2.

Jackhammers. That's what it felt like. Jackhammers. They were burrowing relentlessly through his skull, his eye sockets, his sinus cavities. There were also several located down along his right thigh doing their most evil work in the ravaged muscle there, sending his injured leg into spasms of agony.

Gregory House groaned loudly and opened his bloodshot eyes. Sunlight was streaming relentlessly through the blinds of his bedroom. What time was it?

Just as he turned his throbbing head to look at his clock, the alarm began buzzing.

"Oh for the love of . . . shut the hell up!"

His shout of defiance did nothing to turn off the clock's buzzer. It also did nothing to diffuse the jackhammer convention in his brain.

House reached his arm over to the nightstand and picked up the offending timepiece. He promptly threw the clock against the wall, smashing it to pieces and silencing the buzzer permanently.

House groaned again and began clicking his tongue against the cottony roof of his mouth.

What HAD he been thinking last night? Why did he have so much to drink?

His best friend, James Wilson had come over early that Friday night to show moral support and to help commiserate with him. Wilson knew that Cuddy's wedding the next day was the last, mortal blow to House's already damaged heart.

Although House had denied that Cuddy's getting married affected him in the slightest, he'd still pounded back enough scotch to keep an aircraft carrier buoyant. What was worse, he continued drinking long after Wilson had gone home.

Wilson had left at ten so as to get home at a decent time. He was a close friend of the bride and had therefore been invited to the wedding.

House had not.

After his third scotch last night, Wilson had asserted once again that the fact that House did not receive an invitation was irrefutable proof that Lisa Cuddy was still not over him, that she was still in love with him.

House had downplayed the slight as Cuddy simply knowing him well enough not to trust him in any social situation. Gaffes, confusion and disturbing scenarios always arose when you asked House to dress up and play nice with the other kiddies. Why would a wedding be any different?

But House kept his other, most important detail to himself. He knew Cuddy was right not to invite him to her wedding for fear of his reaction to the spectacle of the one woman in all the world that he loved standing up with another man and promising to love, honor and cherish him for the rest of her life.

House shook his head to rid himself of this last thought only to immediately regret the action. The jackhammers had taken up their crude work again making him decidedly nauseous.

House stood up quickly and hobbled to the bathroom. He made it just in the nick of time, emptying the contents of his sour stomach into the toilet and flushing. As undesirable as vomiting was, he did feel a slight improvement and was able to brush his teeth and shower while the volume of the pounding inside his head was slightly lowered for the time being.

He stepped out of the shower and limped heavily back into the bedroom, toweling the moisture from his naked body as he slowly progressed down the hall.

What if Wilson was right? What if the real reason that Cuddy didn't invite him was because she wasn't over him? So what?

Did that mean he was supposed to show up? What for? Just so that his heart could be ripped from his chest all over again as he watched helplessly while she said "I do" to Lucas Douglas? Lucas, whom he'd once thought of as a friend until he'd stabbed House in the back by making a successful play for Cuddy?

How much of a masochist did Wilson really think he was?

House reached over and opened the drawer of his nightstand. He retrieved his pain pills, opened the bottle and tilted it against his lips, dry swallowing several.

He'd kicked the Vicodin again. When the possibility of experiencing hallucinations began to loom large, he got off the opiates and went under another doctor's prescription. These pills weren't as good at masking the pain but they did have the advantage of keeping his mind clear; no hallucinations. And they were a helluva lot better with pain management than the Ibuprophen had been.

House had detoxed and sought out another doctor to write his prescription all on his own, without telling anyone. He didn't want Cuddy to know and the only way he could ensure secrecy was not to tell his best friend.

Wilson would, in a well-meaning gesture, surely have gone and blabbed to Cuddy. Cuddy would have interpreted this action as House trying to get back in her good graces and pandering to her, begging for her to come back to him.

But no matter how much he wanted her, needed her, loved her, House was not going to beg. He still had his pride, even though that was conceivably all he had.

House sat down on the edge of his bed. Still naked, his eyes wandered down to the hideous scar that stood out on his right thigh. It seemed to him now that this thing was like a biblical mark of Cain, forever marking him as different, disfigured, damaged.

Like the picture of Dorian Gray, House saw in his scar the physical manifestation of his wounded soul, a damning symbol for the misery his life had become. He was doomed to live alone, without friends, happiness, family, love.

Yet, had he always been alone in the permanent crippling of his leg and life? Or had others acted in conjunction with him to first set him on his path and encourage him to move downward?

Stacey was certainly culpable as well as Wilson, who House blamed for simply not being there when the infarction had occurred, when he had needed him most.

And what of Cuddy? She had been the one who had given Stacey the medical advice that left him in lifelong, chronic pain. She had even been the doctor to perform the middle-ground surgery that he had rejected before he was made helpless when he was placed in a chemically-induced coma.

And now, she had crippled him again just as irrevocably; by sentencing him to a lifetime of heartache and pain with her inability to accept him for the damaged man that he was after he had opened his heart to her.

Cuddy had again been the hammer to drive the final nail in the coffin that sealed his misery and his fate.

But did she know that? Was she aware of how much she'd hurt him? Or was she cheerfully gliding along, oblivious to the torture and sense of impending doom House now had to deal with on a daily, an hourly basis?

Did she have the right to move on with her new life without knowing or even caring that she had permanently damned his own?

House stood up and limped over to his closet. Since their breakup, House and Cuddy had not openly faced each other, talked with each other, or argued together. Cuddy's habit of avoiding confrontation and his own pattern of eschewing additional pain had played into each other. They had both purposefully dodged a frank discussion of what went wrong in their relationship and what was wrong within each of them.

But no more.

House dressed quickly and was limping through his front door holding both his helmet and the keys to his motorcycle minutes later. He was, for once, going to take Wilson's advice. He was going to confront Cuddy and have it out with her. He was going to let her know how much she'd hurt him by retaliating and hurting her on the most important day of her life. He was going to forever destroy her fairytale picture of a white wedding and flowers and music and perfection.

Revenge was a dish best served cold. And you couldn't get any colder than the way in which Cuddy had savagely broken his heart.

House decided it was high time to get a little of his own back, wedding day pomp and circumstance be damned.