A/N - This is the last chapter in this story, hope you've enjoyed the ride.

When they pulled up outside the apartment Wilson switched off the engine and started to get out of the car.

"Where are you going?" Greg asked, tightening his grip on his cane.

Wilson got a hurt, kicked puppy, look on his face and then sighed.

"I was going to come in for a bit, maybe make some dinner, but I guess you don't want me to."

"Nope."

"How's the back? I should have a look at it, put some more cream on it."

"Back is fine. Whip marks don't need any special treatment, never had any in the past anyway."

"Doesn't mean you need to suffer now, it's different here, I keep trying to tell you that."

Greg touched his throat, "I know it's different here, not likely to forget it. And I have these," he fished his little bottle of Vicodin out of his pocket, took two out and swallowed them dry.

"Strictly speaking you don't have a prescription for those."

Greg shrugged, "close enough. If I can stay in his apartment, wear his clothes and do his job pretty sure I can take his pills."

Wilson's expression tightened but he shut up and got back into the driver's seat. Putting on his seat belt in a fairly pointed manner, he started the engine again.

"I guess you want picking up again tomorrow?"

Greg shrugged. "Unless I make other arrangements."

Wilson shook his head. "You're more like him that you might think. See you tomorrow."

Greg stood on the sidewalk and watched him drive off. Then he turned and made his slow way into the apartment. He didn't think 'home' – not yet.

Cuddy was working late in her office, she'd seen Greg and Wilson leave an hour or so ago and hoped that everything was okay there. There had been no complaints about Greg today at least, and to her surprise the clinic logs showed that Greg had even done a clinic shift. She'd mentioned it casually to Brenda, who'd reported that House seemed a bit distracted and unusually subdued. Cuddy put that down to the strangeness of his situation, and him feeling his way in this new place, which must look very familiar but seem very alien.

Cuddy had tried not to think too much about Greg, and how he must have lived before coming here. She could see from the scarring on his back that his life hadn't been easy. She thought of all the times 'her' Greg House had caused problems in the hospital, all the times he'd been up before disciplinary committees of one sort or another and imagined how those problems must have been resolved in the 'slave' universe. She couldn't deny that at one time or another she'd thought of bending House over her desk and spanking him ( and having him screw her afterwards she admitted to herself in the privacy of her own fantasies) but having the power to order him physically punished...She wondered if her other self had slept with Greg on that same night that she had with House, that one night stand that had never been mentioned again. To sleep with him, and then years later to own him, and to treat him so harshly, was it that Cuddy's ultimate revenge?

Footsteps interrupted her thoughts and she looked up to see Cameron entering her office. The young doctor had her 'disapproving' expression on and Cuddy sighed.

"What has Greg done?" she asked, the words escaping before she had a chance to consider them. Cameron had seemed ready to launch into a tirade but now stopped and looked at her in puzzlement.

"Greg?"

Cuddy cursed herself for her carelessness but didn't allow her anxiety to show on her face.

"Gregory House, your boss? I assume that you are here to report him, or to complain about him, or to have me sort out all your problems with him for you."

Cameron coloured slightly but she was nowhere near as easily flustered now as she had been when she first started working for House and she kept staring at Cuddy with that 'puzzle-solving' expression on her face.

"You never call him Greg. Is there something wrong? He was looking...different today. Besides having shaved, and had a haircut, he just seemed different to how he was a couple of days ago."

Cuddy glanced at her watch, trying to give the impression of being in a hurry. "He seemed the same annoying ass as he's always been to me. Is there anything I can do for you, Doctor Cameron?"

Cameron stared at her for a couple of seconds more and then seemed to shift gear. "It's about our patient..."

After she'd heard Cameron out, and assured her appropriate measures would be taken, Cuddy kept her professional, polite expression on until Cameron had left her office and then she groaned and put her head in her hands.

Greg had diagnosed his teenage supermodel patient with PTSD due to sexual abuse, and then had confronted the Dad with his suspicions. Not only that, but on confirmation that the Dad had indeed 'done' the daughter, he'd proceeded to completely ignore his professional obligation to report this instance of abuse to Child Protective Services. Apparently his reasoning had been that if CPS inconveniently arrested the father they could lost a valuable source of information in diagnosing his child.

