol airport, she confirms.

Good! Heathrow Airport would be the likelier choice, as it is conveniently close and more flights by far leave from there, but he won't complain. He spends the rest of the afternoon at the computer - a new job can wait another day - finding out about Dr Lisa Cuddy. That small matter with the house bothers him. He wouldn't say she was lying, precisely, but she was definitely hiding something from him. Not that he expects instant openness from strangers, but there are certain topics - her daughter, for instance, or the matter of the collapsing house - that make her tense in a manner that seems unlike her and that neither topic justifies: most people are eager to talk about their misbegotten offspring, and a collapsing house is the sort of story that makes really good telling.

He finds her on the homepage of a teaching hospital in downtown Philadelphia, where she's listed as head of 'Family and Community Medicine'. Hardly a position that carries much weight, one would think, and he wonders from where she draws the assurance that she'll be the next dean. Surely the heads of the other departments - oncology, cardiology or what-have-you-ology - are more influential than she is. There's a link to her personal bio data, which is somewhat more conclusive. Undergraduate studies and medical school at the University of Michigan; he pauses to calculate her age and comes to the conclusion that she must be about forty-seven, so his estimate was good. Residency and fellowship in endocrinology accompanied by a sizeable number of publications (why isn't she in endocrinology anymore?) at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. Then, dean of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Princeton, New Jersey.

She was dean before this? That answers the question as to why she's so sure she'll become dean (again) in two years. It does, however, beg another question: why did she give up a prestigious post like that to go for, what was it, 'Family and Community Medicine'?

There's a gap of almost two years between her long stint of fifteen years at PPTH and the new job in Philadelphia, with no hint of what she was doing during that period. His first guess is maternity leave, but the child on the photo she showed him is too old for her to have taken maternity leave a mere four years ago. He has no second guess. Yet.

He takes the express link to the airport, which gets him there slightly early, so he settles down in the departure area with a magazine that he 'borrows' from WHSmith. About fifteen minutes later she arrives, striding confidently through the doors pulling a trolley suitcase, clad in a practical, severe trouser suit. She heads straight for a self-service kiosk and starts the check-in procedure, pausing to rummage in her handbag for her passport. He sneaks up behind her and leans over her, as much from a sense of mischief as from the desire to smell her hair again, but he's thwarted in the latter desire - she has used a different shampoo today. He knows that smell, too; it's the complimentary shampoo the Brunel keeps for guests. Disappointed, he draws upright, frowning at the back of her head. At that moment she turns around. She must have been aware of his presence, for she doesn't draw back in alarm - god, but he's an idiot to sneak up on someone with a traumatic stress disorder! - but leans back leisurely against the kiosk, smiling smugly up at him.

"Sorry," she says, "but I didn't want to risk a repeat of the scene at your door last night."

He's as much annoyed by her certainty that he'd turn up (unbidden) at the airport as at the insinuation that last night was mainly his doing. Is he that pathetic?

"Stop sulking, and I'll buy you a cup of coffee," she offers, not even waiting to see whether he's following her as she marches off. Still, since he's come all this way, he'd better take what he can get. He waits, leaning against a pillar, as she drops off her suitcase, and then he drags her off to the coffee shop where he orders the largest, sweetest, fattiest espresso drink on the menu with extra whipped cream and two cookies to boot. She rolls her eyes at his choice and doesn't order anything for herself. They sit down next to each other on seats just outside security.

"On a diet?" he asks provocatively.

"No. I want to sleep on the flight."

He waggles one of the cookies from which he's already taken a sizeable bite under her nose. "Those don't contain any caffeine."

She takes hold of his wrist to keep his hand still and takes a bite out of the cookie. "Not bad," she mumbles through a mouthful of crumbs. At his surprised look she adds, "Your tongue was down my throat last night, so I don't think we need to discuss hygiene issues here."

He gets the message: the more he provokes her, the more she'll hit back - below the belt by taking his food if necessary. He decides that she's a bitch, but she's an amusing one. They sit in comfortable silence, he eating and drinking, while she stares abstractedly into space, only checking on his progress every now and then.

When he's done she says, "I need to go through security." She digs through her handbag once more, now drawing out a plastic bottle that she thrusts at him. It has a pink bow tied around it, and he can smell from that distance what it is.

Dumbstruck, he takes the bottle from her hands and twists it round and round, flicking a thumb at the lid. No, he won't open it here and now and smell at it; that would definitely be pathetic. He looks back at her; she's chewing uncertainly on her lower lip, unsure how to interpret his silence.

