Chapter 49 – Monsters Calling Home

A/N: I am so sorry for the insane wait for this chapter, everyone. Life has just changed for me so much lately and I still find myself playing catch up. But the past few weeks have been stressful and this story continues to be a huge source of comfort to me whenever I work on it. I'm going to really try to get back into a regular update schedule. Thank you all so much for being patient with me!

House's eyes remained on the road. I waited impatiently for him to address my cliffhanger-worthy accusation. I couldn't read his expression; his face was a complete mask, and I hated that he could be so stoic when he wanted to be. If he was looking at me, it would be different; House's eyes betrayed more than his words ever did. He could hide worlds behind his sarcasm and deflections, but his eyes? Well, he said they could mislead, but I didn't buy it. They were the only part of him that came even close to being transparent.

To be honest, I didn't really know what I expected. Immediate denial? Another hollow lie? He must've realized by now that lying to me would only get him so far, given my predisposition towards not only questioning everything, but also being a nosy little punk.

All that was really left was the truth.

"You were fine with all of the other corners I cut to get you into Princeton," he eventually said, tone annoyingly casual. "Is this where you finally draw the line? Oh, all of the other deceit is fine, but once money comes into play, that's just too much."

"House–" I began, but he didn't give me the chance to finish.

"It was some of the Super Bowl money, if that's any consolation," he cut across me.

"I thought we only got ten grand from that?"

"I may have under-exaggerated," he replied with a shrug of one shoulder, evidently unconcerned.

"You– are you allergic to being honest with me? I wouldn't have cared if I'd known you'd won more!" As long as I got my KFC out of the deal, I didn't care how much House won, or what he did with the money.

"I didn't know you as well then," House argued. "You might've tried to take advantage of my newly found extravagant wealth."

"You're a world-renown doctor! You already have extravagant wealth!"

"I could be up to my eyeballs in debt. You never know."

"Oh, what, should I be expecting Albanian loan sharks to show up at our door?"

"Arguably it's just my door, now."

And that brought the conversation back to the subject at hand in the most jarring way possible. House had tried to evade, but there was no getting around any of what he'd done recently. We had to talk about this. About the mafia, about Vogler, about Joey, about the bribe– all of it.

"You didn't think I could get the scholarship myself, did you?" I asked, just loud enough to be heard over the roar of the Corvette's engine.

"I knew you would get accepted. I didn't know if you'd get the scholarship," he said at length.

"House..."

"You have zero right to lecture me about any of this."

"I'm not going to lecture you! I'm...I'm..." I didn't know what I was going to do. In House's own fucked up way, this was him showing that he cared about me getting into med school. That it was important to him that I get a genuine chance to achieve my dream. But the way that he went about it was just so backwards-ass and shitty, and then he had lied to me about it, and–

Good God, why was I even surprised?

Stop expecting House to be something he's not.

"This could get you in so much trouble with Vogler. If you don't do exactly as he wants, you know he's going to threaten to go to the higher-ups at Princeton with this. Or the board. Or Cuddy. Or, you know, the fucking police."

"He can't prove anything about Joey."

"There are about a million ways that he can prove plenty of things about Joey! The hospital has cameras, House! And I don't know what you did to cover up the fact that the morgue is now missing a body, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that it wasn't fool-proof," I countered. "And you know all of that. You can't be an idiot about this. I know you are hard-wired down to your very core to self-destruct, but you can't this time. Because if you go down, Foreman goes down with you, and I go down with you."

"Vogler can't touch you," he said dismissively.

"Oh, yes he can. I'm an accomplice. There's video of me going down to the morgue, I'm sure. Not to mention I lied through my teeth to the cops. Not to mention my entire career is at risk if the whole bribe thing gets around. So yes, Vogler can definitely touch me. This is bad, House."

To both my surprise and my annoyance, House just laughed.

"Why are you laughing?" I demanded. "This is not even remotely funny, we are FUCKED!"

