A/N: The return of Jensen. I love Thomas as a character, but Jensen will always hold a special place with me. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed writing it. Next chapter is House again, but things move more quickly in the next few, and we will be in Lexington before long. Plenty will happen there, funeral and otherwise, and there's still a lot of this story left. Thanks for the reviews.

(H/C)

Jensen sat on the sofa, his hands wandering across the guitar, a somewhat restless medley that could never settle on just one song. Earlier, he and Cathy had had a good practice session on their duet that House had written, which was coming together nicely. But even after Cathy left to go to a friend's house for a rare weeknight slumber party, enjoying the Christmas break with no school, Jensen had kept playing, the melodies traveling with his thoughts.

Part of his mind was still replaying those sessions, and as much as he knew that was a futile process, he knew he would have to go through it and let himself emotionally as well as rationally come to that conclusion. Had he been too focused on House, forgetting that there were two participants who were both under stress by the discussions? Possibly. What he kept coming back to, though, was the two hours between stopping and when he left, the peaceful interval when everything was fine. He didn't think that all of the blame, at least, lay on those sessions. Still, he might have been a little one-sided in his approach. He didn't know if it had made a difference, but he did think he might have done a better job balancing the two of them in retrospect.

Even more, he was worried about House. If the other man's professional trust in him had been shaken, they really did have a problem, because House was going to have a very difficult time dealing with Blythe's death, and as Cuddy had pointed out, nobody else could really substitute here as a therapist. Bringing a stranger off the bench, no matter how professionally qualified, to land in the middle of one of the biggest crises of House's life would be challenging to put it mildly. They were in for some tough sessions in the next few months even with their nearly 3-year therapeutic relationship as a foundation. What if that foundation had been cracked?

Melissa came into the living room, and he saw the worry in her eyes. That was his third turmoil of the moment. He had to be very careful right now, had to watch himself, had to convince her that it wasn't all going to happen again. Cathy was too young to remember much of the early years; she had only been three when they divorced. But Melissa remembered the catalyst as well as he did. While he had been somewhat obsessive in the first place about work, what really knocked him off the deep end had been the first patient he ever lost to suicide. From that point, he had determined to never miss anything again with any patient, to never have a therapeutic failure and to completely fix them all, and work had become not just an obsession but a crusade. Every single patient was another cause, every night work had come home with him, and his family had moved progressively more to the back burner, not intentionally but just through lack of adequate time left over while trying to psychiatrically save the universe.

Melissa had resented the job a little even before that and definitely after, all of the patients more and more representing just her husband's proxy mistresses in her eyes. To her, he was having an affair not sexually but with his job. She had shut down herself, not even trying to talk to him, understand his feelings, or be supportive, and the conversations when he tried to make tightly scheduled family time more and more turned into arguments. He had been preoccupied, but she had been outright mad. It was ultimately for Cathy's sake that she had left, eventually realizing that a child growing up in a frozen, angry stalemate of a two-parent home is actually not better off than one raised in a single-parent home. Staying together only for the kids wasn't a favor to them after all. Jensen, with nothing left except the job at that point, drove himself even harder.

In a strange twist of fate, it had been his other patient lost to suicide, the second one, that had opened his eyes. Jensen had pored over everything, trying to figure out where he missed it, and had been forced to conclude even from obsession that there was nothing he had left undone, no warning signs he had missed, no lack of effort on his part that he might have improved. It had just happened, without warning. It wasn't his fault, and he hadn't failed somehow to stop it. But totaling up his actual hours on the job during the professional postmortem that night had stunned him. He had had no idea they were so many. No one truly reading that total could have considered it healthy, either mentally or physically, and that night, he finally read it. For the first time in a few years, he had walked out of the office empty handed that evening and simply gone home to sleep, and the next day, he had called a professional friend and set up sessions himself.

Melissa hadn't been convinced he was changing, of course, though for two years, he had tried to tell her. It had taken Cathy's illness at age seven to make Melissa really look at him again and notice that he was putting his daughter over the practice, didn't even hesitate to cancel dozens of appointments. House had also helped to finally break the ice, not just saving Cathy but also becoming an individual in Melissa's eyes with skills and worth of his own, not just a patient, another embodiment of what had taken her husband away. She realized that she had never truly thought of the patients as people before. It had taken almost a year from then to the remarriage, but with the bilateral mistakes of the past admitted, they had slowly grown back together. Their second marriage, with more insight and more mutual effort at understanding and support, was going much better than the first.

She came across to the couch now holding two steaming mugs, and he put his guitar down in the open case at his feet and took one cup while she got settled next to him. It was hot spiced cider, one of his favorites. "Mmm. Thanks."

She slid her free arm around his shoulders and snuggled in. "You're welcome. Michael. . ."