"It's still more than half-full," she offers.

"Thanks," he says awkwardly. "That's ... really nice of you." How do you thank someone for catering to your fetish, and a rather lame fetish at that? He leans over and gives her a peck on the cheek.

She gets up, pats his knee and says drily, "Have fun under the shower tonight." And with that she goes towards the security gate.

"Hey," he calls after her, brandishing the bottle, "you were very sure I'd turn up, weren't you?" The bottle is larger than the 100 ml security regulations will allow in hand luggage, so if he hadn't come, she'd have had to toss twenty pounds' worth of shampoo into the bin.

She turns round to face him, walking backwards a few steps, her face lighting up. "Oh, yes," she laughs. "You are nowhere near as broodily mysterious as you'd like to be." And with that she turns away again and rewards the undeserving security guard with a toothpaste-commercial smile.

Princeton, August 2011

The wind moaned and howled; the beech tree out in front creaked in protest. Rain slapped on the sidewalk and on the roof. Somewhere at the back of the house a door rattled. Julia sighed. Uncurling from the couch she slipped into her house shoes and went to the kitchen to check the windows and the back door. When she switched on the kitchen light it flickered, as did all the other lights in the house.

"Great!" Julia muttered, moving to the drawer in which Lisa kept a flashlight. It probably wasn't a question of whetherthe lights would go off, but of whenthey would do so and for how long. The flashlight was where it was supposed to be, as was a candle, but there were no matches. Julia paused, trying to remember where Lisa kept the matches since Rachel started pulling herself upright on the furniture. It would be close to the original spot, but higher up - there, the shelves next to the stove. Julia retrieved the matches and put all three items into the pocket of her dressing gown. Then she checked the back door. Yes, it rattled slightly when one tugged at it hard, as the wind was doing now, but it was solid and firmly locked. There was no way it would succumb to the destructive powers of Hurricane Irene, which was more than she was prepared to say about the darn beech tree on the sidewalk. Julia was no wimp, but the groans proceeding from its branches were making her somewhat jumpy.

She checked the clock - one a.m. It was too late to call Rob and tell him she was getting the heebie-jeebies here. Maybe she could risk lying down and getting a few hours' sleep - there hadn't been as much as a squeak from Lisa since she'd taken her meds at eight, and Rachel wasn't due to wake till five or so. As she pondered the advisability of leaving her post in the living room, she heard a low moan from Lisa's room. Well, it had been too good to be true. She switched on the water kettle and got out a mug and a tea bag. She'd sleep this afternoon; Rob had promised to keep the kids off her back. She was lucky Rob was so supportive and understanding.

Mom had said, "Don't encourage Lisa by spending another night with her at That Place! You're enabling her, and she's stubborn enough as it is. She should move out, get a new place with no memories attached to it, and put that phase of her life andThat Man out of her mind. It's no wonder she keeps having nightmares if she insists on staying there!"

Rob had said, "Yeah, sure, Lisa's being an obstinate idiot, but aren't we all - right, Arlene? Tonight is not a good night to be alone in a house like that, even if she wasn't suffering from panic attacks. She's your sister. If you're worried about her, go spend the night there. The kids and I will be fine here - one more night won't make any difference to us." And that despite the fact that Rob knew it wouldn't be the last night, not by a long stretch.

Another moan came from Lisa's room, this one long and drawn out. The kettle boiled. Julia poured the water into her mug, took it and went out into the hall. Outside Lisa's room she paused, listening. It was quiet once more inside. She continued on to the living room and, picking up her book, curled up once more on the couch. But she'd scarcely found her place when the lights flickered once more, and then went out altogether.

Julia closed her eyes in resignation. This was exactly the sort of crap that had to happen when Lisa was growing increasingly restless! It was odd how quiet the house seemed without electricity, without the steady hum of the refrigerator and the heating system. In contrast, the noises from outside, the raging wind, the rush of air along the eaves, the branches whipping and cracking, penetrated the confines of the house as though the walls were non-existent. This house, which had seemed sturdy enough at noon, now seemed fragile and vulnerable when caught in the eye of the hurricane.

There was a resounding crunch from the beech outside and a crash from the pavement. Despite herself Julia jumped. It was just a branch breaking off, she told herself. A moment later, either as a reaction to the increased noise level from outside or as a result of the meds beginning to wear off, a long-drawn groan from Lisa's bedroom turned into a full-fledged wail.

