INSIDE WALTER'S MIND

Grimacing as Foreman attached the interface to the base of his skull, House prepared himself to re-enter the tank.

"Give me a hand."

He held out his arm and Foreman took it, supporting him as he stepped into the tank. He lowered himself down gently into the solution, stretching himself out and floating on the surface.

"I'm closing the doors."

He nodded and Foreman brought heavy steel doors shut, plunging House into darkness. It was easy to return to that dreaming state without space and time.

Foreman's voice crackled over the intercom, giving the all clear. Floating in the darkness, listening to Foreman voice reverberate through the water and echoing off the heavy steel walls, House found he couldn't orient himself towards the intercom, even though he knew that it was only a few inches from his head.

Lights exploded around House, intense yellows and oranges. There was a roar, like a fierce wind,that resolved into a hissing crackle and punctuated by the occasional pop. The yellows and reds gained shadow and definition, transforming into flames and cinders. House was in a laboratory and it was on fire.

He spun around in a panic and realized Walter was next to him. He seemed younger, less worn and ragged. He was screaming and shouting, waving his arms about. House followed his gaze out across the burning lab and saw a panicked young woman trapped by the flames. She was screaming, pleading for help, but there was no way to get to her. A lone fire extinguisher was bolted to a far wall, cut off from both sides by more flames.

House realized he knew where he was, that he had read about this. This was the accident that had sent Walter away. She was the assistant he had killed; a victim of his careless disregard for safety.

House grabbed Walter, bunching up his lab coat between balled fists, and shook him.

"Doctor Bishop! Walter! My name is Doctor Gregory House! I'm here to help you!"

Walter starred at him, puzzled and shocked. "We have to help her," he whined, his gaze constantly flicking back to the screaming girl.

"It's too late! This happened years ago. She's already dead."

Walter starred blankly at him, his mouth opening and closing without words. With his wide-eyes and flopping jaw he looked like a dazed and confused goldfish caught out of water.

"Yes," he finally nodded. "That was a long time ago, wasn't it? There are more pressing things I have to take care of."

Walter seemed to age visibly as the flames around them died down and disappeared. The shapes and colors that made up the laboratory blurred and dissolved as the flames vanished, melting away to Walter's present lab. In reality Walter was laying on the cold steel slab of the examination table, but here in Walter's mind that slab was occupied by the body of Roger Barnes. Walter hurried awkwardly across the lab.

"We have to save this man, he's in a coma." He shot a glance at House and offered him an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, you said you were a doctor?"

"Yes, Doctor Greg House." House joined Walter at the examination table. "Doctor Bishop, this man is already dead."

"Yes." Bishop paused and considered the body in front of them. "I suppose he is."

The body of Roger Barnes began to swell and turn a dark purple, twitching and spasming unnaturally. House took a step back and heard a splash. Looking down he saw water running across the floor. He followed the flow to it's source; it poured in from under every door. House starred briefly at the lab's trembling main door, water seeping in around every edge, as if it held back an ocean. He looked back at Walter and found the old man trembling in terror.

"Walter!" He grabbed the scientist and shook him. "This is not real! This is all in your mind. You have to stop!"

Walter blank stare told House that he didn't understand.

"You're in a catatonic state Walter, presenting as a coma. Something happened in the lab, and it triggered something in your mind. Something you can't deal with, something that has you caught in this scenario in your head. You have to face --"

The body on the exam table exploded, splattering the two doctors with a gory mix of reds and purples. A half-dozen eggplant-colored worms, each as long as a man is tall and as thick as House's leg, writhed and convulsed in the ruined mess that was Roger Barnes.

Walter was shrieking as the doors burst in and a wall of water swept through the room. House reached out and slapped Bishop hard across the face. As soon as his palm met the old man's cheek they were outside under cold gray skies.

Walter and House both looked around them, equally confused, though for very different reasons. Leafless trees with skinny branches weaved their limbs together over their heads, and their dry and crackling leaves swirled around their trucks, carried by a cool autumn breeze. Weather worn and aged granite slabs jutted out from the thin grass like ancient teeth. Tombstones as far as the eye could see.

"I didn't mean for any of this to happen." Walter sniffed as he starred at one of the many markers. House read the stone; it said 'Peter Bishop.' It was at least twenty years old. "I just wanted my son back."

"Yeah, that's nice. But Walter, you have to listen to me. You need to tell me what happened in the lab."

Walter sniffed again and gave House his attention, butt no answer.

"What happened?" House pleaded. "What happened in the lab?"

"Don't you understand? I had to save him. I had to save my boy, no matter the cost. But I didn't know the costs! I didn't know the costs at all!"

"What are you talking about? The cost of what?"

Walter grabbed House by the shoulders and gripped him tight. "The cost of retrieving Peter from the other dimension. Can you even begin to fathom how much something like that costs? The microchips alone were millions of dollars!"

"What? What are you saying? What do you mean 'retrieve from the other dimension?'"

"Peter was ill, terminal. I had to save him, and I tired so many different things, but nothing worked. But then I realized the solution. You see, there's more than one of everything. Even Peter! All I had to do was retrieve another Peter from another dimension, and I'd have my son back! As healthy as ever!"

House was at a loss for words. Was this the rantings of a mad man, or was this the truth?

"But it was so expensive, and I didn't know how to pay for it. I tried to skim money from the grants that the government was giving Belly and I, but he caught me."

"Belly?"

"William Bell, my old partner."

"William Bell, as in the founder of Massive Dynamics William Bell, was your partner?"

