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Afterimage
by bammel
Amber's been dead for a month and he can still only think of himself.
He's done nothing but work and sleep. Cuddy's stopped by his place a few times, and he always calls to her to let her know he's not dead, but he never lets her in. He only knows it's her because she pushes things under the door—files, magazines, movie passes, menus, desperate, worried notes she never needs to sign but does anyway—stuff she probably thinks will give him an incentive to engage the world, or at least stay awake, but House never sees her outside of Princeton because he slumps off to bed immediately after he finishes pushing his repulsive frozen dinner around. In the morning, he showers, arrives at work on time, which still seems to spook the fuck out of everyone, and says no more than he has to to get through the day. Solve the case.
His dreams are still white. White light on whiteness everywhere, sterile, colorless, odorless, tasteless blankness, populated with enough blanched people to make his stomach hurt when he thinks about it. Sometimes he knows he's asleep, because light that bright should make blood vessels cast shadows inside his eyes; it should leave him blind with positive afterimages, like twenty suns. But it never does. Sometimes Amber is there, and sometimes Wilson is, but never at the same time, no matter how much he wants it. She looks at House, maybe pityingly, sometimes mockingly, her eyes the flat ones of a corpse, and he doesn't look at House at all.
House always wakes up tired and trembly. His attention wanders, he forgets what he's doing, does things twice. There are days when he brushes his teeth three times before he leaves.
He doesn't think he'll ever get past this, thinks that Amber's been burned into all of them, but he's glad if it means that she'll leave some bright spots somewhere on Wilson, because House has probably left his share of stains.
She died too soon, before things went bad, and House has to let himself hate her just a tiny bit for that.
His first instinct was to kill himself. Just get it over with.
The idea is pretty enticing now, despite years of indifference to his own demise, and he occupies himself for hours with countless scenarios. Violent methods, peaceful ones, messy, barely detectible, risky, foolproof ones, they're what he thinks about in his office when he doesn't have a case. It's what he comforts himself with before he drifts off to sleep.
Acquiring a firearm would be no problem, but still. He doesn't want to leave any more messes—which means no motorcycle accidents worthy of rotten.com either—and that would be a little more troublesome than thoughtlessly putting a glass down with no coaster.
Hanging is just plain fucking ugly, but it would be an appropriately torturous way to go, especially if he screwed it up. Strangulation, asphyxiation. Then again, nightmare-inducing for anyone else. Bulging eyes, black, protruding tongue, ugh.
Overdosing is probably safest for everyone else's sanity—he could make it look like an accident, even if no one would really be fooled, and leave an acceptable corpse. They could all pretend for each other (always a druggie, bound to happen sooner or later, what a shame, at least we'll save some money), quote Neil Young and the Stones at his funeral, and he wouldn't need to deal with it. Going that route might be more than he deserves.
And then he imagines Cuddy's stricken face (she'll get over it), and starts wondering about how Wilson would react, whether Wilson would be aggrieved or maybe even sickly pleased by it. If Wilson would sigh and say, Finally.
He finally puts idea aside when he admits to himself that, yeah, in this case, suicide would just be euthanasia, an act of self-love. House hates himself.
House accidentally sees Wilson eating lunch with Thirteen and is terrified and ashamed of the flash of furious jealousy that sends spots dancing in front of his eyes. He starts to lurch away, determined to escape before either of them notices him. He can find Cuddy, tell her he's having an ocular migraine. She'll understand, she always understands. He'll go home and try to forget the last twelve years of his life, not that he ever can.
He bumps his bad leg against a table and lets out a dampened hiss. Her gaze finding House, Thirteen stares at him over Wilson's shoulder with bright eyes, her plastic fork motionless. She opens her mouth, maybe to spit something he won't be able to hear, but she just closes it again and smiles apologetically at Wilson.
She was never talkative, but now she says even less in the differentials, only enough to be helpful, and House knows she hates him. He'd wanted to toughen her up and set her free, but instead he just feels like he's killed her, too.
Wilson doesn't even turn around.
He's tired of sleeping this much. His head is always a faraway helium balloon.
House looks in the mirror and sees shades of gray; his face, his hair, his eyes all seem bleached. When he allows himself to look at Wilson, he sees all oversaturated, overheated pinks and reds from crying and probably from a sleep deficit so huge he's surprised that Wilson's still awake in the first place, let alone able to drive to work and then actually work. Wilson's always sucking down coffee, always moving, still trying to keep doomed people alive for as long as possible.
House isn't sure if Wilson's letting himself stop to feel anything, but House is keeping himself stopped.
They haven't spoken.
There's no word in English for what he feels. Talking to Wilson might be easier if there were some way he could describe his state of mind more effectively. He knows, instead, that it bleeds out of his posture and nervous hands, his darting eyes, and that's not enough. But he can't stand there and deliver a sociolinguistics lecture, or blather in Portuguese, or recite haikus, without anticipating palpable contempt. Hell, he anticipates palpable contempt from everyone just for being alive.
He hadn't really believed Cameron at the time when she said she didn't miss him, but he does now. She was just ahead of everyone else.
