Chapter 4—Anya Carhart, This Is Your Life

House's eyes were fixed on me, unswaying, analyzing, picking me apart piece by piece. I presented an interesting puzzle; my very presence antithetical to his resolute belief in a rational universe absent of anything remotely divine. Sure, Einstein had touched on infinite parallel realities. House probably had no trouble wrapping his head around that. But wrapping his head around the astronomical coincidence of a teenage girl accidentally falling into a cross-dimensional portal to an alternate universe that just coincidentally happened to hold within it her favorite TV show...even for a militant atheist like House, that was a stretch.

"You want to stay with me," he guessed, and I supposed that much was obvious. Where else was I going to go?

Legging bouncing nervously, I nodded. "Yes. I do."

I didn't know what I would do if House turned me away, now. Go sit at the university fountain until the portal reopened? If it ever did? I didn't much like that idea. The lack of surety in it all gnawed at my gut, and I prayed silently that House would agree to my insane proposition, even if only for the fun of finding out exactly what the hell had brought me here.

Finally, House's eyes narrowed. He tongued the inside of his cheek before saying, "Sure. Why not?"

I just stared at him in unabashed shock. Holy shit.

Holy shit. He said yes. He said yes!

"Alright," I said slowly, somehow managing to keep my cool. "Great...well. I don't have any bags. Conveniently. So, when do I move in?"

House's living room was just as it had always appeared on the show. Faintly cluttered, warm earth tones, piano taking up most of his living room, the rest being occupied by bookcases. Couch, coffee table, TV. The odor of bourbon, coffee, and underlying guy-smell permeated everything. I made a mental note to sniff House the next time he wasn't paying attention.

Right now, House was paying a lot of attention. Well, House always paid attention, didn't he? Wilson was on one side of me, House on the other, and we all stood hesitantly in the threshold of the apartment. I was grinning like a dumbass, naturally, because...well, I was fucking HERE. I still hadn't even begun to process any of this.

"Well, here you go. Taj MaHouse," House said, draping his coat on the back of the couch, then plopping down. "Here are the rules: If there's a sock on the bedroom door, go somewhere else…preferably far away. Don't make a mess, don't annoy me, don't bug me when I'm—"

I raised a hand to silence the doctor. "I watched the show, House. I know what annoys you." He opened his mouth to retort, and I held up my hand yet again. "And yes, I know being interrupted annoys you."

House's eyes widened for a brief moment before he regained his composure. I was getting a kick out of stealing the words out of his mouth; House was a man rarely unsettled by anything, but I held within my hands the ability to endlessly catch him offguard.

Heh. With great power comes great responsibility.

House shot me a fake, sardonic smile. "Good. We're clear, then." House looked at Wilson. "Why are you here, exactly?"

"Well, if you two are really going to do this, we should probably talk about..." he paused, searching for the correct words, "I don't know, everything."

"For starters," I said, shuffling awkwardly as Wilson shut the door behind us. "I kind of need clothes." I motioned down at my oversized sweat pants and sweat shirt. "I bummed these off of some chick at the university gift shop." I turned my eyes on House. "I feel super bad for asking, but can you buy me some essentials? I promise, I'll get a fake ID or something and get a job to pay you back—"

"Wilson makes a six figure salary, I'm sure he can afford a trip to Kohl's," House cut me off.

"You make a six figure salary, too!" Wilson protested.

"I—uh, whatever you guys want to do. I don't really care. But I'm pretty sure House has your wallet anyway," I told Wilson with a tight, anxious smile. I had seen House slip it out of Wilson's coat when we'd left the hospital. He'd probably anticipated I would need clothes, toiletries, etcetera in the very near future.

House snorted, pulled Wilson's wallet out of his pocket, and tossed it into the oncologist's lap. "Observant, isn't she?"

Wilson quickly shoved it in his back pocket, glaring at House. "Charming." Wilson turned his attention to me. "You're seventeen, right?"

"Yeah."

"Junior or senior?"

"Senior," I answered. "My birthday's in a month."

Wilson looked at House. "Anyway you can think of to get her into school?"

I responded before House had a chance to. "No way. On record, I don't exist. Even if you managed to get fake immunization records, fake birth certificate, fake everything—then I'd have to go to school and lie my ass off day in and day out. I can't do that. Morally and in terms of capability, I'm a really shitty liar."

I might as well get the fact that I'm cripplingly honest out of the way now so House can start right away on ridiculing me for it.

"People lie day in and day out, regardless of the situation. Your lies would just be bigger," House remarked.

I rolled my eyes, knowing that he was going to say something to that effect. "I think it would be easier to keep my cover if I was in cyber school. I don't know about New Jersey, but in PA they had a statewide tuition free cyber school. That still leaves the problem of the fact that I don't exist in this universe. No social security number, no record of my birth, no record that my family even existed."

House waved me off. "Getting a fake identity isn't that hard. Give me a week or two, and I can get you fake everything—I know some people. The immunization, health records, birth certificate, well. Perks of being a doctor." House bounced his eyebrows. "Easy access."

Both Wilson and I had curious stares aimed his way. He glanced between to the two of us. "What?" he snapped.

"You're being very...helpful," Wilson commented slowly.

"It's very unsettling," I added cheerfully.

House glared at me. "I don't want a bored, freeloading teenager having the run of my house 24/7. Trust me, I'm not doing this out of the kindness of my heart."

I nodded, knowing that House wasn't saying the real reason he was being so damn helpful. More likely than anything, I was little more than a rat in a cage to him, and he wanted to watch me run on my wheel.

"Did you have any plans for university?" Wilson asked.

