Disclaimer: I do not own House or any of its characters; they all belong to Fox and all those rightful people. If I owned it, you know there woulda been a lot more Cameron/Remy scenes!

AFTER THE STORM
I won't die alone and be left there.
Well, I guess I'll just go home,
Oh, God knows where.
Because death is just so full and man so small.
Well, I'm scared of what's behind and what's before.

CHAPTER ONE
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

The air was cold and humid as Remy stepped out of her car and into the cheap, rundown parking garage that contained a shocking amount of other vehicles considering the condition it was in. The bottoms of her sneakers echoed across the empty area as they hit the cement and she turned in a circle to shut her door and lock it with the button on her keychain. The locks clicked and the car beeped in some sort of reassurance that no one would be breaking into it while she was away. If they did, she didn't care; it was only a matter of time until it was impounded anyway. The police only had to look at the prescriber identification listed on her brother's medical chart then track her down ten hours away to Illinois. They might have already been hot on her trail, ready to slap her in handcuffs and haul her off to prison as if having to live with herself (for however short-term of a period that may be) wasn't punishment enough. If this were a movie, they probably would have sped into the garage and heroically blocked her exit just as she was leaving – but when she turned, she was only met with a red Honda Civic suddenly honking its horn for her to get out of the way so it could squeeze into the parking space next to hers. Her feet moved before she even registered walking and she glanced at the address scrawled across the palm of her hand in blue ink. She didn't know what had possessed her to drive all the way to Chicago, only to arrive there at one am, but her mind wasn't exactly in a state of logical thinking.

Whoever dubbed Chicago 'The Windy City' wasn't lying. An almost steady wind was blowing thick, heavy thunderheads across the sky and the gusts breathed freezing against her skin as she stepped out into the open. The city smelled of week-old discarded sauerkraut and sewer gas, or maybe like burned street food, such as those chicken sticks that vendors sold, left on the grill until they were charred crisp. Either way, it was disgusting and made her stomach churn. She had never been to Chicago before, but her high expectations of the place were already thrown way off – as high expectations usually were. There was just something about the place that made her visualize it being like an old black and white movie. Instead of the honking horns and shouts from groups of people, she always thought of the place having an almost eerie silence to it so late at night. The only people who would be on the streets would be those travelling home from work in the wee hours of the morning to their small apartments. It would be mostly men, dressed in black trench coats and fedoras with furrowed brows and hard, set jaws. They wouldn't look up or greet each other, not being intentionally rude, only tired, cold, and worn out – hardened from life, much like she was at that very moment. She could almost smell the smoke of their cigars and the dampness of their wool coats as she slogged along down the sidewalk, away from the busy, blustering nightlife.

It wasn't streetlamps, but neon club and bar signs that lit up the walkway. The stench of stale booze and strong, cheap perfumes and colognes assaulted her sense of smell each time she walked by one of the buildings, weaving her way around people who were wasted far too early into the night. That could have been her. The women were attractive and several of them stared at her as she eased her way by them. It would only take a few bucks and several cheap shots to cloud her judgment enough that one of them could take her home and numb her emotions for the night with Ecstasy and fervent touches. She wanted that to be her, but something drove her to keep walking. Her throat constricted and she swallowed thickly before parting her lips and breathing through her mouth. The bright colors of the signs blended together in psychedelic swirls as her vision blurred. There was a dull ache in her head that made her want to reach in and pluck out her eyeballs to ease the pain as she swiped the back of her hand across her face, smearing the wetness of tears across her skin. The rest of her body was numb from the cold; a kind of numb that she wished would engulf her mind because she couldn't shut off her thoughts. She told herself she wouldn't cry, but her eyes were already red-rimmed and puffy from so much of it. She hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours and her weary body wasn't interested in her demands.

The people filtered out as she kept walking, changing from groups of barely dressed young adults to teens dressed in black to an occasional homeless man sleeping on the curb or solitary guy hanging around near his car. She glued her gaze to the cracked pavement, trying not to make eye contact with anyone who didn't look promising. She carried no weapons and while she packed a hard punch, it wasn't something she trusted would defend her from some city bum with a gun. The apartment she was looking for was at the end of the street. It was a large brick building with a single glass door and, surprisingly, no call box outside. She gripped the cold, metal handle and pulled the door open, expecting to be met with warmth. Instead, she was hit with a sudden blast of cool, dry air when the door shut behind her. Even the smell was equally as sickening, some kind of thick, foreign food wafting through the halls – or maybe she was just too sickened to think about eating already. There was an elevator off to the right and she approached it cautiously then pressed the up arrow with her thumb. Even during the ten hour drive it took to get from West Virginia to Illinois, she hadn't put much thought into what she was going to say once she arrived. It was spur of the moment, the only place she could think to go since Princeton was no longer an option. Aside from her dad, Remy didn't have family – and she definitely didn't have anyone she considered to be a friend. She had co-workers, and one didn't show up at a co-worker's home in the middle of the night.

Her reflection in the stainless steel elevator doors disgusted her. There were heavy, dark circles under her eyes and the corners of her lips were twisted into a permanent frown. She looked older. The attempts she made to straighten out her grey t-shirt, wrinkled from driving, were futile and she sniffled loudly then rubbed at her nose. The doors opened, relieving her from having to look at herself, and she stepped into the elevator then slouched against the wall and pressed the button for the fifth floor. The doors closed again and her chest felt heavier with each floor the elevator reached. By the time it got to five and she walked out into the hall, her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears that she might not have even been able to hear an explosion. She curled her quivering hands into a fist and dug her nails hard into her palms, dragging herself down the tan mosaic carpet as quietly as possible until she reached door 508.

Her posture was stiff and her shoulders hurt from the tension, making it difficult to commit to knocking fully. Her knuckles tapped the door quietly before she dropped her hand back down to her side and retreated back a few steps. There was no light to be seen through the cracks of the doors. Maybe no one was home. There was silence aside from the sound of her own breaths creating clouds of moisture in front of her face. Her lips pursed together and she tried to inhale through her nose. Her sinuses felt clogged and continued to drip down the back of her throat; yet another reason, aside from shame, she hated crying. Her hand found a small desk in the hall and she gripped it for support as she turned to leave. Her ears were met with the sound of quick footsteps before she could get anywhere though.

The apartment door opened and it took Remy a few moments but she finally turned back around, face to face with a very groggy and confused looking Cameron.