Rating: PG, mild PG-13 (for possible upsetting themes and a couple mild swear words)
Spoilers: season one and most everything this season. Just bits and pieces from one and definite spoilers for an episode in season two but most all major events have been reworked, time lines have been twisted a bit too

DISCLAIMER: all the standard form and fact. Characters not mine but plot and 'story' is. The song from which this story gains its title and some major inspiration is 'Allison' by Elvis Costello.

Author's Note: hi, thank you so much for checking out my first 'House' story I hope you enjoy! Just a brief not if you'll indulge me :-) As this is my first story in the House category, I hope you'll forgive my sometimes other then pure representation of the characters. House himself is terrible for me (number one reason why this is a Cameron POV and centered story) so I hope he isn't appallingly bad. This story is going to be three parts so I hope you enjoy! Feedback is greatly appreciated!

As I mentioned in the disclaimer this story is inspired by the song 'Allison' and there are lyrics from another Elvis Costello song toward the middle—end that if you can guess the song major bonus points :-) Merry Christmas and happy reading! –RaeAnne

My Aim Is True
By RaeAnne

I hate him. I hate him as much as I love him.

Why do I do this? Why do I sit here pondering him and all his faults, all his virtues, his quirks and his habits?

I hate him.

I never knew he could be such an enemy. I battle the clock from the time I step through the hospital door. I find myself on pins and needles till I see him. My day doesn't start till my eyes meet his. Believe me, this isn't some romantic gesture—it's torture…agony. Time becomes the opponent in my war with my emotions. It feels like my life is defined by his…and I hate that…And I hate him.

He insults me, degrades me, patronizes me, condescends and humiliates me. He knows my triggers and plays every one as only he can. I hate him for it.

I hate that I see him as few do. I hate that I've seen him show tenderness, that I've seen him vulnerable. I hate and love that he has confessed that he needs me. I hate that I feel obligated to him, chained to him, entwined with him.

I hate him…I hate that I love him, but most of all I love hating him.

--------------------------

But that was then. It's been five years since I left the fellowship at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and five years since I've seen him.

I truly don't know what I am doing here, I should have staid gone. But here I stand in the clinic lobby just coming in from the wet New Jersey spring night. I should turn around, but something won't let me.

No one recognizes me; no surprise since all the staff seems to be new. Small miracles; I don't know what I would say to anyone…I don't even know what I will say to him.

I shake my coat free of the remaining water then drape it over my arm. I cringe as my heels make squeaky clicks on the tile floor. I didn't have time to change after dinner, I truly thought I would come to senses and go to the hotel, giving up this absurd detour. Once again, my common sense didn't prevail.

"I'd like to see Dr. House."

I mentally slapped myself when I hear my pleading, hesitant voice. If I fall apart here, what am I going to do in front of him?

"I am sorry ma'am, Dr. House isn't at the clinic tonight, but if you come tomorrow during regular hours you should be able to see him."

I mimicked the woman's plastic smile and mentally thanked her for nothing.

"Allison?"

I know that voice. Spinning around I nearly collide with Dr. James Wilson.

"Wilson!" the memories start to rush back…

"What are you doing here? I figured you were halfway way to…"

"Well plans change, I am only here for a couple days, I had a conference," I interrupted, "and it's really good to see you!"

We pause for a few awkward seconds before sharing a friendly hug.

"Does he know you're here?"

I swallowed hard; I didn't want to face it, not yet…

"No…" I tuck a strand of wayward hair behind my ear. A nervous habit I thought I had broken myself of.

"Are you going to see him or are you just here to say a hello to Foreman and me before hopping a plane?"

The trademark Wilson dry sarcasm is somehow a mellowing comfort—a fitting welcome back.

"I'm here to see him."

Believe me saying that out loud was as much a shock to me as to Wilson.

I agreed to the conference in Princeton because of him…I staid over for him…I am standing in this hospital for him. Just another reason why I hate him, even today though I deny it whenever I can, he possess a part of me.

"He is in his office," Wilson tucks his hands into his pockets looking intently at me.

Just my luck, I had hopped the receptionist was right that he had gone. I hesitate before making any move. I could still back out, I could still turn around. I don't know if I can do this, if I can walk into his office, look into his eyes and not shatter all over again. I know I am crazy, but up till now my resolve, that I could do this had been so sure.

