A/N: Quick update because it was already written down. This scene, which is a favorite in the story, was worked on for a day or two in there last week before my friend's life celebration service when I had a few writing slots available but didn't feel like doing Blythe's funeral. Thanks for the reviews.

(H/C)

The girls had just woken up when House and Cuddy got back to the hotel room. House couldn't believe it was still the same day. So short a time since they had left after lunch; eternity compressed into not quite two hours. The girls were looking for them, a little uneasy at both being gone, but they were still listening to Marina and letting her reassure them. Their smiles as their parents entered the suite were like sunshine breaking through clouds.

Wilson and Jensen turned up before too long, of course. They wanted to make sure he was all right, although they didn't say so. Nobody mentioned the scene at the grave, to House's relief. As far as he was concerned, even when he eventually got into his feelings over Blythe's death in sessions, he didn't want to ever talk about freaking out at the grave, although he doubted Jensen would let him get away with it forever. For now, though, he just wanted to ignore what had happened and spend the rest of the afternoon with his girls. Annoyingly, House found that he was feeling better. His stomach had stopped hurting, and he didn't feel as much like his shoulders were about to break. But he was still embarrassed at what had happened. At least only Cuddy had seen the worst of it, and she actually thought it was a good thing.

But the rest of the afternoon passed pleasantly enough, everyone playing with the girls and talking about anything except the funeral. The girls seemed to be feeling better themselves, bright and frisky this evening, more as usual than they had been any day since Blythe's death. When it came time to start thinking about feeding them, Cuddy asked House if he wanted to go down to the dining room, either with all of them or just the adults later, but he vetoed that without hesitation. No way did he want to face Thornton and see the disappointment in his eyes. Assuming Thornton was even still here; maybe he had checked out after what he'd seen and was returning to his own life.

So they ordered room service for everyone. House still didn't have much appetite, even without the stomach knots, but nobody pushed him. They ate an early dinner, played with the girls a little longer, and then Marina and Cuddy got Rachel and Abby down to bed. They were too tired to protest tonight after this day.

Wilson had just suggested finding a movie on pay-per-view when a polite but definite knock came on the door. House sighed. "Fantastic. No prize for guessing who that is." Thornton, no doubt, come to inspect his disappointing son and say goodbye in person.

Cuddy was still on her feet, having just come out of the girls' bedroom, and she went to the door. It was Thornton, as predicted, with a sort of notepad tucked under one arm. "Hi, Thomas," she said.

"May I come in?" he asked. She didn't look at her husband so she technically wouldn't see him veto the suggestion. Instead, she stepped back and opened the door fully. Thomas deserved reassurance as much as Wilson and Jensen did, and he wasn't going to start anything. She was to realize within the first minute that she had been wrong about that.

Thornton walked in. House looked at his watch. 7:15. Thornton had given up very quickly on his dining room stake-out tonight. "You're too late," House snapped, not facing him. "The girls just went to bed, so you'll have to get a fix somewhere else."

"I know they just went to bed; that's why I waited. I wanted to see you," Thomas replied, but there was no judgment in the tone. House couldn't resist looking up at him then, just for a moment. No disappointment in the eyes, either, only pure compassion. House looked away, unable to believe it. Thomas gave him a long moment as he studied his son carefully, gauging. Then he pushed on. "I have a suggestion for you, Greg."

That at least drew his son's eyes back to him. "Oh, I can't wait to hear this."

Thomas didn't react to the sarcasm. "Why don't you replace John's part of the tombstone?"

It was the first time since the scene in the van that anybody had even approached mentioning what happened at the cemetery to him. House lashed out before the words had fully settled. "Why don't I replace it? It's not that simple. I . . ." He skidded to a halt in mid scathe as the idea crystallized.

