Author's Notes: I just want to thank everyone who's been so kind to leave me such wonderful reviews, some of you taking the time to do so for each and every chapter. I appreciate your words more than I will ever be able to say. We're finally here at the last chapter, and I also want to make it clear that there will be no sequels, no "missing moments", no one-shots of this 'verse. I may write more House/Chase, but if I do, it won't be until June or July, when I have the time--in the meantime, spread the love and try writing your own! This fic has shown me that House/Chase is not a dead 'ship, and that its fans are still out there, as crazy and Cameron-hating as they ever are, and we need to work together to bring this 'ship back to its former glory. Go forth--go forth and write!

Worlds Away From Who I Was
Chapter 14

"You think this might be the last one?" Chase asked, bouncing the ball off of the wall.

House shrugged, sitting back in his office chair. "If one of us takes a nap tomorrow, maybe. There's, what, four months between now and... uh, other now?"

"Five," Chase replied absently.

"Right. We lost almost two years last night," House said, now really talking to himself.

He didn't mention the fact that they'd lost those two years because his leg had been to the point of not being able to sleep, and despite Chase's best efforts to stay awake with him, House had spent the night alone and pacing. He'd fallen asleep around noon, but by then Chase had been up... The conflicting sleep schedules had resulted in the loss of two years. Not that it was a bad thing. Chase couldn't wait for these dreams to be over.

"If you took a nap tomorrow, this might be the last one," House finally suggested.

Chase threw him a dirty look. "I told you at least five times, House. Peters put me in charge of a liver transplant tomorrow, it's my first day back, I'm not taking off. End of story."

"Where's your team spirit?"

"Why don't you take a nap tomorrow?" Chase asked.

"Can't." House opened his drawer and started moving things around. "Department head. I'm not just a flunky like you, sitting around and playing video games all day."

"You're lucky I appreciate your sense of irony as much as your sense of humor."

"Who said anything about irony?"

Chase rolled his eyes and bounced the ball against the wall again.

House finally emerged from behind his desk, triumphantly holding a bag of Skittles. "Hah! I knew that I bought these around this time."

Bounce.

The sound of the door opening made him look over, and he saw Wilson coming into the room, file in hand.

"You're both missing Foreman's farewell party," he informed them mildly.

"Must've slipped my mind." House made a face, twirling his finger next to his ear. "Old age, you know, it messes with the brain. Can't remember like you used to."

"And you?" Wilson asked, looking at Chase expectantly.

Chase shrugged, throwing the ball and narrowly missing Wilson's shoulder. "It's a party, he should be happy. Therefore, I'm not there."

Wilson frowned. "I still think that he'd like to—"

"Wilson," House interrupted loudly. "Can we get to the part where you attempt to attempt to convince me to take this new case?"

"One too many 'attempt to's, House," Chase muttered.

"Is not," House said. "I'm not even going to give him that chance to attempt—therefore, he's attempting to attempt."

"There's no attempting about it," Wilson said, laying the folder down. "I—"

"See? This is me blocking his attempts to attempt," House told Chase.

Chase blinked. "It doesn't even sound like a word anymore."

House looked pleased.

"You have a patient," Wilson told him firmly. "She's got eleven different symptoms and she's illegally here from Cuba, just to see you."

Chase caught the ball and didn't throw it at the wall again. He looked over at House, curiosity piqued.

House flipped the file open, giving it a quick once-over, and then grinned brightly at Chase. "Hey, guess what? This is the part where I fire you!"

"What?" Wilson asked, horrified.

"I'll take the case, now go. Shoo-shoo," House said, making shooing motions at Wilson.

Wilson eyed House suspiciously before turning to leave, and tried to make eye contact with Chase as he passed by but Chase was having none of it. Looking somewhere between worried and exasperated, he pushed the door open and left.

"So," Chase said into the silence.

Tension had come out of nowhere.

House shut the file, pushing it away. "Go tell the patient her diagnosis."

