In the days that follow - Deathfic
A week after Wilson died, Lisa Cuddy dreamed about him. She sat in her office, muted light from the lobby casting cage like bars across her carpet while paperwork covered her desk in ghostly stacks. She signed her name, gasping at the cramp in her fingers but reached for another form, all the time knowing she would never clear them all before morning but unable to stop trying. She heard the door open, wind rushing in and swirling her papers into a storm of white. Cuddy flailed desperately, frantic to catch them but her hands came up empty, all her work littering the floor in a mess it would take days to straighten out. She began sobbing in frustration, knowing that even one form left unsigned meant failure.
“Lisa,” Wilson said gently, catching her hands and tugging her to her feet. He looked as he had the last time she saw him alive; his tie loosened, hair slightly mussed and his eyes gentle but tired. She looked for the blood on his shirt, the terrible wound that had ended his life but he shook his head.
“No time for that, we have to do it tonight.” He lifted his hand, brushing back her dark hair and leaned to kiss her. Lisa had never kissed him before but he felt familiar and warm against her breasts. His hands slipped from her face down to her waist and she felt a tingle in their wake. Everywhere he touched her it was as if he ignited a fire, warmth filled her, rising through her until she was panting for breath. “It’s here,” Wilson said, whispering in her ear. “See?” He stepped back and gestured downward. Lisa followed the movement. Her beautiful silk suit was gone; in its place she wore a white blouse, its cut full, billowy around her swollen belly. “Life,” Wilson said and his smile filled her with joy. She wanted to rush into his arms but Wilson was looking over his shoulder. She couldn’t hear what he obvious did but he gave her a last smile and turned away.
She woke, crying, her hands covering her belly and knew that this time, this time she was pregnant.
Eight days after Wilson died, Robert Chase dreamed about him. He’d never dreamed about anyone he worked with before, especially not Wilson . He’d never been wholly comfortable with the oncologist. Wilson was fiercely protective of House and anyone who crossed him or threatened House’s position at the hospital could count Wilson as an enemy. So to find himself sitting in what looked like his father’s den in their Melbourne home with Wilson sitting cross legged on the desk should have been unnerving, but strangely enough it seemed perfectly normal. “Jimmy Stewart use to live next door,” Wilson said, pointing to the balcony door that weirdly led to both House’s office and his mother’s bedroom, “But since that Madeleine Elster business he hasn’t been the same.”
“Oh.” Chase didn’t know what else to say, thankfully Wilson dropped the subject. Instead he picked up one of the stuffed animals littering his desk and began to dismember it, pulling off its arms, then its legs and finally ripping the head off. He climbed down and retrieved other animals, mutilating them the same way before tossing the parts into a large box that now sat on the desk. The stockpile of stuffed animals didn’t diminish though Wilson worked steadily though the shelves. Chase knew that was one of Wilson’s strong points; he had a serenity that kept him in control of any situation. People looked to him for a level presence in a sea of chaos, especially people who dealt with House. They tended to go through Wilson if at all possible, and let him deal with House. Wilson looked up eventually, pinning Chase with a wry smile.
“It’s not easy but it has to be done,” Wilson told Chase. There was a nobility in his actions, a quiet strength that for some reason made Chase proud to witness. “It has to be done,” Wilson repeated, “And you’re the only one he’ll let do it.” Chase was confused but Wilson just held out a stuffed rabbit, urging him to take it. When Chase did, he was startled to see it was a doll that looked like House and instead of stuffing there was blood seeping from his arms and torso. Chase dropped it, horrified. “You know what to do,” Wilson said. “Just make sure you do him proud.”
Chase looked at Wilson but he was busy taking down his Vertigo poster. “What - what? I don’t understand.” Wilson shook his head, a look of amusement flashing in his eyes.
“Of course you do,” he promised. He took down another framed poster, sitting it in front of Chase and handing him a marker. A list of symptoms scrawled themselves across Orson Welles’ face. Chase recognized them from the patient they were working with now; a case that had even House stumped. As he watched the letters rearranged themselves, forming the one thing they had missed, the clue they needed to send them in the right direction. Chase looked up at Wilson . “It’s the legacy,” he said quietly. “He taught you well.”
Chase woke, filled with a confidence that would make House smile to himself when he saw it, and already scribbling down the tests he would need to perform to prove he had the answer.
Nine days after Wilson died, Allison Cameron dreamed about him. She’d come home, dropping her things beside the couch and kicked off her shoes before collapsing onto the cushions. They’d been working a horrible case all week as well as dealing with House dealing with Wilson’s death, which was to say, watching him pretend he didn’t care while slowly falling apart. Chase had come in that morning and virtually dropped the last piece of the puzzle into their laps, leaving only the actually curing of the patient. Exhausted, she’d slipped out at a reasonable hour.