"It is that simple," Thomas countered. "That much, anyway. Who's going to stop you? It's yours now, Greg, and you can have whatever you like as a marker. People make improvements to their family plots all the time. The way that stone is set up, John's half could be cut off easily by a stone company without affecting hers and just replaced to make it two singles. It didn't have the name clear across the top like some of them do."

The eyes met, father and son, and the similarity between their expressions was suddenly very marked as the wheels sprang into parallel motion. Wilson, feeling as if he were seeing double, spoke up quickly from the sidelines before this plot went too far. "I do think there are some public decency laws that apply here. You couldn't get too accurate."

Thomas shrugged. "So you'd have to be subtle instead of blatant. That's more fun anyway." The gleam in his eyes was very familiar just then, even if transplanted into a different face. This was the plotter, and Wilson remembered Jensen's words again. He's being nice . . . he can turn the tables any time he wants to. He was glad it was John, not himself, in the crosshairs this time.

House grinned for just a moment before remembering himself. Thomas sat down in a free armchair. "Any monument company can take a design and make it into a custom stone for you. They even have an artist available to consult who could draw it up for you if you bounced your ideas off him. Or I could sketch it out myself and save you the extra fee."

House looked at him skeptically. "So you're an artist, too?"

"I've always had a knack for sketching," Thornton answered. "That's hereditary, too. My grandfather, the one we called Grandpa Tom, was an artist for a newspaper. He lived in Chicago, and back then, there were a lot of places, like courtrooms, for instance, where cameras weren't allowed yet. Every large paper had artists who would sketch scenes on site. Grandpa covered courts and other news events in Chicago for years until he retired. That jumped a generation, like the music. Dad was musical but couldn't draw. I can draw and never could do music. But artistic talent, in whatever form, runs pretty straight."

The bedroom door opened at that point, and they looked up to see Marina standing there. "Are the girls all right?" Cuddy asked.

She nodded, looking from Thornton to House. Everyone was silent. She reluctantly turned away. "I'll be in here if you need me."

"Thank you, Marina," Cuddy called. The door closed.

"You never did anything professionally with it, though," House noted.

A cloud of regret crossed Thomas' face, but it was swift moving. He'd swallowed the bitterness of that pill long since. "I wanted to. When I was young, I was going to be an artist. I remember being fascinated watching Grandpa Tom draw, and he always really looked at my sketches when I was a young kid. Never dismissed them as something 'cute' or just kid's doodling. He'd give me a critique on them, even had suggestions for how to do things better, but he always explained the parts he liked, too, and why he liked them. It was serious feedback. He gave me my first official sketch pad and pens. I kept practicing after he died, but then when my parents were killed and we went to Cincinnati, my uncle disapproved of it. That wasn't practical, and he never lost a chance to tell me it would never work out and I wasn't that good and could never make a living at it. Besides, it couldn't be a career anymore for anybody because society had advanced past that. His biggest pet subject was being a responsible provider for your family and not just wasting time on what you wanted instead of what would pay best. He thought Dad had failed there and also hadn't drilled it into us enough. I was so discouraged on everything right then, I let him win."

House was watching him, the lines of his face softer now. The other three adults were fascinated by this family history, but they had the sense to stay on the sidelines. "So you're an artist, but you're 50 years out of practice?" House asked.

Thomas shook his head. "I got back into it in the Marines of all places. It helped a lot there. Think of how many places and situations where it would be very suspicious to pull out a camera and take a picture, but if you could draw later the people and things you had seen, that still would get the information across. I became very good at quick sketches of people, and since leaving the service, I've done other things, too, just as a way to unwind at times. If you'd like, Greg, I'll work out some of your ideas on a better stone for John, and you could see them immediately to make changes. That would be a lot faster coming up with a final version than working long distance with an artist at a monument company." Another quick shadow passed across his expression for a moment, and Cuddy suddenly knew that Thomas had designed Emily's stone himself and with much more than just her name.

House considered it. "Show me something you did," he requested after a moment. Not that designing an appropriate stone for John would push anybody's artistry much, but he was curious.

