The Wasted Ones
Author's note: This is a few years ahead of the current time in the show, and is AU.
"Could it ever have worked between us?"
Dr. Gregory House looked up in surprise as his glass office door was slammed closed and she burst in, unannounced and unexpected.
"Wait, don't answer. Because everyone lies, right? And because we're damaged. What am I thinking of, talking about this to you of all people?"
House watched her silently, waiting, knowing she wasn't finished.
"And I guess it's my fault, isn't it? For needing to fix you."
Both of their gazes dropped to his leg, resting easily beside his other, his cane nowhere to be seen.
"And for believing in the slightest possibility that you aren't the biggest ass in existence."
He almost smiled at this, but couldn't quite give her the satisfaction.
"This all somehow surprises you, Allison? As if you haven't known all along?"
He rose without difficulty and walked, without the swinging awkward gesture that she'd grown so used to. She watched him under raised eyebrows, never certain of what he was about to do next.
"So you took a chance. You fought hard. You did pretty good," he said. "Chances don't always work out."
She looked up at him resentfully.
"Yours always seem to."
House looked over his shoulder as the door swung open again and Chase stepped through, his mouth already open to state his dilemna. House was faster.
"Out. Get out, now," he said firmly, only briefly bothering to let his eyes rest on the man. Chase took in the situation at a glance and backed out, dragging Foreman, who'd been behind him, along with him.
He laughed as he looked down to see her scowling at him.
"That wasn't very nice," she said.
"See? Again with the surprise!" His tone was something akin to exasperation.
When she didn't respond, he reached down to take her hand and held it up, smiling wryly when he saw the band of paler skin around the second finger of her left hand.
"So you took it off. I'm proud of you," he said.
"Why? Was hoping to find me crying over the centrifuge?" she demanded.
"I'll give you a few years."
He dropped her hand and it fell limply to her side.
"You're right. All of this is my fault, for thinking I could change you."
"That's the spirit."
He walked back to his desk and she did her hardest to keep her face stiff, to keep him from feeling the sense of loss that was already washing over her.
"You're just loving this. Now you're proven right. Maybe you are right, House. Maybe no marriages can last. Maybe we're all doomed to fail and there's not a damned thing we can do about it."
"You're trying to get me to say something. I don't quite know what it is."
It came again, her gaze that couldn't pierce through him but sometimes could.
"Don't worry, I'm nowhere near done."
"Oh, goody."
"Maybe it's because you never let your guard down. I still call you House. How wrong is that?"
"I, on the other hand, stopped calling you Cameron when you stopped being a Cameron. And what a confusing day that was. I swear there were some ninety year old men expecting the hottie they'd been promised only to receive me."
Cameron smiled slightly.
"You were happy that day."
His blue eyes met hers apruptly, at once a denial and a concession.
"I'll never admit to it."
She rolled her eyes, imagining them briefly falling into old patterns, him pretending not to be jealous of the inevitable men in her life, her pretending not to care when he flirted with the patients who would try.
She imagined trying to make something happen with someone in the hospital. Someone who wouldn't see through her. It would serve him right.
"You know, without me you're not going to have any friends here any more," she said.
"I have lots of friends," he said, his voice an instant denial.
"Right, I forgot about Wilson and sometimes Cuddy. You know some people have friends with first names."
"We're on that again?"
"You should have talked be out of this," she said.
"What, when I asked you to marry me I should have told you not to?"
"It would have come as less of a surprise than the whole engagment thing."
House briefly remembered the day he'd given her her diamond engagment ring and she'd somehow convinced him to announce it to the whole staff. He had done it, of course. Proudly. He remembered the days leading up to it, consulations with Wilson, with Cuddy, endless second guessing. And third and fourth guessing. By the time he'd done it she'd probably heard every detail from every doctor in the hospital, but still pretended to be surprised when he slid it onto her finger.
Her eyes slid down to his own ring finger.
"You're still wearing yours," she accused. He shrugged.
"Keeps away the teenage girls and the grannies," he said, twisting it around his finger.
"And here I thought nothing could."
With a pang in her heart, she briefly felt too old for him, like he deserved more, before remembering that he'd never deserved her.
Without hesitation she walked over to where he was sitting, sat across his lap. He accepted her presence calmly, his body reacting to her before his mind could. She leaned in as if to kiss him and waited, waiting to see how long he would hold out.
Not long. He became completely consumed in her, kissing her as he always had, as if she was the only thing in the world that mattered to him, as if the world had stopped. As if he didn't know that Chase and Foreman had walked pasted six times in the last ten minutes, as if he didn't know that it was over, even if he decided to start trying. After a moment she moved to pull away but he pulled her back in again, not willing to let it end.
"I have to go now," she said eventually. She stood up slowly, his hands reluctantly moved away from her form.
"Yeah. You really do."
She walked over to the door, paused. She swished her long hair over her shoulder, let her eyes fall to him one more time.
"So what happens now, Dr. Allison House?" he asked. "Please tell me you aren't going to date someone healthy of your own age and live happily ever after."
She stared at him for a moment.
"I don't know." She smiled an unhappy smile, knowing what lay ahead for both of them. "Will you?"
As she walked out and into the hall, House knew she knew the answer to both questions. And deep inside of him, in the part of him that generally only she saw, he was more than a little bit proud.