Green on blue
A.N. This chapter is heavily based on the final episode of season 2 and is possibly the last time this story will stick to canon.
Wilson froze, the beer bottle from which he had been sipping suspended in mid-air. "You hallucinated her?".
"Yep", House shrugged, leaning against the windowsill.
"Hallucinations are not uncommon in near-death experiences…".
"I'm fully aware of the phenomenon", he remarked drily. "If you cast your mind back to the start of our discussion, you'll recall that I wanted help not with the what but with the why".
"It would help me if you could share more about this hallucination", retorted Wilson.
House flinched imperceptibly and his eyes narrowed.
Ah, thought Wilson, this is the reason for tonight's impromptu visit. In all the years they had known each other, he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times House had willingly come to him for emotional support. In each instance the problem had been overcome only with great difficulty. House's reaction did not need an interpreter: this was serious, going beyond straightforward feelings. And yet it was in the realm of emotion that he was least comfortable. This was the moment of truth. He would either reveal all, or he would march out of the apartment and attempt to self-medicate his conundrum away.
Not for the first time in the evening, House was silent, his roving blue eyes the only indication that invisible calculations were being made.
Wilson sipped from his now lukewarm beer.
"Fine, I'll tell you exactly what happened. Fair warning, it isn't pretty".
Over the course of the next hour, one man spoke while the other listened, interrupting only occasionally to clarify a point of detail. New drinks were fetched and forgotten; fresh indentations in the carpet were made.
House confided that the first image conjured up by his delusional mind was of Cameron reading at his bedside ("it was a Dan Brown thriller—can you believe it?!"), her eyes tired and puffy, unwashed hair lank, white arms thin and fragile against the blue of her blouse. He described how he had goaded her to prevent his leaving the hospital room: she wouldn't do it, he said, because it would require touching him. Too much intimacy to countenance. But she did: one hand over his hand gripping the drip stand, his makeshift cane; another on his shoulder holding him in place. He towered over her. Even in his weakened state, it would be easy to push her aside, this delicate woman in his dream.
But he didn't force her away. Instead his eyes slid to her face, tracing the arch of her brows, the way that stray wisps of dark hair, having escaped the confines of her tightly coiled bun, now danced around the white skin of her temple. Purposely avoiding Cameron's eyes, he allowed his gaze to drop to her pale cheeks, on which he could still discern a trace of tear-smudged eye shadow lightly applied—a subtle indication of the sexuality lying beneath the jocular masculinity she assumed like a mask in her male-dominated office. House knew that his colleague dressed austerely at work, as formal in her wardrobe as he was not. He suspected that she did this because she feared not being taken seriously. She had confessed her insecurity last year: reading books on social manipulation, assuming a more forceful tone. House had found it faintly pathetic. And yet she had managed to extract an unguarded comment from him.
"My opinions shouldn't be disregarded just because people don't like me", she had said.
"They like you. Everyone likes you".
"Do you? I have to know".
"No...".
Everybody lies.
Outside the hospital room, House's eyes had travelled downwards, taking in the shape of Cameron's lips, pursed in disapproval at his attempting to move further into the hospital and away from the sanctuary of his room. Like her skin, her lips seemed to have lost the colour that he remembered. He thought that she looked utterly tired. This observation caused him a twinge of sorrow and he brought his eyes, finally, up to hers, expecting to find despondency and exhaustion. Perhaps even anger.
But as blue eyes met green, House discovered an expression that didn't belong on this defeated face. The gaze was firm and unyielding. Defiant. How many times had he looked into those eyes? He should have known better. In spite of himself, he maintained contact, locked in a struggle of mutual scrutiny. When in Japan as a boy, he had taught himself Latin to while away the time. Looking back now, he suspected that he had chosen Latin because it was as far from Japanese language and culture as possible. A rebel by nature, what better way to demonstrate nonconformity to East Asian values than by reading books in the most significant Western tongue ever spoken? A line from Tacitus came to him as his gaze wrestled with Cameron's: nam primi in omnibus proeliis oculi vincuntur (for in all battles it is the eyes which are first conquered).
House was not one to run from a fight but as blue looked down into green, as he could feel his pulse quicken, he decided that discretion was the better part of valour. There would be future battles with less risk of friendly fire. He would not let this woman conquer him. He broke the spell and shook free from her grasp, having no way of knowing that Cameron, too, had been on the point of surrender.
