lit_luminary (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lit_luminary) wrote2008-04-07 05:15 pm
lit_luminary) wrote2008-04-07 05:15 pm
Entry tags:
Dæmonverse AAU (16/16)
Title: Principles of Growth
Author:![[info]](https://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
dominus_trinus
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Chase, House/Wilson (established).
Genre: Alternate alternate universe, à la Pullman's His Dark Materials.
Summary: Secrets and stories shared among heretics.
Notes: My sincere thanks toruby_took for various R & D conversations and assuring me this story wasn't too bizarre to post, and to bluerosefairy for the truly excellent beta.
He throws out an arm automatically, silencing the noise; and for several moments after that he’s still, neither speaking nor opening his eyes. Trying to hold on to the dream.
He remembers the broken little boy, the powerful woman and her clan, his mother’s arms around him; and the memories stay there, as easily accessible as any formed in waking life; wonderful and terrible at once.
Thinking of the other-self so brutally destroyed, he shudders and holds Kylie tighter. It didn’t happen. Not to them, not here.
We’re all right, Kylie murmurs. We’re who and what and where we’re supposed to be, and we know it.
He nods, because neither of those other lives had been even close to the perfection he’d hoped—well, the alternate in the second one had been happy, had had…her mother safe and well, but…
Not human enough, Kylie says. If we were one or the other, there’d always be half missing.
He can’t imagine himself without the formative influence of human society, human pain, any more than he can life without witch’s power. His self-concept is rooted too deeply in the knowledge that he’s both.
If he could spin a fate-line of his choosing, Mum would be alive; there’d be no Magisterium to fear; there’d have been no infarction to breed so much bitterness in House, no guillotine-stroke to scar him to his soul. He’d visit Mum on the weekends and House and Wilson sometime during the week, and his extended family when he’s off work in the summer—
And it’s a nice fantasy, but that’s all. If there is a world with that makeup (and there probably is; there were certainly enough lines for every possible permutation to be played out), he knows better now than to believe it’s perfect. Cause and effect: if this, then not this. If not this, then this and this and that instead, and it’s impossible to anticipate how things would end up.
Just thinking about it is enough to give him a headache.
Let’s not, Kylie says. We have to get up, anyway—if we’re not at work at eight, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where House will be at five after.
House doesn’t usually show up before at least ten, but Chase is reliably present at eight, and if he deviates from routine today, House will show up at his door with a lock-pick and worst-case assumptions, and he’ll end up insisting “I’m fine,” all the way through a blood panel and into the MRI.
He chuckles to himself as he throws off the covers. House’s brand of concern may have all the delicate subtlety of a sledgehammer, but it’s still good to know House feels he’s worth it.
It doesn’t take long to dress and get ready for work, moving just a little faster than usual: better to err on the side of caution and be slightly early.
Sure enough, when he gets in at five to eight, House is already there, sitting at the conference table watching Minerva shred…last week’s paperwork.
Thank Goddess for carbon paper and Xerox machines, Kylie says, or you’d have to do the whole lot over.
On the other hand, it’s good to see Minerva in high spirits: a paperwork nest generally means House is in the mood to be Up to Something (not surprising, since it’s been four days since they had a case) and is warming up with small subversions.
All is right with the world.
“You,” House proclaims as Chase hangs up his coat and wonders whether he wants a second cup of coffee, “are visibly happy to see me.”
He raises an eyebrow, glances at Kylie. Sure enough, she’s watching House with a smile and her tail is wagging slightly.
“Relieved,” he corrects. “Had a nightmare last night…I guess I was a little more shaken up than I thought.”
Minerva looks up from the remains of a patient history, shaking herself to dislodge clinging paper scraps from her fur. “I’m guessing a horrible fate befell us?”
“It was…last spring.” He gestures vaguely at the carpet, fortunately replaced by Foreman despite House’s resistance. He wouldn’t have been able to stand coming in to the sight of House’s blood on the floor every morning.
“So my nightmares took a night off and you picked up the slack,” House surmises. “Perfect.”
He looks a little more closely at House: he does look like he slept better, and his cane is propped up against the table. “Keeping up appearances?”
“Obviously.” House pulls an amber bottle out of his pocket and shakes it, and Chase notes a slightly different sound. “Right down to sugar pills. After all, if I can’t play the cripple-in-pain card, I can’t get away with half as much.”
“Somehow I think you’d get by on force of personality,” he says wryly. “And it isn’t like—” He breaks off as his witch-sight flares, blinking rapidly several times: he’s pleased to see House’s aura is noticeably brighter. “Sorry. Just give me a second.”
“You have almost no control over that.”
He shrugs. “It goes on if I watch anyone closely enough for a while. I can try to turn it back off, but sometimes it will and sometimes it won’t. Started when I was about seven, and then I spent the next year or two learning how to read it.”