"I'll go up." I hated that even to me I sound hollow and weak, "It was so good seeing you! Give my best to Julie if I don't get the chance to see you again before I leave." I hug him again giving him a quick peck on the cheek.

"I will but it might be hard. Julie and I divorced a year ago."

He is grinning sheepishly, a slight pink tint to his cheeks. I shake my head and laugh, "Then pass it on to either the current or future Mrs. Wilson."

I head to the elevator banks trying to regulate my breathing. I hate this so much, I hate my weakness…I hate him. But I have to do this if I ever expect to be whole.

"Allison…" Wilson calls quietly just as my elevator arrives.

I turn.

"Remember it wasn't only you who was hurt by what happened."

Those soft spoken words cripple me; hit me like a two ton weight. Those words, that realization of a fact I knew but failed to remember hit me hard. I can't answer him, can't face it right now. I just get on the elevator.

The doors close blocking Wilson and his sympathy stricken face from my eyes.

I hate him for this; I hate him for being my un healing wound.

The halls are remarkably empty and eerily silent. Only my Prada heels click, only my shallow unsteady breathing disrupts the stillness.

His door looms. My heart pounds and my palms dampen. Why am I doing this? Why am I subjecting myself to this pain, to this horror? I left five years ago for a reason, I told all of this goodbye…

Tears pool and throb behind my eyes. This is going to heal me? This is going to help me mend. Doing this is going to help me embrace my future by resurrecting and reliving the past?

But before I can turn around, I am standing before the glass door staring directly into Dr. Gregory House's beautiful blue eyes. I start to shake.

I stand there for an eternal long second and neither one of us move. I with a hand anything but steady open the door stepping through on rubber legs.

He sits behind his desk, leaning back. Darkness engulfs all but the area illuminated by the lights shinning in from the outside.

"Dr. Cameron-Chase… co-head of Pediatric Diagnostics with her illustrious spouse Dr. Robert Chase of Boston Massachusetts, back here after all these years…Hmm, nice shoes but where's the ball and chain?"

His voice is just like I remember it, just as disarming as it ever was. The gravely timbre still has the power to make me teeter on the verge of a full blown swoon. However, I don't remember his face being so tired and pale, or his hair having this much gray veining it. He's still the devastatingly handsome, sardonic House I fell for.

I didn't stay anything but as I took a couple steps toward his desk, he didn't give the chance anyway.

"I was quite surprised when I heard you and the Brit…or excuse me the Aussie were tying the hangman's knot of wedded bliss. Though why should I be surprised at my little duckling taking off your party dress…
"What are you doing here? Back to poke fun at the cripple?" he twirled his cane as he spoke mockingly.

I have known him to be cold in the past but to be this venomous and smug so quickly hurts like dagger thrust and twisted in my core.

I take a deep breath deciding that for once I won't be subtle, if he wants blunt I can be blunt.

"I am here because I hate you. I am broken and the memories un dealt with are keeping me that way. I am here because I hate you…I hate you for what you did to me." I don't find the release I thought I would have with that admission; nevertheless, I can't back down now.

"Well then it seems my fears of us having nothing in common after all these years were completely unfounded because I hate you too. But lets not get in a nasty tiff about who hated who first or who hates who more because Chase might get jealous," he answered back lightning fast and with that superior taunting tone, he matched it with that rolling of his eyes and put off huff.

His smirk is killing, his delivery pitch perfect successfully rendering me to my knees.

I grab the back of the chair for support then sit heavily.

"Why didn't you ever try and contact me?" I clamped my hands together to keep from…from…well I don't know. I just know that my nails are digging into my palms; maybe it'll be that physical pain that'll keep me grounded.

"Don't waste time with pretty chit chat do you? Just get right down to the nitty gritty; good if we are asking questions I have one, what did you do with my red coffee cup? I haven't been able to find it since you left…"

"This is not a social call House! I'm not here to exchange frivolous comments. I just want to talk about what happened so I can actually live my life! I want to get this over and done with, I think we've put this off long enough," I won't let his callousness throw me from my goal.