"Yes, until I sold him all my research. He had been pressuring me for years. So much of our work was based on my research, my theories, my ideas. Belly had friends, people with more money than good sense, and they wanted to buy our research, make it commercial. But I wouldn't sell. Our work, the things we were doing, they were too dangerous, too much potential for abuse."

"And then Peter died, and you needed to fund your attempt to retrieve another Peter from this alternate universe."

"Exactly."

"And what does this have to do with Roger Barnes?"

Walter's grip on House's shoulders loosen and his arms fell to his side, shoulders slumping. He seemed tired.

"Roger Barnes? Just another abuse of my research, just another innocent person dead because of my selfishness and greed."

"The worm, the one that infected Barnes and turned him into an incubator. Your research had something to do with that?"

"Everything to do with that. Gene splicing, viral mutation, tampering with the very fabric of nature." He chuckled glumly. "You could say it was my specialty. I always told myself I was doing important work, that I was a good scientist because I was creating monsters. But I knew I could, I knew I could create monsters and I knew it was wrong. And then I sold it, all of my theories on creating these monsters and so many others just like them. I sold my work on monsters to monsters. And now Roger Barnes has paid the price."

"That's it? That's the whole reason you've lead yourself slip into this state? Because you feel guilty?"

"I am guilty! Look at the things I've done! Look at the monsters I've unleashed in the world!"

"Oh shut up. You're a scientist. That's the price of science. We don't get to choose what happens with the discoveries we make, and we sure as hell aren't responsible for them."

"But --"

"No buts!" House shouted him down. "Science is discovery, not invention. You made have discovered these truths that create monsters, but you didn't make them true. You didn't make the universe work the way it does, and if you hadn't discovered it someone else would have."

"That's all there is too it. You can't hold yourself responsible for the evil things people do with your research."

"But I knew that it could be used..."

"Of course it could be used for evil, but it could also be used for good. Half the diagnostic tools we use at Princeton-Plainsboro are built by Massive Dynamic, as well as some of the most radical treatments available. How many of those are only possible because of your research?"

"You're a scientist Doctor Bishop. You do science, and you don't concern yourself with what happens next. That's what you have to do to be true to science. Just like I don't get the luxury of asking if my patients deserve to live or die. I treat them, save their lives, and if they go out and kill a thousand people the next day. Well that's just not my fault. The world is a crappy place Walter, and it's full of crappy people. And you can't take responsibility for the crap they do. You just have to do your own job the best you can, and accept that it all turns to shit in the end anyways."

"It all turns to shit in the end?"

"That's right Walter. No matter how much good you try to do, no matter how much evil you avoid doing, at the end of the day some asshole is going to come along and crap all over it. And it's not your fault. Roger Barnes is not your fault, and neither is Flight 627, or Lorraine Alcott, or any of the other people who have died because of misguided applications of your discoveries. Now get over it."

"But it can't be that simple, I can't just shrug off all the evil I've brought into the world as a result of my research. There has to be consequences!"

"Of course there are consequences, some good, some bad. But you're not responsible for them. Do you think Philo Farnsworth is responsible for the drek they put of TV? No! Is John Lennon responsible for the crap Oasis tries to pass off as music? No! And you're not responsible for the things people do with your work, just like the giants whose shoulders you stood on aren't responsible for whatever you've done. If we all take responsibility for what those who follow us do, then everything is the fault of the first monkey to climb down from a tree. Either way, we're blameless."

Walter blinked and smiled. "You know, I think you might be right."

House smiled, pleased with himself.

"And now Doctor House," Walter's expression drew grim. "I'd like you to get out of my head."

The graveyard turned black as night and grew suddenly cold. Wet and disoriented, House realized he was back in the cold, dark tank. He reached out and touched its cold walls then yelled.

"Hey! Get me out of here!"

A moment later the heavy steel doors swung open and Foreman's dark scowl loomed over him. He reached down and grabbed House under the shoulders, dragging him up and out of the water. As House sat on the edge of the tank Foreman yanked the connection from the base of his skull, provoking a wave of dizziness and nausea.

House stood shakily and took the robe Foreman offered him, slipping it over his shoulders as he shivered. It wasn't the cold that made him tremble, but some after effect of his sudden ejection from Walter's mind.

He glanced over at the old scientist lying on the slab. He was awake, his compatriots gathered around him and celebrating his return. He tried to rise up but seemed tired and lethargic. House sympathized.

House gathered up his clothes and dressed himself, keeping his distance from the patient and his family. As he slipped on his sports jacket Agent Dunham approached him.

"Doctor House?" She smiled weakly, as if she was about offer an apology. "You understand that you can't tell anyone about Walter's work, or about Fringe Division. I'm sure that's clear."

"Doctor House understands," Foreman said as he looked to House, who smirked but nodded. "National security and all that."

"Good, good." Olivia smiled again, more genuine this time. "I'm glad we all understand. Do you need me to call for a ride? The Bureau is happy to take you to their airport?"

"That'll be fine."

Olivia pulled out her cellphone and began making arrangements as Foreman and House made their way to the door. House stopped on the threshold and looked back at Walter's lab, at all of the neat things he was never going to get to play with. His jaw tightened and his eyes grew soft and wet as he took a long last look at the sensory deprivation and contemplate all of the mysteries he could unlock with it. He wondered most of all why he had still needed his cane inside Walter's mind. Wilson would have something to say about that, if only he could tell Wilson.

Walter glanced towards House and their eyes met. The old man smiled warmly at the sight of House's forelorn look, mistaking it for sorrow at the parting of friends, and silently mouthed the words: "Thank you."

House smirked and stepped into the hall, twirling his cane as he went.

THE END