"I wasn't here when you solved the case the first time," Chase reminded him evenly.

"Oh, yeah."

Chase stood up, holding the ball between his hands. "Are you going to fire me again?"

"Considering this is a dream, where nothing is of any consequence?" House asked. "No. Don't think so."

"That wasn't what I was asking," Chase said, now actively working to keep the tightness out of his voice.

House sighed, leaning back in his chair. His eyes went to the ceiling. "You want to know why I fired you."

Chase said nothing.

"It's not gonna change anything," House warned.

"That doesn't mean it's not important," Chase said quietly.

Another long sigh, an even longer pause.

"I don't want to tell you."

"House."

"Oh, c'mon. No points for honesty?"

"How about I make suggestions, and you tell me yes or no?" Chase asked, unable to keep the acidity out of his voice.

"I'm not interested in hearing your melodramatic theories." House dumped a pile of Skittles into his hand and held them out to Chase. "They probably all involve me being jealous of you and Cameron, and hoping that firing you would break the two of you up."

Chase ignored the Skittles. "It is something you'd do."

House gave him a withering look. "I'm not jealous of Cameron."

Chase nodded. "All right."

"I fired you because you were more irritating than Cameron that day," House said abruptly.

"What?"

"You can kid yourself all you like, thinking that I did it because I thought you were ready to fly, or because you were beginning to understand me, or because I had repressed feelings for you—bullshit." House sat up and dumped the bag of Skittles all over the desk, staring Chase directly in the eye. "It's bullshit. Wilson was on me about changing, you were annoying me, I decided to fire you."

Chase reminded himself that he'd asked for this.

"On the other hand," House said thoughtfully, looking off into the distance. "Well, no. I can't say I regret firing you, because I don't. Now. Even if I didn't mean to, kicking you out of the nest did you a lot of good. But for the first week after, yeah, I probably wouldn't have done it again."

Coming from House, that was practically a declaration of undying love. It didn't make it any easier to digest, though.

House was looking at him, waiting for a reaction, waiting for him to pass some sort of test.

"Thanks," Chase said at last.

"That hurt, didn't it?" House asked, raising an eyebrow.

Chase sighed. "It would hurt less if you gave me all the green Skittles."

He'd get over it. House was right, after all—being fired had brought him to the world of surgery, where he was slowly learning the rudiments of office politics, earning his own name, dealing with crazy interns, and perfecting the art of sarcasm. Now that he was free of the relationship that had been smothering him for months, he felt like he was breathing in his life away from diagnostics for the first time.

Honesty was what he'd asked for, and it was what he'd gotten.

oOo

Heading a liver transplant wasn't actually all that exciting. It was a pretty routine surgery, and Chase had just been in on a harvesting last week, but it was his first non-appie solo surgery in ages and that was enough to get him excited. He even pulled Ricky into the surgery ("Seriously? A liver transplant? Could you find something with less blood?" "Yes, welcome to office politics. Take it or leave it."). The rumors flying around the hospital about him had apparently doubled in his absence, but by this point Chase was practically indifferent to it all.

"You could start a betting pool," Ricky suggested.

"Right. Because the last one left everyone really happy with me," Chase said dryly.

"I could start a betting pool," Ricky tried. "Really, we could just model it after the one in Radiology for House and Wilson, except this one would be for you and House. I'll give you twenty-five percent."

"I thought that betting pool was a myth?" Chase said, frowning.

Ricky shrugged. "Maybe. Jake says he put money down on it, but he might have been joking..."

Chase made a mental note to find out. Getting a straight answer out of House about his history with Wilson was also moved up a few spaces on his list of priorities.

"So I'm off of House Alert duty," Ricky said conversationally.

"How'd you do that?" Chase asked.