Cuddy had to admit it made a warped sort of Housian sense, and Cameron had also reported that father and daughter seemed to have a good relationship, but of course it was irrelevant. Now that Cuddy knew about it, she was obligated to report it. And she wasn't risking her career to make it easier for Greg to get his diagnosis.

One day. Greg hadn't been able to make it through one day before doing something that would jeopardise his medical license and his position at the hospital. And Cameron was suspicious about the changes in House. Of course it was unlikely that Cameron would jump to the right conclusion but if she was suspicious it was probable that the other two were as well.

Suddenly her plan to simply substitute Greg for House didn't seem such a bright idea after all.

Greg was cooking dinner. It wasn't much, some pasta and chicken, but it was the first meal he'd cooked for himself for years. A hot dinner cooked by him, not dished up in the slave canteen, or brought to him by Wilson. Sure, the ingredients had been supplied by Wilson but Greg had chosen this meal and cooked it himself. He had chosen what to eat, and when to eat it.

He took it through to the living area to eat, flipping on the television with the remote. There was a dizzying array of channels to choose from, apparently House had believed it important to have hundreds of channels. Most of the shows were new to him, though there were a few he used to watch. He was still trying to find something he wanted to watch when there was a loud banging on the front door.

He jumped and stared at the door. Wilson? Or maybe Cuddy? He stared at the television and thought about just ignoring it. But the banging was persistent and whoever it was obviously knew he was here from the sounds of the TV. He grabbed his cane and limped to the door, yanking it open.

An annoyed looking young man was there.

"About time. I'm doing you a favour, you know. Most people manage to get themselves to the shop to pick up their bikes." The man glanced at his cane and then away. "Come on, come and check her out so I can get home."

House carefully looked the door behind him and followed the man out to the street, intrigued by the mention of a bike. There on the sidewalk was a motorbike. House's apparently. His.

The man was chattering on, telling him about the work that had been done on the bike but Greg didn't hear any of it, he was staring at the bike.

"Okay, man, there you go. She's like brand new now, shouldn't have any more problems. Boss said you're all square now and he doesn't owe you anything more. Here's the keys."

The man gave him a set of keys, a piece of paper detailing the work done, and stood there. Greg looked at him, still overwhelmed and stared at the keys in his hand. His keys, his bike.

"Okay, thanks," he managed to say and the kid stared at him a bit longer and then threw his hands up and left. The word 'asshole' clearly floated back to Greg but he didn't care.

He had a bike.

He could go anywhere he wanted.

Wilson stared at Greg when he opened the door the next morning. He was wearing House's leather motorcycle jacket and carrying his helmet. For one moment he thought that Greg was gone and House was back and he started to smile before he realised his mistake.

"Yep, still here," Greg said, missing nothing. "Sorry. Are you going to be disappointed every morning when you see me?"

"I don't know. Are you going to see that other Wilson every time you see me?" Wilson shot back, he hadn't missed the wariness in Greg's eyes when he opened the door.

Wilson couldn't deny that he'd been disappointed that Greg hadn't swapped back. It hurt even more to see Greg with House's stuff, emphasizing that House was gone and Greg had taken his place. He was taking everything of House's, as if it was his by right.

"What are you doing with those?"

"Taking the bike in this morning." Greg said casually, but his eyes never left Wilson's face – waiting for a reaction.

"Are you insane? When was the last time you rode a motorcyle?" Wilson asked, not liking the idea of Greg taking out House's pride and joy. "And do you have a license?"

"No, about sixteen years ago, and no – but your friend House does. Pretty sure I'd pass for him."

Greg stepped out of the apartment and locked the door behind him. Wilson followed him out to the street, seeing the bike there. Greg went over to it and with some maneuvering straddled the seat, clipping his cane into the holder House had had placed there. Wilson went to stand beside him.

"Greg, I really don't think this is a good idea," he said, in a calming tone of voice. This was an insane idea, House was dangerous enough on that thing, he couldn't imagine what Greg would be like on it.

Greg put on his helmet and revved the engine.

"Don't worry Wilson, it's just like riding a bike, you don't forget. Oh, wait, it is riding a bike. See you at the hospital."

