Fic: Sinnerman, Prophet, Saint (12/13)
Title: Sinnerman, Prophet, Saint
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Chase/OMC, House/Chase
Summary: The marks of the saints and a past he won’t remember force Chase and House to face religion head on. They won’t get his fellow without a fight!
Spoilers: Up to season 4 Finale.
Genre: Drama, Supernatural
Disclaimer: I don’t own House. I’m not making any money off this story.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): Language, Adult Situations, Violence, M/M relationships. Do not read this story if any of these bother you!
Chapter 12: Wonderland Welcome
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A/N: Only one chapter left!
Wilson approached cautiously. House was the only one he knew of that could wrangle Cuddy when she was this pissed. Granted it was usually House that made her mad in the first place. Wilson didn’t see what House found so amusing about these situations.
“He said they were fine.”
“The last time you spoke to him. What, three days ago?”
“Two.”
The correction was answered by a fierce glare. “Other side of the planet and he’s still giving me hypertension.” She turned her glare to the atrium that greeted patients when they first walked through the main entrance. On the second floor mezzanine, where she and Wilson stood overlooking the entrance, the rest of the rooms were dark and quiet. They were mostly meeting rooms and few people held meetings at one thirty on Saturday morning.
The hospital was still running though. People took ill, or were injured at all times of the day. And of course there were also the eager, busy body doctors that just wouldn’t go home. Cuddy’s eyes followed Dr. Cameron as she dropped a file off on the deserted clinic station.
“Doesn’t anybody in this hospital have a life?” Cuddy mumbled to herself.
“You should go home. Get some rest.”
“How am I supposed to do that? House is off in God-knows-where doing who-knows-what and he’s dragged Chase along with him.” She shook her head, her frustration over her missing employees magnified by the unhelpful FBI investigation.
“This isn’t your fault.”
Lisa glared at him.
“This isn’t my fault either.”
“Well I can’t blame the person I want to blame because he isn’t around right now!” Cuddy’s head dipped and her grip on the rail tightened while she collected herself.
Wilson clenched his jaw to prevent his own words of frustration from flying out and making the situation any worse. His eyes strayed over the open area not taking anything in until he saw the front doors being pushed open.
“Oh my God,” Cuddy heard Wilson say faintly. She felt his hand fall on her shoulder and then he was gone. She opened her eyes to see him running for the stairs. She looked to the lower level to see what had sent him off and then she was running too.
“House?”
House didn’t hear the voice of the immunologist on his team. He didn’t see her standing not far from him. His eyes were focussed on the faint image a few steps before him, the outstretched arms, the soft welcoming smile.
‘You’re almost there.’
House took another step. His weak legs barely held him up, but he was almost there. The distance between them was beginning to grow shorter.
‘You did it,’ the familiar voice told him while another called his name and asked if he was alright.
“House!”
‘You’re home.’
He reached out to the faint apparition, the last of his strength evaporating the moment it was no longer needed. House collapsed, but not into the arms he’d been struggling towards.
Cameron couldn’t support House’s dead weight but she awkwardly managed to get them both to the floor without injury.
“House?” she called trying to get a response from him. Her eyes were already assessing his state but her furious thoughts came to an abrupt halt when House whispered a name.
“Robert…”
Her stunned gaze was frozen on his head, where it rested on her chest. Had her eyes been anywhere else she might have missed how the unruly hair a little above House’s temple ruffled as though someone had laid a gentle caress there.
“Is he alright? Cameron?”
Wilson’s frantic voice pierced through her alarm. “I…I don’t know.”
Cuddy arrived a moment later and Cameron dismissed what she’d seen as she was swept up in the excitement and concern over House and his return.
“Where’s Chase?” Wilson asked at some point in the fracas.
Cameron gave a shake of her head as an answer and continued working on House.
Chase’s form, standing back from the action, stared longingly and faded away.
Thousands of miles away a man awoke with a gasp to a tired and achy body. It was dark and the wind that blew through the small alcove was cold. Chase shivered and pulled in tighter. He raised his head briefly before letting it fall against the cool outer wall with a dull thud. Now he had to find his own way home. It’d have to wait. He was too tired to do more than close his eyes and sleep.
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---H/C---
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Cameron slid the door to the hospital room closed. Her eyes, sullen and glassy were trained, unseeingly, on the speckled floor pattern. A pair of brown cap-toe oxfords slipped into her line of sight.
“How is he?”
Cameron shook her head minutely and responded without looking at Wilson. “Sarcastic, cruel, miserable, in pain.”
“So his usual self,” Wilson said with a slight smile. Cameron didn’t see it but she would hear it in his voice.
“I guess. He keeps asking for news on Chase.”
Wilson didn’t see why that was worth mentioning. “He’s worried. We all are.”
“Right,” she agreed, though her tone implied she didn’t. “He’s stable. No complications from his surgery. He’ll be fine.”
Wilson peered into the House’s hospital room. “I can’t believe he made it all the way here bleeding internally.”
“The bleed may have started or only became serious when he got here.”
“Convenient.”
“So you think it’s more likely that some mystical force kept the bleed in check just long enough for him to get back here?”
“I think it’s one more strange thing to add to a list of strange things that have been going on here. You saw him yesterday. He was walking! Not limping, not shuffling, Walking! And without his cane!”
“Trauma can sometimes cause the brain’s perception of pain to--”
“You’ve been talking to Foreman,” Wilson stated before she could finish.
“Do you have a better idea? Why would he be able to walk normally, with no pain for that brief stretch only to have it come back again? His leg is still hurting him!”
“His leg shouldn’t be hurting him,” Wilson uttered suspiciously. “He’s on morphine from the surgery. He shouldn’t be great but it shouldn’t be bad.” Wilson gazed through the glass again and started taking in the subtle nuances of the way House was laying there, staring up at the ceiling.
House’s body language included an intricate dialect in pain. To be as close a friend as he was, Wilson had to become fluent in reading it and acting accordingly. Pushing House on a bad pain day was something he’d quickly learnt not to do unless he wanted his conscience nagging him and House’s glare and hurtful words resounding in his head for days after.