Cameron closed her eyes, meaning only to rest for a moment before getting up to find something to eat. Her eyes snapped open when someone cleared their throat. “Are those too tight?” James Wilson asked.
“W-what? Wilson ? What’s going on?” She knew she was dreaming but the sight of him sitting there alive when she knew he was dead made her head spin.
“I asked if those were too tight,” he inclined his head and Cameron looked down to find her wrists lashed into handcuffs. Her apartment had disappeared and she and Wilson were sitting across from each other on lumpy cots in a barren jail cell. “Sorry, they don’t want anyone to get too comfortable.” He showed her his own shackled wrists with a shrug.
“What’s going on?” Cameron struggled to free her hands but the cuffs didn’t budge. “What’s this about?”
“House,” Wilson said. She looked up quickly, startled by the pain in his voice and saw for the first time how ravaged Wilson looked. She’d seen him just before - the end - and at the funeral - then he had appeared to be only sleeping - as if when you could touch his cheek and it would be warm and soft beneath your fingers. Now he looked drained, ashen, old and worn out as he never had in life. “You accused me of betraying him for my own gain but you were wrong.” He held up his bound wrists and there was blood pouring from the deep gouges where the cuffs had ripped his flesh. “I would have given up my career for him, my life if I could have but I got nothing for it, Cameron. He couldn’t forgive me and I knew he couldn’t when I did it.”
“Then -why?” As she watched Wilson withered before her eyes, his face becoming more gaunt, his arms thinner, his clothes hanging on his skeletal frame.
“Because I love him,” Wilson said simply. “He would have died in jail. Being locked up and humiliated would have killed him. I knew when I went to Tritter that it would end what we had.” Blood pooled under the cot, creating little rivulets that crept closer to Cameron’s feet. “I’m no different than Stacy,” Wilson whispered. “He does that to you. He makes you love him with your whole heart and soul and then he demands you choose between his life and his love.” Wilson shook his head. “I wasn’t strong enough. I wanted him to live.”
“But I don’t understa-“ Cameron started but Wilson cut her off.
“You’re locked to him too,” he nodded towards her handcuffs. “You all are. I just wanted to let you know it’s okay. Sometimes you fail at love but it doesn’t make it not worth seeking out. You’ll get your chance someday, but don’t make your decision based on what you think I did. House and I are different. We can’t really exist without the other and he might hate me, might never forgive me, but I’ll always be there. If you try to love him, you’ll find a part of me still there.” Wilson’s voice was soft, fading as his form did, but there was a steel core within it that made her shiver.
“This is a warning?”
Wilson grinned, an eerily cheerful expression at odds with the ghastly shade of grey his skin had taken on. “Pretty much. Don’t be afraid to find someone, Cameron. Just don’t pin your hopes on those you think deserve it because no one else seems to; don’t love someone because you pity them. Sometimes it turns out they really are a jerk and don’t care how much you’re willing to sacrifice for them and love is about making a sacrifice and living with it.” His expression became sheepish, “so to speak. House isn’t going to turn to you because I’m gone. He’s probably mocking me because I got myself killed, but he needs the memory of me. I’m the benchmark he’ll measure people by, I’m the one who never gave up, who never walked away. Even that deal with Tritter? He knows I got nothing of value; he thinks it was a power play on my part, another way I could run his life.”
Cameron dropped her gaze to the blood on the floor. It was close, almost touching her bare foot and she drew back from it, suddenly afraid. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t even waste my time.”
Wilson’s laugh brushed the air like a delicate wing. “Not on House. I’m telling you it’s time to break free. You saw me as your rival when I was alive; I’m a hundred times more your rival now because House has an excuse not to be happy anymore.”
Wilson’s blood had reached her toes, and though she had feared it would burn her, it disappeared as it touched her skin and she woke knowing it was time to move on.
Ten days after Wilson died, Foreman dreamed about him. He turned over in bed and saw Wilson standing at his window, looking out over the street below. “Oh, sorry,” Wilson said, “Did I wake you?”
“Aren’t you dead?” Foreman asked and then felt foolish.
“Well, yes,” Wilson said. He was wearing his lab coat over the clothes House had picked out for his burial and the sight of him in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt with his customary pocket protector and name badge went a long way in reinforcing the surreal quality of the visit. “I just wanted to tell you something.”
