Chapter 51 – Heavy Dirty Soul

A/N: Yes, here I am, back to face my shame. It's been a year. Inexcusable, I know. But I reread the last thirty chapters, and was reminded of the fact that this story is my heart. Anya grew with me as a writer and a person, and I'm not ready to leave this fic behind. So...here's a chapter. :) Reviews (or insults!) are always welcome and appreciated.

"I spy with my little eye, a boy who should under no circumstances be back at work yet."

I leaned on the counter at Ryan's, narrowing my eyes at Zach, who was positioned behind the register in his smock, and looking for all the world like he hadn't nearly been killed just a week beforehand. His nose was still swollen, and like me, he had a stitched head wound, but he stood tall and proud. And with less hair. His thick blond locks were down just below his ears now.

"And you hacked off the mane," I added. "We should've had a funeral."

Zach smiled at me, faintly amused. "Mike called off. I told Carol I'd come in."

"Pretty sure we get a tax break for him now that he's brain damaged," Carol chirped from nearby, where she was scrubbing down the creamer pumps. "Speaking of, when is your ass coming back to work, Carhart?"

"Start of the next schedule," I replied. "You miss me that much?"

"Oh God, not even a little." She disappeared into the back room.

"Love you too!" I called after her.

Zach chuckled, then leaned on the counter, mirroring my position. "What are you doing here so late?"

"I'm giving you a ride home."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "What?"

I winked at him. "Don't worry about it. I'll be in the parking lot. When you see it, you will know," I said mysteriously. With a furrowed brow, Zach handed me the white mocha latte I'd ordered a few minutes beforehand. I winked at him and disappeared out the door, the bell clanging cheerily behind me.

When Zach emerged ten minutes later after clocking out, he stared at me in complete awe.

"Who did you steal this from!?"

I patted the Corvette's steering wheel. "Shockingly, no one. It's a gift from House for getting into Princeton."

Zach vaulted over the passenger's side door, settling into the seat beside me, childlike wonder in his eyes. "I'm pretty sure you have to call him 'Dad' now," Zach said, running his hands over the dashboard. "Shit, he actually bought you this? This is a '65!" He looked at me, shaking his head, slightly dazed. "This car is worth more than I am as a human being."

"That's debatable." I laughed. Zach's excitement was infectious. "I figured since your Explorer being Swiss cheese is kind of completely my fault, the least I could do is become your official chauffeur. Anywhere you need to go, I got you." I grinned at him. "Until I start med school and my life disappears into a black hole of scholastic suffering and I no longer leave my house."

"Always the sunny optimist."

"You know it."

We roared out of the coffee shop's parking lot. "You're going to have to tell me where to go. I have no clue where you live."

"It's not all that far past your house. Like fifteen blocks north, I think."

I shot him a withering glare. "All those times you walked me home, you made it sound like a lot less than that."

Zach just shrugged. "I like walking."

"Want me to pull over and let you out?"

He threw his head back and actually physically laughed at that. "Never."

And we laughed, and things were okay. In spite of the absolute hell night we'd shared together, we'd come out of it closer, and hopefully not too permanently traumatized. I looked at the stitches on his head, then ran the tips of my fingers over my own wound. We would always have these, wouldn't we? Shared scars that only the other would really understand.

"You've got that far-off thinking look going on. Should I be worried?" Zach asked when we were about halfway to his apartment.

"Well, I mean, first off, you should always be worried about me, one hundred percent of the time, because I am a natural disaster walking around on two legs. But besides that..." I swallowed. "It's weird how things go back to normal so quickly, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure this is normal," Zach responded. "I'd say better than normal. And, you know, no one's shooting at us yet. So that's cool."

"Don't start talking about it, you're going to make me paranoid." The sad part was, I was only half-kidding. I couldn't help but jump at shadows nowadays; the mob had no real reason to come after me again, but yeah...kidnapping takes its toll on a person. I wasn't sure that I would ever trust the dark again.

"Sorry," he apologized. "I get what you're saying though. I still, uh..." He had his eyes fixed to the left and up, as if counting the streetlights. "Still kinda feel like we're stuck in there. In that moment when Calafiore pointed the gun at you."