Thus Wilson turned his attention to careful examination of House’s form. At first glance he was simply zoned out, staring at the fluorescent light, but not even House contemplated a light with that much interest. His face was tense. His jaw was set, clenched shut and his lips pressing hard against each other. Only House’s right hand could be seen from Wilson’s vantage. It was resting atop the sheets, palm down, fingers moving in a leisurely pattern, up the fabric and then down. It didn’t mean anything to Wilson at first and he nearly dismissed it as idle movements. He was probably bored and fidgeting. House rarely sat still unless there was something particularly entertaining on the television. But he wasn’t fidgeting out of boredom, or restlessness. He wasn’t fidgeting at all.
Had that right hand been in the same position on House’s right thigh, it would have been applying a deep, concentrated massage that Wilson had only seen House use a handful of times when the pain of his infarct remnants overcame his pain management methods.
Wilson hurried past Cameron and shut the door behind him without saying a word.
“How bad is the pain?”
“I’m fine,” House grumbled without unclenching his jaw.
“No, you’re not.”
“If you already know I’m in pain, then why ask?” House didn’t take his eyes from the ceiling. Wilson noted that even his blink looked pained and forced.
“I asked how bad it was.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“You also have morphine available, and you never, just do something. You always have a reason. You’re always testing a hypothesis.”
“Maybe the trip to the Holy Land saved me. I’ve been reborn. I hear it’s all the rage, repenting and turning from your wicked ways.”
“You love your wicked ways. You’d never repent, you can barely apologize. Your drugs, your booze, your misery, even your pain is part of you. But you’ve never let it overrun you without a reason.”
He watched House’s eyes close when a strong wave of discomfort crashed over him. Wilson went for the morphine drip.
“Don’t!” House caught him before he Wilson could start the drug’s delivery to his bloodstream.
“You need the morphine. I’m not going to let you suffer for no reason.”
“I can make my own decisions! I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“What possible explanation could you have for this much pain?”
Ready to lash out, the poisonous words already on his tongue, he paused. The explanation was baseless, farfetched in his own mind, even after all he’d seen.
The fight left him, the feeble words slipped forth. “He cares if I’m in pain. If I am… he’ll come back.”
The next several seconds of stunned silence was interrupted only by the beep of the heart rate monitor.
Finally Wilson found his voice, though not all of his wits. “He’ll come back…?”
House slouched farther back into the bed, the pull on his stitches uncomfortable in every position. His eyes went back to the ceiling. “He took the pain away,” House informed, though Wilson’s confusion remained.
“…Chase?”
House was weary. He was listless and unsure of both himself and the situation. Being back in PPTH was like coming out of the rabbit hole. In the grim light of New Jersey day, the things he’d accepted as normal out of necessity, were again, the things he hated and the things to which he’d always denied existence.
How was he going to explain to Wilson what he didn’t understand himself? All he knew for certain was that Chase, when they weren’t at each other’s throat (and sometimes even when they were), he made the pain less sharp, and less fated. For some demented, romantic, clearly drug induced moments House thought he saw and end to his pain. And for a brief stretch of time, when it had been the most dire, Chase was there and he took the pain away. One touch, one will, he plucked the right string and his body was in tune.
“He…he’s not…he makes me feel better.”
Sadly, no admission could have been more filled with shame than that.
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---H/C---
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It was all so new to him, and yet completely familiar. Sights, sounds, smells, it was like experiencing sensation for the first time. All around him people went about their business, their belonging tucked under an arm or in a pocket as they sped from one task to another. He tried to recall what he knew he’d forgotten but could only see the greater image.
He knew that he was something else, and that he had things to do, somewhere to be and someone to find but he couldn’t recall. There were no memories in his mind but there had been before. He knew that, though he couldn’t fathom what it had been like or what the memories were. Nothing was familiar, not his surroundings, not the language spoken around him. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a glass window. Not even his body was familiar. His face belonged to a stranger.
The flow of pedestrians picked him up again and he continued walking because he didn’t know what else to do. Between the blur of faces and the blur of places, his confusion grew but at the same time became less intense. It was like taking a step out of his body and watching things occur at a distance. What it was, was a monumental shift in perspective though he saw through the same eyes.
He stood on the peak of Mount Moriah, underneath a gilded dome and saw a beach, an expanse of water, a blazing sun. He didn’t know when or how he arrived there, or how long ago. He knew only that he chose, some time ago, to be here. He knew that he didn’t want to go back. He wasn’t ready yet.
“I don’t understand,” someone said as they walked up and stood next to him.
“Only because you don’t want to.”
“Perhaps I just know better than you.”
“Or perhaps admitting you care about someone other than yourself would make what you do more difficult.”
“Well we can’t all have breakdowns, can we?”
“You think I’m weak, Azazel?”
“I would have said fragile.”
“I think you’re jealous.”
“I would have said afraid. How long do you think you’ll be allowed to remain here before one side forces you back? You’re position is unique. Nobody else can do what you do.”
“Nobody else wants to.” His eyes lost focus and the bright scenery blurred. Tourists came into focus, and the ornate mosaics covering the walls, before fading away again. “Who wants to make the righteous suffer and make victims of the innocent?”
“If they are truly righteous, then they overcome,” the demon answered without hesitation. “And the innocent…those crimes don’t mark their souls. Mastema, you can’t let them continue to reach you like this.”
“But I have a duty. You said it yourself. I’m unique, I’m phenomenal at what I do; I test them in ways you would never imagine. But how am I to do that unless I know what hurts them the most? How can I know their pain without it touching me?”
“…you can’t.”
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House knew he was asleep. He knew because an indeterminate amount of time ago he’d felt his lids becoming heavy and had been relieved to find an escape from his pain. His mind’s venue for escape turned out to be a giant, empty place. It wasn’t dark or light and though he was seated, there was something solid but yielding under him, House couldn’t see what it was. He could see the man next to him, a man he was sure was dead. And that was how he began the conversation.
“I know,” Warren replied scathingly. House was taken aback by the hostility. “You wouldn’t be happy if you were me either. You’ve finally done the right thing and you get a bullet for your troubles.”
“I…suppose not.”
“I don’t have a lot of time here, so listen carefully.” Mayes leaned close to House who couldn’t help but lean minutely back. “Either take care of him, or let him go. No halfway about it.”