"So, you're not going to come clean to Princeton yourself?"

And that comment froze my thoughts in their tracks. Because my instant reaction was no. Then, of course, came the immediate realization that it hadn't even occurred to me to come clean. To tell the truth to the head of the admissions board, or the dean, or whoever the information would need to go to, and therefore sacrifice my chances at getting into Princeton.

Hadn't even crossed my mind.

"I'm not going to turn you in," I said weakly, knowing that wasn't the real reasoning in my head. "You could get fired. Vogler could take it to the board."

"And I've got Wilson and Cuddy, and anything he brought to the board wouldn't go anywhere. Not to mention the fact that both you and I know it wouldn't do my reputation any damage. Hell, it would probably help it. Ruin my mystique, sure, but suddenly I'd have people calling me for consults, thinking I actually am capable of caring."

I swallowed. "Who was it? Was it the guy who interviewed me? Taub?"

House nodded. "Great guy. Easily bought."

"He would get in huge trouble for accepting bribes. He'd lose his job. Maybe his license," I pointed out.

House laughed again, that same staccato, God-you're-so-transparent-it's-hilarious laugh.

"You don't give a shit about him."

Actually, I did genuinely give a shit about Taub, but House couldn't know that. Not yet. But I couldn't pretend he had even occurred to me when I thought of why I didn't want to come clean about how I wormed my way into Princeton.

So, this is who you are now, huh? Truth conquers all, my all.

"Oh my God."

"And there's the realization I have been waiting so long for. Moses comes down from the mountain and realizes that he was just as much of a lowlife as the rest of the human race all along," House said, the smug smile on his face driving me mad.

I looked away, unable to think of a response. Because he was so damnably right that it made me want to smack him about the face and neck.

There are always points in your life when you're going to look in the mirror, and you get hit by that punch-in-the-chest realization that you don't recognize yourself. You don't know who you are anymore. You see Point A and you see Point B and suddenly the space between seems enormous, and you can't grasp how you could end up here, of all places.

I was still young. And that moment with House in that cherry '65 Corvette, roaring down the interstate, that was the first time I lost sense of who I was. That was the first time I felt an unbridgeable distance between who I thought of myself as, and who I really was.

Based on the definition of right and wrong that I had established in my mind before I'd fallen into House's universe, on what I viewed as good and evil in the grand scheme of things, I was no longer good. The selflessness, the kindness, the honesty I had always preached about...everything I'd said suddenly seemed like such hollow bullshit in the face of everything I'd done lately.

Because this was dishonest. It was wrong. I hadn't earned my way into Princeton. I had been accepted and been given the Smitty scholarship over kids who had actually worked hard to earn it. I'd had it all handed to me on a silver platter. All I had to do was memorize my fake story and sit in quiet ignorance while House paid my way to the top.

But I didn't want to say a word. Not one single part of me did. Because I didn't want to give up something this important to me, whether it was wrong or not. I wasn't nearly as mad at House as I should've been. I should've been furious. But most, if not all of my fury was directed at one person at the moment, and that was myself.

I hated the swell of gratitude I felt for what House had done.

I hated that I lied to the cops.

I hated that I wasn't going to tell anyone about the bribe.

"I hate what I'm turning into," I said quietly.

House pulled off the interstate. We were heading back to Princeton. I didn't stop him. "You're not turning into anything."

"Yes, I am."

"No, you're–"

"I would've never been okay with this stuff before," I insisted. "I would've never...I didn't use to lie, now all I do is lie, I swear to God..." I buried my head in my hands.

We sped into the same tunnel that Zach and I had been cornered in, and I felt myself immediately tense.

"Welcome to reality, kid," House told me.

"That is a piss-poor excuse," I spat out with surprising venom, lifting my head. "Do you know how much I hate hearing adults say that? Like being a part of the quote-un-quote real world is an excuse to do whatever you want, regardless of right or wrong? Like it's all about surviving, and doing whatever you have to in order to keep going is okay? That's crap. That's a bunch of Machiavellian crap."

