A/N: Wow. Has it been a while or what? Sorry to keep you guys waiting for so long but school's jus been crazy for me lately since the quarter's ending on Friday and I've been desperately trying to maintain my grades. This last chapter here has not been too pleasant to write. My brain jus wouldn't cooperate with me. I had the biggest writer's block known to mankind for the past few weeks. And again, excuse the medical talk in this chapter. I tried my best to make it sound realistic. And now, may I present, the 7th and final chapter! ;)

Disclaimer: Don't own it. I especially don't own the line by Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight that I used somewhere in this chapter.

Chapter 7

Whoever invented stairs should be shot and pushed off a cliff then shot again, he thinks vehemently as he painfully ascends up the staircase to the roof. The distance from where the elevator stops to where the stairs end isn't very far and on a normal day, this trek would've merely been intolerable but today it's absolutely excruciating. With every step, the pain magnifies about a 100 times and he's beginning to wish that he could just rip his leg off. Actually, he's already passed that point. About 20 steps ago. Why'd she have to come all the way up here? That is, if she was here at all. Maybe Wilson had just wanted to punish him and his unending curiosity. As if getting slapped wasn't enough.

He goes around the last twist of the staircase and sees the door leading to the roof just several steps away. Mustering up whatever tolerance he has left, he staggers up the steps and breathes a sigh of relief as he leans heavily on the door in order to catch his breath. It's all he can do not to collapse to the floor. He spends a minute or two massaging his thigh, letting the pain revert back to more tolerable levels, before pulling open the door and stepping out onto the roof.

He hasn't been up here in a while but this open sanctuary welcomes him back with a rush of familiarity. It's quiet here unlike the usual chaos and bedlam down on the hospital floors and he relishes the silence. The cool October breeze blows past, bringing with it a welcome relief to the scent of latex and floor polish that dominated the halls below. Being up here again gives way to a multitude of memories, some good, some bad, but he pushes them all back down into the deepest places of his brain nonetheless. Snapping himself out of his thoughts, he looks around to locate the tell-tale head of long, blond hair and is relieved to see that his painful trek had not been in vain after all.

She's sitting on the ground about 50 feet away, her back resting against the brick wall behind her, arms hugging her legs protectively to her chest. Her head is tilted back and for a second he thinks that she's looking at the sky until he sees that her eyes are closed. He almost smiles upon seeing her like this, so quiet and still.

"A little early to be star gazing." he says, taking a step toward her.

"Go away." She's tired and a little part of her hopes that House will take the hint.

He doesn't. "Sure. As soon as I get next month's horoscopes for the hospital's monthly newsletter."

She tries again. "House, just go away."

"Can't."

"Damn it, House!" she yells suddenly, her eyes snapping open. "Why do you have to make everything so damn difficult?"

This shuts him up good for a moment or two and he just stands there, looking down at her sitting form.

Closing her eyes again, she calms herself down enough to form a coherent sentence. "Is there any particular reason why you're here other than the fact that you love to invade other people's privacy?"

He doesn't know what makes him do it but he decides to give her a smart-ass answer even though he is in no way the position to do so. "Yes, actually. Venus is in retrograde tonight. Whoever spots it is supposed to find their soul mate by the next cycle." He stops his sarcasm when he sees the look on her face. She's exhausted beyond exhaustion with not even enough energy to come up with a retort. Shifting his gaze away from her, he looks guiltily at the ground and taps his cane a few times. "And I wanted to apologize to you." he continues, lowering his voice. "I had no right to ask you what you were doing with Wilson. And I'm sorry." He hopes that she'll believe him because he means every word of it but at the same time, he can't blame her if she doesn't. "If it makes you feel any better, you can slap me again if you want."

He watches her for a reaction but she doesn't say anything; she doesn't even move. Taking this as his answer, he turns around and begins walking back to the door and the 50 steps of pain that awaited him.

"House." She doesn't realize she's calling him back until after his name leaves her mouth and those piercing blue eyes turn back toward her, his gaze questioning. She hesitates for a split second. "35 year old female presents with acute intermittent headaches. Diagnosis?" Opening her eyes, she turns to look at him. She doesn't know what makes her say those words but they're out before she can stop herself.