“And what will you do if I decide to mess with him? Will you haunt me from the grave? If invading dreams is the best you can do, you need to talk with your agent.”
Mayes shook his head but sat back to a more acceptable interpersonal distance. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m forgetting things and what I do remember…is faint and getting fainter. I’m not even sure who we’re talking about or who you are. But I know this is important. I can only hope that hurting him would be enough of a deterrent. I don’t have the power to threaten you.”
“No, only talk to me from beyond the grave.”
House sat there, trying not to think about what Mayes had said. He didn’t believe Mayes was anything more than a figment of his exhausted mind, giving him a representation of a man he knew only briefly as the speaker of what House would not acknowledge consciously.
The other man stood and began away. He paused in his exit to say, “He doesn’t need you and you don’t need him, but I think you’d both be a lot better off with each other.”
House didn’t notice his hospital room swimming into focus as he came out of his dream. He almost thought he was still dreaming when he saw who was laying next to him.
“Chase?”
Translucent eyes opened. A beatific smile appeared on the blond’s face. House might usually have scoffed, or smirked, or simply turned away, but he’d never seen this look before. And if he had, he never would have expected it to be directed at him. Except, now that it was the only thing he could do was smile back. He reached up to touch his face his hand only registered the barest of contact before it continued on. House pulled back, disappointment in his expression. “You’re not really here. I’m hallucinating.”
House took a better look and noticed that he could see through Chase. Not only was he a hallucination but it was a poor hallucination. But the hallucination moved, shifting to lean over the hospital patient. The sheets the illusion rested on didn’t move. When the faint hand reached up to touch his chin House didn’t expect to feel the touch.
“I’m not a hallucination,” the familiar voice said in what barely amounted to a whisper.
“So…where are you?”
Chase shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I remember now.”
House blinked slowly, trying to clear the fog that was making Chase’s complicated answers even more complicated. “Are you coming back?”
“…yes.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Soon, hopefully.” Chase turned his stare to the IV that House had turned off. “Take the pain killers.”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Promise you’ll come back,” House demanded stubbornly.
House swore he felt the air brush against his cheek when Chase sighed before responding.
“I promise.”
The kiss they shared a moment later barely registered any sensation on House’s lips. The light touch faded all too soon. House opened his eyes and found himself alone. Several minutes passed, in which he stared at the ceiling lights and wondered where Chase was and what he was doing.
“Hey, you okay?” Cameron asked, poking her head into House’s room on one of her multiple daily visits. Sometimes House responded to her, other times he didn’t say a word. Seconds passed without a response and Cameron was about to go, assuming that this would be one of the silent days. As she was about to go House called out.
“Wait. Restart the morphine,” he instructed reluctantly.
“Are you sure?” she asked walking over.
House closed his eyes. “Yeah…I’m sure.”
It was with relief and a faint smile that Cameron reset and started the control for the intravenous morphine drip. Once she was done, she left without another word and quietly closed the door. Her first stop once she stepped away was to Wilson’s office. She barged in without knocking to find Wilson staring blankly at the chart in front of him. It wasn’t actually a blank stare, but contemplating how much of her life his patient was going to miss when she died of cancer was about as productive.
“He asked for the morphine.”
He didn’t have to ask who. “Did his pain get worse?”
“No,” Cameron answered, sounding surprisingly happy. Usually she of the opinion that House took too many pain killers. “He just asked for them out of the blue.”
The blue pen in the oncologist’s hand tapped against his desk a few times. He shook his head. “He wouldn’t give up like that.”
“Give up what?” Cameron wasn’t dumb. She knew there was something House wasn’t telling her. She knew whatever it was Wilson wasn’t telling her either. The hard press of his lips and his averted eyes said he wasn’t about to divulge. “Is it about Chase?” she asked as though she was taking a random shot in the dark that she didn’t expect to be true. But of course it was about Chase. What else would have House asking whether anyone had heard from their intensive care specialist at least once a day? Why else would Wilson glance at her then away, and then lie?
“No, it’s not him.”
Cameron looked to the ceiling with a huff. “He’s an adult he can take care of himself. You and House should stop worrying about him and worry about House.”
“House is going to be fine. Chase is the one still missing.”
“That’s Chase’s problem.”
Wilson sat back in his chair and looked at Cameron in surprise. “I though you were friends.”
Cameron’s head raised and by the set of her shoulders Wilson knew that she was about to tell a half-truth, if not a full out lie. “Chase is nothing but a colleague.”
“And House is just your boss,” Wilson countered sarcastically. “You realise this isn’t Chase’s fault.”
“You realise that if it weren’t for Chase, none of this would have happened. Ergo, it has to be his fault. I thought at least you would be able to see that.”
“I suppose House is just blinded by love.” Wilson watched Cameron swallow something, something bitter by the look of it, before she was gone.
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Foreman was glad to be leaving for the day. It was Easter Monday but he’d taken the shift at the clinic just so that he could tell his parents he was busy and couldn’t make it home. The clinic was also a good way to avoid the rest of his department. Though with House checked-in as a patient and Chase still in the wind, Foreman was only avoiding Cameron.
He was tired of her griping and worrying. She’d given up on their formerly schizophrenic patient -the only topic Foreman was really interested in discussing with her- and was focused on whatever had happened with House and Chase.
Today being only a half-day for him, Foreman had managed to stay out of Cameron’s sight and was feeling quite good, if somewhat tired, on his way home. He resolved for a quiet night in, not that he had many other options, and decided to make a stop at a fine food mart that sold a particular brand of wine he enjoyed. The only problem with the small grocer was its location.
Nestled between a dry cleaner and a tiny law-firm the strip mall was an assembly area for the riffraff of the area. The area wasn’t all that seedy, only a few blocks from a major town centre, but those who weren’t allowed to sit and beg for change in that area, having been forced away, had relocated here.
“And all the parking is full, of course,” Foreman mumbled to himself. The tiny parking lot always seemed to be full leaving the physician no choice but to park his BMW in the lot for the neighbouring group of small businesses. It wasn’t all that much of a trek to his destination from his parking space. It just meant that he’d have to cross paths with people who had somehow managed to make themselves homeless. And now they pestered him for handouts, financing for whatever scam they were going to run next.
