What dreams may come

This story takes place after "97 seconds" and can have spoilers for all 4 seasons up to that episode. Short, but not a one-shot.

What was House thinking when he tried to "nearly kill" himself? Or was he thinking anything at all? Does an encounter with death give him food for thought? Some – at least seemingly – supernatural elements.

Introit

House was not sure what had woken him up nor how he had ended up standing face to face with an intruder in his living room. As intruders went, she didn't look dangerous: a slim girl dressed in white. Her long hair was so blond it looked white and her eyes were deepest midnight blue you could imagine. House had the impression that she was incredibly beautiful, yet, though he was staring at her right there and then, he knew he wouldn't have been able to describe her in any detail or say what about her created the impression of beauty. She looked strangely familiar but House was sure he had never seen her before. House checked the door; it was still closed and had no signs of breaking and entering. Sure he stashed a key outside, but since he had – this once – slid the deadbolt in place, as he didn't want any visitors, the key alone was not going to open the door.

"What are you doing here," House demanded. "How did you get in? And who the hell are you!"

"I came to see you," she replied a little absently ignoring two out of three of his questions.

"How did you get in?" House decided to ask the questions one at a time since the girl obviously wasn't quite all-there. Maybe she was a savant at breaking and entering. Of course he hadn't checked all his windows yet so, since he lived on the first floor, she could have got in that way. She looked fit enough.

"I wished to be here, and so I was here," she smiled at House gently, yet there was a little twinkle of mischief in her eyes like she knew that her answers were going to frustrate House.

"Just like that?" House scorned. "Right! Why should I believe you? Who are you that you can just walk through the walls or whatever. In fact, just tell me: who are you?"

"I'm the one who cannot be denied," she replied and somehow her voice seemed deeper and for a fraction of a second House felt strange, almost primal, fear. But it passed almost without a trace.

"Ok, what is this?" House insisted. "An elaborate joke? Has Wilson hired you to make me think I've gone bonkers and need a shrink or have I stumbled into an episode of Touched by and Angel? Are you bringing me a message from God telling me that He loves me? Are you supposed to be my guardian angel or something?"

"Yeah, right!" she scorned. "Dreaming about guardian angels would be so you."

"Dreaming?" House frowned.

"Duh!" she nodded towards House's bedroom where, once he turned around, he saw himself sleeping in the bed.

"This is a dream?" House was puzzled.

"Yeah, couldn't you tell?" she asked. "After all, your hand is fine."

House looked at his hand and saw that it was fine, no sign of the burn. "How does this tell me this is a dream?" he wanted to know.

"Come on! You're a doctor and though you do scorn psychiatry you do know something about it," she invited. "You know that minor injuries rarely make it into your dreams, unless you are actually dreaming about receiving them, and even then they are rarely accurate. I don't need to tell you how long it took for you to start limping in your dreams."

"Yeah," House acknowledged the hit. "But if this is my dream, why don't I know you?"

"You know me," she told him quietly. "You may not recognise me, but you know me. For the time being you can call me Doña Sebastiana."

"Santa Muerte?" House gasped. He couldn't help but stare at her and suddenly he realised that her hair really was white, not blond, but really white from great age, and though her shape was that of a girl or a young woman, everything about her was actually ageless, eternal. "You're Death."

"I told you I'm the one who cannot be denied," Death smiled at him gently.

"Why would I be dreaming of you?" House wanted to know. "I don't think I have ever personified you in my mind."

"Well, this is your dream, but there are dreams and then there are dreams," Death shrugged a little apologetically. "I needed to talk to you and this seemed like the way to do it. I didn't really want to freak you out, you see."

"Why did you need to talk to me?" House asked suspiciously. "Aren't you supposed to know all the answers already? Or are you going to tell me the meaning of Life or try to convince me that there is God and after-life?"

"I'm Death," she reminded him. "Though life and death are irrevocably linked together I don't really deal with life. And I don't know anything about After-Life. I'm the End of Life, you see. And that, believe me, is quite enough to deal with for one entity!"

"Then why are you here?" House was still in the dark about that.

"I need to know if life has meaning to you," Death sighed.

"What life?" House asked cautiously.

"Your life," Death responded. "Does it have meaning to you?"

"I suppose you'd have to define what you mean with meaning," House prevaricated.

"Stop that!" Death nearly yelled at him. "I'm asking you if you want to live or die, and you can't even say that!"

"What do you want me to say?" House wondered. "Are you telling me that if I don't choose right now you will kill me? Do you want me to have sudden epiphany and break down? Cry and tell you that life is sweet?"

"I want you to tell me that your life is important to you," Death insisted. "Because I don't know. And because that's what's on the table right now: your life."