Amber's been rotting for four months. In his mind she's been leveled and sharpened to artifact-ridden yellows, pinks, and burning whites, and he doesn't even dream about her much anymore, but Wilson must. House hopes.
Puzzles don't hold his interest, but it's not like he can concentrate on anything. Fuck it. Everything is fucked, the entire planet is fucked, has been fucked, will be fucked forever, and Wilson hates him and House is so fucking ashamed and angry with himself and he can't fix it, can't even distract himself, because he doesn't know how, and he bets no one knows how.
House calls out of work on Tuesday after one final pointless sally on Monday and doesn't leave his apartment for the rest of the week. He pretends not to hear the phone ringing when he sits in the bathtub in the dark with wrinkled, wet finger pads pressing into his eyes. The answering machine picks up, but there's no message. They call five more times.
Whoever it is tries his cell phone next. God, why did he even turn it on? It's not like Wilson is going to just up and call him.
He gets out of the tub and fumbles with his buzzing cell for a couple of moments. He doesn't bother looking at it when he takes the call and simply says, "No, Cuddy," before he stabs the off button with a damp finger, lifts the cover on the toilet tank, and drops the thing in there. He can't bring himself to smash it like part of him really wants to, but that little ploopclank doesn't even touch on satisfying.
His wet feet slide on the tiles when he moves to get a towel and he falls awkwardly, trying to protect his leg, his left wrist making a cracking sound underneath him. He screams around the tongue clamped between his teeth.
Whatever. It hurts, but it's one thing that'll knit. He has drugs in the meantime. Enough drugs can make anything fade.
He sits on the toilet naked for two hours.
No one comes to check on him.
When he moves, things inside him make noise; joints pop, bands of tissue slide over and catch on prominences, and he tries to stay as idle as possible. House has fallen into disuse and he wants to feel that way, wants to feel like shit because he deserves it. He hasn't eaten anything but painkillers in two days, and the inside of his mouth is sour and fuzzy. He hasn't washed since he fell.
His head is foggy from too much sleep and too much Vicodin, but that's nothing unusual. The broken wrist is enormous and purple now, but nothing's sticking out, so he ties a sock around it with the help of his teeth to limit its articulation, though it's already pretty fucking limited. Someone can look at it if he ever feels like leaving, which he never will. He'll stay until he runs out of food, until they cut the power, until someone drags his starved, reeking carcass out of there, because he doesn't care.
The phone rings and he jerks the cord out of the jack and bites off the connector because he never has enough hands for anything anymore. He spits it at the wall and limps back to bed. It's 8:32 p.m.
House has rolled over on his wrist and shrieked himself awake too many times in the last two nights, so he tries sitting in the recliner, eyeballs drying out staring at the muted television while he waits to fall asleep again, and it's all right until he finally, finally gets hungry. He ends up dozing with his forehead and nose pressed against the cool, wet surface of the kitchen table, arms stretched out in front of him, his belly full of dry cereal because the milk stinks.
He gasps and lifts his head so fast his spine pops when his front door is almost pounded off its hinges. Five thunderous knocks in quick succession reverberate around his apartment. Her again.
Cuddy's voice is wavering on the other side of the door.
"House! Open up, please!"
This is the first time she's actually asked him for anything in months.
It's one problem he can solve simply by ignoring it, so he doesn't get up, doesn't speak. He's already apologized, cut his head open, and agreed to suffer forever when all he wants to do is erase himself, and it's not Cuddy he's done these things for and she knows it. He lays his head back down on the table and covers his face with his right arm. Go away.
She doesn't knock again, and he shuts his eyes against the dim moving light radiating from the television in the living room. He can still see it.
House hears a series of clicks and soft footsteps, and he's only slightly surprised when he cracks a filmy eye and looks up to see Cuddy's delicate, manicured hands shakily place a vial of nalaxone hydrochloride and a syringe on the table. Of course. He wipes his face. Since when did she have a key?
Her voice is quiet. "I'm sorry. I was just so scared. Don't hate me," is all she says, and he almost wants to make a crack about Mirror Syndrome because he can't stand any of this. But he just nods without looking directly at her, and she doesn't touch him but slides into the chair across from him, inhaling suddenly when she sees the filthy sock on his wrist.
House shuts his eyes and lowers his head to the table again, his left cheek pressed flat and wet and sticky and itchy, and extends his hands over his head across the table without looking at her. Cuddy lightly rests her cool fingers on his as if she's afraid he'll suddenly pull away, and he's grateful that she doesn't speak or acknowledge his idiotic tears. They just sit like that in silence for a few minutes. This is the first time he's let anybody touch him since he was able to tell them all to fuck off. He's so tired, and he jumps a little when Cuddy starts talking, but he realizes he doesn't mind it. He can hear the nervous smile in her voice, and it's kind of comforting, but he's not really listening to her. He catches bits and pieces. She laces their fingers. He lets her.
"Thirteen wanted to come," he hears her say, and he must be dozing off, because that's pretty close to gibberish. "I told her maybe next time."
It's the larger, warmer hand settling on the back of his neck that shocks him, and he flinches and gasps like he's been stabbed, and he freezes. But House knows who it is without turning when a closely trimmed thumbnail moves gently over his ear, fingers in his filthy hair.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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