A/N: Yes, Thomas' entire words at the end of last chapter were in German. About Marina, she isn't segregated constantly from the adults; it's implied that she was expecting to join them when she came out of the bedroom. But at that moment, House definitely wouldn't have wanted her there as they discussed even indirectly what happened at the grave. Marina will have her turns coming up with Thomas and the rest of the group in future chapters.

Short Saturday update. Next chapter or possibly two is assorted phone conversations later that evening with Cuddy with her shrink, Jensen with his, post funeral wrap-up. Thanks for the reviews.

(H/C)

Cuddy closed the bedroom door firmly, sealing off the world, as House limped over to the bed and inspected it blankly. "The sweats you were wearing last night are folded up next to the main suitcase," Cuddy informed him. House rolled his eyes. He, of course, had stuffed them under the pillow and not even entirely that; parts had been sticking out.

"Control freak," he repeated as he went to retrieve them. "The world wouldn't end with something out of place for a day." He grabbed them and headed for the bathroom, and Cuddy immediately followed. "A little privacy would be nice," he grumbled.

She looked startled at first, then understanding, and her smile lit up her face. "Okay," she replied. "It's all yours."

"Just for a minute. Let me get through before you take forever. When the girls get older and there's three of you, I'm going to have to make a reservation if I ever want to get into a bathroom in my own house." He shut the door, then hesitated and reopened it about three inches. He stood, tense, waiting.

Nothing. The only voice in his head right now was the demanding but familiar one of his leg. He limped carefully away from the door and clear across the large bathroom.

Nothing.

The matching smile to Cuddy's appeared since there was nobody to see it. He pulled out Thornton's folded drawing from his pocket and read it again. I win, Jackass. He folded it back up, putting it in his wallet, then moved over to the toilet. After he had peed, he sat down on the closed lid for better access to take his shoes off and slowly started getting undressed. Odd; he'd barely been aware of his leg for much of today. It was making up for being ignored now.

Thornton. The man had infuriated him at first tonight, coming over specifically to bring up the cemetery - yet he hadn't even mentioned House's own emotional breakdown. The whole topic had centered on replacing the stone, which really had been a good idea. Indeed, the fact that he as nominal son now owned the rights to John's grave and could revise it as he liked hadn't occurred to House. That it had occurred to Thornton promised an interesting sneaky streak. And then he had even apologized at the end and even sounded like he meant it. A quadruple amputee could have counted on digits the number of times John had given House a sincere apology about anything.

He had to be careful. The girls were going to get attached, especially Rachel with that enticing horse. He needed to come to his own conclusions about Thornton quickly while there was still time to back out. Could the man actually be sincere?

"Greg?" Cuddy called. She was trying to shield the worry in her voice. He pulled on his sleeping sweats, retrieved his pill bottles from his pockets, deliberately left his clothes in a tangle in the middle of the bathroom floor just to rile her a little, and limped out.

"I'm fine," he said. "Just going through the bathroom. You don't have to beat the door down." He couldn't totally hide the smile, though, and she saw it.

"As long as everything's okay," she said. There was a slight question on the end. She knew, but she wanted the words, too.

"I'm fine," he repeated without the sarcastic edge. She embraced him. It was his leg, of course, that shortened the kiss. She was as aware of his pain levels at the moment as he was.

"Would you like a massage?" she asked.

He nodded, surrendering. It would make her feel better, after all. It would help him, too - he thought at times that she had magical hands - but he doubted even she would get his leg settled down tonight. He limped to the bed, which she had turned down while he was in the bathroom changing. It took both hands and a grunt to swing his leg up. He lay back, and she started working on the offended thigh.

"Marina knows who Thomas is," she told him. "She had a couple of questions when I went in there to check the girls."

He sighed. "He already told me this morning that she'd worked it out. I was hoping he was wrong. Let me guess; she likes him, too."

"The jury is still out, I think, but she likes him so far. She was just surprised. She just wanted to know where he'd been all of your life."

House had wondered the same thing himself ever since childhood. Of course, he'd thought in his childhood assessment at first that Thornton had worked out what was going on and had left him deliberately because he didn't care, and even when he'd questioned that later, he'd still thought that Thornton should have worked it out. But his father had only visited ten times in House's childhood. It was the early days he had seen at length, that first year before he was transferred. If he really had fallen for John's early attitude, that changed the picture. It still didn't change what had happened, though.

John's attitude. House himself had misread John at first, and that had been a major topic the last few months with Jensen. The idea that his stepfather had ever loved him was a very difficult pill to swallow. He shook his head and tried to wrench his thoughts to something else other than John. He was too tired to be having mental reruns of his sessions with Jensen tonight.

Jensen. The man still didn't quite seem himself, even after accepting House's apology. He needed to talk to Jensen, not just for him but for Jensen's sake, too. But not tonight.

"You know," he said, "about Thornton being my father, I never have actually run a DNA test." He broke off as Cuddy started laughing. "It's not that funny," he insisted. "What happened once may have happened again and Mom just took the easy answer I knew already instead of admitting to another affair. Hell, she was living with John. I couldn't have blamed her. But with Thornton, there's still no hard scientific proof."

Cuddy finally got control of herself. "Greg, if you want to bet on that, if the results were negative, I'd do a strip dance in the lobby at PPTH." He stared at her. "Is this helping?" Cuddy asked. Her hands were never still, trying their best to soothe his mutilated leg.

"Some," he answered. It was, but only some. It wasn't helping enough tonight, not after all the muscular tension and inadequate meds of this eternal day.

She stopped. "Greg, please, let's use the morphine tonight. It would help reset the pain levels while you rest."

He resisted only briefly. He really did dislike the more powerful drugs that clouded his mind. Tonight, though, she was right, and he knew it. His leg wasn't going to ease up without a reboot.

Cuddy fixed the injection from the meds bag while he fished out the sleeping pill. He looked at the Ativan bottle, even though he wasn't taking any of that tonight, and remembering the funeral earlier today, he shuddered. He did feel better tonight, though, leg aside.

A horrifying thought gripped him as Cuddy brought the syringe over. "You were in there for a few minutes with Marina. You didn't tell her what happened at the cemetery, did you?"

"No," she promised. "I told you before, Greg; your secret is safe with me."

He relaxed a little. At least Marina didn't know he'd flipped out at the grave. Nice to have one person who didn't; Wilson, Jensen, Thornton, the funeral director, and the pastor were more than enough to complete the list of the informed.

And Cuddy. There throughout today, going through all of it with him. He studied her face as she gave him the shot. "You need to call Patterson," he reminded her.

"Soon as you're asleep, I will." She put the needle into the small jar she'd brought along as a sharps container, put away everything, and closed the bag again. Then she came around to her side of bed and climbed in to hold him until he was out.

He settled into her arms. "Left my clothes on the bathroom floor," he confessed. "Sorry."

She kissed him. "I'll forgive you. This time." Her grip around him tightened. "I'm proud of you."

His brow furrowed. The exact same words Thornton had spoken. He never tired of hearing them from her, but this time, he tried to run a differential, to compare all the layers of her tone to Thornton's, looking for the difference. "Say that again," he demanded.

"I'm proud of you."

"Again." She complied. The morphine was swirling through his mind. Couldn't think straight. He couldn't sort the two columns out properly, not at the moment, but he needed to. Had to work quickly. The girls. "Again," he said thickly.

"I'm proud of you." Her hands, still felt at a distance. "I'm proud . . ."

He sailed away on the river of her voice.