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House was not sure how much time had passed, or if any time had passed at all (after all time was a very relative term in dreams) but it felt like there had been a lengthy pause after Death had stated her business – if that was what you could call it. They were now sitting on his couch; he at one end with his leg propped on the coffee table, she at the other end with her feet on the seat, her arms around her legs and her chin leaning on her knees. Her ageless, timeless, eternal midnight eyes were looking into his soul – if he had one.

"I don't know," Death seemed to have read his thoughts.

"What don't you know?" House didn't want to accept her mind-reading abilities even if in dreams stranger things could happen.

"If you have a soul," Death clarified. "Souls and things like that are about the after-life and I don't know anything about that."

"So you don't collect souls?" House asked.

"No. I'm Death, I end lives," Death pointed out. "Souls are none of my business."

"And is that why you are here tonight?" House was curious. "To end my life?"

"No, not tonight," Death promised. "But you cannot play cat and mouse with me forever, not when I'm the Cat."

"What do you mean?" House pretended not to know – though it wasn't entirely a pretence even if he was fairly sure she was talking about his latest stunt with the knife.

"I mean you electrocuting yourself," Death admonished him. "I mean you popping your pills without any regard for your liver and mixing them with alcohol. I mean you speeding on your bike, courting every disaster you can think of! I'm hanging so much around you that I'm really starting to feel like I'm your bloody guardian angel and I resent that! Think about that! You are actually succeeding in pissing off Death herself, and let me tell you that takes some doing."

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," House tried to defend himself. It sounded lame even to him.

"I know," Death surprised him with her reply. "You took precautions to prevent that outcome. But you are a doctor; you knew that no matter how careful you were there was still a real chance of you dying. And you didn't do it for anything one could term as a higher purpose. You were just satisfying your curiosity. And since you're not a cat you don't have nine lives. Actually, even if you had you'd still be on your last one by now. Though you didn't know it, you came much closer to actually dying that you ever have before. I was this close to taking you!" Death lifted her hand and showed House how close he had come. Her thumb and index finger were less than half a millimetre apart from each other.

"If it was that close a call, why didn't you take me?" House was deeply curious.

"Because you didn't have the right to die on her," Death stated.

"Her?" House was puzzled for a second. "You mean Cut-throat Bitch?"

"Yes, I mean Amber," Death nodded. "And there are other people who would have been adversely affected by your death as well. Not that that is a major concern with me in general. Usually when your time's up, it's up. But it didn't feel right yet, taking you."

"Well I suppose I should thank you," House mused, not very convincingly.

"Yeah, I can see you're real grateful," Death dismissed. "But that exactly is the problem."

"My lack of gratitude?" House wondered.

"I don't expect you to thank me," Death clarified. "But I just told you that you nearly died, for real, not just the nearly you were aiming for and you feel nothing. No relief, not apprehension, no sudden realisation how close you came to loosing everything. I'm not saying you have a death wish, but you have no life wish either. And before the next time comes I need to know if your life means anything to you. Right now it doesn't seem to."

"I only just told a patient that any kind of life is better than death," House reminded her – he was fairly sure she had been around for that conversation, considering how close to death the patient had been.

"You were angry at him for refusing treatment and thus depriving you of the chance to prove your diagnosis," Death dismissed his words. "You have helped patients to end their lives when the quality of their lives would have been unacceptable. You gave a nine-year-old the chance to choose death a year sooner, if that was what she wanted. You have never believed that any kind of life is preferable to death."

"He wasn't at that point yet," House defended his words. "His life still had a chance to have some quality to it, too. He was choosing death in the hope of reaching a better existence of which he had no proof what so ever!"

"And you have no proof that he was wrong," Death pointed out. "By all means, choose whatever belief you want, but don't tell others what they should choose."

"But they are not rational!" House held.

"That is their choice," Death shrugged. "Besides, I'm not interested in their choices right now. I want to know what your choices are. Why don't you care if you live or die? The two previous times before this one, you wanted to live. You fought hard to live, to survive. You had such vibrant life in you. Now ... This time I couldn't find any life in you. The only reason, the true reason why I didn't take you was because I couldn't really find any death in you either. But not wishing to die will not save you again. Unless you can convince me that you want to live, really want it, not just don't really mind living, I'm taking you the next time."

"Well, I suppose I'll take that as a warning," House tried to sound flippant but it didn't quite come off that way.

"Do," Death told him. "So start thinking if your life has meaning for you. Your alarm is about to go off so I'll leave you for now. But I'll be back."

"I suppose I can take that as a promise," House accepted with a sigh just as he suddenly found himself back in bed and the sound of his alarm started to make its way into his ears.

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House woke up with a start. It was morning and he was definitely alone in his bed, in his apartment and his hand was hurting – as was his leg, of course, but right now he found the hand more interesting. Yes, he was awake and the weird dream was over.

House popped a Vicodin and thought that it might actually be a good idea to go to work and find something else to think about than life, death and finding a parking place anywhere in the Galaxy.