As he turned away, she flexed the fingers that had grasped his arm through the thin cotton of the standard issue gown, the fingers that had pinned his hand to the metal of the drip stand. Her boss' eyes were pools of aquamarine. She had imagined herself sinking beneath their surface, a willing participant in her own demise. Not today. She quietened her racing heart.
House described to Wilson the contours of the case with which he and his team had grappled. The man with exploding body parts. He explained urging his team, even the patient himself, to question his theories incessantly, probing for unusual or irrational deductions.
Wilson could only smile at this. Even in his delusional mind, House was searching for logic as if it were Ariadne's thread guiding him through the Minotaur's Maze. Except that the maze was his own consciousness and a wrong turn might result in a faulty diagnosis and the death of a patient.
House talked animatedly about the medicine, but Wilson noticed that in the hallucination Cameron was always present in some capacity. If she wasn't offering suggestions, talking to the patient on the team's behalf, or attempting a tentative treatment, she was in the background opening doors, bringing coffee and food, interpreting test results. House was probably unaware of quite how much he was revealing about himself and about her. Probably.
But it was when House outlined how he had managed to convince the patient to consent to a delicate robotic procedure that Wilson appreciated how central Cameron had become to his friend:
"I had to prove to this guy that the robot was more precise than any human could be…", House looked down at Wilson as he spoke but the latter could tell that his attention was far off as he lost himself in the recollection, "…so I had Cameron lie on the surgical bed while I worked my magic".
"You used your own subordinate as a guinea pig?".
"Well, you know me. I prefer the more interesting diagnostic routes". But seeing that Wilson didn't appreciate the joke, he held up his hand as if to pre-empt further criticism. "Hey, don't blame me. Blame my subconscious—it does what it wants".
"Quite. Someone doing whatever they want with no thought for the consequences. Now why does that sound familiar, I wonder...".
"Yeah, yeah. Can I continue, or do you want to flex your sarcasm muscles again? If the latter, let me know so I can fall asleep. That couch is lumpy but I bet I could drop off faster than you could say 'all oncologists are morons'".
Wilson smirked but motioned for the tale's resumption. It was getting late after all, and as much as he liked his curmudgeonly companion, he liked his bed more.
House had remained standing the entire time and paced the room as he spoke, eyes fixed on the floor. "Cameron wasn't in any danger. I had complete control of the robotic arms...".
As you'd expect from someone who spends every other hour on his Gameboy, mused Wilson.
House detailed the procedure he performed but Wilson perceived immediately that the young immunologist was the chief object of his friend's fertile imagination. Cameron's blouse was the same dark blue she had worn outside the hospital room, her eyes the same green grey. But House now added new elements. Whereas before her hair had been caught up in a tight bun, now it cascaded around her shoulders as she lay on the bed; before it had been oily and dishevelled through worry, now it shone with a fresh radiance as it reflected the light in the operating theatre. Even the colour had changed, from a dull black to a chocolate brown.
Wilson knew enough psychology to recognise that he was witnessing the product of House's rational mind as it assimilated details and reshaped them according to need. He wasn't getting a true-to-life portrait of Allison Cameron, but instead an impression of her as she existed in a malfunctioning psyche trying frantically to reboot after the trauma of the shooting.
This was Cameron as House envisioned her: beautiful, prone, inescapably feminine...at his mercy.
House had declared earlier that he had full mastery over the machine, and as he moved to explain how he had demonstrated this fact to the still sceptical patient, Wilson saw the final piece of evidence for his friend's true feelings slipping into place. The robotic scalpel had darted downwards at House's command, as if intent on ruining the pale perfection of the flesh below. But instead of biting into skin and bone, the instrument turned back on itself, adjusting its trajectory. Lightly it brushed Cameron's cheek, sliding from her brow to her mouth. As the steel traced its way downwards, it caused the tiny hairs to stand on end. With the slightest adjustment, the blade angled so that only its tip remained in contact, always on the move, past her jaw, which twitched involuntarily. The scalpel edged along her throat.
Cameron knew that the merest slip would be her end, but she didn't even consider it a possibility. She trusted House completely. A swallow as she tried to slow her breathing.