"Oh is that what you want? Let's see what happened? What happened…Are you referring to what transpired five years ago when you left here after miscarrying our child not bothering to tell me I had even gotten you pregnant?
"Or are we talking about what happened when the chicken crossed the road because I've been dying to hear what happened…I hear the punch line is a real doozy!" he gives a loud contemptuous laugh while giving his chair a full rotation.

How dare he! How dare he sit there and talk about what happened like that…?

Tears burn so much I can hardly keep them back, "I didn't tell you because…because by the time I had come to accept I was having a baby…by the time I had the courage to even thinking about telling you…the baby was gone!How was I to tell you I lost our baby when you made it perfectly clear you wanted nothing to do with the morning after you slept me! How could I come up to you and say 'by the way House I am pregnant with your kid but I didn't do on purpose, trust me!' I can just picture your response! …Yeah House; I am going to do that!"

"Enough…enough! You've made your point—clearly. But what are you doing here now, you've had five years to deal with this and aren't you supposed to be on your honeymoon with pretty boy?"

Tears quickly evaporate in the heat of my anger. He is so smug, so arrogant, so self righteous!

"Don't you dare at yell me! Don't you…dare…you don't have the right…"

I didn't mean to cry, I didn't want to break down in front of him but once I felt the first tear fall the dam gave way.

"Don't make me hate you more then I already do…don't make me…" I choke so unbearably on the sobs growing so forcefully so quickly from a depth in me I didn't know existed.

"Tell me…tell me why Chase…" House leans across the desk eyes exploring, penetrating, "Of all the men in the country, in this forsaken hospital did you pick the one man that turned informer on me to save his own neck, the man that I have the least amount of respect for…the one man that you knew I couldn't accept…Why did you go to him, tell him, marry him?"

I quaked. It was like five years hadn't passed at all, like nothing had changed. The pain is still just as sharp and stabbing.

"Chase was there. He cared; he gave his shoulder when I couldn't get you to give me the time of day! He helped me accept, grieve and bury my daughter! He accepted me broken and didn't care. And you know what maybe—no I did, I did turn to him because I knew it would make you angry.
"You hurt me and so help me I wanted to hurt you even a fraction of how bad you hurt me! I wanted you to hurt! But I came to love Chase because he loved me in spite of you…"

"Well then since your spite is complete…why aren't you? I know I might be masochistic but you my dear Cameron-Chase are soft so why if marrying Chase, moving away and moving on with your life is your punishment to me, are you back here? Coming to see if it worked? If that were so, you wouldn't be telling me that you wanted to put to rest memories…you're still broken."

"You're right, I am broken…broken beyond any and all recognition. I came hear to lay all the blame at your feet but I can't…I came to you broken, left you broken but so help me I'll not continue to be broken! I'll not go on clinging to shreds of normalcy, I am going to rebuild so help me!"

"How?" he slammed his cane on the desk making me flinch, "How are you doing that? Coming here and blaming me? You expect to find your salvation in crucifying me?
"I made a mistake, yes I'll admit it. But you compounded it by not giving me the chance to rectify it, by getting on a plane to Boston minutes after telling me. Don't try and lay all the blame for our drunken night of sex solely on me because you could have said no.
"You're also right, you were broken, damaged and muddling through when you came to me and that's why you came because you saw brokenness in me and thought perhaps you could fix me when you couldn't fix yourself.
"Did you ever stop to think that maybe I, the cold, nasty, indifferent House could feel the loss of a child I didn't even know I had till it was gone? That maybe I was stunned about having a chance to be a father and then losing that chance in the span of less then a minute. Did you ever give that a thought?"

Fact is, I did, and I have. I dismissed it because it was easier to peg him as the catalyst of my misery dwelling in the core of me. Easier to think that I couldn't hurt him, that nothing could hurt, the indestructible House; it was easier to believe I was the only one who grieved.

"You never gave me a chance…you pinned for Stacy; your every spare moment was spent seeking her. You accused me of hanging on to the hurt of my husband dying…of wearing it like a badge…How blind did you think I was? You were a hypocrite. You drove your girlfriend away with your bitterness and anger over your leg and then hung onto that vigilantly rage and resentment just waiting to turn it back on her. To prove that she made the mistake, that she pushed you away…that she couldn't deal with your injury instead of the other way around. You wanted to prove that she still loved you, so you could take her back with your holier then thou attitude still in tact…" I am ranting so loud I don't doubt the whole hospital can hear me. But I don't care.