A subtle sense of relief washed over me. Zach had such a brave face on, I was starting to feel like I was the only affected by what had happened. But no, he was just better at hiding the damage than me. Compulsively, my fingers traced my stitches again. "Calafiore would've blown my head off if you hadn't kicked out his legs."

"Yeah."

"You saved my life," I said quietly, the rush of the wind almost sweeping my words away. "We haven't talked about it, not really, and some of the memories are still scattered, probably because of the concussion, but I'm sure of that. You saved my life."

"What else would I have done?" Zach asked me with a shrug. "Let you die? You're my friend. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you if I can help it."

I didn't really have a response to that. Warmth built in my chest. My paranoia disappeared for a moment, blissfully, replaced by a sense of safety. All because some guy says he has my back? With the way my life is going, that's not gonna be enough to keep my ass out of the fire.

But I didn't say that. I said, "I'm lucky to have you looking out for me." I glanced sideways at Zach, but he wouldn't meet my eyes. "And you're lucky I'm looking out for you. I owe you a life-save now. One day, you'll be walking down the street, and a semi's gonna come to plow you down, and I'll be there to push you out of the way."

Zach chuckled. "Ain't that a comfort."

I grinned. "It should be."

You're my friend. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you.

Fuck. I was really starting to like this kid, wasn't I?

"Here."

"Huh?" I said, completely in my own head.

"Here. My apartment's here, above that old gas station." Zach pointed to a dilapidated, abandoned Sunoco, across the street from some low-income housing units. We weren't exactly in the bad part of town, but we'd strayed away from anything close to bougie.

I pulled into the parking lot. The pumps were empty, and it looked like the place had been out of service for some time. I looked up to the second floor of the Sunoco. Lights shined dimly through windows covered with thin blankets, as a kind of DIY curtains.

"Home sweet home." Zach cleared his throat. "Uh, you wanna come in and hang out? My roommates stay up late. We could all chill."

"I..." I hadn't expected that. Even though at this point I suppose I should have. We were friends. This is what friends did, they hung out outside of work and near death experiences. I guess my social muscles had just weakened and deteriorated since coming to the House 'verse. I hadn't spent time with anyone my age in a setting outside of Ryan's since tripping half-naked out of the fountain back in November. Could I even "chill" with other kids around my age, now?

"You don't have to," Zach said quickly, taking my pause for rejection. "It's cool if you just want to head home."

"No, no, I'm down. Down to hang," I said awkwardly. "Lead the way."

His roommates weren't going to think much of me if I acted like an anti-social loser. I braced myself as Zach led me up the stairs to the door of his apartment. He pulled out his key and opened up the door.

He let me go in first. I was surprised to find that the small apartment was relatively clean; they had a somewhat large living room with piece-meal furniture, the highlight being an old vacuum-tube TV with a slew of game systems crowded around it. The kitchen took up the other half of the room, carpeted, for some odd reason. Their stove top was missing two burners and their counters had a lot of interesting burn marks on them.

The walls were decorated with tapestries, art, posters. No dull, blank space. You could barely spot the dry wall. I saw framed Sound Garden vinyls next to old school KISS posters, Native American dreamcatchers alongside a tapestry of Mother Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Bookshelves dominated one corner, filled with everything from A Song of Ice and Fire to the first ten seasons of The Simpsons on DVD.

A guy and a girl, looking to be around Zach's age, sat on the largest couch, a plaid sleeper that looked to have been shredded by a dog. They had their feet on the coffee table, both minding a large bong. Oh. I figured Zach partook of the green stuff, but I didn't realize he was so...well equipped.

"Whoa, is this her? Is this Mob Girl?"

So distracted by the paraphernalia, I hadn't really given his roommates a good look. I glanced up, following the male voice, and froze.

"You're—" I cut myself off just in time. It would've been hard to explain if I'd burst out and said, "You're that couple from Fools for Love!" as soon as I walked through the door.

Seriously? More one-off characters? Talk about a small world.

Sure enough, Jeremy and Tracy from season three sat side by side, Tracy's hand resting on Jeremy's thigh. They were both shooting me weird looks, understandably, as was Zach. Keep it together, Carhart!