Thornton opened the notepad he held to the first page and stretched out from his chair to hand it over. It was a black-and-white sketch of Rachel. Cuddy, who had sat back down next to her husband on the couch, leaned over to share in surveying it. Not elaborate, but the attitude was captured perfectly, the curiosity, wanting to get down and run, even the airport terminal suggested behind them. "That's really good," she said. House gave a grunt and flipped the page. The next one was Abby, and the page after that was House and Cuddy together. That one wasn't set in the last day by background but was a general portrait. Cuddy smiled looking at it. "May I have these, Thomas?"

"Of course. I can draw more. I did a few sketches of all of you this afternoon after we got back now that I know what the girls look like."

He hadn't known what the girls looked like. It struck Cuddy with renewed force, even greater for the fact that he was an artist, that he enjoyed drawing faces, and yet he had had no faces to fill in those blanks. He hadn't even known how to start drawing his granddaughters until this trip. She felt tears well up suddenly and looked down, not wanting to set off her husband.

He noticed anyway, of course, and gave her hand a brief squeeze, although his tone was exasperated. "Oh, knock it off. You women, always getting sentimental about things." He flinched as he promptly remembered outdoing all of the women in tears earlier today, and he quickly flipped through the remaining filled pages. A few more of the two of them and the girls, including one of all four of them together. One portrait of a woman he'd never seen who he realized had to be Emily, Thomas' wife. He looked at her face for a while, wondering how things might have been different had he been raised on the other side. This could have been his mother, and he would have been Timothy Thornton III, probably turning his younger brother into another Thomas unless his father decided to break the shackles of tradition and discover another letter. She looked kind but humorous. That was the last one.

House tore off the filled pages except for that last one and handed the sketches to Cuddy before returning the notepad to Thomas. Jensen, on the other side of House on the couch, had seen the drawings, too, and at this point, Cuddy took pity on Wilson, who looked like he was physically holding himself in the other armchair to keep from disrupting the moment by jumping up just to satisfy his curiosity. She handed the pages to him, and he went through them one at a time, impressed.

House meanwhile had actually started thinking about what would be a suitable marker for John. "I suppose a 6-foot giant middle finger is out of the question."

Thomas laughed. "Love the concept, but no, the cemetery probably wouldn't accept that one. I'll draw you one, though, just for practice." He started sketching, propping the pad on his knee, working amazingly quickly. House, watching, noticed his hands. Blythe had said his touch was unlike anything else she had known. Of course, she was comparing to John, so the bar was set incredibly low for that experience. Still, House wondered.

Thomas finished his drawing and handed it across the gap. House and Cuddy both started laughing, and Jensen leaned over more to join in the joke. Giving up any pretense of restraint, Wilson came to his feet and walked around behind the couch to see the pad.

The drawing was a gigantic hand, middle finger extended, the others curled down forming the writing surface. John House was written in half-buried letters at the very bottom, still legible but missing a good proportion of it. Far larger were the words above that. "I win, Jackass."

House was openly smiling now. "That's perfect. Too bad we can't use it." He started to hand the pad back, then paused and tore that sheet off, keeping it for himself. "I do like the half-buried letters. Maybe there's a three-word tribute that starts with the letters SOB that could be spelled out with emphasis. Or dead roses as a border."

"Skull and crossbones?" Wilson suggested.

"Definitely remove all the stuff he put on there. Husband, father, Marine. Bullshit." Thomas looked relieved, and House jumped into attack mode. "That's why you want me to redo the stone. It's the Marine reference, right? That's what gets your back up."

Thomas met his look without flinching. "The part about the Marines is an offense to me, but it's not the only one nor the largest." Father and son locked into a one-sided glare-off for a moment, skepticism nose to nose with sincerity, and then House dodged away, changing the subject.

"I wonder why he didn't have House in gigantic letters all the way across the double stone. Why not make a big deal out of the one thing that wasn't a lie?"

