Chapter 47 – The Truth Is Out There

A/N: Phew. Okay. Now that my life has been completely uprooted and I've moved to a new town and started a new job, I can finally start settling back into my normal routines – including fanfiction. So, here's a long-delayed update, everybody! Thanks as always for all of the love and support, guys.

"You've actually been in a coma for nineteen years. Welcome to the year 2024. I rode here on my hover board, my shoes tie themselves, and the hospital now only serves Soylent Green."

Zach glared at me, but I could see him fighting a smile. "I fucking hate you sometimes."

I smiled brightly at him. "I know. And to be fair, now you're completely within your rights to hate me. I did almost get you killed by the mob...and I destroyed your car."

"You almost got yourself killed too, so I figure I can't be too mad. And the car, well, yeah...guess I'm back to walking for awhile." Zach rested a hand against his bandaged head, grimacing. "Not that I really remember much. Can you get them to up my pain killers or something?"

"Concussions are tricky. You gotta stick with the light stuff; non-narcotic."

Zach huffed out a strained laugh, resting his head back against his lame-ass hospital pillows. "Doesn't that just suck. I nearly get shot in the face by some ugly Al Capone wannabe, and I don't even get the good shit."

I chuckled, making my way into the room proper. "Look...Zach, I don't even know how to start to say how sorry I am for all of this. If you never wanted to speak to me again, I'd get it. I just wanted you to know that I never meant to get you wrapped up in all of this."

Zach shrugged, running a hand through his tangled blond locks. "It's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault, really. Just...this isn't gonna happen again, is it?"

"The guy the mob wants dead is dead. House couldn't figure out what was wrong with him." I hated being a party to House's lie, but I couldn't risk revealing what he and Foreman had really done to anyone, lest I risk the two of them getting in some seriously deep trouble.

I was jack-pissed at House, don't get me wrong...but I wasn't that pissed.

And I still couldn't figure out Foreman's role in all of this. Why was he the one to help House? What had really gone down at the hospital yesterday? I was honestly considering just asking Foreman myself. He may have been the only one of the ducklings that I really didn't have any kind of relationship with at this point, but regardless, I deserved a more thorough explanation.

No one could tell me it was none of my business. It was my ass that got kidnapped, after all.

"So...we're safe?"

I gave him a weak smile. "I hope so. I have too fragile a constitution for all of this drama."

Zach laughed loudly at that. "If there's one thing you're not, it's fragile."

You'd be surprised. "I'll take the compliment. So, when are they letting you out of here?"

Zach shrugged one shoulder. "Doctors said my head got conked pretty bad, so they're keeping me over one more night for observation. They'll let me out tomorrow."

I nodded. "Well, how about I stop by later with some real food, and we can make fun of shitty day-time TV together?"

"Well, after the life-or-death incident last night, I'd say that makes us even," he said with a faint smirk.

"It's a date." I lifted a hand and backed out of the room, already feeling my cheeks heating up and desperately wishing I'd worded that differently. Oh well. Too late to go back now.

Wilson waited for me in the nearby waiting room. "You ready to go?"

I nodded. "Yeah. And hey, thanks for letting me stay for a few more days."

He waved me off. "It's fine, Anya. You're hardly a problematic guest. You're clean and you're quiet. Honestly, I think Julie likes having you around."

I wasn't sure what to make of that, so I just said, "I like Julie. She's cool."

I wanted to remain diplomatic; I was of course much closer to Wilson, and I guess that meant that therefore I should be on "his" side, if there was truly a side to take, but I'd yet to see the she-demon that Wilson and House (okay, mainly House) had made Julie out to be.

"I can see why you want a few more days away from House," Wilson continued, rising to his feet. The two of us walked side by side down the hallway, weaving around passing nurses and doctors. "After everything you've been through, you need to rest, recover. House is..."

"Not conducive to that."

"To say the least."

No, I hadn't told Wilson why I really didn't want to go back to House's apartment, and unfortunately, it was going to have to stay that way. It wasn't fair to drag Wilson into the mess that Mob Rules had become.

At the very least, I'd been able to walk away from this entire disaster with a very valuable lesson learned: I'd already done too much to go back now. Disaster could strike at literally anytime. Things were never safe, and I couldn't allow myself to get comfortable, not when my actions had already altered enough that any previously uneventful canon episode could turn into a living nightmare.

I could never take my hands off the wheel, or things would spin out of control.

The weight on my shoulders felt a hundred times heavier, but I guess I should be grateful that I'd learned this way, rather than by actually killing someone.

"Anya? Are you alright?"

I realized that we were already through the hospital doors, and I hadn't said anything in a couple of minutes.

"Yeah." I gave him a tight smile. "I'm fine."

I was doing a lot of lying today, wasn't I?