House’s gaze intensifies and he leans forward slightly, apparently having decided that, in absence of a case, new information will do to keep him occupied. “What do you actually see when your eyes go like that?”
He pulls a pen out of his pocket and retrieves a piece of paperwork that’s only half-shredded, sketching a quick outline of a human figure, indicating the space around it. “I see light, there,” he says. “The colors and patterns and so on are different from person to person, but every one has a range of meanings.”
“So how do you know which one applies?” Minerva asks.
“Observation,” Kylie replies. “We can guess, but we don’t know unless we’ve been around a person for a while. Still, just having a general idea is enough to know whether we should be on our guard or not.”
“Or if I’m in a particularly foul mood, apparently.”
“Dark red,” Chase confirms, “for temper. Also for impulsivity, so when we’re on a case it’s always a toss-up between ‘frustration’ and ‘about to do something reckless.’ But the yellow in your aura darkens with frustration, so—”
“What’s yellow for?”
The witch-sight recedes again. “In your case, intellect. It’s your primary color.” He half-smiles and adds, “When a case clicks in your head, you flash like a light-bulb. Gold.”
“I gather from your tone that that’s impressive.”
“Inspiration. The highest possible fulfillment. Gold in men; silver in women. It doesn’t turn up in many people.”
“We’re gold when we diagnose,” Minerva says quietly, “like your mother was silver when she flew.”
Kylie nods. “That need to know…”
“Is essential to us,” Minerva says. There’s a pause, then, with remembered pleasure in her tone, “I settled on that conviction. We were fourteen, and we saw that having the right answer overruled everything else.”
Fourteen. Even he was fifteen when Kylie settled, precocity rooted in pain; he doesn’t want to think what horror there is in House’s childhood that made him grow up so fast.
“We were in Japan at the time,” House says. “My father was never stationed in any one place for more than a year or so, but the military brat lifestyle had its upsides.”
“And its downsides,” Minerva says with a wince. “We were fifteen in Egypt. Greg insisted on spending most of his time playing archeologist in the desert—do I look like I’m designed for the desert?”
“Better to swelter than freeze,” Kylie says.
House smirks. “I’m guessing you didn’t enjoy your first winter up here.”
“As usual, you guess right,” Chase says. “All the moving around you did, I guess you didn’t get used to a single climate until university; but I’d lived in the warm all my life. Winter was fascinating for about a week…and then I started to hate it with a passion.”
“Sun-worshipper.”
“Not technically.” God is sun as Goddess is moon, but he’s never been comfortable with God. Because of course God is Father, and Rowan didn’t exactly show him fathers were to be trusted.
Maybe not all fathers, Kylie says. But we can trust this one.
He does trust House, because House has earned it—has pushed him and annoyed him and amazed him in turns but always been there with the implicit belief he’ll do his best. House cares about him, for who and what he is.
And there’s healing in that honest affection, slower and subtler but deeper than anything magic can accomplish.
“Didn’t mean it like that,” House says.
“I know.”
There’s a pause, then, “It wasn’t just a nightmare, was it?”
He shakes his head. “Bit more complicated than that, but…”
“Not here. Right,” Minerva says. “After work?”
He agrees, and House sends him down to scour the clinic for potential cases.
There’s nothing in the clinic but a particularly nasty virus keeping far too many school-age children home sick, and really one would think that at some point all these worried parents would have realized science hasn’t yet devised a cure for the common cold, but no.
Unfortunately.
Twenty such diagnoses later, he can understand why House once went out and diagnosed an entire waiting room of cold-sufferers en masse ("You have colds, you morons! Go home, take a Motrin and a nap, and quit wasting my time!" Chase had caught hell from Foreman for not stopping that, but it'd been worth it to see so many scandalized faces).
In one way it’s good that no one is afflicted by an exotic, potentially fatal illness; but in another it makes the Diagnostics department rather unnecessary. One patient a week is enough to keep them busy, but any less than that and Foreman will start whining about financial vacuums, which he does about once a month or when House incurs a frivolous lawsuit.
“Nothing in the clinic,” he hears House complaining to Wilson when he arrives at House’s apartment that evening. “If the ER-intake drones don’t have something tomorrow, I might have to paste some of those referral requests back together.”
He knocks on the door, and House lets him in a moment later. Now he’s not keeping up the pretense of pain: the cane is nowhere in sight, and his stride is even, effortless.
Chase smiles to himself and moves to sit down on the couch, Kylie pushing aside a few scattered papers and lying down near its arm. Wilson is already at the opposite end, Rona lounging at his feet and Minerva lying atop Rona. It’s a good sign, he thinks as House takes his usual place in the center, that he doesn’t have to maintain contact with her all the time anymore. He may never heal completely, but he’ll get better.
“So,” House says, “about this dream of yours—”
“Actually,” Wilson breaks in, “before we discuss that, I wanted…” He pauses, sighs softly. “His pain’s been gone for over a day now—when do you expect…?”