Jensen tilted his head, considering it. "That is interesting. Probably as inadequate as he felt in the other three departments, it was the name deep down that still bothered him most. I'd bet his father's tombstone had House carved in huge letters. To John, to do the same thing with his own stone and claim his father's example at the end might have been such a lie he couldn't bring himself to it."

"That was certainly some interesting background on his father," Thomas put in.

Wilson sighed. "Of course. Even you already know what they're talking about." Wilson had no idea who John's father was or why that mattered, but he knew he was once again at the tail end of the information chain.

House's thoughts unwillingly returned to the story of Charles and his young son. First a hero absent father who was presumed dead and then a shattered present one who had most likely been abusive himself as he fought his own demons. Damn it, House refused to feel sorry for John. Whatever the man's father had or hadn't been, it wasn't an excuse. But suddenly, having the last word over John seemed hollow somehow, this game losing its flavor.

He knew exactly what John's tombstone needed to be. "Just the name," he said softly, staring at his hands.

Cuddy had been busy glaring at Wilson, conveying the message in flaming darts that tonight was not the night to expand Wilson's education on background, but she quickly looked back at her husband. "Just the name?" she repeated.

He nodded. "John House. In the middle, not half buried letters, but with nothing else there. Just the name." That much wasn't a lie, but nothing had ever been done with it by John, either. The stone truly should be mostly blank.

Thomas' eyes were shining. "Well done, Greg," he said warmly. House looked up, startled at the clear pride in his voice.

"Yes, well done," Jensen echoed. Thomas watched in pure longing as Greg turned to look at him briefly, not to challenge but to feel the warmth of the words. From Jensen, he accepted praise, at least at this moment. Thomas tried to remind himself that that, too, had probably taken a good while.

House sighed. The rest of the thought was right there, just waiting to be completed. If John's elaborate stone needed to be redesigned plain, Blythe's plain one needed an upgrade. "I need to redo Mom's side, too," he said. "She . . . she deserves that." A visible tremor ran through him.

Jensen took over, stepping in firmly. "That's enough for tonight," he insisted. His voice was sharp and a little louder than necessary. The tone drew everybody's attention, and he could feel Thornton's eyes weighing his own abrupt leap in tension, coming to lightning-swift conclusions. But damn it, this time, Jensen would act on his judgment no matter how the rest of them felt about it. Thornton was trying to be careful, and House had been in the spirit of the game for a while, but his mood had shifted in the last few minutes. He was hitting the limit. They were not going on tonight, period, and that resolve was carved in granite itself. Nobody challenged the psychiatrist, and after a moment, he made himself ease up.

There was an awkward pause, not of resistance to Jensen's decree but simply a vacuum waiting to be filled. Thomas put his sketch pad away, but he didn't offer to leave. Wilson finally spoke up. "Right before you came, we were thinking about finding a movie on pay-per-view." He studied Thornton as the thought occurred to him. "We ate a little while ago. Have you eaten yet?"

Thomas shook his head. "That's okay, though. I'm not really hungry."

"Nope, we have to order you something, and you can eat while we watch the movie. Trust me; I'm a doctor. It's very unhealthy to just skip meals." Wilson headed for the phone and picked up the card with the number for room service as he turned. "What do you want?" His eyes made a miniscule shift to the back of House's head.

Thomas got the message instantly, loud and clear. "Actually, I wouldn't mind a burger and fries. I am hungry now that I think about it. Thank you for asking."

"Anybody else want dessert or something? They had some key lime pie on the menu last night. We already ate, but I'd like a slice of that and maybe some fries. Cuddy? Jensen? House?"

Cuddy and Jensen both promptly ordered dessert, and Jensen also added fries. House after a moment ordered pie himself. Wilson called down, carefully concealing his satisfaction. House had barely finished one complete meal today out of all three combined he'd been present at. He really did need some more fuel. Hopefully he would relax enough to graze some during the movie while everybody else was.