With that Greg made his way off the sidewalk, the bike wobbling a bit. As Wilson watched the bike gathered speed until it was roaring down the street and out of sight.

Wilson hurried to his car and went to follow, praying he wouldn't find Greg splattered on the side of the road somewhere.

The trip was scary, but in a good way. Not scary like kneeling before Cuddy waiting to find out how many lashes he would get, or lying handcuffed to a hotel bed and watching Wilson move around the room, and then approach him, smiling, or being trapped in an elevator with a couple of horny medical students. No, this was an adrenaline rush. This was him risking his life, because he could. His choice, his actions, his life to risk. Nobody could punish him for this. Nobody could tell him not to, well, they could tell him, but they couldn't make him stop. Every minute he spent here, as a free person, he felt the old Greg House coming back. Riding a bike was one of those things he hadn't realised quite how much he'd missed until now.

He parked the bike in a disabled parking spot near the hospital. That was another thing he'd missed out on – disabled parking spots. There had been absolutely no advantages to his injury in his old world, here was one small one anyway.

He entered the hospital, his thoughts on his patient. His team had found elevated protein levels in the CSF so whatever this was, it wasn't just PTSD from her Dad doing her. The results of the brain biopsy had been negative according to a late night report from Foreman. So the mystery of the twitching teenage supermodel still remained to be solved.

"House!" A voice called out as he entered the lobby and he looked around. Cuddy was standing at the doorway to her office, hands on hips. She crooked a finger at him and pointed to her office. He had a sudden mental image of 'his' Cuddy pointing like that to a spot on the floor in front of her desk and swallowed hard, his good mood disappearing. Reluctantly he limped over there and sidled past her into the office, she shut the door behind them.

"I don't know how it worked where you're from Greg, but here, if we find evidence that a father is abusing his daughter we inform the proper authorities. We're mandated to do so. I've called Child Services for you, this time, but if you're going to work here you need to work within our rules."

Greg figured it would be easier to pretend ignorance of the correct procedure rather than argue his case. In his own universe he would also have been obliged to report it, although the protocol would have been to report it to Cuddy who would have taken the proper steps. Child services weren't going to take any testimony from a slave after all. If it was found that he was wrong then he would have been severely punished for accusing a free person of a crime.

In his own universe he would have done exactly the same as he had done here, not reported, in the interests of keeping the father around to provide information on his daughter.

"Okay," he said, "now I know."

Cuddy's look softened and she sat down on the couch and gestured for him to sit next to her. He did so, not looking at that spot on the floor where he would normally kneel for her lectures.

"Look Greg, I know this can't be easy for you, obviously we do things differently here. But while you're settling in it might be worth letting me into the loop with what's happening with your patient. Cameron was in here last night, complaining about you primarily, but she has also picked up on there being something different about you. If there are any major decisions to be made you should run them past me first, we can discuss them and come up with the best course of action."

"Either I can do the job or I can't. If I go running to you every time I need to make a decision the team will think there's something wrong. I didn't do that in my hospital and I don't know, but I bet that your 'House' didn't do that either." Greg lifted his chin and stared at her and then stood up. "If you don't trust me, if you think I can't do this, then I'll take off this rolltop and show them my back, show them my throat. Show them what I am. I'll lose them, and you'll lose your diagnostics department." He put his hands on the hem of the jersey he was wearing, ready to peel it off.

Cuddy's eyes widened at his threat and she waved her hands, stopping him.

"No, don't. I was just trying to help you, I don't want them to find out that you're not House."

"The best way to help me is to get out of my way and let me diagnose this patient. If I do that, the team won't ever suspect anything's changed. And you've just made our work a lot harder."

Greg turned and limped out of the office without another word. Cuddy went to the door and watched him make his way across to the elevators. As she was watching, Wilson entered the hospital, coming straight up to her.

"Did Greg get here okay? Stupid idiot rode House's bike in. Lucky if he wasn't killed. He's as stubborn as House."

Cuddy kept watching Greg, a slight smile on his lips. "Yes, he's just like him isn't he?"

"She has paraneoplastic syndrome, we need to find the tumour," Greg said as he paced the conference room. The 'squeeze the tube' test had confirmed it as far as he was concerned. There was cancer there somewhere, they just had to find it.

