My thanks, as always, go to maineac for being such a patient beta reader and to Brighid45 for bouncing ideas around with me. Having said that, any remaining mistakes in this story are entirely my own.

Chapter 1

People here knew how to make good coffee. Plenty of coffee shops and excellent coffee were this city's saving grace.

Truth be told, these weren't the only things House liked about Seattle. But the list wasn't very long. However, the weather wasn't great and played havoc with his leg most of the time. But since he hadn't expected to find paradise when they moved here he felt no urge to leave.

This was a city where you could easily feel at home – or so he thought. Maybe he was just tired of moving. He hadn't felt properly at home in a long time. Even his childhood homes had all been temporary. Princeton had probably come as close to a home as he'd ever had. His apartment there had been a comfortable space, a refuge of sorts. Princeton was the place he had stayed longest, without ever having planned to.

This - Seattle - hadn't been planned either. They had decided to stay here after Wilson's treatment. It was as good a place as any. Maybe even better, due to its proximity to Wilson's doctor. Neither of them had ever said it out loud but both were worried about a recurrence of Wilson's cancer. House certainly was. And Wilson knew too much not to worry. So staying was the most sensible option. For now.

For now, things were as good and as quiet as they could be. Too quiet, as far as House was concerned. Which was part of the reason he was here this morning.

House drained his cup and looked for the server. He didn't have to look far; she got up from her stool behind the counter the moment he put his cup down and turned away from his laptop screen.

"Don't you have anything bigger than thimble size?" he asked when she arrived at his table.

She raised her eyebrows. Maybe she was related to Wilson in a roundabout way. Although after his treatments, Wilson's brows had never quite grown back to their former glory. With the amount of poison that had been pumped into Wilson, House was surprised anything had grown back at all.

Things weren't the same as they had been three or four years ago. They never would be again. But maybe, for once, change wasn't a bad thing. That's what he kept telling himself. Wilson was alive. So was he. He just had to get that fact officially confirmed.

And to do that, he needed to be awake. He pointedly looked at his empty coffee cup.

"You're already on your second refill, how will a bigger cup help? If this isn't keeping you awake, I doubt a bigger cup will do the trick. Besides, it's quality that matters, not size."

"Is that what your boyfriend tells you?"

The waitress laughed but filled his cup anyway and turned around, knowing full well he was watching her. He could have sworn that was an extra nice hip swing when she disappeared behind the counter.

This wasn't his first visit, and it wasn't their first exchange of this kind. With a bit of luck – and a lot of other people's goodwill, he thought – it wouldn't be the last one either. The coffee here was almost as good as the organic Ethiopian grind Wilson bought. House liked it, although he'd never tell Wilson he even knew what coffee they were using every day.

House stretched his legs and, after another go at emptying that delicate cup, went back to his current project.

Not that he had made much progress since he had left the house two hours ago. He still hadn't made a decision, and it was high time he did. It wasn't only Wilson he had on his back; Stacy was getting impatient as well.

When he had called her a few weeks ago she had been more than willing to help him fix his problems. And boy, they were problems.

That day in the burning building he hadn't had much time to come up with a plan; he had acted on instinct alone. And it had worked. But it had never been meant to work forever. Wilson had only had five months then, give or take, and House hadn't given himself much more. It didn't have to be a permanent solution.

As it was, they were both still around. Wilson was still alive, and so was he – to his continued surprise.

Now that things were back to some semblance of normal, with Wilson back at work, life was getting tricky. And boring. House couldn't work, he couldn't even get a credit card – not that he really needed one. After all, he still knew how to scam Wilson.

Officially, Gregory House was dead and buried. But seeing as he was still very much alive, he was getting antsy. Now he was paying the price for not having a well-thought-out plan and acting on a smack-addled brain. He had some ideas about what he wanted to do. For all of them, he needed to reclaim his identity. Sam Aldersson wouldn't get his medical license back, even if he'd had one in the first place. Which he hadn't. Not even Mr. Alderson with one S had held one, as far as House knew. He had also been dead a while. House had taken the first name offered to avoid having to wait – and pay extra - for a bespoke new ID. The almost-connection to Samuel W. Alderson, inventor of the crash test dummy and 'medical phantoms', used to simulate reaction to radiation which he had read about in med school, had amused him a little initially. But he really didn't care about the name either way. It was time to retire Mr. Aldersson and resurrect Gregory House.

So he had decided to ask Stacy for advice. It had taken him a couple of days to finally make that call. But he'd had no other choice. After the initial shock of hearing his voice, she went straight into work mode and started pulling strings and calling in favors. How many strings he didn't want to know, in case he got so entangled he couldn't find his way out again.

A week later, she had a meeting set up for him.

He knew the date, and he knew the time. He had forgotten the guy's name, even his title, but he was sure Stacy would remind him. After she had picked him up.

And that's where a whole new problem lay. Pick him up where?

He had to be in New Jersey three weeks from today, and he had to figure out a way to get there. While his current ID hadn't come cheap, it would not pass closer inspection at an airport.

How do you get from one side of the country to the other if you're dead?

Stacy had suggested the train. It was the obvious choice. She had assured him that ID checks for trains and buses weren't as thorough as airport security checks, so he'd probably pass. But just the idea of being trapped on a train, for what would probably amount to days, gave him hives.

The bus was out for the same reason. It was even worse than the train because he wouldn't be able to move around when he needed to. And he would need to, that much he knew. He could barely sit in one position for an hour nowadays without having to shift or get up and stretch his legs.

He could drive. Just buy a cheap car, drive it across and fly back once everything was sorted. If, not when. He knew it was a big if. There was always a chance Stacy was wrong, and things would go south after all. But a car wouldn't be much better on his leg than being stuck on a train for days. At least a train would continue moving towards his destination no matter what. If he took a car, he would have to make regular stops and lose precious time. It would take him ages to get to Princeton.

Short of inventing technology to beam him across to the other side of the continent, this really only left one more option to consider. It wasn't better than any of the others – worse even if you looked closely - and it was the one option neither Stacy nor Wilson nor his leg would approve of.

Not surprisingly, it was the only option he wanted.

He knew it wasn't sensible, but that word had never held a high ranking in his vocabulary. He knew it would be hell on his leg, and he would probably regret it. And time-wise it wouldn't be any better than the car. So he had to make up his mind and fast.

House went back to the last website he had opened.