Once the call was made, Cuddy stood up. "I'm going to go check on the girls. You boys pick a movie while we're waiting for room service to get here." She started for the bedroom and smiled as Thomas and Wilson started a movie differential behind her.

Marina was in a chair reading a book, and the girls were sleeping peacefully. Cuddy touched them gently, not wanting to wake them up but feeling a surge of pride. They had handled today so well. "We'll be watching a movie if you need anything," she said.

The nanny closed her book as Cuddy turned away from the girls, and she spoke softly enough that the words pulled Cuddy right up to her side. "That's his father," she stated. Cuddy nodded. No point in denying it when they confirmed it in person themselves. "So where has he been?" Marina asked.

Cuddy sighed. She could have just insisted it was none of Marina's business, but the thing was, Thomas' character really was Marina's business inasmuch as it affected the girls and even House. The nanny cared deeply about all of them by this point. "He did follow life from a distance, as much as he could, up until about three years ago. Then his wife got very ill, and he was tied up dealing with issues with her until last summer, when he saw the media on the trial."

"She died." Marina confirmed the sad edge on Cuddy's tone.

"Yes. He obviously loved her deeply, and he says that just consumed him the last few years. He wasn't uninterested in his son, but he didn't realize anything had changed."

"So he's all alone now?" Marina asked. Cuddy nodded, and the nanny looked thoughtful. "He seems all right so far," she said finally, "but . . ."

"Exactly. Thomas is a good man, Marina, but there's a lot of background to process. Don't push Greg on this, okay?"

Marina gave her a conspiratorial look. "He wants it himself, I think. He'd deny that, of course. These men!"

Cuddy laughed. "I think he does. Now, please, drop it. And of course, the girls are not to know, not until he decides."

"Or they work it out," Marina filled in. "They're bright little girls. He'd better process things quickly." She smiled and picked her book back up. "All right, Dr. Cuddy. Good night."

"Good night."

Cuddy left the bedroom. The movie had been selected, and she sat back down by her husband and picked up his hand again. He was more relaxed than earlier, even with Thomas pushing him a bit on John. She had to give Thomas credit there; none of the rest of them would have dared to raise the subject tonight, but he had managed to make it a challenge to draw his son in. Simply turning up to invite himself to their evening and movie in order to check on his son would more likely have drawn an attack out of pure stress redirection.

Room service arrived, and they started the movie. Thomas was much quieter than his son in watching movies, but his comments when he did make them were equally perceptive, if less acerbic. House managed to finish off his piece of pie and half of Jensen's fries, and the evening passed remarkably peacefully as if the world were catching its breath after today. Cuddy could tell her husband was more aware of his physical pain levels by the end, though. All the other emotional noise had finally let up enough for that voice to be heard, and he had missed several of his meds today. She wondered if she could talk him into a small dose of morphine tonight.

Once the movie ended, Thomas stood up promptly. "I'll say goodnight. It's been a long day. Thank you." He took two steps toward the door, then stopped and turned back. "Greg."

House looked up at him. His eyes were a window filled with suspicion, weariness, and pain, but at least they met Thomas' steadily this time without the glaring challenge. "What?" he asked. Jensen tensed up slightly but didn't say anything.

Thomas switched into German. "I had never seen that stone before because it was still being carved at the time of John's funeral. I never would have let you walk into that blind. I should have gone to inspect the grave in the last few days, though, and I didn't think of it. Should have known there might be something odd since he set it up. I apologize for that failure."

House stared at him, caught off guard. It actually hadn't occurred to him that his father might have seen the stone and simply set him up for the fun of it, and he had never expected in any of his earlier scenarios of disappointment that Thornton would take the blame and apologize to him for this afternoon. "Good night," Thomas said. He hesitated, then added, "I'm proud of you."

He turned away softly, and he was gone.