"Yeah. I scored early acceptance to Brown over the summer." I smiled hesitantly. "I was going to medical school."

With a faint quirk of his head, Wilson asked, "...Because of House?"

"I mean, yes and no? It's always kind of been in the back of my mind that it was something I wanted. I've always wanted to make a difference with what I do. Being a doctor, I can help people. Not to mention it's a profession that's always changing, always presenting new challenges," I explained succinctly, getting flashbacks to my three-round Brown interview. Fuck, all of that was for nothing now, wasn't it?

House scoffed at me. "You are so—"

"Naive? I figured you'd say that. I'm sure you'll make it your mission to stomp the youthful optimism out of me," I said knowingly.

"I was going to say insufferable, but sure," House said, eyes never leaving me. I looked away, curling into myself a bit. I felt so nervous whenever House looked at me. I hated that feeling of exposure. How am I supposed to live with him if I can't even make eye contact with the guy?

"So, how long did this 'show' last?" House asked, abruptly changing the subject and blatantly showing his skepticism with the whole concept of me being from an alternate universe.

"From November 16th, 2004, to May 21st, 2012," I answered swiftly. "Eight years in real world time, but the show took place over the course of about nine years." I had to account for House's year in prison, but obviously I didn't say that aloud.

"I didn't agree to a decade," House said immediately.

I held up my hands. "Look, I—I don't know. A big part of me is still expecting to wake up any moment now, and be back home in bed. But, if you want a full-time guardian angel..." I trailed off, trying to find the right words. "I'm—if I'm stuck here, I might as well look out for you, right? So, if you'll let me hang around, yeah. I'll be with you for eight years at least."

House snorted derisively. "My forties must be a shit storm if you're showing up now. Little late on the saving." He wriggled his vicodin out of his jeans pocket and palmed one. He tossed it into his mouth, dry swallowing as per usual.

"I can't work miracles," I said carefully. "I wouldn't have been able to stop what happened to your leg. The only thing I would've done if I was there was try to convince you to amputate, so you could avoid being in massive amounts of pain for the rest of your life. And you wouldn't have listened to me either, just like you didn't listen to Stacy."

"I like my leg," was House's toneless response.

I sighed, knowing that it was a useless argument to have.

"So, what's the next step from right now?" Wilson interjected, breaking the tension, mercifully.

"Food," House suggested. Well, less suggesting, more demanding.

"Right now, all I want is a hot shower and to get out of my bikini. It's starting to chaff," I told the two doctors. Both House and Wilson shot me strange looks. "Uh. Sorry. Probably TMI, but I don't really have a filter.

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say you know where the shower is?" House asked dryly.

"Yep. I know where everything is." I smirked at him before growing serious again. "House, seriously, thank you. I'd be screwed if you hadn't agreed to this."

House didn't bother looking at me. "I'm sure I'll spend the next eight years regretting it."

Forty minutes later, I hopped out of House's shower into the steamy bathroom, refreshed and clean. After drying myself off with a downy brown towel, I searched the room up and down for a brush that was more than a measly comb. With my thick hair, I needed something heavy duty.

I found one in the cabinet under the sink, and I guessed it to be a relic from when Stacy lived with House. I raked it through my thick auburn hair as I glanced around the bathroom, still in bone-deep shock. Barely able to convince myself that Gregory House and James Wilson were waiting for me to get out of the shower, just beyond the bathroom door.

My eyes landed on the mirror in House's bathroom. I shuddered inwardly, remembering the two times that House had ripped the mirror off of the wall to reveal the secret stash of pills hidden behind it. I thought of taking it off now, grabbing the pills, and flushing them down the toilet, but decided since that was nearly seven years in the future, it might be jumping the gun just a little bit. The vicodin was a problem, always...but one thing at a time.

After I finished raking the brush through my hair, I grabbed my bikini bottom and top and put them back on. Wilson had thrown them in the dryer for me and placed them in the bathroom halfway through my shower, along with the now clean sweat pants. However, the sweat shirt, which had been at least three sizes larger than needed, was not there. Wilson had laid one of House's t-shirts out for me, Queensryche written across the gray shirt in faded scrawl.

"He shrunk it in the wash by accident a few weeks ago," Wilson had explained.

I wiggled into the sweat pants, then pulled House's shirt over my head. It smelled a bit like his House, with undertones of a cinnamon aftershave. Another character sniffed. I was already making great progress.

Wearing House's t-shirt! Fangirl Me shouted in my head. I mentally told her to shut up. I couldn't have an internal meltdown every time I touched something that belonged to House. God, if this is bad, imagine when I meet Thirteen.

I stretched my arms, then looked in the mirror again, only this time I wasn't thinking of House's relapse, I was thinking of myself.

My own subdued green eyes stared back at me, equal parts excited and frightened. I was tan for the time being, but in the blustery New Jersey fall, I'd be back to ghost-pale in no time. Cons of having almost overwhelmingly Irish heritage, but I'd always liked the spattering of freckles across my nose and cheeks, so it wasn't all bad.

I was short, with a slim build. I had a high metabolism, lucky me, so I didn't tend to put on weight easily. Downside: not much in the boobs, or butt. I had petite facial features: small eyes, small nose, and slight lips. The only noticeable thing on my face was a scar that marred my left eyebrow, a leftover reminder of a nasty fall I had experienced. I had been sneaking out of my friend Maura's house and taken a dive off of her roof. Not a fun night.

Dressed in House's t-shirt, which was still slightly baggy on me despite the major shrinkage, and my borrowed sweat pants, I opened the door and stepped out into House's chilly apartment.

My new life had officially begun.