Behind the command console, House also swallowed. He had brought the mechanism past her collarbone and to the top button of her blouse. With the slightest flick of the control in his left hand he cut it off and, with that in his right, seized hold of the material with the metal fingers. Gently but deliberately, he peeled it away from her body, revealing an expanse of unblemished skin.
House continued this movement, pulling the device even more; yet more of his 'guinea pig' was unveiled. His eyes swept over Cameron, drinking in her paleness, as if trying to convince himself that he was a disinterested observer, that this act had no deeper meaning beyond medical curiosity. He noticed the white lace edges of her bra and the intricate patterns woven into the fabric. He recognised that it, like the trace of eye shadow detected earlier, were concessions to her own femininity: tiny chinks in the uncompromising and ambitious shell she presented to the world. Only she knew what lay beneath; only House, here and now, could appreciate it.
"House", she had whispered.
"Don't move, Cameron".
There was more to see. The robotic arm released her clothing which settled loosely against the swell of her breasts, rising and falling with each shallow breath. Following a series of precise movements, the metal fingers travelled further down her body. Once more material was lifted away from its compliant owner, and once more he could only marvel at the smooth white skin that revealed itself to his sight. With a flick, he called up another piece of apparatus, a small vacuum designed to clear away excess fluid.
Blue eyes burning, House traced the circumference of Cameron's navel, lightly touching flesh. She glanced down. From her prone position, she could see only the creased blouse which had gathered up above her abdomen and which hid the mechanical digits from view. Putting her head back she focused on feel instead—the touch of the metal, the knowledge that House was fixed on her, that she was beneath him, under his power yet completely safe. A soft sigh.
From the command position towards the side of the room, House withdrew his eyes from the bank of monitors. Although they gave him a perfect all-angle view of the robot's handiwork, he wanted to see her. He looked over to where she lay, perfectly still. He observed how her skin caught the light, how her hair fanned all around. She had not moved to pull her ruined blouse more tightly to her body, and his eyes ran down her bare upper chest, drifting over the outline of her breasts which remained largely hidden.
His gaze travelled further, taking in her flat stomach beneath the harsh metal of the robotic arms, which were frozen in place waiting for orders. He imagined walking over to her while she still had her eyes closed and tracing kisses from her mouth to her belly button. But instead he returned to the console for a final time. She looked completely at peace as he manoeuvred the tiny vacuum until it hovered millimetres from her midriff.
House activated the device.
Cameron inhaled sharply at the new sensation and looked sideways to her boss, who was completely absorbed as he guided the mechanism over her skin and towards the hem of her grey work pants. The stream of warm air caused bumps to appear over the pale flesh and the miniscule hairs to stand on end—he could see a sliver of cream underwear but no more; impassable terrain. For now.
The robotic arms rose once again.
"Goodbye".
A bang. Pain. Fear. He was on the floor.
On a bed. Moving. Familiar voices: "he was shot. Twice: once in the abdomen, once in the neck".
"Hello". The voice was his.
"It's gonna be OK, House", she said. Cameron looking down on him just as he had been looking down on her. Poetic. She would be his last sight.
"You don't know that".
"I know it, House. I know it".
Death isn't so bad.
"House, listen to me. I've got you. You're gonna be fine".
No one could be so naïve. So innocent. So hopeful.
So beautiful…
Her voice grew fainter. He strained to hear it, like a whisper on the wind. Her face receded. He tried to reach out, but his hand would not obey. He could barely make out her eyes, points of green in the dark, seeking his blue, diminishing every second until they were nothing.
Almost dying changes nothing but dying changes everything.
Time to die.
For a long time neither man spoke. The clock ticked in the corner.
"Well?", asked House finally, his face devoid of emotion.
Wilson looked up and shook his head—a whirlwind tour through his friend's unconscious had left him drained. During the past two hours it had felt almost like a sacred confession. He was touched that House had confided in him, that he had confessed so candidly to his feelings. He experienced a sudden surge of empathy. There were many things that could be said, but he decided to be similarly forthright. "Well, I reckon you're in trouble, House. Real trouble".
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I was afraid you'd say that".
Both men looked at each other in companionable silence as the rain hammered against the window and New Jersey slept.