"You mean like you are doing right now? Trying to absolve yourself of your guilt? Because Allison you're not here to forgive me or even to punish me are you?"

For yet another time I am sucker punched by a revelation I didn't want to see. Have I all this time been playing a wicked joke on myself? I remember the night of our first and only date; the date I forced as my price for coming back to work…

We drank way too much trying to compensate for the miserable dinner, for it was miserable. I knew better then to demand the date…I knew that what was between us, (you can't convince me there wasn't something) couldn't be forced… held to rules and limits. It had to be spontaneous and not pressured or over analyzed. It had to unconventional, like the monster truck rally, convention was not, is not, Houses' strong suite.

So we drank and stumbled to his car…that beautiful red convertible and made love in the back seat while the alcohol coated our consciences and saturated our pleasure seeking senses.

The recovery from that night about did me in. I never wanted a one night stand with House but some how I couldn't' bring myself to regret it.

Then Stacy came and the fragile mental grasp I had upon my heart broke into a thousand emotional pieces. I stopped eating, wasn't sleeping well, so when I missed my period I didn't attribute it to much. I didn't give a second thought to the failure/success rate of my birth control pills or even to the lack of protection that night…'baby' was the least and furthest thought from my mind.

I learned to deal with Stacy somehow in the weeks after and chalked up my upset stomach and dizziness to an onset of the flu.

Then came the night with Chase…it had started so innocently and ended again in the backseat of a car.

That week I found out, I was pregnant. I don't really know what possessed me to do the blood work but I did. I knew though before the results came back that I was pregnant. I can't explain how I knew, but it just rang like an executioner's bell and I knew.

Absolute terror was my first single emotion. I could only stand staring at the results with an unconscious hand on my stomach. What had I done? I went home and called in sick for the next three days which wasn't that much of stretch since everyone though I had been coming down with a bug…but not a baby. I went over everything…I would keep the baby and I wouldn't tell House. It was a rash emotional roller coaster that I was riding when I made that decision but as I saw it, there was no other choice.

I had wanted a child, I desperately wanted to have a child with my late husband but because of his illness, we were never able to. I had never found the right man after that. I looked at this child as a blessing as well as the most terrifying thing I would ever attempt.

I would be able to hide my pregnancy I thought for a good while. There were women who did it all the time. Certainly, my change of style would raise eyebrows but thankfully, the lab coats were roomy.

Two months passed with little commotion or question. I started, quietly, to look around for a new position I knew leaving would be my only choice but I was dragging my feet.

That was when the scare happened. Blood from an HIV positive man was splattered on me while I was examining him. I knew that moment I had to leave. I had to get my baby away from harm…

I was almost four months pregnant and I wasn't going to take any chances. I was on a precarious edge ready to crack anyway—and this event was an earthquake.

I by accident found a teaching position at the University of Massachusetts it was perfect. The semester would start in a month and a half; I could start to relocate right away.

I told Chase soon after mostly because he was starting to figure it out. He was the only one that really paid me any attention any more. House had Stacy and Foreman was being kept on his toes by House too. I blended easily but having Chase as an ally was a relief.

Chase being the only one I was involved with any where near the time of conception asked politely if there was any chance he was the father…he could clearly see the timing was off but I appreciated his concern.

It was in those following weeks that I started really caring for Chase, he was invaluable. He took the House situation remarkably well and then helped me carry the weight.

Two weeks before I was to leave and the day, I was going to turn in my resignation I miscarried.

The doctors couldn't explain it, 'just one of those things' they said 'your body just rejected the baby' I could have killed them, how can you explain to a woman who felt that baby alive and moving in her that her body 'just' anything!

I remember the pain, the dizziness…and the blood but not much more. It happened at home. I evidently passed out on the kitchen floor where Chase found me barely alive and bleeding out.

I woke up in a hospital bed but not in PPTH with Chase holding my hand. He didn't have to tell me, because just like I how I knew I was pregnant with her–she was a girl—I knew I lost her. Even if I hadn't felt it through the pain medication and the haze, I would have known when I looked into Chase's eyes.

I'll never forget his eyes or that feeling…