Eyes on his destination Foreman quickly marched by the alley between the two short buildings where the majority of the disenfranchised sat huddled against the spring chill. So intent on ignoring the shortfalls of society he didn’t notice a familiar face in the mix.
“Foreman?” he whispered to himself, thinking he had just spied his colleague dart past the alleyway. The complexion, the walk and the attire did fit the neurologist for the brief moment that he’d seen him, but his tired mind just might have been putting a familiar face on a stranger.
Chase shuffled weakly between the refuse and the people, who had been tossed aside, and got to the exit. He was standing at first but eventually slid against the wall down to the dirty pavement. He was weak, he was tired, he was in pain again. He’d made it back to New Jersey, though he couldn’t recall how. He remembered seeing House in the hospital but he hadn’t really been there. Then he’d awoken tucked next to a dumpster in this alley feeling very tired. He’d sat there for what probably amounted to hours, letting his memories and awareness slip back. Finally he knew enough to be secure in his complicated identity as both Robert Chase and Mastema. But his wrists hurt and his back. There was no blood but the stigmata were not done with him yet.
Chase wasn’t sure what to do. Reaching out to the familiar was a last desperate bid.
His eyes fluttered shut while he waited for Foreman to go by again. He barely managed to wake before his target was completely by him. “Hey…wait…” Chase’s voice was raspy and unfamiliar to even his own ears. He reached out to touch the passing man but only managed to skim the pant at his lower leg.
“I don’t have any change,” Foreman dismissed after taking a superficial glance at the bum that had touched him.
Chase waited for the spark of recognition to lighten the harsh gaze. It never came. Foreman continued on, his pace a touch faster than it had been. Slowly Chase brought his hand back in, pulling in his disappointment as well.
There eyes had met. Foreman had looked right at him. Then he walked away.
“Don’t let him get to you,” A tentative hand fell on his shoulder. Chase turned to the person, a woman, middle-aged and apparently of sound mind.
“I know him…”
The woman shrugged. “I know people. They don’t see us, even when they look right at us.”
Chase shook his head, eyes on his tattered clothes. “I don’t want to be invisible.”
The woman barked out a harsh laugh and shifted away from him. “I do.”
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He wandered around for sometime after that, trying to decided what he was to do. He thought that this would be over. He thought, after everything that had happened in Israel he would be in the clear for another seven years. But his feet, his wrists, all the places where the wounds had marked his body, still hurt. He stopped and sat at a bench, unaware of how far he had walked, or in what neighbourhood he now rested in. A drop of rain skimmed his cheek. A moment later one made direct contact with his forehead. More drops came down until it was a moderate drizzle. Chase gaze up at the sky, where clear starlit portions were mixed with the heavy clouds that provided the chilly shower.
“What do you want?” Chase asked of the sky. “What more am I supposed to say?”
A plaid umbrella suddenly blocked his view. “You’re going to get sick out here.”
Chase gave a leery stare at the man standing before him. Another priest, terrific, he thought.
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t be stupid. There’s a place for you to wait out the rain. And you can leave or stay after it’s stopped.” The man gestured to the building behind Chase, who turned and grimaced. Another church, fantastic.
“Everyone is welcome,” the pastor said.
Chase responded after an extended pause. “I don’t think you’d like the company I keep.” A shadow passed between the two men. Only Chase saw it.
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Cameron greeted Foreman the next morning and kept her eyes on the man as he stalked tiredly in.
“Didn’t get much sleep last night?” she said, not concealing her innuendo at all.
Foreman went through his morning routine and didn’t respond. Once his jacket was hanging, his briefcase was at the side and a cup of coffee was in his hand, he sat down. Cameron had gone back to the journal in her hand but looked up when Foreman spoke.
“I saw Chase yesterday.”
“What? Where?” Cameron was surprised but the flutter of concern she felt at Foreman’s words.
“I didn’t realise it was him though,” Eric went on dejectedly, trying to explain. “It was by the Patelli Fine Food store. He called out but I… I just kept going, barely glanced at him.” Foreman released his mug and scrubbed his face with his hands, trying perhaps to wipe away the fatigue and the guilt. “He was sitting with a bunch of bums. I didn’t recognize him…until it all clicked at three in the morning.”
Everything had jumped into place and he would never forget the surprise and the shame that he startled awake with. He’d hastily donned his jacket and a pair of sneakers and sped back to the small strip of businesses. The homeless people he’d snubbed hours ago were still there. Some might have left but he hadn’t been paying enough attention the first time around to make an accurate comparison. What he did quickly find out was that the man he was looking for was gone. He’d walked the alley up and down numerous times, thinking that the familiar face was lost in the darkness. It wasn’t. The familiar face was no longer there to be found. By the time he was ready to give up the loose change in his jacket pocket that he liked to use for parking and impulse buys was gone, the pleas for spare change having been responded too as barely and after thought while he’d searched.
When he paused near the entrance of the alley, a sigh of something that might have been disappointment and maybe doubt on his lips, a woman laughed. Foreman turned to look at her. She was counting the change she’d just been given.
“Your friend is gone. You’re too late.”
“Where did he go?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Foreman shook his head and had gone back to his car.
“Do you see us now?” she’d taunted after him.
Foreman omitted the details, simply telling Cameron, “I went back to look for him. He wasn’t there. Nobody knows where he went.”
Cameron didn’t know what to do or say to allay the obvious conflict in Foreman’s eyes. “At least we know he’s around and he’s okay.” Foreman didn’t respond. “He’ll find his way home.”
“Who will?” Cameron and Foreman looked to find Doctor Wilson in the doorway.
Cameron glanced and Foreman before answering. “Chase.”
Wilson quickly got the story from them and once he had, he rushed to inform House.
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it? You’ve been pining for him to come back for days!”
“I wasn’t pining,” House opposed stubbornly.
Wilson didn’t understand it. Had House really given up? Had Chase contacted him?
“When can I get out of here?” House asked, eyes averted.
Wilson was silent for several seconds. He shook himself and went for the door. “I’ll check,” he said quietly as he left.
House closed his eyes. Chase said he’d come back. He’d promised even. House would be patient, for as long as he could.