"Then turn down the scholarship. Withdraw from Princeton. If you think that selflessness counts for anything in the real world, then I'll drive you there in the morning and you can tell the dean everything." He glanced at me, eyes a sharp, cold blue under the tunnel's fluorescent lights, and I wondered how little he thought of me in this moment. How quickly it had taken my facade to drop. For me to start slipping.

How long had I been here? Not even eight months? And already so much of House had bled into me.

Or maybe that much of him had already been in me all this time, and it took me leaving the safety of my home, my family, and my own damn universe to realize it.

"You're not going to," House continued. "We both know you're not. And you know who that affects? Absolutely no one. The only person your self-righteousness benefits is you."

"So my selflessness is inherently selfish, because I'm just doing it to feel good about myself?"

"Precisely."

We exited the tunnel, and I instantly relaxed. I didn't think I would ever be able to go that way again without getting the chills, or hearing the echoes of gunfire in my head, or a slight twinge from the stitched wound underneath my hairline.

"But what about good for good's sake?" I pointed out. "What if I have no motivation to do the right thing, what if I do it simply because it's right?"

"Right is subjective. Your right is my left. Or wrong. Whatever. It's all semantics," House argued. "Your whole worldview revolves around this moral code you have from some invisible man in the sky who is never gonna reward you for all of your hard work at being insufferable. When our time comes, the lights go out, and that's it. It won't matter what you did. You're going the same place as a murdering rapist on death row. Otherwise known as nowhere. All that matters is right here, right now, and what you want. You want to be a doctor, then do it."

"House, you're not going to be able to talk me out of believing in God. Me being an asshole does not invalidate God."

"But that's why you feel guilty, isn't it? Because God would be disappointed in you?" he challenged as we drove past Ryan's. The coffee shop was still and silent at this time of night.

"I feel guilty for a lot of reasons."

"But not guilty enough to turn me in."

I pursed my lips. No. Not that guilty. Not guilty enough to destroy the rest of my life, and ruin the dream I'd been building for myself since I was a child.

But I was going to be a doctor. I was going to save people. I was going to make a difference. The way I got there wasn't that important, was it–?

"I can practically hear you trying to rationalize this. Don't. Accept the brutal fact that sometimes it's okay to do fucked up things if it's something you really want," House said, and I wasn't surprised when he pulled up in front of his apartment on Baker Street.

There was a whisper of pain in my chest at the sight; a ghost of that soul-deep ache I felt for my own universe. And I guess, maybe, just a sliver of that had been shaved off and dedicated to this place. The too-modest-for-a-rich-doctor apartment with the rattling windows and the couch that I could call mine, the piano I could sometimes claim, the dull scent of hard liquor and House's cologne, and the sure-fire tap-tap of his cane on the wood floor.

The things that went on within those walls were some of the only things I could count on, now. The closest thing to "home" I had.

House turned off the Corvette. He looked at me, I looked at the apartment, and we were quiet.

"You know what I hate most about you?" I asked softly, after a time.

"There's a lot of fun possibilities."

"I hate that I know you well enough to know that you were kind of hoping you'd get caught," I continued. "You were hoping I'd be in this position so I'd have to make a choice, and you would know."

"Know what?" And I knew he already knew, but he wanted to see if I knew.

"You would know how easy it is to break me."

House didn't respond, and I still wasn't looking at him, and there was something so overwhelmingly sad about that moment. Something I couldn't really name, but felt somewhere deep in my chest. A disconnect with myself; with not knowing what I was turning into. And wondering how far I would be willing to go, just how much like House I truly was, and how House himself would find ways to answer those questions.

I felt myself stepping through a door, and much like the portal that had brought me here, there was no going back.

Finally, House asked, "You wanna come in?"

I sighed.

"...Yeah."