Salvage

A/N

Just a little 'what if' I've had rattling around in my head. What if when Cuddy went to House's apartment, he wasn't there? What if House had been more seriously injured in the secondary collapse than he had first thought?

Just an alternate season 7 where House and Cuddy don't jump into a relationship doomed to fail.

I really enjoyed the first five seasons of House and loved the characters. I have to admit i stopped caring about the characters during season 6. I used to love the Cuddy/House/Wilson dynamic and hated how it developed in the 6th season.

And i was pretty annoyed at the emphasis on Houses pain being mostly if not completely psychosomatic. People with chronic pain and health conditions have to walk that fine line between pain relief and dependence on opioid's and live with the consequences, i.e. Liver damage, nausea, toxicity. Making House a drug abuser then get clean and manage on ibuprofen alone... And his 'bad days' all precipitated by an emotional event... It just didn't sit well with me.

I do not own House or any of its characters. I am writing this purely for fun.

He hadn't felt this numb in a while, he mused in disinterest. Sitting on the cold wooden picnic table in the park at two in the morning in the freezing cold, the air heavy and damp, might have had something to do with it. Though it felt different, like the numbness came from deep within and was radiating out.

He let out a cough, wincing at the pain in his chest. He would have a bruise tomorrow he predicted, remembering the slab of concrete that had glanced off his chest during the secondary collapse. He had been lucky he thought distantly, not to have had a pneumothorax like Hanna. A small voice was telling him to get it checked out at the hospital but he couldn't go back now. A few cracked ribs could wait.

Even the constant fire in his thigh was somewhat muted. But still there. Always there. Forever reminding him of things he would rather forget. That he was broken, defective. That he couldn't completely trust anybody and everybody lies. That everybody left.

In truth it wasn't a lesson he hadn't learnt long before the infraction. His mother had been the first he supposed. Not that he knew it at the time. She had cheated on her spouse, gotten pregnant and chose to pass off the child as her husband's child. Then she had turned her back every time he was 'disciplined'.

John House had taught him that words, apologies, pleas meant nothing. That he was a mistake, unwanted and a pathetic excuse for a man. House had remembered trying as a kid. He remembered a hunting trip when he was six. His stomach churning and throwing up when his father had shot and killed a young deer on one trip. The other father and son on that hunting trip had mocked him but John House had a different look in his eye… When they had gotten home, John had set about 'toughing' his son up.

Ice baths, missed meals, standing to attention for hours, the belt...His mother continuing to betray him with her silence.

As a teenager House had realised he was never going to please his father. People would have been surprised to know that before he was twelve he had been the model student. At twelve when he figured out John House was not his biological father and that his mother was a liar… Well what was the point in trying to please the man? He never would. It wasn't till he got bigger and stronger that he began to openly defy him. At eighteen he had secretly applied for and was granted a scholarship to college and enjoyed telling John exactly what he could do with his long held plans of his 'son' becoming a Marine. That had been the last time John had ever laid a finger on him, physically.

From that moment on, he had thought he was a free man. He would no longer have to hold his tongue or put up with another person's crap. And he no longer cared what anyone thought. It was much easier to go through life without having to please other people.

As for authority figures…well his father was a marine and the vast number of teachers, emergency room workers and on a few memorable occasions' military police, in the many different parts of the globe he had lived during his childhood had proven just how many stupid, blind people there were in the world. Authority meant nothing to him. It didn't mean respect, intelligence or safety.

It wasn't until Stacy that he even really began to trust someone. She had been a surprise. He'd had many girlfriends, short relationships but she was the first he would even consider flirting with the word love.

Until the infarct. He had trusted her and she'd betrayed it. It didn't matter the reasons. Even if a very small and very recent part of him knew she had done the right thing. The moment she had made that decision, they were done. House thought he had been betrayed for the last time.

Unfortunately he was wrong. In the past year alone. The two people he had been closest to in years had betrayed him.

He had been trying so hard to stay clean. The hallucinations that had shaken him to the core and forever disturbed his sense of reality had made the prospect of relapsing terrifying in a way he could never, would never explain.