"You're Zach's roommates! He's told me so much about you guys!" He hadn't, not really, just that he'd grown up around Jeremy and Tracy, and when they'd run away from home, the three of them had moved into an apartment together. I'd never made the connection, because Jesus, why the hell would I. It would've been ridiculous to assume that he'd been shacked up with canon characters.

Wait...weren't they...

Oh no.

They're the incest couple. The accidental incest couple.

Oh no.

"Only bad things, I hope," Jeremy said, snorting. "You want a beer?"

Zach closed the door behind us. "I don't know if she drinks. She's, uh..."

"Self-professed goody-two-shoes," I elaborated on Zach's behalf.

"You've never drank?" Tracy asked, cocking her head. "How old are you?"

"Eighteen. And uh, I drank some scotch once, but I don't think that counts, because I spat it out instead of swallowing it."

Jeremy snorted again, but that time it almost sounded like a whole laugh. "Guess that means we don't have to worry about you smoking any of our weed. I like her already."

"Uh...cool." I grinned nervously, trying to keep my mind focused on what was actually happening, rather than the tiny voice screaming incest! incest! inside my head. "But, I'll have a beer, if that's okay. One can't hurt, right?"

I had zero desire to drink, but if it helped me look a little more natural and less like I had never spoken to other people before, I'd do it. Secret siblings or not, I wanted Zach's roommates to like me. Developing a group of friends would be...nice. Something I hadn't had since I'd ended up here. I felt an ache for my old friends, especially my best friend Maura, but I had to move on, at some point. Make new friends.

INCEST! You should tell them. They have to know they're banging biological relatives.

"Shut up, brain!" I muttered under my breath, following Zach to the kitchen, where he grabbed a bottle of Coors Lite from the fridge and passed it to me.

"You say something?"

"Nope. Nothing."

"So, you've never had a beer before?"

"When I was eight, I drank some of my brother's Rolling Rock, but that's because I thought it was a can of Sprite."

"...I'll take that as a no."

Zach handed me a bottle opener. I did the deed, then stowed the bottlecap in my pocket. Might as well treasure the memory of my first beer. I braced myself, pinching my nose, and took a deep gulp. It took all I had not to immediately spit it out all over Zach. I swallowed with Herculean effort, grimacing all the while. Zach just started laughing, and Jeremy and Tracy joined in. I hadn't realized they'd been watching.

"I wish I could get that face framed," Zach remarked, patting me on the back. "You don't have to drink it, Anya."

I managed to quell the rising wave of nausea and respond: "Oh, I'm committed now. I've got to drink it all." I took another sip. "Oh, God. It tastes like wet toast."

Tracy giggled. "Good attitude."

"But can she do it without puking?" Jeremy asked. "Should we start taking bets?"

After that, things eased into an easier vibe. I sank down on the couch with Jeremy and Tracy, with Zach sitting on the floor, his back resting against one of my legs. Zach fired up the Gamecube and declared it was time for a Super Smash Bros tournament. I knew full well I would get my ass kicked, being more used to Street Fighter than any other fighting game, but I happily joined in. Eventually cold pizza from two days ago was introduced into the situation, and I was even happier.

Before I knew it, it was pushing one in the morning, and I was yawning, and thoroughly destroyed at Smash by Jeremy and Tracy. I'd managed to beat Zach exactly once.

"I gotta head out, guys, I'm beat," I told the room at large.

Jeremy and Tracy bid me goodnight, and Zach told me he would walk me out to my car.

"Never pegged you for a Yoshi main," Zach commented as we headed for the door.

"There's plenty of things you don't know about me."

"Well, now I know you're not a beer girl." He scooped up my beer from the coffee table. I'd managed to drink the neck, and then about an inch down. He tsked at me. "Sad. I thought you were committed."

"I'm just not enough of a masochist."

He deposited the beer in the fridge, and we made our way back out of the apartment and down the stairs.

"I had a good time," I told Zach. "Thanks for letting me hang out."

"Letting you? I invited you."

"You know what I mean."

We stopped when we reached the Corvette. "So...we should do this again," Zach said.

I smirked. "Should we?"

"Yeah. Soon. Maybe...Friday?" He shrugged, trying to act nonchalant, but I had a feeling he was more nervous than he let on. "Kingdom of Heaven is coming out. I kinda want to see it."