"Okay, shall I get Wilson or do you want to?" Chase asked, gathering up the files.

"It doesn't have to be him, I'm sure there are other oncologists in this hospital," Greg said, distracted, as he turned over the symptoms in his head again

The team all looked at each other and then back at him.

"But we always use Wilson," Cameron said. "You never want to use anyone else."

"I didn't think you knew there were any other oncologists here," Chase put in.

"Have you guys had a fight?" Cameron asked, "he hasn't been around as much during this case has he? Is something wrong?"

"Yes, he stole my lunch money and I got the bigger kids to beat on him," Greg answered in a sneering tone, hoping to distract them.

"No, seriously, he was looking a little upset when I saw him yesterday...If you guys have had a fight, if you've done something to annoy him, you should apologise to him..."

"There's nothing wrong!" Greg shouted, bringing his cane down for emphasis. "Wilson and I are Best Friends Forever, we haven't had a fight and I'm sure Wilson will be happy to drop everything he's doing and come and help." He looked up, saw the man himself passing the

window and yelled out, "Wilson! Need you!"

Greg was standing on the roof of the hospital, looking out across the city. It had been a struggle to get up the stairs and out here but it was worth it. He used to do this before, come up to the roof, to get away for a few minutes from the ever present reality of being a slave. To look out onto a wider world. To feel open sky all around him. Not that he could ever really escape the reality of course, but he had always enjoyed being up here, and imagining. He hadn't done it much, since Stacy, and then the leg.

His team and Wilson had spent all day testing the supermodel for cancer, every bone in her body, every organ she possessed. Nothing. It had to be cancer, it all fit. He just couldn't work out where it was hiding.

It had been...interesting working with Wilson. He'd been coolly professional, taking painful samples from the girl, reassuring her, checking the scans. He'd done it without any of the possessive glances that his Wilson usually gave him. The Wilson in his world didn't seem to see Greg as anything more than an object of lust – didn't see him as a doctor at all. It was oddly reassuring to realise that Wilson here was used to working with House, as a fellow doctor. Maybe Wilson hadn't been lying when he had said that he and Greg were nothing more than colleagues and friends here.

He looked over the edge of the roof, mildly surprised to see that the suicide netting wasn't in place here. No need to stop desperate slaves from hurling themselves off the roof. Apparently desperate patients weren't as important. His mind was still busily churning over the puzzle of the twitchy supermodel when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned around quickly, only to see Wilson closing the distance between them.

Wilson looked as surprised to see Greg as Greg was to see Wilson. Greg moved away from the edge.

"Checking up on me?"

Wilson shook his head, "no, I wasn't looking for you." He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged ruefully. "I guess I was looking for House in a way. He used to come up here sometimes, said it helped him think. So I thought I would give it a try."

"You miss him," Greg realised, "you miss talking to him."

Wilson sighed and sat down on the ledge running around the edge of the roof.

"Yeah. I mean, we never talked about anything, you know, meaningful, but we did talk, and have lunch together sometimes, and..." he rubbed the back of his neck, looked embarrassed. "Sorry, I mean, it's great that you've escaped that place, but...just, working with you today, it just made me realise that he's gone. I didn't even get to say goodbye. I don't know if I'll ever see him again, and when I think where he probably is..."

"He might come back," Greg said flatly, knowing what that would mean for himself.

"Yeah, maybe, and then you'd be gone and...well, I don't want that either. So..." he trailed off, and stared out across the city.

"When did you meet him?" Greg wondered how it had played out here. In his own universe he'd met Wilson when he came to work at PPTH only a couple of years ago, obviously this House and Wilson had known each other longer.

"Oh, sixteen years ago, at a conference in New Orleans. I had just been served divorce papers, got into trouble at a bar and was arrested. He bailed me out."

Greg's Mom had used an expression, 'like someone walked over my grave'. Greg had usually rolled his eyes when she used it but now he knew what she was describing. He had been scheduled to speak at that conference in New Orleans, to deliver a paper on obscure causes of kidney diseases, and to be on a panel. Instead his life had fallen apart and he'd become a slave. If he'd gone to that conference, if he hadn't been a slave, would he have met his universe's Wilson? Would he have bailed him out of jail? Would they have become friends?