He could no longer trust himself.

Yet the craving for Vicodin was an ever present threat to his peace of mind. His leg hurt from the moment he woke, to the moment he passed out. He was secretly ashamed that he had slowly succumbed to increasing amounts of alcohol but as the year was getting progressively worse…what was the point? No one else seemed to think he would stay clean so why should he resist the allure of those two pill bottles hiding behind his bathroom mirror…

But here he was. Sitting on a picnic table. Numb, in pain but refusing to move. Eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun would make an appearance in a few hours. If he could just make it to morning, maybe then it would be safer to go home…

It was long past midnight when Chase decided to leave the hospital. The last of the victims of the crane collapse had been triaged and were stable enough that he felt safe to go home for some rest. Deciding against driving in his exhausted state, he chose instead to cut across the park. Perhaps not the best thought he realised as he picked up the pace along the path.

He didn't know why he looked up at the picnic tables. There had been no noise he was aware of, no movement. But he turned his head and looked up at the benches to see his boss sitting quietly on the bench.

It wasn't the fact that House was sitting on a picnic table at four o'clock in the morning that was so disturbing. Even the fact that he was still covered in grey dust and had blood on his shirt wasn't what had him moving quickly over to the man. It was the stillness. Although House appeared wide awake, sitting upright, his hands where still. For as long as Chase had known him, House had never been so still (unless unconscious). He would have one of his many knick-knacks or his walking stick or something in his hands as his great if eccentric mind worked out the latest mystery presented to him.

Sitting alone, in the freezing cold at four am, completely still after the night he must have had…

"House?" It took a few repetitions of his name but finally he got a response when he reached out to grab the older man's wrist, feeling his pulse. It was threadier than he was comfortable with, fast. His pupils wide and unfocussed. Shock, he thought, or…

"I'm not high." He could admit to feeling a small rush of relief at the man's voice. And the response. House had tried this year. And to his shame he realised no one really had expected him to stay clean. Taub had even started a pool which surprisingly Chase had opted out on.

"Trying to stay that way actually."

"By sitting out in the park at four a.m.?" He asked, sitting up on the bench beside him.

"No place really to go." The older man shrugged. "Wilson doesn't want me at his place. And the Amber shrine is not the place to go if you are trying to stay clean…There is a stash of Vicodin at my apartment which I haven't stayed in for a while so there is probably things living in there. And it is chaos in the hospital and I'm sure I can think of at least three ways of getting my hands on drugs there. So you tell me Chase where should I go."

The calm, emotionless drone of his boss's voice shook him. House had really thought this through. And was really struggling.

"What happened today?" He asked. Only knowing that House had been at the collapse site with Dr Cuddy.

"I tried to save a patient who was trapped under a building. I tried to save her leg… And then when time ran out I had to convince the patient then amputate. Did everything I could. Everything right. And she died anyway."

"How?"

"Fat Embolism."

"You couldn't have foreseen that House."

"I know that. I do." He said unconvincingly. "Had a fight with Cuddy at the scene. Had a building nearly drop on me. That was fun."

"It's been a bastard day." Chase agreed. "And you're tempted to take Vicodin?"

House laughed bitterly. "I'm always tempted. The leg hurts like a bitch you know. Advil is as effective as using a toothbrush to clean the hoover dam. Course crawling and dragging it though rubble may have irritated it a bit."

"There are alternatives…"

"Not for me." House told him flatly, his voice oddly thick. "Not tonight."

"So you're just going to sit here?" House didn't respond, he hadn't looked at Chase once during the exchange, his eyes never straying from a fixed point in the darkness.

"It's freezing out here. You can't stay here." Again no response. "I have a couch. You can crash on. And the hardest drug I have is Advil."

"I will be fine. I'm fine." As if to prove him a liar his chest suddenly shook and a deep rattle reverberated through him as a loud, hard and worried wet cough escaped his lungs. House was unable or perhaps too tired to bother to hide his painful grimace as he held his tender ribs.