He tensed up immediately. "I'm not going to go work crazy again and leave you two."

"Stop it and listen to me for a minute. That wasn't what I was thinking."

"You're worried, though."

"Yes, I am. About you. But not that you're going to repeat history. Actually, that first time, what you did immediately after getting the call was head down to the office to spend hours going over all the charts for your patients the next day. You sure weren't wasting time sitting around in the living room playing music a whole day later."

That difference hadn't struck him. "I didn't even remember that part."

"We've both grown since then. What I am worried about is that you're going to try not to share what you're feeling because you'll be afraid I'll hit the limit. I wasn't really thinking about what you were feeling the last time; I only noticed what you did. We both reacted badly then and made mistakes. But what I was about to say, I think you ought to call Paul and talk to him about it. Me, too, as much as you can. But please, call him."

Paul had been his own therapist, retired to Florida since early October. The two families had had a dinner out together in celebration of his "escaping the cold, frozen north," and he had left stating his goal to spend the rest of his life fishing. Jensen's sessions had been more social than anything by that point, and he hadn't gotten a replacement, something Paul himself had agreed with. "Paul's retired. Probably too busy fishing to talk to me."

"You know better. And they do have phones in Florida."

He sighed. "I was thinking about calling him anyway. Just didn't want to disturb his new life."

"One phone call isn't going to disturb him much. I'm sure part of him misses it. But there's one other thing. I think you ought to go to this woman's funeral."

That suggestion was a total surprise. "It's going to be in Lexington." He didn't know the time yet, just that Thornton was setting things up, but he did know from the sessions about the prepaid deal John had purchased.

"They have airports there. And phones, too."

"But I'd have to leave you and Cathy, and it will probably take a couple of days at least to deal with it all plus travel. I'm . . . I don't want you to think I'm just taking off to work again."

"You're not even going to mention the appointments next week you'd probably have to cancel? You thought of us first, not them. It's okay, Michael. But I know this has shaken you up, and I think you. . . I think you need to grieve for her yourself. I think going to her funeral would help give you closure. Take a few days and deal with it, and don't try to tell yourself that's the same thing as last time. Cathy and I know you'll come back. But you need this."

He finished off his cider and set the mug down on the coffee table, then pulled her closer. "Why do I need to bother Paul? You're not doing such a bad job yourself."

She smiled and leaned in to kiss him. At that moment, headlights splashed up on the window as a car turned into their driveway. Jensen looked up. "It's Mark," he announced.

Good, Melissa thought. She stood up, and Jensen leaned over to finish tucking in his guitar and close the case. In the next moment, he froze with the lid halfway down. "Where's my pick? It was right . . . Mozart!"

The kitten trotted into the room at his name and answered casually, though in that "my mouth is full" muffled meow. Sure enough, the stolen pick was clenched firmly in his jaws. Jensen launched off the couch, and the chase was on. Melissa laughed and went to open the front door. "Hi, Mark. Glad to see you."

"Come back here!" Mozart made a high-speed orbit of the room with Jensen in hot pursuit, then raced down the hall.

Mark stood with Melissa just inside the living room, eying the contest. "New exercise program?" he inquired.

Mozart ripped back down the hall and disappeared under the couch, emerging a moment later straight into Jensen's hands. "Gotcha, you little . . . all right, where is it?" He set the kitten down and then lifted one end of the couch, swinging it over several inches before putting it back down. Mozart and Jensen both pounced, ending up in a tug-of-war that time. The psychiatrist won, and the kitten promptly flopped over on his side and blinked blue eyes up at his audience, soaking up all the attention and purring like a helicopter.

"Wish we had a video of that," Mark said. "We could send it to that TV show."

"You know," his brother pointed out, "we still have contact information for that breeder. Melissa, why don't we give another one just like him to Courtney for her birthday in February?"

"Do, and you'll be dreading Cathy's next birthday." Mark walked over to move the couch back into place as Jensen safely closed the guitar case. Mozart promptly reached out to untie Mark's shoes. He bent to pick up the kitten, whom he'd already seen in action all last weekend during the family Christmas. "You'd better be glad you're cute," Mark told him. Mozart purred throatily.

"According to the breeder, they do settle down a little as they age," Melissa said. "He's only five months old. I'll go make another round of spiced cider, Mark." She disappeared toward the kitchen, leaving the twins alone.

Jensen moved the case over against the wall out of the way, then straightened up and faced his brother. Mark was finally looking and feeling back to normal, he thought. It had taken him several months to reach baseline again following his hospitalization in the summer. The psychiatrist felt another surge of gratitude toward House.

House. Damn it, he realized he wasn't Super Shrink by now, but why did something have to go so badly wrong involving his sessions with that patient?

"I was in the mood for a game of chess," Mark stated.