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End Chapter 12
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- - - H/C - - -
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Cast and Characters
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Chase/OMC, House/Chase
Summary: The marks of the saints and a past he won’t remember force Chase and House to face religion head on. They won’t get his fellow without a fight!
Spoilers: Up to season 4 Finale.
Genre: Drama, Supernatural
Disclaimer: I don’t own House. I’m not making any money off this story.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): Language, Adult Situations, Violence, M/M relationships. Do not read this story if any of these bother you!
Chapter 12: Wonderland Welcome
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A/N: Only one chapter left!
Wilson approached cautiously. House was the only one he knew of that could wrangle Cuddy when she was this pissed. Granted it was usually House that made her mad in the first place. Wilson didn’t see what House found so amusing about these situations.
“He said they were fine.”
“The last time you spoke to him. What, three days ago?”
“Two.”
The correction was answered by a fierce glare. “Other side of the planet and he’s still giving me hypertension.” She turned her glare to the atrium that greeted patients when they first walked through the main entrance. On the second floor mezzanine, where she and Wilson stood overlooking the entrance, the rest of the rooms were dark and quiet. They were mostly meeting rooms and few people held meetings at one thirty on Saturday morning.
The hospital was still running though. People took ill, or were injured at all times of the day. And of course there were also the eager, busy body doctors that just wouldn’t go home. Cuddy’s eyes followed Dr. Cameron as she dropped a file off on the deserted clinic station.
“Doesn’t anybody in this hospital have a life?” Cuddy mumbled to herself.
“You should go home. Get some rest.”
“How am I supposed to do that? House is off in God-knows-where doing who-knows-what and he’s dragged Chase along with him.” She shook her head, her frustration over her missing employees magnified by the unhelpful FBI investigation.
“This isn’t your fault.”
Lisa glared at him.
“This isn’t my fault either.”
“Well I can’t blame the person I want to blame because he isn’t around right now!” Cuddy’s head dipped and her grip on the rail tightened while she collected herself.
Wilson clenched his jaw to prevent his own words of frustration from flying out and making the situation any worse. His eyes strayed over the open area not taking anything in until he saw the front doors being pushed open.
“Oh my God,” Cuddy heard Wilson say faintly. She felt his hand fall on her shoulder and then he was gone. She opened her eyes to see him running for the stairs. She looked to the lower level to see what had sent him off and then she was running too.
“House?”
House didn’t hear the voice of the immunologist on his team. He didn’t see her standing not far from him. His eyes were focussed on the faint image a few steps before him, the outstretched arms, the soft welcoming smile.
‘You’re almost there.’
House took another step. His weak legs barely held him up, but he was almost there. The distance between them was beginning to grow shorter.
‘You did it,’ the familiar voice told him while another called his name and asked if he was alright.
“House!”
‘You’re home.’
He reached out to the faint apparition, the last of his strength evaporating the moment it was no longer needed. House collapsed, but not into the arms he’d been struggling towards.
Cameron couldn’t support House’s dead weight but she awkwardly managed to get them both to the floor without injury.
“House?” she called trying to get a response from him. Her eyes were already assessing his state but her furious thoughts came to an abrupt halt when House whispered a name.
“Robert…”
Her stunned gaze was frozen on his head, where it rested on her chest. Had her eyes been anywhere else she might have missed how the unruly hair a little above House’s temple ruffled as though someone had laid a gentle caress there.
“Is he alright? Cameron?”
Wilson’s frantic voice pierced through her alarm. “I…I don’t know.”
Cuddy arrived a moment later and Cameron dismissed what she’d seen as she was swept up in the excitement and concern over House and his return.
“Where’s Chase?” Wilson asked at some point in the fracas.
Cameron gave a shake of her head as an answer and continued working on House.
Chase’s form, standing back from the action, stared longingly and faded away.
Thousands of miles away a man awoke with a gasp to a tired and achy body. It was dark and the wind that blew through the small alcove was cold. Chase shivered and pulled in tighter. He raised his head briefly before letting it fall against the cool outer wall with a dull thud. Now he had to find his own way home. It’d have to wait. He was too tired to do more than close his eyes and sleep.
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---H/C---
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Cameron slid the door to the hospital room closed. Her eyes, sullen and glassy were trained, unseeingly, on the speckled floor pattern. A pair of brown cap-toe oxfords slipped into her line of sight.
“How is he?”
Cameron shook her head minutely and responded without looking at Wilson. “Sarcastic, cruel, miserable, in pain.”
“So his usual self,” Wilson said with a slight smile. Cameron didn’t see it but she would hear it in his voice.
“I guess. He keeps asking for news on Chase.”
Wilson didn’t see why that was worth mentioning. “He’s worried. We all are.”
“Right,” she agreed, though her tone implied she didn’t. “He’s stable. No complications from his surgery. He’ll be fine.”
Wilson peered into the House’s hospital room. “I can’t believe he made it all the way here bleeding internally.”
“The bleed may have started or only became serious when he got here.”
“Convenient.”
“So you think it’s more likely that some mystical force kept the bleed in check just long enough for him to get back here?”
“I think it’s one more strange thing to add to a list of strange things that have been going on here. You saw him yesterday. He was walking! Not limping, not shuffling, Walking! And without his cane!”
“Trauma can sometimes cause the brain’s perception of pain to--”
“You’ve been talking to Foreman,” Wilson stated before she could finish.
“Do you have a better idea? Why would he be able to walk normally, with no pain for that brief stretch only to have it come back again? His leg is still hurting him!”
“His leg shouldn’t be hurting him,” Wilson uttered suspiciously. “He’s on morphine from the surgery. He shouldn’t be great but it shouldn’t be bad.” Wilson gazed through the glass again and started taking in the subtle nuances of the way House was laying there, staring up at the ceiling.
House’s body language included an intricate dialect in pain. To be as close a friend as he was, Wilson had to become fluent in reading it and acting accordingly. Pushing House on a bad pain day was something he’d quickly learnt not to do unless he wanted his conscience nagging him and House’s glare and hurtful words resounding in his head for days after.