"Dr. House didn't think I was recounting in enough detail or something," Ricky said cheerfully, clearly not too upset about it. "Not exactly sure. He went on a really long rant, and I caught the 'hey you' and 'you're fired' parts. I think Nurse Brenda's already found—"

"Dr. Chase," a voice cut in, making both of them stop and look up.

"Hello, Dr. Peters," Chase replied calmly.

"May I speak to him alone, please?" Peters asked Ricky, fixing him with a stare.

Ricky nodded quickly, disappearing a second later.

"Walk with me?" Peters asked.

Chase knew from the liver transplant this morning that he wasn't too far into the doghouse. "Sure. What's going on?"

"I'll be frank. I asked you to get your personal life under control, and yet it's only seemed to have spiraled further out of control over the past week," Peters said, tone dangerously light. "Do you want to explain that to me?"

Chase took a moment to swallow the anger that had started to boil up inside of him, but after a moment's consideration, decided not to apologize and swear to do better as he knew that Peters was expecting him to do.

"With all due respect, sir, my personal life is very much under control," he said tightly. "I broke up with my girlfriend and found a new relationship with someone else. It happens all the time in the hospital—the only difference is that people, for whatever reason, take an interest in gossiping about me. I'm unclear as to how you expect me to singlehandedly stop the hospital rumor mill. Sir."

Peters stopped walking, staring at him. His expression was unreadable.

Chase knew he should probably be worrying about keeping his job, and whether he would be seeing the inside of an OR sometime in the next decade, but he could only hear the blood rushing in his ears. So much for starting to get a handle on office politics.

"So you do have a backbone," Peters said, with a mirthless smile.

Chase stared back, quiet and defiant.

"Kurtzman took a liking to you, you know. Even when you couldn't be bothered to clear your schedule for his surgery."

"I like it here," Chase replied steadily.

"He would be delighted to have you," Peters told him. "He thinks you would excel in obstetrics and pediatrics, especially with your history in the NICU."

"I like it here," Chase repeated.

"He requested your help tomorrow in a surgery he's heading here," Peters said, and it was obvious that he was making an effort to suppress the distaste this idea caused him. "You can pick up the files at the nurse's station across from the board. Clear your schedule this time."

"I will."

Peters nodded and strode away.

Chase, reeling a little from the fact that not only was he going to see the inside of an OR again, but he was also being sought out by one of the leading neonatal surgeons in the state, if not the northeastern United States. The bubble of excitement that rose up in him could not be helped, and a grin split across his face.

His good mood faltered as he approached the surgical board. Alan Sarghetti was arguing loudly with the nurse at the station.

"Look, I don't care what he told you—take me off. I'm done!"

The nurse—Chase didn't know her name—glared at him. "There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry."

"In the past week, I've done nearly eight surgeries for Dr. House, and six biopsies. I want to be on a surgery that isn't for House," he practically growled, hands on the counter flexing.

Oh, brother.

Chase approached the desk, politely shouldering past Alan. "Hi. I need Dr. Kurtzman's files, please."

Still scowling, the nurse reached over and grabbed a white folder among a file of tan folders and thrust it at him. "Here."

"Who told you that I was Dr. House's exclusive surgeon?" Alan demanded, going right back to it as Chase left.

Chase flipped open the file, reading as he walked. Owen, born at thirty weeks with a hole in his heart, scheduled for surgery tomorrow...

oOo

"House, take Alan Sarghetti off your personal call."

House looked up from his desk. "Well, hello to you, too."

"Take him off. You can wait in line, just like everyone else," Chase continued, coming up to House's desk.

"I don't see what's wrong with having your own personal surgeon," House replied with a shrug.

Chase sighed. "It's a teaching hospital. The people in the surgical program are here to learn, and they're not going to do it with exploratories and biopsies. You can hire someone to do your personal surgeries, if you feel that contrary about it."

"You don't even like the guy," House complained, making a face.

"House."

"Pick a card," House said, holding a fan of cards.

Chase rolled his eyes and obliged, picking up the nine of diamonds. He slid it neatly back into the fanned cards, and House closed the deck.