"How did you...how do people become slaves?" Wilson asked, in a seemingly casual manner but Greg could see the curiosity in his expression. Wilson was apparently both appalled by the idea of slavery but also drawn to it. "Are they born that way or..."

Greg laughed without humour. "No, there aren't three genders where I come from – Man, Woman and Slave, people aren't born slaves." He trailed off, staring into space. Something had gone off in his brain, some connection made. He reached for that thread of thought, his mind ticking over the symptoms of the twitchy teenager one more time. Got it.

He reached for his cane and limped off, leaving Wilson staring at his back.

He went to her office again, this time without her calling him in.

"So, did I pass the test?" He asked as he walked in the door. Cuddy looked up from her work and smiled at him.

"It wasn't a test..."

"Sure it was. Can't say I blame you. You want to know if the slave can do the job before you buy them."

"You're not a slave and I'm not buying you."

Greg looked out the window of her office. He wasn't a slave now, but he didn't belong here. Arriving here didn't make him House, anymore than finding a set of testicles made his patient a guy. He didn't know what he was now.

"I will hire you though. On paper of course you're already hired, you already have tenure. Only you, I and Wilson will ever know the difference."

He contemplated working here, this bizarre copy of PPTH, where there were no slaves, but there would always be memories. He thought about getting on his bike and riding off. Never returning. Going somewhere else, somewhere he hadn't been a slave.

"I could leave," he said aloud, "work somewhere else."

"No-one else will hire you. I got House cheap because of his reputation, he'd been fired by more hospitals than most doctors work in in a lifetime. No other administrator will risk having you on staff. You need us Greg." Cuddy paused and then her expression hardened. "I wouldn't feel comfortable allowing you to go to another hospital and not informing them of who you are, and there's the tricky question of your medical license. It really would be in your best interest to stay here, at least for a while Greg. You can use House's apartment, his bike, his clothes, his things. I'm sure you've already figured out how to access his accounts. You can have a good life here Greg, if you want it."

He heard the implicit threat in his words. Leave and he would lose access to all those things.

"So, I'm not really free, am I?" he asked quietly, feeling the weight of the collar around his neck again.

Cuddy smiled, gesturing around her office, at the piles of work on her desk. "Are any of us?"

He visited the supermodel before he left the hospital for the day. She was sitting on the bed, alone, her ever present father nowhere in sight.

"Dear old Dad nowhere around?"

She looked up at him, her wide eyes devastated. Everything she thought she knew about herself was gone, her world shattered. The news that she was biologically a boy far outweighing the news that she had cancer.

"He doesn't want to be around me, he doesn't know how to treat me. When the industry finds out, my career will be over."

"Maybe, maybe not. You're still the same person, a little bit of biology doesn't make you different. You just have to make them treat you the same. Show them you are still valuable."

"I don't know how, this is all I had. I don't know how to live now."

"You survive. You go on. That's all you can do. Sometimes things get better."

He left her there, forgetting her as soon as he walked out the door. She'd learn to live with it, or she wouldn't, that was a choice only she could make.

The apartment was silent, he'd switched the television off and stood staring at the piano. It was immaculate, in tune, a testimony to what it had meant to the man who had lived here. He thought about House, the nights he must have spent in this apartment. He wondered what he'd thought about his past, his life and his future. What dreams had he once had that he would never achieve now? Had he been happy here?

He sat down on the piano stool, putting a glass of scotch and his Vicodin bottle on the top of the piano. He glanced at the clock, it was late, but he needed to do this.

He placed his hands on the keys and began to play, softly at first, fingers tentatively finding their way back to the familiar places.

The music flowed from him, as a part of him came to life that had been dead for years. Memories, dreams, wishes, all came out through his fingers on the keys. Where a few days they'd only been pain and hardship in his future, now there was hope.

After a while there was banging on the ceiling, he was disturbing the neighbours.

He grinned, he was causing trouble, well he was used to that. As he played louder, and the banging increased, he put his head back and laughed.

This was freedom.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the story. Let me know if you are interested in seeing where House has got to during all this :)