Thus Wilson turned his attention to careful examination of House’s form. At first glance he was simply zoned out, staring at the fluorescent light, but not even House contemplated a light with that much interest. His face was tense. His jaw was set, clenched shut and his lips pressing hard against each other. Only House’s right hand could be seen from Wilson’s vantage. It was resting atop the sheets, palm down, fingers moving in a leisurely pattern, up the fabric and then down. It didn’t mean anything to Wilson at first and he nearly dismissed it as idle movements. He was probably bored and fidgeting. House rarely sat still unless there was something particularly entertaining on the television. But he wasn’t fidgeting out of boredom, or restlessness. He wasn’t fidgeting at all.
Had that right hand been in the same position on House’s right thigh, it would have been applying a deep, concentrated massage that Wilson had only seen House use a handful of times when the pain of his infarct remnants overcame his pain management methods.
Wilson hurried past Cameron and shut the door behind him without saying a word.
“How bad is the pain?”
“I’m fine,” House grumbled without unclenching his jaw.
“No, you’re not.”
“If you already know I’m in pain, then why ask?” House didn’t take his eyes from the ceiling. Wilson noted that even his blink looked pained and forced.
“I asked how bad it was.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“You also have morphine available, and you never, just do something. You always have a reason. You’re always testing a hypothesis.”
“Maybe the trip to the Holy Land saved me. I’ve been reborn. I hear it’s all the rage, repenting and turning from your wicked ways.”
“You love your wicked ways. You’d never repent, you can barely apologize. Your drugs, your booze, your misery, even your pain is part of you. But you’ve never let it overrun you without a reason.”
He watched House’s eyes close when a strong wave of discomfort crashed over him. Wilson went for the morphine drip.
“Don’t!” House caught him before he Wilson could start the drug’s delivery to his bloodstream.
“You need the morphine. I’m not going to let you suffer for no reason.”
“I can make my own decisions! I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“What possible explanation could you have for this much pain?”
Ready to lash out, the poisonous words already on his tongue, he paused. The explanation was baseless, farfetched in his own mind, even after all he’d seen.
The fight left him, the feeble words slipped forth. “He cares if I’m in pain. If I am… he’ll come back.”
The next several seconds of stunned silence was interrupted only by the beep of the heart rate monitor.
Finally Wilson found his voice, though not all of his wits. “He’ll come back…?”
House slouched farther back into the bed, the pull on his stitches uncomfortable in every position. His eyes went back to the ceiling. “He took the pain away,” House informed, though Wilson’s confusion remained.
“…Chase?”
House was weary. He was listless and unsure of both himself and the situation. Being back in PPTH was like coming out of the rabbit hole. In the grim light of New Jersey day, the things he’d accepted as normal out of necessity, were again, the things he hated and the things to which he’d always denied existence.
How was he going to explain to Wilson what he didn’t understand himself? All he knew for certain was that Chase, when they weren’t at each other’s throat (and sometimes even when they were), he made the pain less sharp, and less fated. For some demented, romantic, clearly drug induced moments House thought he saw and end to his pain. And for a brief stretch of time, when it had been the most dire, Chase was there and he took the pain away. One touch, one will, he plucked the right string and his body was in tune.
“He…he’s not…he makes me feel better.”
Sadly, no admission could have been more filled with shame than that.
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---H/C---
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It was all so new to him, and yet completely familiar. Sights, sounds, smells, it was like experiencing sensation for the first time. All around him people went about their business, their belonging tucked under an arm or in a pocket as they sped from one task to another. He tried to recall what he knew he’d forgotten but could only see the greater image.
He knew that he was something else, and that he had things to do, somewhere to be and someone to find but he couldn’t recall. There were no memories in his mind but there had been before. He knew that, though he couldn’t fathom what it had been like or what the memories were. Nothing was familiar, not his surroundings, not the language spoken around him. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a glass window. Not even his body was familiar. His face belonged to a stranger.
The flow of pedestrians picked him up again and he continued walking because he didn’t know what else to do. Between the blur of faces and the blur of places, his confusion grew but at the same time became less intense. It was like taking a step out of his body and watching things occur at a distance. What it was, was a monumental shift in perspective though he saw through the same eyes.
He stood on the peak of Mount Moriah, underneath a gilded dome and saw a beach, an expanse of water, a blazing sun. He didn’t know when or how he arrived there, or how long ago. He knew only that he chose, some time ago, to be here. He knew that he didn’t want to go back. He wasn’t ready yet.
“I don’t understand,” someone said as they walked up and stood next to him.
“Only because you don’t want to.”
“Perhaps I just know better than you.”
“Or perhaps admitting you care about someone other than yourself would make what you do more difficult.”
“Well we can’t all have breakdowns, can we?”
“You think I’m weak, Azazel?”
“I would have said fragile.”
“I think you’re jealous.”
“I would have said afraid. How long do you think you’ll be allowed to remain here before one side forces you back? You’re position is unique. Nobody else can do what you do.”
“Nobody else wants to.” His eyes lost focus and the bright scenery blurred. Tourists came into focus, and the ornate mosaics covering the walls, before fading away again. “Who wants to make the righteous suffer and make victims of the innocent?”
“If they are truly righteous, then they overcome,” the demon answered without hesitation. “And the innocent…those crimes don’t mark their souls. Mastema, you can’t let them continue to reach you like this.”
“But I have a duty. You said it yourself. I’m unique, I’m phenomenal at what I do; I test them in ways you would never imagine. But how am I to do that unless I know what hurts them the most? How can I know their pain without it touching me?”
“…you can’t.”
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House knew he was asleep. He knew because an indeterminate amount of time ago he’d felt his lids becoming heavy and had been relieved to find an escape from his pain. His mind’s venue for escape turned out to be a giant, empty place. It wasn’t dark or light and though he was seated, there was something solid but yielding under him, House couldn’t see what it was. He could see the man next to him, a man he was sure was dead. And that was how he began the conversation.
“I know,” Warren replied scathingly. House was taken aback by the hostility. “You wouldn’t be happy if you were me either. You’ve finally done the right thing and you get a bullet for your troubles.”
“I…suppose not.”
“I don’t have a lot of time here, so listen carefully.” Mayes leaned close to House who couldn’t help but lean minutely back. “Either take care of him, or let him go. No halfway about it.”