"Course you are," muttered Chase sliding off the table grabbing Houses arm to steady him and looking around the table. "Where's your cane?"

"Trenton." House gasped.

"Right."

Chase helped a disturbingly docile House off the table and moved to his left side taking his arm. "If you tell anyone about this…" He grumbled as he held the older man's arm and prompting him to move.

"You're not pretty enough for me, pretty boy." House rasped weakly, the feeble attempt at an insult slightly reassuring as the two exhausted men made their way painfully though the park.

Cuddy woke up with a start when her phone rang and looked around for a dazed moment at the familiar yet unfamiliar apartment. Then she remembered where she was. She quickly found her offending phone and answered it sleepily.

"Cuddy…"

She listened with a heavy heart as her new assistant dealt her previous plan of a late morning start a severe blow.

"Tell one of the ER doctors to hook him up with an I.V. And run some labs. I'm on my way." With a groan she hung up and stretched, her neck cricking at the awkward angle she had slept in and looked around and frowned.

She had driven to House's apartment last night after handing Lucas back the ring she hadn't even really worn. Surprised at the relief she had felt in that gesture. With Rachel at her sisters she was free to hunt down House and… what she wasn't sure.

She knew she wanted him. That she wanted to try and have a relationship with him. But the prospect daunted her. He was so complicated and she had a child to consider in all this. She hadn't been as oblivious as people thought she had seen efforts he had made. And she was ashamed to realise that she had never even acknowledged it. And now he was struggling. She'd seen it in the past week. The hangovers, the drawn look in his face, his dull eyes.

Realising he was not in the apartment she had decided to wait on the sofa and must have dosed off. But the apartment still seemed empty although it was now seven in the morning. Forman said House had left the hospital just after midnight. She checked her phone but saw no missed messages from Wilson. Meaning he hadn't gone to his friends place. She walked to his bedroom but there was no sign that her eccentric diagnostician had come home last night. Concern bubbling in her stomach she left the apartment, dialling as she walked.

"I don't know where he is, Lisa. I haven't seen him since yesterday. Are you sure he's not at the hospital?"

Sam rolled her eyes as she listened to James phone call. Of course, first thing before breakfast and House was already intruding on their day. The man hadn't even finished moving himself out of the apartment!

"Have you checked his office? Maybe he changed his mind…I'm on my way in."

"You haven't even had breakfast." Sam protested, irritated as her ex-husband/boyfriend shrugged on his jacket and grabbed his briefcase.

"I know but Cuddy sounded really worried. It sounds like it was a hard night."

She softened slightly as she remembered the news footage last night and decided to leave it this time but she was not going to let House cause problems in their relationship. She would not let him.

Leaving his bedroom, Chase was surprised to see his boss still on the couch where he had left him a few hours before and a quick glance showed nothing around the living room had moved or searched though. This was unusual behavior for the annoyingly curious and nosy diagnostician. House really must be exhausted. He was sat upright, his leg up on the ottoman, head tilted back in sleep. There was a very slight wheeze as he breathed, his breathing still a little too fast, the doctor in him noted. The flush of his face was also out of place.

"House?" Chase tried to rouse his boss will some success, although the older man responded sluggishly. Putting his hand to Houses forehead, he frowned at the heat emanating from it.

"Just…cos I …let you…walk…me…." Houses attempt at a witty repartee trailed off into his alarmingly labored breathing.

At that moment the doorbell rang. Taub was here to drive him to work and was quickly drafted in to help assess his boss.

"You need the hospital." Chase told House who was stubbornly refusing.

"No... just...need...rest." Did his lips have a purple tinge?"

"House, you're tachy-cardiac, having difficulty breathing, febrile. You have decreased air sounds in your right lung…"

"He's hypotensive and showing signs of cyanosis." Taub stated ripping the blood pressure cuff of the bosses arm. "80/40, House we're not asking we're telling you. I'm ringing a rig…"

"No, let's just get him in the car, he's deteriorating quickly." Chase said. Trading a long, concerned look with his colleague when his boss stopped protesting.