He raises an eyebrow. Okay, he wasn't expecting that. "You want me to do a DDX on someone whose medical history I don't even know?"

"Well, it's not that big of a leap from what you actually do." she replies with a slight shrug.

There's a short pause. "The patient. Are we talking metaphorically or literally?"

"Does it matter?"

"I don't know. Does it?" he answers smartly.

"Just do the damn differential." she says, her tone sharper than what she intended.

He considers her for a moment, watching her intently. "Headaches are headaches. Give her some Tylenol and tell her to suck it up." he answers.

"Patient endures three and a half weeks before headaches degenerate into severe migraines."

"Am I allowed to ask questions?" he inquires, cocking his head.

Cameron stiffens. "Depends."

"Patient's occupation?"

"How is that relevant?" Her heart's speeding up and she hopes that she hasn't been too obvious already.

"Extremely high stress levels can cause serotonin receptors to go haywire. If Ms. Susie Blue's raising four kids while divorcing Cheating Chester and working eight to five at Marge's Diner, she might just start losing it."

She takes this in, choosing her answer carefully. "Patient works ten hour shifts, six days a week."

"Not exactly what I was asking, but okay." He fiddles with his cane, switching it from one hand to the other. "Her brain's getting overloaded. Topamax to knock-out the migraines and tickets to Cabo to get her a life. And tell her that we're humans, not robots."

"Patient receives strict orders to relax and instructed to take 25 mg of Topamax daily." He squints at her. "There's a 'but', isn't there?"

"Medication begins to loose effect after a month. Patient nearly dies from an overdose."

"Well, that ruined it." he says, scratching his forehead with his thumb. "Ineffectiveness of medication indicates a neurological problem. Get MRIs, CTs, and whatever other tests we got for the brain."

"Patient is admitted for a battery of tests."

"And…?"

She hesitates for a split second but not long enough for him to notice. "MRIs come back with results." Her voice is a bit softer than it had been two seconds ago.

He mulls over this new piece of information even though there's really only one solid diagnosis he can give. "Tumor. Judging by the rapid onset of the symptoms, I'm guessing that it's been there for a while and just passed the point the brain can handle. At least four centimeters located on the frontal lobe."

Sometimes she still can't believe just how damn good he is at his job and now is one of those moments. "Impressive."

He looks at her, confused. "So, what was that? Some sort of test? See if I still got it? 'Cause Cuddy has a whole file cabinet of patients who certainly think I do. Why didn't you just go ask them?"

She doesn't reply to this and merely sits there, staring up at the sky. "If you were the patient's attending, what would you tell her?"

"I'd tell her she was dying."

She looks at him. For some reason, his tactlessness angers her more than usual. "You'd say it like that? 'You're dying. There's nothing we can do.'"

"It's the truth." he replies, shrugging a shoulder. "What else is there to tell?"

"You wouldn't give her even an ounce of hope? Tell her it's gonna be alright even when you knew it's not?"

"There wouldn't be a point. You said it yourself."

And she snaps. Springing to her feet, she strides over to where he's standing until she's merely a few inches from his face. "There wouldn't be a point in showing a dying woman just a little bit of mercy after telling her that her life as she knew it was about to end?"

House doesn't flinch. "No."

"Why?"

"Because she'd already know the outcome." he says almost exasperatedly. "False hope doesn't help anyone. If anything, it screws them up even more into thinking that maybe if they try real hard, if they fight real hard, if they hang on tight enough to that nonexistent piece of hope, that everything's gonna be okay."

"Do you think they care?" she replies, her voice rising. "Do you think the relatives that gather around the hospital bed and see their smiling face during the last few days of their life are going to care that the hope you gave wasn't real?" He cocks his head. "They should. Because it'd be a lie."