“And what will you do if I decide to mess with him? Will you haunt me from the grave? If invading dreams is the best you can do, you need to talk with your agent.”
Mayes shook his head but sat back to a more acceptable interpersonal distance. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m forgetting things and what I do remember…is faint and getting fainter. I’m not even sure who we’re talking about or who you are. But I know this is important. I can only hope that hurting him would be enough of a deterrent. I don’t have the power to threaten you.”
“No, only talk to me from beyond the grave.”
House sat there, trying not to think about what Mayes had said. He didn’t believe Mayes was anything more than a figment of his exhausted mind, giving him a representation of a man he knew only briefly as the speaker of what House would not acknowledge consciously.
The other man stood and began away. He paused in his exit to say, “He doesn’t need you and you don’t need him, but I think you’d both be a lot better off with each other.”
House didn’t notice his hospital room swimming into focus as he came out of his dream. He almost thought he was still dreaming when he saw who was laying next to him.
“Chase?”
Translucent eyes opened. A beatific smile appeared on the blond’s face. House might usually have scoffed, or smirked, or simply turned away, but he’d never seen this look before. And if he had, he never would have expected it to be directed at him. Except, now that it was the only thing he could do was smile back. He reached up to touch his face his hand only registered the barest of contact before it continued on. House pulled back, disappointment in his expression. “You’re not really here. I’m hallucinating.”
House took a better look and noticed that he could see through Chase. Not only was he a hallucination but it was a poor hallucination. But the hallucination moved, shifting to lean over the hospital patient. The sheets the illusion rested on didn’t move. When the faint hand reached up to touch his chin House didn’t expect to feel the touch.
“I’m not a hallucination,” the familiar voice said in what barely amounted to a whisper.
“So…where are you?”
Chase shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I remember now.”
House blinked slowly, trying to clear the fog that was making Chase’s complicated answers even more complicated. “Are you coming back?”
“…yes.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Soon, hopefully.” Chase turned his stare to the IV that House had turned off. “Take the pain killers.”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Promise you’ll come back,” House demanded stubbornly.
House swore he felt the air brush against his cheek when Chase sighed before responding.
“I promise.”
The kiss they shared a moment later barely registered any sensation on House’s lips. The light touch faded all too soon. House opened his eyes and found himself alone. Several minutes passed, in which he stared at the ceiling lights and wondered where Chase was and what he was doing.
“Hey, you okay?” Cameron asked, poking her head into House’s room on one of her multiple daily visits. Sometimes House responded to her, other times he didn’t say a word. Seconds passed without a response and Cameron was about to go, assuming that this would be one of the silent days. As she was about to go House called out.
“Wait. Restart the morphine,” he instructed reluctantly.
“Are you sure?” she asked walking over.
House closed his eyes. “Yeah…I’m sure.”
It was with relief and a faint smile that Cameron reset and started the control for the intravenous morphine drip. Once she was done, she left without another word and quietly closed the door. Her first stop once she stepped away was to Wilson’s office. She barged in without knocking to find Wilson staring blankly at the chart in front of him. It wasn’t actually a blank stare, but contemplating how much of her life his patient was going to miss when she died of cancer was about as productive.
“He asked for the morphine.”
He didn’t have to ask who. “Did his pain get worse?”
“No,” Cameron answered, sounding surprisingly happy. Usually she of the opinion that House took too many pain killers. “He just asked for them out of the blue.”
The blue pen in the oncologist’s hand tapped against his desk a few times. He shook his head. “He wouldn’t give up like that.”
“Give up what?” Cameron wasn’t dumb. She knew there was something House wasn’t telling her. She knew whatever it was Wilson wasn’t telling her either. The hard press of his lips and his averted eyes said he wasn’t about to divulge. “Is it about Chase?” she asked as though she was taking a random shot in the dark that she didn’t expect to be true. But of course it was about Chase. What else would have House asking whether anyone had heard from their intensive care specialist at least once a day? Why else would Wilson glance at her then away, and then lie?
“No, it’s not him.”
Cameron looked to the ceiling with a huff. “He’s an adult he can take care of himself. You and House should stop worrying about him and worry about House.”
“House is going to be fine. Chase is the one still missing.”
“That’s Chase’s problem.”
Wilson sat back in his chair and looked at Cameron in surprise. “I though you were friends.”
Cameron’s head raised and by the set of her shoulders Wilson knew that she was about to tell a half-truth, if not a full out lie. “Chase is nothing but a colleague.”
“And House is just your boss,” Wilson countered sarcastically. “You realise this isn’t Chase’s fault.”
“You realise that if it weren’t for Chase, none of this would have happened. Ergo, it has to be his fault. I thought at least you would be able to see that.”
“I suppose House is just blinded by love.” Wilson watched Cameron swallow something, something bitter by the look of it, before she was gone.
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Foreman was glad to be leaving for the day. It was Easter Monday but he’d taken the shift at the clinic just so that he could tell his parents he was busy and couldn’t make it home. The clinic was also a good way to avoid the rest of his department. Though with House checked-in as a patient and Chase still in the wind, Foreman was only avoiding Cameron.
He was tired of her griping and worrying. She’d given up on their formerly schizophrenic patient -the only topic Foreman was really interested in discussing with her- and was focused on whatever had happened with House and Chase.
Today being only a half-day for him, Foreman had managed to stay out of Cameron’s sight and was feeling quite good, if somewhat tired, on his way home. He resolved for a quiet night in, not that he had many other options, and decided to make a stop at a fine food mart that sold a particular brand of wine he enjoyed. The only problem with the small grocer was its location.
Nestled between a dry cleaner and a tiny law-firm the strip mall was an assembly area for the riffraff of the area. The area wasn’t all that seedy, only a few blocks from a major town centre, but those who weren’t allowed to sit and beg for change in that area, having been forced away, had relocated here.
“And all the parking is full, of course,” Foreman mumbled to himself. The tiny parking lot always seemed to be full leaving the physician no choice but to park his BMW in the lot for the neighbouring group of small businesses. It wasn’t all that much of a trek to his destination from his parking space. It just meant that he’d have to cross paths with people who had somehow managed to make themselves homeless. And now they pestered him for handouts, financing for whatever scam they were going to run next.