Jensen didn't point out that Mark had chess partners available in Albany who didn't involve him driving two hours first. Mark was just being polite. He wouldn't push, and they could do nothing more than play chess all night if Jensen chose, but the unspoken concern was obvious. Mark knew more than anyone what his brother was feeling. "I might have contributed to causing somebody's death," Jensen said softly.

Mark flinched. "Might have?" he asked.

"I don't know for sure. I'll never know for sure. The possibility is a real one, though."

"How?"

Jensen hesitated, picking the words carefully. "Call it lack of enough attention to detail."

"But it might have happened anyway even without you?"

"Right." He sighed. "I'm okay, big brother. It's just going to take a few days to get a handle on this." He just hoped that House would ultimately be okay, would accept the help he was going to need here. Jensen turned away, getting the chess set off the bookshelves that lined most of the wall. Silently, he sat down and started setting it up on the coffee table, and Mark put the kitten down and joined his brother on the couch.

"If you ever want to talk about it, I do understand what it's like to hurt somebody badly through negligence. And there isn't any question that I did it."

"You were a kid. I'm supposed to be a professional by now with all kinds of training."

"That doesn't exempt you from being human. We all make mistakes. Assuming that you did make one."

"I know. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I've got that one down by now; I can't save everybody. But I just wish. . ." He pulled back. "I can't talk too much about it. Let's just play chess."

Mark reached out and put his hand on his brother's arm. He was on Jensen's right, and his grip was warm directly over the old burn scar. "Okay. But I'm here."

"Thanks. I'm not going to jump off the deep end this time," he assured him.

"I know that already."

The unshakeable confidence there steadied him. "White or black?"

They settled into their game, Mark pushing from the beginning as usual, not cutting him an inch of slack. The focus was exactly what Jensen needed, and he felt himself rising to the challenge. By the time Melissa returned with three mugs, the twins were both bending over the game board, a mirror image in not only features but expression. To complete the picture, they were both, without intentional coordination today, wearing blue jeans and dark blue button-down shirts. She distributed the drinks, then sat down in the recliner, watching them and distracting the kitten from those appealing game pieces. The tension in her eased a little, but it was a different flavor of tension this time, not like years ago. He wasn't shutting his family out and retreating mentally into work. She hoped she could continue to be as supportive as she should and not get impatient, but she could feel the lessons of their past trials, of old mistakes that they had realized now. They might be scarred, but they were stronger for it.

Mark won the first game, but it was a pretty good battle. They had just reset the board when Jensen's cell phone rang. He pulled it out, and his expression changed immediately. "I need to take this." With an apologetic glance at his family, he stood up and headed for his study, answering at the same time. "Hello." House had called him a few different times now, never talking for long and never getting into his feelings, but at least he was staying in touch and continuing to function in a numb way.

"Lisa heard back from Thornton." House dove straight into the middle of things this time.

Jensen closed the study door and sat down at his desk. "Is everything set for the funeral?"

"Yeah. He really did it." House sounded confused and hating the confusion. "I figured he'd back out once it got difficult."

"He wouldn't give his word and then back out, Dr. House. You can trust him on that."

House predictably dodged from that thought. "Funeral's Monday at 10:30. Burial at 1:30." With a break between, Jensen noted, and guessed correctly the reason why. "You. . . you could come to it if you want."

Jensen settled back against the back of his desk chair for the first time, relaxing just a little. House wanted him there. He still wasn't sure if things would change when they got down to full sessions or not, but that was encouraging, at least. "Thank you. I'd like to come."

"It is in Lexington," House reminded him.

"I know. You're probably flying down Sunday then?"

"Probably. Lisa's doing the planes and hotels; talk to her." Another pause. House sounded so fragile right now, so tense he might break. But he had at least asked. "Will your family mind?"

"No. Actually, Melissa was just telling me a little while ago that she wants me to go to the funeral. She thinks I could use the closure myself. She's right, too."

"What the hell do people get out of those? She's . . . she's dead. Some empty ceremony won't change that."

"Actually, it does help people. It's a time to remember someone, to share those memories and listen to the memories that others have. A time to say goodbye. John warped you with his predictions, but he was totally wrong, as usual. A funeral really can help to provide closure, Dr. House."

"How many have you been to?" House asked abruptly.

Jensen paused, counting. "Well over a dozen. That's not all for family. Enough of them were, though."

"You went for your parents?"

"Yes. Totally different experiences there. Dad died abruptly, in an accident. There wasn't any chance to prepare, and it completely shocked us. Mom had cancer, and with her, there was a downward spiral. It was almost a release with her, an ending of pain. But in both cases, it did help to go to the funeral." He thought suddenly of his brother out talking to Melissa and wondering about him - he could feel along their shared connection the worry tinged with curiosity about this call. "Thank you for helping Mark," he said, once again grateful that Mark's funeral was not on that list. Funerals did help, but not needing them yet was even better.