Right. Of course House wouldn’t have told Wilson the pain is gone; probably wouldn’t have mentioned it at all—because of course that would have meant raising Wilson’s hopes, too, and his own are still too fragile. “It’s not going to,” Kylie says.
Rona’s gaze locks on hers, and though he can’t read her expressions as well as he can Minerva’s, it’s unmistakable how much Wilson wants to believe him. “How did you…? We thought—”
“I can’t do it the way it’s supposed to be done,” he says. “And what I did wasn’t exactly safe—”
“And I quote,” Minerva breaks in, gesturing to indicate Kylie, “‘life-threateningly stupid.’”
“Only if it’d gone wrong,” he says, seeing Wilson’s alarm, “which wasn’t likely. I took a calculated risk.”
“And went out like a light,” House says.
He sighs. “I was unconscious for half an hour and needed a meal and some sleep. You no longer have nerve damage and won’t be in pain anymore. On balance, the price I paid wasn’t that high.”
House looks like he wants to start ranting about the general stupidity of self-sacrifice, but Wilson breaks in.
“Have you had an MRI done?”
“No.”
“You should,” Wilson says. “It’d make you feel better to be sure, and I’d like to—”
“No,” House repeats, and when Minerva adds a hiss for emphasis, Wilson backs down.
“All right.” A pause. “Someday?”
“When I’m willing to have it, I’ll let you know.”
Wilson nods, but still looks disappointed.
“He doesn’t need an MRI,” Chase says. “I know it’s—I know you can’t see it, but I can. The nerves are normal; there won’t be any more pain.”
“Sixth sense?” Wilson asks.
He shakes his head. “No. It’s Aunt Callisto who Sees; I just have a standard variation in my vision.”
House looks up, intrigued. “She was just ‘Callisto’ before. Why the familial title now? Been visiting?”
He hadn’t changed the reference on purpose; it had just been natural to call her ‘Aunt’ after the dream, once he’d gotten to know her and some of his other family members, and who they were to his other-self. “Since yesterday?”
“Fair point; obviously you haven’t taken an eighteen-hour flight—”
“Twenty-and-a-half,” he corrects with a wince.
“Twenty-and-a-half-hour flight,” House continues without missing a beat. “So how exactly could you dream of relatives you’ve never met?”
He’s used to it by now, how House’s mind jumps from A to D or farther with no warning to connect seemingly unrelated things—he’s learning to make similar leaps himself—but it can still be a little disconcerting. “I dreamed of my mother,” he says. “She…answered some questions I’ve had for a while, showed me how my personal what-ifs would’ve played out.”
House watches him with interest, but no visible skepticism. “And those are?”
“If she’d have lived if I’d been able to convince her to go when I was ten. What if I’d been born a full witch and raised that way, without my father in the picture.” Softly, he finishes, “What if I’d somehow been able to stop her drinking.”
“You couldn’t have,” House says with certainty, and he nods.
“You’re right. In a billion, billion possible fates…there was nothing I could do. She said as much.”
“A billion fates?” Wilson asks. “Then…this isn’t…?”
He shakes his head. “All the possibilities are there, the past-present-future of everything. Lines diverge and intersect and run parallel—there were…I guess an infinite number, in infinite space. I could’ve stood there for millennia and not understood the pattern.”
“The ultimate puzzle,” House surmises, and there’s something in his tone that’s half jealousy and half—the only word Chase can think of is hunger.
Wilson hears it, too. “Don’t, House. The answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is beyond even you—unless you’ve acquired an interest in applied metaphysics?”
“Not my area,” House says, shaking his head. “I’d have to revamp my entire belief system for that.” He still looks a little wistful, but after a moment he shakes it off. “I’m guessing possibility one didn’t play out as nicely as you’d hoped.”
He remembers the screams and the flash of a breaking bond and the gleaming knife and shudders, reaching down for Kylie and burying his fingers in the warmth of her fur. “It took…a couple of hours after the binding spell wore off for something to explode. Eventually it happened in front of my father. He handed me over to the church. They killed me; Mum killed herself.”
Perhaps it’s the implication of what happened to his other-self, or perhaps Chase’s horror shows on his face, because House grimaces. Minerva makes a soft crooning sound that—well, he doesn’t know the precise meaning; he’s still learning her nonverbal code, but it’s probably supposed to be comforting, though whether to House or to him or both he’s not sure.
“And the other life?” House asks after a moment.
“Having a daughter instead of a son made the difference,” he says, smiling to himself at the memory of Rowan finally put in his place. “She told my father—everything she should have to begin with. That he was using her and she wasn’t going to put up with it, and she was taking me—well, that version of me—and leaving.”
“We’ll cherish the memory of the look on his face for the rest of our life,” Kylie adds, her tone rich with satisfaction.
