Title: The End of the World

Author: Bellsie

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Summary: And this is how the world ends.

Author's Note: Inspired by life & love & death & TS Eliot.

;';2005;';

For one week, he becomes a fatalist.

He's always considered himself a realist, but for this week in particular, as summer fades and fall blooms, he can't help but see the worst in every situation—that the end is near and everyone dies.

He has a clinic patient who sees the reincarnation of Jesus in pieces of chewed gum and shadows. The patient claims that God instructs him to punch his hands with nails and get on the ground and pray. House sends in Cameron-the-atheist and has her explain that there is no God, before sending the man up to the psych ward.

He has another clinic patient who believes that the world will end soon—and it will be with fire and it will be miserable and no one will survive. The man says that the oceans will become liquid fire and the forests will catch flame. The buildings will burn and fall. House laughs when he hears this and asks if the man has been watching 9/11 reruns.

When he gets to his office, he finds Wilson sitting in his regular chair. House throws his cane on his cane on his desk and collapses in the chair behind it.

"How do you think the world will end?" He asks Wilson without the least bit of malice or sarcasm.

Wilson quirks an eyebrow.

"I don't know. I just stopped by to invite you to—"

"—I don't know how the world will end or how I want it to end. Haven't you ever thought about it? Should we be selfish and ask that the world ends when we're dead or should we be selfless and ask that the world ends now so our children who were never born don't have to experience it? Or are we already there? At the end of the world and none of us know it? Perhaps the start of time was the end of the world, but if not…well, there has to be an end, right? Because every beginning has an ending. Every exposition has a conclusion. Every war has a victor."

Wilson gapes and throws the tennis ball in his hands at House's head.

"I've never heard you wax philosophy."

House smiles.

"Neither have I."

;';Tuesday;';

He's awake at 4 a.m. when he receives the email from Australia. Renowned Doctor Rowan Chase Dies. (He subscribes to all the Australian news dailies just to see this announcement.) He clicks out of it and realizes that for Rowan (Robert) Chase the world has reached its end.

In the morning, House walks in to find Chase sitting at the head of the conference table with Cameron sitting next to him reading the paper. Foreman pours coffee.

Chase receives word that his father has died from his cell phone five minute after House enters. House watches as the Aussie asks Foreman to make his coffee blacker than normal and snaps at Cameron when she asks him if he is all right. He stares at House when House makes a snide remark about the décor (it looks like a funeral home in here!) House knows Chase knows that he knows about the thing…or something like that. But Chase understands that House has reasons, just like he does.

So, after Foreman and Cameron leave, House asks Chase.

"How will the world end?"

"How should I know? I'm busy House, and you should be, too."

He walks away with a pout on his face (because rich boys don't cry). House ponders the thought that impenetrable, looking-for-a-father-figure-and-the-security-he-brings Chase is punishing himself for being a good son to a bad father. Maybe death spooks him, maybe it doesn't. Youth avoids death like youth avoids the plague (3/4 of Europe dead during the Bubonic nightmare—that wasn't the end of the world.)

He watches Chase the rest of the day. Rounds are made; people are saved (but none of them are Rowan.)

;';3 p.m..;';

The AIDS patient coughs up blood on Cameron. She spends the day scared and frightened. He likes to watch scared people—they make his day interesting. But that was before. Now he's stuck revolving in this T.S. Eliot poem, this is how the world ends, so he's not so sure if he should care about Cameron or if he should care about his own sanity.

He makes believe he's sane and talks to her. Because only the sane can be compassionate, right?

"How will the world end, Dr. Cameron?"

And he can see that she's surprised because she was expecting a declaration of love—hearts and red stains on white lace—an eerie resemblance of the blood spattered on her face. He loves her pale skin and the tapestry that the blood must have woven on her skin made him want to see it for himself, but he was too late (always too late.)

"What?"

"The world. This big green and blue ball will live on. How will it end?"

"I don't know, House."

"Are you afraid to die?"

"Aren't we all?"

(And there's avoidance through questions and repetitions and marks at the end of sentences. But test results don't lie and he can see through her eyes that she's deathly afraid of death.)