My recovery turned out as intended. I had a few days at the Wilson household to simply rest and recuperate. I was bored out of my mind more often than not, but hey, I'd read through a lot of the supplemental materials for some of my freshman pre-med classes, so at least I'd accomplished something. That was one benefit of my only real connections in this world (save Zach) being doctors. Plenty of ways to study.

I delayed the inevitable interview with Detective Compson for as long as possible, but it reached the point where I couldn't use my banged head as an excuse. Or rather, Wilson wouldn't let me use it as an excuse.

I didn't want to go down to the station – I was already going to have to bullshit Compson, I didn't want to have to do it in a place that would make me ten times more anxious than I was to begin with. So we agreed to meet on home turf, relatively. Four days after my kidnapping, Detective Compson showed up at the door around noon. I was home alone, both Wilson and Julie were off at work.

Not that I was particularly worried. Obviously Compson didn't know me, but I did have the upper-hand in that I knew him...at least a little. Forty-two minutes of an episode I hadn't watched in probably pushing a year didn't exactly give me a huge amount of insight, but at least he wasn't a stranger to me.

So there I sat in Julie's spacious, well-designed living room, nursing a cup of coffee across from the good detective, waiting for him to drill me. Also, I hate coffee. But I'd watched enough crime procedurals to know that this is just the kind of thing you do when a cop comes to interview you.

"Just start at the beginning for me, Anya."

So I did. I detailed being trapped in the tunnel, the crash, waking up in the slaughterhouse. I told him everything.

Except who took us. Because according to me, they were all wearing masks. I didn't see a single face, and none of them identified themselves.

It didn't take Compson long to figure out that I was full of it, not that I really expected anything less. He looked at me, not with anger, but with a resigned kind of sadness.

I'm sure he'd seen a million like me before, and he'd see a million like me after. The scared pragmatist who knew that saying "boo" against the mob wasn't worth the risk. If it was just my ass on the line, sure. But I wasn't going to put the people around me in any more danger than they already were.

Fictional character in a television series. It was a dangerous occupation.

"Anya, if you want these guys to face any kind of punishment for what they did to you, you need to be honest with me."

"How many people are honest with you about things like this, Detective?" I asked him seriously.

He frowned. "Not many. But nothing, even the mob, is too big to fail."

I pursed my lips, a wave of guilt washing over me. Joey didn't testify, and neither Zach or myself was going to say a word to the cops about Calafiore and his men kidnapping us. Which meant that the organized crime in this part of the state was going to keep going strong for who knew how long.

Maybe that wouldn't affect me, or anyone at PPTH. But it would affect a hell of a lot of other people.

"I'm sorry. I just don't remember anything else."

I never thought that I would have to protect the House MD cast at the cost of others. It never occurred to me that I would have to put them first over anyone else, other than perhaps myself. My narrow little worldview hadn't included the seven billion other people in this world. This universe didn't begin and end in Princeton, New Jersey.

"Anya–"

"I'm sorry," I repeated, with more finality that time. The detective sighed heavily, then rose to his feet. He reached into his jacket and slipped out a business card. He handed it to me.

"Not that I expect you to use it, but if you remember anything else, let me know."

"Alright."

With that, the detective left, no doubt to go shake down Zach– if he hadn't already. Zach and I had discussed the other night that neither of us were going to talk, an idea which he jumped on immediately without any kind of prodding.

"I don't trust cops," Zach said simply.

I had to admit, our little kidnapping experience had raised a few questions about Zach that I didn't necessarily have before. He'd alluded to the fact that he may have dealt with drug addiction in the past, which made me think that Zach may've been more troubled than I originally thought, but between the knife he apparently carried with him everywhere and his obvious distaste for the law, well...

I tried to stop myself from thinking about it too much. I shouldn't judge Zach when I really didn't know his story. When he was ready to tell me more about himself, he would.

I didn't know whether it was nice or frustrating to have someone in my life that I didn't know everything about by default. It certainly left more to learn, but I also didn't know the ins and outs of his history and personality, which left me feeling like I was on the back foot.

All this future knowledge had spoiled me.

With Compson gone, I was once again left in the Wilson house by myself, the too-big home feeling empty. A hint of loneliness crept into my chest. Julie had women's Bible study tonight at her church, and I didn't have the foggiest idea when Wilson would get home from work.

I was too scared to ask Zach to hang out, especially given what he'd said the other night in the slaughterhouse. His asking me out comment had been made with him down a couple thousand brain cells and under a hell of a lot of pressure. I didn't know what to make of it. Should I just pretend that he'd never said it? Or should I...

That was where my mind always blanked out, inevitably. Dating had never been something I'd considered when I'd gotten my ass chucked into House Land. Whether that was because I wanted to keep my head in the game, or because I just assumed nobody would want to date me, I wasn't sure.