“I’d have paid to see that look,” House says, smirking. “He liked to control people—having the tables turned on him would’ve hit like a ton of bricks.”
“It did,” he confirms. “It was so good…to see her stop tolerating him, take her power back. Like all of a sudden it was all right to throw the mask off.”
“People do that when they’re burning bridges,” House says. “Although it would’ve been one spectacular deflagration.” He pauses. “And that would’ve been where the family connection came from: little witch’s life.”
“Rhea’s,” he says.
House raises an eyebrow. “Is it just a thing with witches, that they’re all named after goddesses and stars?”
“Naming traditions vary from clan to clan. Mum’s mostly used star names; a couple of goddess ones. Aunt Callisto named her daughter Aurora, for example.” He thinks of his favorite cousin, whom Rhea had called sister and companion. “But Aunt Alcyone’s daughter is Arista, and my grandmother is Cassiopeia.”
“You didn’t mention having another aunt,” Wilson says.
“Didn’t know about her before; she and Mum weren’t that close because of the age gap. It was…I actually don’t know how large, because it wasn’t like any of them really showed age; but enough that they all had different fathers.”
“Wide enough that one man couldn’t have fathered all three,” House surmises. Then, changing tacks, “So this version of you grew up with a family.”
“It’s…different from a human family structure. I—she—” He breaks off, unsure which to use: she was him, in one way, but so fundamentally different.
“Just say ‘I’,” House says. “Technically true, and it’ll save you the trouble of switching to third person.”
“I was closest to Mum, then, but her sisters were also like mothers to me. All the girls in my age-range were my sisters. Blood connections—well, everyone knew who belonged especially to whom, but it…mattered less.”
“But you were happy?”
The question comes from House, and that’s surprising: House isn’t the one who asks about feelings. “Yes. I was happy. But…” He pauses, drops the ‘I’: it’s served its purpose. “It was hard to see myself in her, and…”
“And?”
“And it felt like half my life was missing. I mean, I know it wouldn’t have been like that if I’d really lived it; I wouldn’t have known anything else, but…” He pauses. “I wanted to see the rest of it, the human half. You, the hospital.”
“I’d’ve been working alone,” House says matter-of-factly.
“You…were, but—”
“Oh, come on. I’d be a lousy diagnostician if I couldn’t even predict my own actions.” He’s quiet for a moment, and Minerva says, “We didn’t hire you to piss off your father; that was just a nice bonus. You got the job on merit, and we don’t settle for second-best.”
Explicit praise. From House.
If his witch-sight were on right now, he swears he’d be able to see himself glow orange with pride.
Still, he knows better than to acknowledge it. “There were a few cases I remember we solved that you didn’t, by yourself; and Foreman was on your back more without me to do the paperwork and run interference with the patients.”
House nods. “Obviously. And then the deranged gunman killed me, hence the ‘nightmare’ bit of the scenario.”
Rona whines, and Wilson closes a hand around House’s: they find the idea just as horrifying as he did.
He nods slightly, swallows hard and tries to dislodge the memory of House’s lifeless body, and the more vivid one, actually lived, of his hands slick with hot blood and his heart pounding a staccato beat in his chest, his only thought Goddess please don’t let him die! “Yes. Since I wasn’t there…”
“Also obviously. You need me where I am; I need you where you are. Works out best for all concerned.”
That’s probably as close as House will ever come to acknowledging it, this paternal-filial bond between them, but it’s enough. “That’s what I came away with.” He pauses, then says, “And Mum agrees with you that what I did for you was risky and stupid.”
“Good judgment,” House says.
“But she trusts you with me anyway.”
“Less good judgment. I’m not good at this whole…” He gestures vaguely. “Thing.”
“Good enough,” Kylie says, and he sees from the flicker of pleased surprise in House’s gaze that those words mean as much to House as they did to him.
There’s an instant’s silence; then the spell breaks. “Okay, storytime over,” House says. “Wilson, what did you make with the unholy racket this morning?”
“A casserole,” Wilson says. “And one of these days I’m going to get up and make enough of an unholy racket that it gets you out of bed, and then I can have dinner prep done in half the time.”
“Twice the time,” House corrects. “If I were actually helpful, it would set all kinds of ugly precedents. Next thing I knew, you’d be roping me into doing the laundry and washing the dishes.”
Chase chuckles to himself and leans back against the cushions, half-closing his eyes: their companionable bickering is, in its own way, as soothing as Mum’s embraces and lullaby-song.
He is who and what and where he’s meant to be, and he’s not alone.
What he has now isn’t the archetypal perfection he’d hoped for as a child, nor the unattainable affection of Mum’s clan; it’s nothing but the sum of his own choices, but…
But he has a father in House just the same, a loyal friend in Wilson. And Mum, somewhere, unseen but still watching, protecting, loving.
It’s enough.
This family is enough.
END.