"So there's a surgeon over at Princeton General who wants to train me," Chase said, as House made a show of shuffling the cards. "Me, personally."

"Princeton General has cold bathrooms. Never work in a place with cold bathroom," House said. "Ready to see your card?"

"I'm not going," Chase said, shaking his head.

House held the deck in his left hand, and then flipped the first card over. "Nine of diamonds!"

Chase smiled. "Cute."

But then House flipped the next card over. "Nine of diamonds again! And, hey, again. And again. Wait a minute..."

He turned the deck over and let the cards spill out all over the desk, revealing a deck full of nines of diamonds.

Chase's eyes widened. "How did you do that?"

House smirked, gathering the cards back up. "Magician never reveals his secrets."

"Fine."

He shuffled once, then fanned out the cards to reveal that they were no longer all nines of diamonds.

Chase held out a hand, and House closed the deck and handed it over.

"So why are you telling me about this Princeton General guy, if you're not transferring?" House asked.

"I think it's an interesting specialty," Chase said thoughtfully. He shuffled the cards twice more, and then fanned them out. "We're constantly calling Kurtzman in for surgeries on newborns, anyway—if I can fill that gap, I'll be indispensable, which means that I won't have to deal with the bloody politics anymore."

House picked one up. "Literally bloody, or British-expletive bloody?"

"Both." Chase closed the deck. "Put it on top, please."

House obliged.

Chase took the deck, slipping House's card to the bottom of the pile while he shuffled them twice, and then he cut the deck. He held the deck upright in one hand, House's card located in the back, and used his other hand to pretend to draw the card up out of the deck. He used his thumb to slowly push the card up, holding the deck at the right angle so that it gave the illusion that the card was floating up out of the middle of the deck.

House grinned. "Cute."

"Honestly, I think I'm done with magic for a while," Chase admitted, letting the card fall back down into the deck. "What brought this on?"

"My patient's a magician," House said, now looking vaguely disgruntled. "I can't figure him out."

"I would say the fun's in not knowing, but I think we both know that's not true," Chase said.

House nodded.

It was quiet for a moment.

"And on that note," Chase said, remembering his earlier conversation with Ricky. "Wilson says that the two of you have definitely messed around, which leaves me a little confused. I thought you told me that nothing had ever happened between the two of you?"

House scowled. "Wilson's got a big mouth and an even bigger imagination. He likes to think something happened."

"Should I feel threatened?" Chase asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"Wilson did say something about gonorrhea..."

Chase rolled his eyes. "Please don't start another rumor."

"Been there, done that." House reached over and grabbed the cards out of Chase's hands. "Trust me. It didn't inhibit Wilson's sex life in the least."

"So why is Wilson under the impression that the two of you had sex?" Chase pressed.

It took House a moment to answer.

"One of his bachelor parties," he answered at last. "We got ridiculously drunk, neither one of us remembers what happened that night. Just, you know, the waking up naked and together part. Did anything actually happen? The world may never know."

"Oh," Chase said.

He honestly tried to hold back his snort of laughter. He did.

House raised an eyebrow. "It's funny?"

"The whole hospital's been speculating for years," Chase snickered, "and even you two don't know whether or not you've ever done anything. I think it's brilliant."

"Most people wouldn't find this funny," House said, eying Chase. He sounded as though he weren't quite sure what to make of this.

"Cameron wouldn't find this funny," Chase corrected, still grinning. "I don't care who you've slept with. You've done worse things in your life, especially when it comes to me."

"True."

"Anyway, I've got surgery in twenty," Chase said, pushing himself up out of his chair. "See you tonight?"

House grinned wickedly. "I brought the bike."

Chase gave him a thumbs up before heading out of the office, inexplicably knowing that this next surgery was going to be a success. It wasn't magic. He could just feel it in his bones.

oOo

That night, their sleep was dreamless.

End