Closing her eyes, she takes a breath to calm herself. "Not everyone's like you, House." she says, softening her tone. "People don't want to be miserable. Even if it means living the rest of their life with the delusion that the world is a decent place and that their suffering has to mean something in the end. Even if it doesn't. They want to know that if there was the smallest chance in all of hell of things turning out okay, it would because then there'd be something to hold onto, something that would make them get up every morning even when they knew what they had to look forward to."

"So, you're saying that we should just tell people who are on their death beds that they have absolutely nothing to worry about even if their next breath could be their last?"

"I'm saying that telling someone that there's still some hope left would be less cruel than telling them there wasn't."

There's a short pause as they regard each other, their gazes steady and unfaltering. "You've put a lot of thought into this." he surmises.

She takes a deep breath before responding, knowing that what she said next will be past the point of no return. "That's what happens when the story ends up to be true." Immediately, his expression changes and she can almost see the little gears in his head working in overtime as he processes this.

All at once, everything starts to click as various pieces of the puzzle come together. The visits with Wilson, the stubbornness, the slap, the differential. It all made sense. An odd sensation sweeps through his body, something he's never felt before. It's almost as if he's literally gone numb with disbelief. He searches her for some sort of indication of her illness but finds nothing. Just the tired, beaten face of the woman he had worked with for three years looking up at him.

"Aren't you gonna say anything?" she asks eventually.

The thing is, he doesn't know what 'anything' means. "What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry? That life isn't fair?" For the briefest of moments, his gaze falters slightly. Does he give her the truth? Or does he let her off easy? In the end, he decides on the former. "One of the realities of this world is that people die. Crack addicts, prostitutes, little kids who get run over by drunk drivers on their seventh birthday. It's all the same. The only real variable is the circumstance. It isn't always pleasant and it isn't always quick; it might not even be right. But it happens and it happens everyday. You got a diagnosis. What you do with it is up to you but the bottom line is that eventually our bodies will break down and we will die. The only difference between you and me is that I don't know when, I don't know where, and I don't know how."

"Why are you telling me this?"

He looks at the ground, almost uncomfortable with his answer. "Because it's the truth. And because dying doesn't need to be sugarcoated."

There's a short pause. "Then lie to me." she says and she begins to feel her eyes grow hot with tears. No. Not in front of House. "Lie like you like to everybody else in your life."

He raises his eyes to look at her. "Why?" he asks, even though he already knows the answer. "It's not gonna change anything, fix anything. It won't even make you feel any better than you do right now."

"I know." Her voice is shaking now. "But lie to me anyway."

Again, he's forced to tear his gaze away from her, unsure of what to say next. It's ironic, really. If he needs his patients to consent to some dangerous, jeopardizing procedure he can spin a lie out of anything. But ask him to lie to someone he's known for six years and he doesn't even know where to start. And then he thinks of the one response that will be the biggest lie he's ever told.

"It's okay."

She looks up and finds his clear blue eyes gazing directly into hers. She doesn't know what it is about them but in that second she forgets all about being strong and for the first time since she heard the news about her condition, the tears that she had been holding back for so long finally come pouring out.

He stands there for a moment as she sobs violently into his chest before wrapping his arms around her small body.

"Everything's gonna be okay." he whispers, once again looking up at the evening sky.

And for that one moment that she was crying in his arms, he believed it, even if he knew deep down in his heart that everything was definitely not going to be okay.

A/N: And so it ends. I might write an epilogue but I'm not too sure at the moment. Also, I jus feel the need to explain something. I actually wrote the ending starting at "Aren't you gonna say anything?" before I wrote anything else in this chapter jus because I really wanted to end it that way (that's jus how I work). So I had to build the rest of the chapter on that bit of dialogue at the end and I admit that some parts don't flow as well as I'd like them to because of that. That isn't an excuse; I jus wanted to explain.

Also, kudos to those of you who can spot the "The Dark Knight" references. I kinda tweeked somethings but the gist of the dialogue between Dent and Gordon at the end of the movie is in there. ;)

Anyway, it's been great fun writing this story even if certain bits wouldn't work with me. I'm glad you guys have shown this much enthusiasm for it. It really brightens my day. So, please take the time to leave a review and tell me what you think. Until next time! Cheers! ;)