Author's Notes:
The line about the answer to "Life, the Universe and Everything" is a reference to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which, by the way, states that the answer is '42').
Author:
dominus_trinusRating: R
Characters/Pairings: Chase, House/Wilson (established).
Genre: Alternate alternate universe, à la Pullman's His Dark Materials.
Summary: Secrets and stories shared among heretics.
Notes: My sincere thanks to
ruby_took for various R & D conversations and assuring me this story wasn't too bizarre to post, and to bluerosefairy for the truly excellent beta.Family
He throws out an arm automatically, silencing the noise; and for several moments after that he’s still, neither speaking nor opening his eyes. Trying to hold on to the dream.
He remembers the broken little boy, the powerful woman and her clan, his mother’s arms around him; and the memories stay there, as easily accessible as any formed in waking life; wonderful and terrible at once.
Thinking of the other-self so brutally destroyed, he shudders and holds Kylie tighter. It didn’t happen. Not to them, not here.
We’re all right, Kylie murmurs. We’re who and what and where we’re supposed to be, and we know it.
He nods, because neither of those other lives had been even close to the perfection he’d hoped—well, the alternate in the second one had been happy, had had…her mother safe and well, but…
Not human enough, Kylie says. If we were one or the other, there’d always be half missing.
He can’t imagine himself without the formative influence of human society, human pain, any more than he can life without witch’s power. His self-concept is rooted too deeply in the knowledge that he’s both.
If he could spin a fate-line of his choosing, Mum would be alive; there’d be no Magisterium to fear; there’d have been no infarction to breed so much bitterness in House, no guillotine-stroke to scar him to his soul. He’d visit Mum on the weekends and House and Wilson sometime during the week, and his extended family when he’s off work in the summer—
And it’s a nice fantasy, but that’s all. If there is a world with that makeup (and there probably is; there were certainly enough lines for every possible permutation to be played out), he knows better now than to believe it’s perfect. Cause and effect: if this, then not this. If not this, then this and this and that instead, and it’s impossible to anticipate how things would end up.
Just thinking about it is enough to give him a headache.
Let’s not, Kylie says. We have to get up, anyway—if we’re not at work at eight, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where House will be at five after.
House doesn’t usually show up before at least ten, but Chase is reliably present at eight, and if he deviates from routine today, House will show up at his door with a lock-pick and worst-case assumptions, and he’ll end up insisting “I’m fine,” all the way through a blood panel and into the MRI.
He chuckles to himself as he throws off the covers. House’s brand of concern may have all the delicate subtlety of a sledgehammer, but it’s still good to know House feels he’s worth it.
It doesn’t take long to dress and get ready for work, moving just a little faster than usual: better to err on the side of caution and be slightly early.
Sure enough, when he gets in at five to eight, House is already there, sitting at the conference table watching Minerva shred…last week’s paperwork.
Thank Goddess for carbon paper and Xerox machines, Kylie says, or you’d have to do the whole lot over.
On the other hand, it’s good to see Minerva in high spirits: a paperwork nest generally means House is in the mood to be Up to Something (not surprising, since it’s been four days since they had a case) and is warming up with small subversions.
All is right with the world.
“You,” House proclaims as Chase hangs up his coat and wonders whether he wants a second cup of coffee, “are visibly happy to see me.”
He raises an eyebrow, glances at Kylie. Sure enough, she’s watching House with a smile and her tail is wagging slightly.
“Relieved,” he corrects. “Had a nightmare last night…I guess I was a little more shaken up than I thought.”
Minerva looks up from the remains of a patient history, shaking herself to dislodge clinging paper scraps from her fur. “I’m guessing a horrible fate befell us?”
“It was…last spring.” He gestures vaguely at the carpet, fortunately replaced by Foreman despite House’s resistance. He wouldn’t have been able to stand coming in to the sight of House’s blood on the floor every morning.
“So my nightmares took a night off and you picked up the slack,” House surmises. “Perfect.”
He looks a little more closely at House: he does look like he slept better, and his cane is propped up against the table. “Keeping up appearances?”
“Obviously.” House pulls an amber bottle out of his pocket and shakes it, and Chase notes a slightly different sound. “Right down to sugar pills. After all, if I can’t play the cripple-in-pain card, I can’t get away with half as much.”
“Somehow I think you’d get by on force of personality,” he says wryly. “And it isn’t like—” He breaks off as his witch-sight flares, blinking rapidly several times: he’s pleased to see House’s aura is noticeably brighter. “Sorry. Just give me a second.”
“You have almost no control over that.”
He shrugs. “It goes on if I watch anyone closely enough for a while. I can try to turn it back off, but sometimes it will and sometimes it won’t. Started when I was about seven, and then I spent the next year or two learning how to read it.”
House’s gaze intensifies and he leans forward slightly, apparently having decided that, in absence of a case, new information will do to keep him occupied. “What do you actually see when your eyes go like that?”
