Title: Crossroads

Author: Cschick

Author's note: I apologize to all those who are waiting on new chapters for Universal Forces. After a long creative drought over the past six months, I'm trying to write again. At the moment, I'm finishing up some short scenes and stories I've partly written over the past year or so.

This is a Cuddy introspective I wrote after the season finale last year.

In her forty-odd years on this earth, Lisa Cuddy knew that she had learned at least one thing about life. There are moments when you suddenly realize that you're headed down the wrong path at full speed. Moments when every fiber of your spirit suddenly rises up and protests against the plan the logical part of your brain has plotted, when you see the perfect life you've designed for yourself and hate it for the heartless shell it is.

How you react to those moments, that is the measure you have of yourself.

Perhaps the moment had arrived because she had been so completely focused on so different an issue-emergency management, on getting herself and other hospital staff organized to take care of the crane collapse. Perhaps after the proposal she had so thoughtlessly accepted the night before, the proposal she had been half-expecting and yet never really considering, some part of her subconscious was waiting for a moment of pure distraction to start screaming at her about what she had forced herself to become.

Or perhaps the moment had arrived because of that strange connection that she and House seemed to share, the connection that made House the only one that truly understood her, the only one who could both tear her down completely and build her back up again in a blink of an eye. The connection that always lead him to do the wrong thing at the right time, and the right thing at the wrong time.

When House had handed her the book, that was one of those actions. Her single moment of shock felt like it lasted a thousand years, that moment when she thought he was giving her an engagement present.

Afterward, it didn't matter that he intended it as a house-warming present rather than an engagement present. With the way they both lived their lives, cohabiting and marriage meant the same thing. As either type of present, the book and its inscription meant the same thing. He was trying to accept that her relationship was permanent, that Lucas was going to be an ongoing presence in her life. He was trying to tell her that he accepted it, that had he accepted it to such a degree that he had inscribed its existence in a present he knew she would find deeply meaningful.

Lisa Cuddy had looked at the book and its inscription, and instead of feeling happiness, instead of rejoicing that for once in her life everything, including House, was falling into the place where she wanted it to be, her heart seized with despair.

Rather than revealing to her what she was receiving, the gift brought home the reality of what she was losing. And for the briefest of moments, her heart collapsed in on itself, leaving behind confusion and devastation.

For that evening, she hated House. Every time she encountered him being his apparently lazy and destructive surface self at the accident site, she clutched the evidence of his failures to herself, gathering them as reminders of why she was willing to lose the chance she had spent the past year running away from.

Every time he threw pointed questions her way, using his uncanny ability to read her to pry directly into her confusion, she turned the anger she felt at herself back on him. She gathered together every scrap she knew about him and his vulnerabilities to try to bring the same despair on him that she felt.

And through their encounters at the site, through their confused discussions that both spoke about the patient and themselves, she tried to tear him apart but destroyed them both. Every time she launched another verbal bullet in his direction, from her declaration that that she did not love him, to her full-out attack that questioned the worth of his life, she felt it hit herself. She was using her own hurt to destroy a man she on some level respected, and on another level, loved. With every moment she ignored both of those aspects, with every word she used to try to convince him she neither respected nor loved him, she felt her own despair grow.

Then once again, as she'd seen happen many times before, House had turned his own destruction into a chance to save someone else. But this time, she was the direct cause of the destruction. This time she had designed the depths of his destruction, and she could only marvel at what he suddenly and unexpectedly extracted from that darkness.

As she listened to the girl scream, closed her eyes against the sound of the saw yet still pictured behind her closed lids the blood and tissue destruction that House was creating in that garage of horrors, she finally had to admit that right at this moment, what she hated was herself. She hated what she had let herself become, the path she had chosen to follow for every logical reason in the world. She hated the beautiful ring that was tucked so neatly away in the drawer of her desk, the proposal she had accepted with so much, yet so little thought. It was in that moment that she knew that she needed to actually make a choice, to follow her heart or follow her brain, and to embrace that choice fully.

She had called him from her office at the hospital, perhaps too cowardly to face him in person. "I can't do it."

"Do what?"

"Continue this relationship, marry you . . ."

"Lisa . . . " she heard the sound of a sigh come over the phone. "Take a day to think about it?"

"I did take a day to think about it."

"How did he get to you?"

Even Lucas knew who his competition was. "By giving up. By showing that he could actually change, even in some small degree."

"He's a bastard."

"Yes, he is."

"I hope you're happy, Lisa."

"I can't know unless I try."

"That's your flaw."

Lucas had ended the conversation there, ending the call with no goodbye. At some point, they'd have to deal with the messier details-returning the ring, getting the belongings he'd moved in out of her house. But not tonight. Tonight, she didn't want to deal with anything, but she had one thing she needed to deal with.

His apartment door was unlocked, not a good sign. When she found him sitting on the floor of his bathroom, staring at the pills as if they were some sort of salvation-or escape-she knew that she couldn't stop him, but couldn't allow her own denial to be the direct cause of his destruction any longer.

"You here to yell at me again?" he asked.

"No . . ." she responded, trying to find the right words.

"Well, I'm running out of ideas," he said sarcastically, using his words to hide his pain, as he always did.

"Lucas," she mumbled, wishing that maybe she's rehearsed this, maybe she'd at least tried to figure out the right words.

"Oh, great. You're feeling uncomfortable again. Probably means you just got back from some quickie wedding in Vegas or you're already pregnant."

She took a deep breath, and realized all she had was the truth. "I ended it."

Underneath the despair, the destruction she had brought on him, she could see that slightest light of hope suddenly appear in his eyes. "What?"

"I'm stuck, House." She didn't know where to direct her eyes, so she took a deep breath, looked down and continued. "I keep wanting to move forward. I keep wanting to move on, and I can't. I mean, my new house, with my new fiancé, and all I can think about is you.

"I just need to know if you and I can work."

The look of despair on his face echoed that in her heart. "You think I can fix myself?"

And once again, she could only give him the truth. "I don't know."

"'Cause I'm the most screwed-up person in the world."

Wasn't the first step to fixing something admitting that it existed? "I know. I love you." She paused, but felt forced to continue, "I wish I didn't. But I can't help it."

Below her, she could see the mixture of confusion and hope cross his face, and both hated and rejoiced that she had brought at least some shadow of hope to a face that so rarely showed it. House tried to push himself off the floor, but his exhausted and defeated body failed him. With that look of hope again crossing his face, he reached a hand up to her, and she took it, pulling him up against her.

He brought his lips down to hers, perhaps the gentlest kiss they ever shared, in their long history of few kisses. She found herself responding in kind, barely able to process what she had done here, how he was responding.

House pulled back and his face darkened for a moment. "How do I know that I'm not hallucinating?"

She caught her breath against the honesty and fear in his voice but tried to hide it. "Did you take the Vicodin?"

At the same moment, they both looked at the pills, the temptation, nestled in his palm. "Nope," he responded, that lilt of ego that was completely House coloring his tone.

She finally smiled, that tone reminding her of all the aspects of the man standing before her. "Then I think we're okay."

"Yeah."

In this moment, for this moment, she knew in with both her mind and her spirit that she had found the right path. How this would all work out-right now that didn't matter. Even as she had spent years of her life running from it, she knew that she needed this. She needed to stop running, to stop planning, and even it if was for a short time, to just experience this man who life continued to throw at her.