Eyes on his destination Foreman quickly marched by the alley between the two short buildings where the majority of the disenfranchised sat huddled against the spring chill. So intent on ignoring the shortfalls of society he didn’t notice a familiar face in the mix.
“Foreman?” he whispered to himself, thinking he had just spied his colleague dart past the alleyway. The complexion, the walk and the attire did fit the neurologist for the brief moment that he’d seen him, but his tired mind just might have been putting a familiar face on a stranger.
Chase shuffled weakly between the refuse and the people, who had been tossed aside, and got to the exit. He was standing at first but eventually slid against the wall down to the dirty pavement. He was weak, he was tired, he was in pain again. He’d made it back to New Jersey, though he couldn’t recall how. He remembered seeing House in the hospital but he hadn’t really been there. Then he’d awoken tucked next to a dumpster in this alley feeling very tired. He’d sat there for what probably amounted to hours, letting his memories and awareness slip back. Finally he knew enough to be secure in his complicated identity as both Robert Chase and Mastema. But his wrists hurt and his back. There was no blood but the stigmata were not done with him yet.
Chase wasn’t sure what to do. Reaching out to the familiar was a last desperate bid.
His eyes fluttered shut while he waited for Foreman to go by again. He barely managed to wake before his target was completely by him. “Hey…wait…” Chase’s voice was raspy and unfamiliar to even his own ears. He reached out to touch the passing man but only managed to skim the pant at his lower leg.
“I don’t have any change,” Foreman dismissed after taking a superficial glance at the bum that had touched him.
Chase waited for the spark of recognition to lighten the harsh gaze. It never came. Foreman continued on, his pace a touch faster than it had been. Slowly Chase brought his hand back in, pulling in his disappointment as well.
There eyes had met. Foreman had looked right at him. Then he walked away.
“Don’t let him get to you,” A tentative hand fell on his shoulder. Chase turned to the person, a woman, middle-aged and apparently of sound mind.
“I know him…”
The woman shrugged. “I know people. They don’t see us, even when they look right at us.”
Chase shook his head, eyes on his tattered clothes. “I don’t want to be invisible.”
The woman barked out a harsh laugh and shifted away from him. “I do.”
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He wandered around for sometime after that, trying to decided what he was to do. He thought that this would be over. He thought, after everything that had happened in Israel he would be in the clear for another seven years. But his feet, his wrists, all the places where the wounds had marked his body, still hurt. He stopped and sat at a bench, unaware of how far he had walked, or in what neighbourhood he now rested in. A drop of rain skimmed his cheek. A moment later one made direct contact with his forehead. More drops came down until it was a moderate drizzle. Chase gaze up at the sky, where clear starlit portions were mixed with the heavy clouds that provided the chilly shower.
“What do you want?” Chase asked of the sky. “What more am I supposed to say?”
A plaid umbrella suddenly blocked his view. “You’re going to get sick out here.”
Chase gave a leery stare at the man standing before him. Another priest, terrific, he thought.
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t be stupid. There’s a place for you to wait out the rain. And you can leave or stay after it’s stopped.” The man gestured to the building behind Chase, who turned and grimaced. Another church, fantastic.
“Everyone is welcome,” the pastor said.
Chase responded after an extended pause. “I don’t think you’d like the company I keep.” A shadow passed between the two men. Only Chase saw it.
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Cameron greeted Foreman the next morning and kept her eyes on the man as he stalked tiredly in.
“Didn’t get much sleep last night?” she said, not concealing her innuendo at all.
Foreman went through his morning routine and didn’t respond. Once his jacket was hanging, his briefcase was at the side and a cup of coffee was in his hand, he sat down. Cameron had gone back to the journal in her hand but looked up when Foreman spoke.
“I saw Chase yesterday.”
“What? Where?” Cameron was surprised but the flutter of concern she felt at Foreman’s words.
“I didn’t realise it was him though,” Eric went on dejectedly, trying to explain. “It was by the Patelli Fine Food store. He called out but I… I just kept going, barely glanced at him.” Foreman released his mug and scrubbed his face with his hands, trying perhaps to wipe away the fatigue and the guilt. “He was sitting with a bunch of bums. I didn’t recognize him…until it all clicked at three in the morning.”
Everything had jumped into place and he would never forget the surprise and the shame that he startled awake with. He’d hastily donned his jacket and a pair of sneakers and sped back to the small strip of businesses. The homeless people he’d snubbed hours ago were still there. Some might have left but he hadn’t been paying enough attention the first time around to make an accurate comparison. What he did quickly find out was that the man he was looking for was gone. He’d walked the alley up and down numerous times, thinking that the familiar face was lost in the darkness. It wasn’t. The familiar face was no longer there to be found. By the time he was ready to give up the loose change in his jacket pocket that he liked to use for parking and impulse buys was gone, the pleas for spare change having been responded too as barely and after thought while he’d searched.
When he paused near the entrance of the alley, a sigh of something that might have been disappointment and maybe doubt on his lips, a woman laughed. Foreman turned to look at her. She was counting the change she’d just been given.
“Your friend is gone. You’re too late.”
“Where did he go?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Foreman shook his head and had gone back to his car.
“Do you see us now?” she’d taunted after him.
Foreman omitted the details, simply telling Cameron, “I went back to look for him. He wasn’t there. Nobody knows where he went.”
Cameron didn’t know what to do or say to allay the obvious conflict in Foreman’s eyes. “At least we know he’s around and he’s okay.” Foreman didn’t respond. “He’ll find his way home.”
“Who will?” Cameron and Foreman looked to find Doctor Wilson in the doorway.
Cameron glanced and Foreman before answering. “Chase.”
Wilson quickly got the story from them and once he had, he rushed to inform House.
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it? You’ve been pining for him to come back for days!”
“I wasn’t pining,” House opposed stubbornly.
Wilson didn’t understand it. Had House really given up? Had Chase contacted him?
“When can I get out of here?” House asked, eyes averted.
Wilson was silent for several seconds. He shook himself and went for the door. “I’ll check,” he said quietly as he left.
House closed his eyes. Chase said he’d come back. He’d promised even. House would be patient, for as long as he could.
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End Chapter 12
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- - - H/C - - -
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Cast and Characters