He pulls a pen out of his pocket and retrieves a piece of paperwork that’s only half-shredded, sketching a quick outline of a human figure, indicating the space around it. “I see light, there,” he says. “The colors and patterns and so on are different from person to person, but every one has a range of meanings.”
“So how do you know which one applies?” Minerva asks.
“Observation,” Kylie replies. “We can guess, but we don’t know unless we’ve been around a person for a while. Still, just having a general idea is enough to know whether we should be on our guard or not.”
“Or if I’m in a particularly foul mood, apparently.”
“Dark red,” Chase confirms, “for temper. Also for impulsivity, so when we’re on a case it’s always a toss-up between ‘frustration’ and ‘about to do something reckless.’ But the yellow in your aura darkens with frustration, so—”
“What’s yellow for?”
The witch-sight recedes again. “In your case, intellect. It’s your primary color.” He half-smiles and adds, “When a case clicks in your head, you flash like a light-bulb. Gold.”
“I gather from your tone that that’s impressive.”
“Inspiration. The highest possible fulfillment. Gold in men; silver in women. It doesn’t turn up in many people.”
“We’re gold when we diagnose,” Minerva says quietly, “like your mother was silver when she flew.”
Kylie nods. “That need to know…”
“Is essential to us,” Minerva says. There’s a pause, then, with remembered pleasure in her tone, “I settled on that conviction. We were fourteen, and we saw that having the right answer overruled everything else.”
Fourteen. Even he was fifteen when Kylie settled, precocity rooted in pain; he doesn’t want to think what horror there is in House’s childhood that made him grow up so fast.
“We were in Japan at the time,” House says. “My father was never stationed in any one place for more than a year or so, but the military brat lifestyle had its upsides.”
“And its downsides,” Minerva says with a wince. “We were fifteen in Egypt. Greg insisted on spending most of his time playing archeologist in the desert—do I look like I’m designed for the desert?”
“Better to swelter than freeze,” Kylie says.
House smirks. “I’m guessing you didn’t enjoy your first winter up here.”
“As usual, you guess right,” Chase says. “All the moving around you did, I guess you didn’t get used to a single climate until university; but I’d lived in the warm all my life. Winter was fascinating for about a week…and then I started to hate it with a passion.”
“Sun-worshipper.”
“Not technically.” God is sun as Goddess is moon, but he’s never been comfortable with God. Because of course God is Father, and Rowan didn’t exactly show him fathers were to be trusted.
Maybe not all fathers, Kylie says. But we can trust this one.
He does trust House, because House has earned it—has pushed him and annoyed him and amazed him in turns but always been there with the implicit belief he’ll do his best. House cares about him, for who and what he is.
And there’s healing in that honest affection, slower and subtler but deeper than anything magic can accomplish.
“Didn’t mean it like that,” House says.
“I know.”
There’s a pause, then, “It wasn’t just a nightmare, was it?”
He shakes his head. “Bit more complicated than that, but…”
“Not here. Right,” Minerva says. “After work?”
He agrees, and House sends him down to scour the clinic for potential cases.
***
There’s nothing in the clinic but a particularly nasty virus keeping far too many school-age children home sick, and really one would think that at some point all these worried parents would have realized science hasn’t yet devised a cure for the common cold, but no.
Unfortunately.
Twenty such diagnoses later, he can understand why House once went out and diagnosed an entire waiting room of cold-sufferers en masse ("You have colds, you morons! Go home, take a Motrin and a nap, and quit wasting my time!" Chase had caught hell from Foreman for not stopping that, but it'd been worth it to see so many scandalized faces).
In one way it’s good that no one is afflicted by an exotic, potentially fatal illness; but in another it makes the Diagnostics department rather unnecessary. One patient a week is enough to keep them busy, but any less than that and Foreman will start whining about financial vacuums, which he does about once a month or when House incurs a frivolous lawsuit.
“Nothing in the clinic,” he hears House complaining to Wilson when he arrives at House’s apartment that evening. “If the ER-intake drones don’t have something tomorrow, I might have to paste some of those referral requests back together.”
He knocks on the door, and House lets him in a moment later. Now he’s not keeping up the pretense of pain: the cane is nowhere in sight, and his stride is even, effortless.
Chase smiles to himself and moves to sit down on the couch, Kylie pushing aside a few scattered papers and lying down near its arm. Wilson is already at the opposite end, Rona lounging at his feet and Minerva lying atop Rona. It’s a good sign, he thinks as House takes his usual place in the center, that he doesn’t have to maintain contact with her all the time anymore. He may never heal completely, but he’ll get better.
“So,” House says, “about this dream of yours—”
“Actually,” Wilson breaks in, “before we discuss that, I wanted…” He pauses, sighs softly. “His pain’s been gone for over a day now—when do you expect…?”