“Let me guess.” Foreman sat up, making himself comfortable against the headboard. “As usual, this is about House.” Wilson gave a reluctant nod and Foreman resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “You’re here to tell me that being afraid I’ll turn into a heartless, cold bastard who doesn’t give a damn about anyone doesn’t make me a bad person, right? I should be glad to have sat at the feet of the Great Gregory House and use that knowledge to make the world a better place. I should be thankful to House for showing me that I might be arrogant, headstrong and think I’m better than everyone else but I’m also a great doctor who will go on to save lives.”
Wilson frowned at that. “No. I mean, I think you’re a good doctor but you’re nothing like House. He’s a realist. He’s seen cruelty and suffering and knows that people like to think they’re compassionate and giving but when it comes down to it, most of us are in it for ourselves.” Wilson came closer, standing at the foot of the bed with his hands on his hips in a way Foreman had seen him speak to House dozens of times. “He loathes hypocrisy as much as he hates being lied to. Don’t lie to yourself, Foreman. Be who you really are but don’t tell people it’s because you’ve seen the nastiest bastard alive and want nothing to do with him. Be different because you are different. And if you find out you have more in common with House than you’d like, accept it. House is the way he’s suppose to be, plain and simple. He sees the puzzle, not the people but it works for him. His patients don’t get better because he knows their names; they get better because he knows what’s killing them. It’s not up to his patients to love him, to care about him, it’s up to you.”
“Why would I want to care about him?”
“Just to prove him wrong,” Wilson said with a smile. “He’s not a monster, Foreman, he’s just a man who’s trying to find the reason he was put here.”
Foreman woke determined to give House, and himself, another chance.
Eleven days after Wilson died, House dreamed about him. He was at his piano, playing ragtime tunes when Wilson walked in, hair damp from the rain. “Hope you’re not hungry because I dropped the pizza.”
“What, you lose your sense of coordination along with your pulse?” Wilson took off his coat and kicked off his shoes, settling down on the couch in a comfortable sprawl. “Don’t get ectoplasm on my cushions.”
“Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’ve turned into a slob,” Wilson said primly. House smiled at that, glad that even in his hallucinations Wilson seemed to be himself.
“Not a hallucination,” Wilson said, seemingly plucking House’s thoughts from his skull. “I’m a ghost and I’m invading your dreams to impart a vital Life Lesson.”
“Oooh,” House played an ominous trill on the keyboard. “Should I get out the Ouija Board or just write this down in blood?”
“Putting on your listening ears should suffice,” Wilson said with a smile. “Notice any changes in your underlings these last few days?”
“Oh god, that was you,” House said with a sigh. “I knew those sunny smiles and new found dedication to the job were too much to attribute to my amazing management skills. I should have known you’d cheat and play Casper. Interfering with the living has always been your MO.”
“You’re just jealous,” Wilson said. He held a beer in his hand and when House glared at him Wilson held out a second. House sat down beside him, glad that in this dream at least Wilson was warm and solid against his side.
Wilson took a drink and House could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “What cunning plan did you devise?” He asked just to distract himself from a sight he knew he wouldn’t see anymore.
“Let’s see,” Wilson set down his beer and counted his deeds out on his fingers. “I told Cuddy she’s pregnant. She would have found out on Friday anyway but what good is being a ghost if you can do freaky things like that? I gave Chase the answers to your latest case -“
“You idiot!” House threw his beer at Wilson, not sorry to see it hit him in the chest when he’d believed it would go through him. “He’s been all confident and - and annoying!”
“Ow,” Wilson said and rubbed the spot where he’d been hit. “Hitting a ghost with a dream beer bottle hurts, you know.”
“Why don’t you go haunt someone else? I can’t believe you’d give Chase the answers like that.”
“I did it so Chase will be able to do it on his own. He’s a damn good diagnostician, he just needs to believe in himself,,” Wilson said quickly. “Just like I told Cameron to get over you and I told Foreman to accept the part of himself that’s like you and maybe cut you a little slack in the disdain department.”
“Alliterations are not going to sway me,” House pointed out.
“Technically not an alliteration, but I get your point.”
They sat in silence for a while, then House asked. “Why should Chase take over? You planning on scaring me to death with your hideous visage?”
Wilson sighed and reached over to take House’s hand. “I don’t have to,” he explained and when House looked down he and Wilson were standing in front of the fireplace. Wilson leaned closer, the look in his eyes full of affection and sadness. “Look,” he said and pointed to a shape lying on the floor between the couch and coffee table. House took a step forward, dread sending a wave of cold through his chest. It was him, he was lying stretched out like a broken doll, an empty pill bottle in the loose curl of his fingers.
There was no vomit this time, nothing had saved him, he was dead. “I didn’t mean to,” House said softly and Wilson laid his cheek against House’s shoulder. “I just wanted the pain to stop.”
“I know,” Wilson whispered into his ear. “It did.”
House didn’t wake up.