Ugh. I didn't want solitude at the moment. There was too much going on in my brain, and if I didn't give myself some kind of break from my troubled thoughts, I was headed straight for a neurotic breakdown.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed my purse and headed for the door.

"Ah. Just the man I'm looking for."

Foreman looked up at me, surprise evident in his eyes. "You're looking for me? Not your dad?"

I seated myself at the differential table across from Foreman, trying to appear less nervous than I actually was. I could count the number of one-on-one conversations I'd had with the neurologist on a single hand. I wasn't exactly comfortable around him.

"I am looking for you," I confirmed. He had a mess of paperwork in front of him. House was nowhere in sight, nor was Cameron. I figured House was hiding in Coma Guy's room with his mini-TV and a pilfered sandwich, and Cameron was probably doing clinic hours. Which left Foreman in here, doing boring deskwork.

The team was predictable, when they didn't have a case. But when they had a patient, all bets were off.

I glanced around surreptitiously, a thrill of anxiety creeping under my skin and making a home there. "I have some questions about the other day."

"Anya..." Foreman sighed, also doing a quick glance around the room and into the hallway, making sure we were completely alone. "I think it's best if you left what happened the other day well enough alone."

"I watched a man come back to life. I think you owe me an answer or two."

"He wasn't actually dead," Foreman reminded me, dropping his pencil to the side and crossing his arms. "Your dad doesn't want you involved with any of this."

"A little too late for that, don't you think? Just give me a timeline, Foreman." I spread out my hands. "That's all I'm asking."

The doctor gave me a dry look. "Oh, is that all?"

Foreman was being about as stubborn as I'd expected, but I wasn't giving up so easily. If there was one trait House and I had in common, it was that we were both annoyingly persistent. Or nosy. Depended on how you looked at it.

"I don't want you to look at your dad differently," Foreman continued. "It's not my place to tell you what happened."

"He's not my dad, Foreman," I told him, not cruelly, just as a matter of fact. "He hasn't earned that title yet."

Foreman narrowed his eyes at me. "He was willing to kill a man for you."

Hoo-boy, that was a slip-up. "Then why is Joey still alive?"

Foreman was quiet for a moment. He leaned back in his chair, a long stream of breath escaping between his lips. He wouldn't look me in the eye. "Because I overheard him talking to Joey. And it sounded like he was planning on–"

"Planning on what? Killing him? He told Joey he was going to kill him?" I pressed immediately, clinging onto the scrap of information.

"He told Joey that if he didn't kill him, you were probably going to die. Joey asked House what he was going to do, and then House asked Joey what he would do, if he was in House's place. And Joey said if he were House–"

"He'd kill him in a heartbeat," I guessed.

"Yeah. And then I came in, and I suggested that we try to fake Joey's death. So you would both be safe. I wasn't going to let House kill our patient, but no father is going to spare a stranger at the cost of his daughter's life, no matter what is going on between the two of you."

I ran a hand through my hair, speechless and reeling. "House was really thinking about it, wasn't he?" I said, more to myself than to Foreman.

He might've killed a man for you.

A part of me was touched, but a much bigger part was terrified.

"I don't know what he was going to do. I'm not sure that House knew, either," Foreman said.

I rose from my seat, planting my hands on the glass to keep myself steady. "I kind of flipped out on him the other day," I admitted. "I haven't talked to him since the morning after everything went down."

"I figured, since we hadn't seen you around the hospital. Plus, when you're not around, House is even more of an ass. So do me and Cameron a favor, and make up with him, okay?" Foreman raised an eyebrow at me, and in his own way, I think he was trying to be a Mom Friend, and that was kind of nice.

Maybe Foreman was an underrated character, after all.

"Thank you for telling me," I told him, and I meant it.

"I'm not sure the conversation we just had qualified as telling, but no problem."

I bid Foreman goodbye, and left the differential room, off to search for House. I needed to make things right. House not telling me the truth about faking Joey's death was still shitty in my book, but given the circumstances leading up to him lying to me, it was basically impossible for me to stay mad at him.

But we did need to have a talk. A talk about who was supposed to protect who, and last time I checked, I was supposed to be his guardian angel, not the other way around.

I wandered around the hospital, searching for some sign of House, but he wasn't in any of his usual spots. The clinic was my last stop, and he wasn't there doing his daily routine of racking up lawsuits and pissing off patients.

For the record, I could generally tell if House was in the clinic within five seconds of stepping through the glass doors; as it was, Brenda was working on paperwork at the nurse's station, calm as could be. Two doctors were chatting by the coffee maker. Patients milled in and out of exam rooms, and none of them looked irritable, or were on the phone with their lawyers.

Yeah. House wasn't there. I went to turn around, and found myself face to face with someone's chest.

I looked up, and found the imposing figure of Edward Vogler standing over me.

He smiled and stuck out his hand. "You must be Anya. I've heard so much about you."