Right. Of course House wouldn’t have told Wilson the pain is gone; probably wouldn’t have mentioned it at all—because of course that would have meant raising Wilson’s hopes, too, and his own are still too fragile. “It’s not going to,” Kylie says.
Rona’s gaze locks on hers, and though he can’t read her expressions as well as he can Minerva’s, it’s unmistakable how much Wilson wants to believe him. “How did you…? We thought—”
“I can’t do it the way it’s supposed to be done,” he says. “And what I did wasn’t exactly safe—”
“And I quote,” Minerva breaks in, gesturing to indicate Kylie, “‘life-threateningly stupid.’”
“Only if it’d gone wrong,” he says, seeing Wilson’s alarm, “which wasn’t likely. I took a calculated risk.”
“And went out like a light,” House says.
He sighs. “I was unconscious for half an hour and needed a meal and some sleep. You no longer have nerve damage and won’t be in pain anymore. On balance, the price I paid wasn’t that high.”
House looks like he wants to start ranting about the general stupidity of self-sacrifice, but Wilson breaks in.
“Have you had an MRI done?”
“No.”
“You should,” Wilson says. “It’d make you feel better to be sure, and I’d like to—”
“No,” House repeats, and when Minerva adds a hiss for emphasis, Wilson backs down.
“All right.” A pause. “Someday?”
“When I’m willing to have it, I’ll let you know.”
Wilson nods, but still looks disappointed.
“He doesn’t need an MRI,” Chase says. “I know it’s—I know you can’t see it, but I can. The nerves are normal; there won’t be any more pain.”
“Sixth sense?” Wilson asks.
He shakes his head. “No. It’s Aunt Callisto who Sees; I just have a standard variation in my vision.”
House looks up, intrigued. “She was just ‘Callisto’ before. Why the familial title now? Been visiting?”
He hadn’t changed the reference on purpose; it had just been natural to call her ‘Aunt’ after the dream, once he’d gotten to know her and some of his other family members, and who they were to his other-self. “Since yesterday?”
“Fair point; obviously you haven’t taken an eighteen-hour flight—”
“Twenty-and-a-half,” he corrects with a wince.
“Twenty-and-a-half-hour flight,” House continues without missing a beat. “So how exactly could you dream of relatives you’ve never met?”
He’s used to it by now, how House’s mind jumps from A to D or farther with no warning to connect seemingly unrelated things—he’s learning to make similar leaps himself—but it can still be a little disconcerting. “I dreamed of my mother,” he says. “She…answered some questions I’ve had for a while, showed me how my personal what-ifs would’ve played out.”
House watches him with interest, but no visible skepticism. “And those are?”
“If she’d have lived if I’d been able to convince her to go when I was ten. What if I’d been born a full witch and raised that way, without my father in the picture.” Softly, he finishes, “What if I’d somehow been able to stop her drinking.”
“You couldn’t have,” House says with certainty, and he nods.
“You’re right. In a billion, billion possible fates…there was nothing I could do. She said as much.”
“A billion fates?” Wilson asks. “Then…this isn’t…?”
He shakes his head. “All the possibilities are there, the past-present-future of everything. Lines diverge and intersect and run parallel—there were…I guess an infinite number, in infinite space. I could’ve stood there for millennia and not understood the pattern.”
“The ultimate puzzle,” House surmises, and there’s something in his tone that’s half jealousy and half—the only word Chase can think of is hunger.
Wilson hears it, too. “Don’t, House. The answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is beyond even you—unless you’ve acquired an interest in applied metaphysics?”
“Not my area,” House says, shaking his head. “I’d have to revamp my entire belief system for that.” He still looks a little wistful, but after a moment he shakes it off. “I’m guessing possibility one didn’t play out as nicely as you’d hoped.”
He remembers the screams and the flash of a breaking bond and the gleaming knife and shudders, reaching down for Kylie and burying his fingers in the warmth of her fur. “It took…a couple of hours after the binding spell wore off for something to explode. Eventually it happened in front of my father. He handed me over to the church. They killed me; Mum killed herself.”
Perhaps it’s the implication of what happened to his other-self, or perhaps Chase’s horror shows on his face, because House grimaces. Minerva makes a soft crooning sound that—well, he doesn’t know the precise meaning; he’s still learning her nonverbal code, but it’s probably supposed to be comforting, though whether to House or to him or both he’s not sure.
“And the other life?” House asks after a moment.
“Having a daughter instead of a son made the difference,” he says, smiling to himself at the memory of Rowan finally put in his place. “She told my father—everything she should have to begin with. That he was using her and she wasn’t going to put up with it, and she was taking me—well, that version of me—and leaving.”
“We’ll cherish the memory of the look on his face for the rest of our life,” Kylie adds, her tone rich with satisfaction.
“I’d have paid to see that look,” House says, smirking. “He liked to control people—having the tables turned on him would’ve hit like a ton of bricks.”