;';La noche;';

Foreman, House finds, is a man of chosen words and sharp movements—the emphasis on a syllable shows all the meaning, the rolled eyes show all his understanding.

Foreman, House also discovers, is a man who is very good at breaking things.

House tracks him after work and learns that Foreman is a purveyor of modern art, of decadent pottery. It's in an art gallery of Foreman's new flame in which House scares him enough that he jumps and breaks his girlfriend's Very Expensive Sculpture.

"Son of a bitch," he murmurs under his breath.

"Can't say it any louder?" House mocks.

"Why are you following me?"

"For fun."

"Everything's fun to you. Amanda, I'm so sorry," he gushes to the pretty girl with the blonde hair who runs over with tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Eric! Oh, my vase!"

"Miss? Is this how you think the world ends?"

She turns her pale green eyes up to look at him—there's water in at the edges, pooling there ever so gently. The water is borne of oceans, filled with salt and he watches as the bonded atoms of hydrogen and oxygen caress her face.

"Excuse me," she murmurs and hides her tears from her guests.

Foreman is furious and House is ready to duck when throws his punch, but no violence ever comes, just a simmering look of hate.

"So, Dr. Foreman, what about you? How does your world end?"

All Foreman does is roll his eyes and walk away to comfort the troubled hostess. House leaves, his cane trailing through the shards of clay as he goes.

;';67 seconds;';

It is Thursday and Cuddy plays tennis on Thursdays. House has her schedule memorized—Tuesday is shoe shopping if she can get away from the hospital, Saturday is the day she volunteers at the soup kitchen and on Thursdays she plays tennis. He tracks her down at her club—it is called Elmwood and near the hospital and the university. She is, he notices, very unhappy at the fact that he has followed her to her one sanctuary.

"What do you need? Why in God's name do you think you have to follow me everywhere! I could get a freaking dog for that! I don't need an aimless diagnostician!" She screams loudly at him when he walks into the women's locker room.

"You play tennis every Thursday—"

"What the hell is your point? Get out!"

(Because she's standing there in nothing more than a bra and House notices her nipples underneath the cotton of the undergarment and oh, yeah, he's so not moving.)

"How will the world end, Dr. Cuddy?"

He watches her mouth fall open; her black hair falls over her shoulders. Her racquet is next to her like a reticent toy soldier, quietly watching, solemnly waiting.

"With me shoving my racquet up your ass or bashing you over the head with it. Take you pick," she hisses.

"So, you just don't like me seeing you half-naked?"

"That and I hate when you ask stupid questions," she snaps.

"Ah, but the end of the world is quite relevant. Or, are you, for the first time, speechless?"

She snaps her mouth shut, grabs the racquet, and clenches her fist around the handle.

"The world will end in 4.5 billion years when the sun explodes. Now, go away."

And he does leave because by this time security is pulling on his jacket with a force that no one should ever use when confronting a cripple.

;';Infinity;';

This is how he thinks the world will end.

The sky will fall like Pluto's does…the atmosphere will freeze and all in pieces to the ground. He waits for Heaven-sent signs. There must be some intrinsic preambles to nothing integral; and then there's this superfluous epilogue to stories with endings that are blurry. Things will clear, he hopes, and stipends will be paid—"go down, go south, go west"—devils beckon with Godly fingers (the Devil, House has found, keeps his fingernails clean and immaculate; God bites the dead cells and gains hangnails for it—easier to keep clean nails when one's tempting the faithful.)

When the world ends, with mirrors and smoke and drama, House knows that they'll be a screeching of a train flying off its track; there will be a crackling of planes crashing through clouds. Why envision the world ending in a bang? He can't think of it doing anything else. Humans and their dramatic tendencies—fancy themselves more important than anything else. He knows this all too well because he isn't the first and he isn't the last. Fragility in his bones rears as an excuse for madness, but what happens when it's the truth?

Ice submerges beneath fire and all that's left—grandiose grumblings and effervescent epitaphs. Swinging hands and nursery rhymes persist throughout the collective mind. Sense and feeling and nerves merge. He has made these changes and has asked the questions—he must pretend to enjoy the predicaments and complications.

And so, with bated breath and battered lungs, he'll wait for the end of the world.