Julia cast aside the throw she'd drawn over herself, pulled the flashlight out of her dressing gown pocket and hurried to the bedroom. She opened the door carefully; sudden interruptions of her sleep when she was in that state generally put Lisa into a wide-open panic attack. With one hand over the flashlight so that it only emitted a gentle orange glow, she slipped inside and made her way to the bedside. Lisa was throwing herself around moaning. No intelligible words left her mouth, but from what she'd once said in a (rare) vulnerable moment, Julia had a pretty good idea what she was dreaming: in her dream the car, hiscar (instead of stopping right in the hole it had made in the wall, its hood crushed completely and him trapped inside badly injured) would shoot through the dining room like a missile, stopping just short of the opposite wall. And then, as Lisa watched in horror from the doorway, he'd get out brandishing the hairbrush he'd come to return. If Julia let the dream get beyond that point, there was usually no return - in the dream, armed with the hairbrush, he was capable of reducing Lisa to a gibbering mess.

Careful to keep the flashlight pointed at the floor, Julia sat down on the edge of the bed and put one hand tentatively on Lisa's shoulder. When that elicited no reaction, she tightened her grip and shook her gently.

"Lisa, wake up!" she urged. "C'mon, wake up!"

"No, nooo," Lisa moaned.

Julia shook more insistently. "Snap out of it, Lisa, it's a dream."

Suddenly Lisa shot upright in the bed, drawing in a frightened breath. "What ...?"

"It's okay, you were dreaming again," Julia said.

Lisa stared at her wild-eyed, her breathing rapid and shallow.

"Long, calm breaths, Lisa," Julia advised. "It's okay."

Lisa's breathing calmed somewhat, but her eyes flickered around the room. "Why's it so dark?"

"Lights went out," Julia said with a calmness that she didn't feel. "Hurricane Irene, remember? Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Lisa plucked at her blanket, avoiding Julia's eyes. "He ... had a sword, this time."

"A sword? Why would he have a sword?" Julia cast around for some way of defusing what was clearly turning into a major issue. Shouldn't the nightmares be getting less as time passed, instead of more, and worse? She opted for, "People don't have swords!" hoping that by pointing out the improbability of whatever scenario Lisa's subconscious was painting for her in vivid colours, she'd put a stop to it.

"House has a sword - a sabre, or something like that. He collects odd stuff."

"You've got a restraining order; the trial is next month; he'll be locked away for years!"

The latter was wishful thinking - he'd get two years if they were lucky - but Lucas, Lisa's other ex, was sanguine that he'd piss the prison authorities off so badly that he'd never be released early. "And there's no way he can get through two years or so in the slammer andkeep his big mouth shut, so chances are some other convict will throttle him," he'd added with a hint of vindictiveness under the top veneer of amused indifference.

Julia was drawn out of her thoughts by Lisa drawing in another panicked breath. "What's that?" she gasped.

Julia listened. The wind was louder, gustier than before - if that was possible -, and Lisa was right. There was another sound over and above that of the wind and the never-ending rain. "It's just that stupid old beech on the sidewalk," Julia decided. As a precaution she added, "It may come down tonight, but it's too far away to damage the house."

"No, not that! It's here, in the house!" Lisa was wide-eyed again, on the verge of a panic attack.

"Lisa, there's nothing ...," Julia stopped short, hearing it too, now. It sounded like some animal scrabbling along the roof; a very heavy animal. Except that there was no way that anything, animal or human, could clamber along the outside of the house in this weather.

Lisa's voice rose. "Julia, it's him! He's gonna break in and get Rachel, he'll ...,"

"Lisa, snap out of it!" Julia barked, losing her calm too as a creaking that seemed to come from inside the house reached her ears. "He's nothere; there's no way a cripple with one leg - or anyone else, for that matter - could break in here in the midst of a hurricane!"

Then pandemonium broke loose - a tremor shook the building as a rumble, low at first, but increasing in pitch and volume, reverberated around the bedroom; Lisa stiffened and started screaming, short sharp screams that seemed dissociated from her body. Then came a crash, and another one, and over it all the hysterical screams of a three year old.

"Shit, Rachel!" Julia muttered jumping up. Unwilling to abandon Lisa while she was in a full-blown panic attack but seriously worried about her niece, she shot out into the hall and ran towards Rachel's room at the further end, only to stop confused. Despite the dark she sensed something different - a moist smell, the dust of plaster in the air, the taste of grit on her tongue. Dimly she registered that the door to Rachel's bedroom was gone. Julia stared at the gaping hole where the door should be, at the heaps of rubble in the room, and at the night sky that was visible wherever dust didn't obscure her view.

And Julia screamed, too.