“It did,” he confirms. “It was so good…to see her stop tolerating him, take her power back. Like all of a sudden it was all right to throw the mask off.”
“People do that when they’re burning bridges,” House says. “Although it would’ve been one spectacular deflagration.” He pauses. “And that would’ve been where the family connection came from: little witch’s life.”
“Rhea’s,” he says.
House raises an eyebrow. “Is it just a thing with witches, that they’re all named after goddesses and stars?”
“Naming traditions vary from clan to clan. Mum’s mostly used star names; a couple of goddess ones. Aunt Callisto named her daughter Aurora, for example.” He thinks of his favorite cousin, whom Rhea had called sister and companion. “But Aunt Alcyone’s daughter is Arista, and my grandmother is Cassiopeia.”
“You didn’t mention having another aunt,” Wilson says.
“Didn’t know about her before; she and Mum weren’t that close because of the age gap. It was…I actually don’t know how large, because it wasn’t like any of them really showed age; but enough that they all had different fathers.”
“Wide enough that one man couldn’t have fathered all three,” House surmises. Then, changing tacks, “So this version of you grew up with a family.”
“It’s…different from a human family structure. I—she—” He breaks off, unsure which to use: she was him, in one way, but so fundamentally different.
“Just say ‘I’,” House says. “Technically true, and it’ll save you the trouble of switching to third person.”
“I was closest to Mum, then, but her sisters were also like mothers to me. All the girls in my age-range were my sisters. Blood connections—well, everyone knew who belonged especially to whom, but it…mattered less.”
“But you were happy?”
The question comes from House, and that’s surprising: House isn’t the one who asks about feelings. “Yes. I was happy. But…” He pauses, drops the ‘I’: it’s served its purpose. “It was hard to see myself in her, and…”
“And?”
“And it felt like half my life was missing. I mean, I know it wouldn’t have been like that if I’d really lived it; I wouldn’t have known anything else, but…” He pauses. “I wanted to see the rest of it, the human half. You, the hospital.”
“I’d’ve been working alone,” House says matter-of-factly.
“You…were, but—”
“Oh, come on. I’d be a lousy diagnostician if I couldn’t even predict my own actions.” He’s quiet for a moment, and Minerva says, “We didn’t hire you to piss off your father; that was just a nice bonus. You got the job on merit, and we don’t settle for second-best.”
Explicit praise. From House.
If his witch-sight were on right now, he swears he’d be able to see himself glow orange with pride.
Still, he knows better than to acknowledge it. “There were a few cases I remember we solved that you didn’t, by yourself; and Foreman was on your back more without me to do the paperwork and run interference with the patients.”
House nods. “Obviously. And then the deranged gunman killed me, hence the ‘nightmare’ bit of the scenario.”
Rona whines, and Wilson closes a hand around House’s: they find the idea just as horrifying as he did.
He nods slightly, swallows hard and tries to dislodge the memory of House’s lifeless body, and the more vivid one, actually lived, of his hands slick with hot blood and his heart pounding a staccato beat in his chest, his only thought Goddess please don’t let him die! “Yes. Since I wasn’t there…”
“Also obviously. You need me where I am; I need you where you are. Works out best for all concerned.”
That’s probably as close as House will ever come to acknowledging it, this paternal-filial bond between them, but it’s enough. “That’s what I came away with.” He pauses, then says, “And Mum agrees with you that what I did for you was risky and stupid.”
“Good judgment,” House says.
“But she trusts you with me anyway.”
“Less good judgment. I’m not good at this whole…” He gestures vaguely. “Thing.”
“Good enough,” Kylie says, and he sees from the flicker of pleased surprise in House’s gaze that those words mean as much to House as they did to him.
There’s an instant’s silence; then the spell breaks. “Okay, storytime over,” House says. “Wilson, what did you make with the unholy racket this morning?”
“A casserole,” Wilson says. “And one of these days I’m going to get up and make enough of an unholy racket that it gets you out of bed, and then I can have dinner prep done in half the time.”
“Twice the time,” House corrects. “If I were actually helpful, it would set all kinds of ugly precedents. Next thing I knew, you’d be roping me into doing the laundry and washing the dishes.”
Chase chuckles to himself and leans back against the cushions, half-closing his eyes: their companionable bickering is, in its own way, as soothing as Mum’s embraces and lullaby-song.
He is who and what and where he’s meant to be, and he’s not alone.
What he has now isn’t the archetypal perfection he’d hoped for as a child, nor the unattainable affection of Mum’s clan; it’s nothing but the sum of his own choices, but…
But he has a father in House just the same, a loyal friend in Wilson. And Mum, somewhere, unseen but still watching, protecting, loving.
It’s enough.
This family is enough.
END.
Author's Notes:
The line about the answer to "Life, the Universe and Everything" is a reference to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which, by the way, states that the answer is '42').