"That Crusades flick with Orlando Bloom in it?"

"Yep."

I nodded. "I think I'd like that."

Zach smiled at me, running a hand through his mess of hair. "I'll see you then. You're picking me up, I hope you know that."

"I'd expect no less."

He surprised me by swooping down and kissing my cheek. "Night, Anya."

"Night," I replied numbly as he walked away. Thank God it was too dark for him to see me blush.

"House!" I called when I stepped through the door. "I'm home. Not to assume that you care, but if you've got anything nefarious going on, now would be the time to stop." I turned around, sliding off my coat. House sat on the couch, staring into the distance with a glass of scotch in his hand. He didn't show any sign of having heard me enter. "Uh-oh. Bourbon means sleeping, scotch means thinking."

"My patient's dying," House said in a monotone. "Warfarin induced necrosis. We're looking at a radical mastectomy to have any chance of keeping her alive long enough to diagnose."

Damn. I hadn't realized Jessica's case had escalated that quickly since I'd left the hospital earlier in the day. "Do you have any ideas?"

"No."

That was decidedly not good. Things got desperate in the episode proper, and they'd nearly had to perform the mastectomy, but they'd figured it out just in the nick of time. What exactly led to the epiphany in Heavy?

"She's fat," I said out loud, not really meaning to.

House blinked, the closest sign of surprise I was going to get from him. "Never pegged you for a fatphobe."

Chase had been the one to trigger the diagnosis in Heavy. But in this timeline, Chase was still off on the other side of the world, and a little girl's life was at stake. There was no way that I was going to let Jessica go into a surgery like that if it wasn't necessary. Which meant that House needed to figure out the diagnosis here and now, before it was too late to stop the mastectomy.

"When does she go in for surgery?"

"Six in the morning."

"Cool. We've got about four hours." I sank down on the coffee table, facing House. "She's fat," I repeated.

"Yes, she's also female and ten years old. Would you like to point out any other obvious facts?" House asked, clearly annoyed.

"I'm trying to help you. Just roll with me here, okay?" I grabbed the scotch from him and set it beside me. I could just tell House the diagnosis, but House needed that rush, that high, that feeling of I figured it out, I'm right. "The warfarin induced necrosis, tell me about it."

"It's the only possible causation. The sores presented right after Cameron dosed her."

"There's absolutely no other explanation?"

House seemed to catch on. "It could be a symptom."

"Skin necrosis as a symptom, and obesity as a symptom. Erase all other assumptions. So we start from there...ulcers secondary from vasculitis."

House shook his head. "That's just sores, not obesity."

"Hypothyroidism?" I suggested.

"Genetics are more likely. Mom is heavy too...but not just heavy, she's tall." House's eyes gained distance, seeming to stare right through me. "We have history on the dad. Hold on."

House disappeared to his bag, where he withdrew Jessica's patient file. He flipped through rapidly. "Family history, family history," he muttered. "There. Dad was 6'1."

"But Jessica is short for her age," I pointed out.

House nodded. He searched in his bag until he found a sharpie, then brought that and the patient file with him back to the couch. He started writing directly on the coffee table to my right.

"House, that's probably not gonna wash off-"

"We've been looking at this the wrong way the entire time." He began writing. Stunted growth. High blood pressure. Blood clots. Obesity. Skin necrosis. His eyes traced over the symptoms. Once. Twice. Three times.

"What are you thinking, House?"

"Cushing's."

"But necrosis doesn't-"

"In rare cases, Cushing's can present with hypercalcemia," House cut me off before I could even finish. He started flipping through Jessica's chart. "But none of her blood tests show any abnormal cortisol levels...unless the hypercortisolism is cyclical."

"You have to do another UFC."

"There's no time, by the time it gets through pathology she'll already be in the OR." House rose to his feet, damn near jumped. "We'll do an MRI."

"How is that gonna help?" I knew exactly how it would, but House knew as well as I did that I was just playing along.

"I'm going to look for something that can cause hypercortisolism." He grabbed up his patient's chart and headed for the door, snatching his coat and bag on the way. He was out of the apartment a moment later.

The door banged shut behind him. I smiled. "All is right with the world."