"Is he there?" House asked.

"Yes. He came down to play chess."

"And to check on you." It wasn't a question.

"Yes. This is hard to handle. That's all right for it to be hard to handle. We can give it the time it needs." House didn't reply. "How's Dr. Cuddy?"

"Worried and . . ." House stalled.

"And what?"

House sighed. The answer was reluctant, but it did finally come. "We're kind of having a difference of opinion."

"About what?"

"Rachel and Abby. I told her how you said they'd be fine and get over being scared quickly. Patterson told her the same thing."

Jensen was getting confused himself, feeling like he had only half of the details here with some majorly important pieces missing. "They will get over it quickly with reassurance from you."

"Exactly. She doesn't believe it."

"Aren't they improving?"

"Yes. Not fast enough for her, though. Every time we left today, just outside for five minutes, they were still watching."

"Of course they would be. But why would Dr. Cuddy expect any differently in just one . . ." The actual topic under discussion hit Jensen like a ton of bricks. "You aren't thinking of leaving them, are you? Not for several days while you're gone to Lexington?" Dead silence. Oh, boy. Jensen took a deep breath. Come down too hard, and he would shut House down or get him resentful, but that idea wasn't just wrong; it was damaging. That blow to the girls this soon could have some major, long-term consequences. House wanted his opinion, even if he hadn't quite asked for it. "I don't think that would work, Dr. House. In fact, I think it could do a lot of damage. You don't have a big problem with them now; this current fear is just a misunderstanding, and it will settle down quickly. But leaving that soon for that long while they're still afraid will turn it into a big problem."

"You said they'd get over it," House challenged.

"Not before Sunday." Jensen scrambled, trying to keep his tone even. "Listen to me, Dr. House. This would make everything a hundred times harder for them. A lot of damage would be done. It would take months and months to fix that."

"They don't need to see . . . things," House insisted. "That's what would do more damage."

"Actually, it wouldn't. They don't have your framework of John. I think it would help them to go to the funeral. They need to say goodbye to her themselves."

Dubious silence for a moment. "You're nuts. They're just little kids; they aren't ready for that."

"They definitely aren't ready to be left behind."

"Rachel stayed behind for our honeymoon," House reminded him. "No big deal."

"She wasn't already terrified of you going away forever before you left. You're worried about making some mistake at the funeral, too, and them seeing you, but it would be far worse for them to . . ."

House cut him off. He wasn't ready to have a session on that yet. "Got to go before the others come looking. Bye." He didn't hang up yet, though.

Jensen gave it one last, desperate appeal for the moment. "Please don't do this, Dr. House. It will scare them far worse than Dr. Cuddy's misstatements did." He quickly changed the subject, saving House the trouble. "I'd be glad to come down to Lexington with you. I'll call Dr. Cuddy tomorrow and check on times, and we can get reservations all together."

"Wilson's coming, too. Not Sandra and Daniel, but he wanted to."

"That's a good idea. He'll help. When are you coming back?"

"I'm seeing Mom's doctor Wednesday afternoon. He's on vacation until then. Seeing her shrink at 11:00 Wednesday, too." The last statement almost ended as a question.

"I'd like to talk to her psychiatrist myself," Jensen suggested obligingly.

"Might as well as long as you're down there. You'd just pester me with questions if you didn't hear him first hand." There was an audible knock on the door on the other end. "Got to go," House repeated, not a maneuver that time.

"All right. I'll talk to you later, and I'll come down Sunday." Jensen thought of repeating his plea for the girls, then left it alone for now. House would hopefully think about things, and he would be more receptive if he wasn't cornered. "Good night, Dr. House."

House hung up in reply. Jensen broke the connection and pocketed his cell phone, then shook his head. "Please listen to us," he urged the desk. It didn't reply. Hopefully Cuddy would keep working on him.

Mark and Melissa were talking quietly in the living room about Christmas, and both looked up at him quickly as he came back into the room. "I'm going to the funeral," he announced, watching Melissa's face carefully. There was nothing but relief there, no resentment. "It's on Monday, so I'll need to fly out Sunday. I . . . I might not be back until Thursday. There are conferences with a few other doctors Wednesday about what happened. If you want, I could come back Monday night instead."

Melissa shook her head. "Go ahead, Michael. We'll be fine."

Mark cast his vote, even though based on very sketchy details for him. "Sounds like a good idea to me. It should help with closure."

Jensen wished House were convinced of that. He sat back down on the couch next to his brother. "Ready to beat me again?"

"Sure." Mark made his opening move, and they were soon once more engrossed in the game, Melissa watching from the sidelines and holding Mozart.