Fanfiction: The Other Conversation (2/10)
Title: The Other Conversation
Pairing: House/Cameron
Rating: PG-13
Length: 21 000
Spoilers: spoilers up to “Human Error”
Author's Notes: Endless thank yous to jlneveloff who looked over this story at the last minute!!
Summary: He understands her mute conversations with everyone. She is on the edge of a cliff.
Amazing art work at shutterbug_12 's journal, here
PART TWO.
Reminisce past worlds
It is at the hospital she ended up later as she rapidly lost weight because her inability to keep food down. The room she stayed in was lighter than the guest room at his house even though the blinds were drawn and she drew the covers high above her head. This was too close to the world, and it all scared her, all the noises surrounding her scared her.
Breathing in her own hot breath, she felt suffocated but safe. She could hear him sitting next to her, felt his presence close, guarding her from everything with a hopeless lump growing in his stomach, tears pressing behind his eyelids.
“I need a crash cart in here!” Someone was yelling, and the familiar sound of cardiac arrest seeped into her room, reminding her of a life just like that. Once she had been brilliant, she could listen to her voice without feeling discomfort, could move her body without trying to hide what she was feeling, without trying to lie.
She could feel his body moving, touching her. She knew what he was saying; she knew that he was scared for her, that he was close to giving up on her.
Shouting intruded on her world, worthless reviving into a world of noise. She traced a scar on her left wrist, slowly caressing the uneven skin.
A shaking breath next to her told her that he was now crying silently. Not that she minded, she only envied him, because her own cheeks were dry. She shivered.
Suddenly everything was very quiet. Only him breathing next to her, and her own breath against the sheet above her could be heard. This part she remembered, when everything was shut off, and the stillness that wrapped around you. Sadness and disappointment, the thought of relatives and friends.
“What the hell are you doing?” A very familiar voice called, barked, and she gripped the covers hard, bracing herself for his voice again.
“House, we've been trying to get her heart to start again for too long,” a stranger’s voice explained, patience and tiredness hiding beneath.
“Don't care!” She jumped, the loud voice intruding too much. Why was this happening to her? Coincidence didn’t seem to fit.
Sunlight broke through the window, washing over her curled up in a wheelchair next to Dana and him who were eating, she too was supposed to eat, but the sandwich that they’d bought for her stood in the middle of the table, and she was curled up in her chair covering her head under her arms.
Sound was everywhere. Plates crashing into each other, people talking over tables filled with food, the line reaching well outside the door filled with talking people, the hollow and mechanical beeping of the cashier. Everything had been so quiet before this, she had forgotten how loud sound could be, how close it could get to you, how it almost became you.
“What did the doctors say?” Dana asked him as a worried frown creased her eyebrows as she glanced over at her, curled up in the wheelchair, looking more and more scared as she constantly searched the cafeteria they were sitting in. He sighed patiently, having explained this several times already.
“They will call us when the results come back, and then we’re going to go up to Ally’s room and meet the doctors there,” he smiled a sweet smile at his wife, carefully stroking her hair out of her forehead and then kissing her quickly on the lips before returning to his food.
“Did you call Mrs. Andersen about picking Less, you know she forgets.”
It could not have been that long ago she too sat in this cafeteria, with her own lab coat on, or scrubs, proudly calling herself a doctor. She couldn’t understand why they had brought her here, out of all places, could they not understand the humiliation of meeting them now? If they noticed her they would strike up a conversation with her, and then Dana and him would have to explain everything, and it would get awkward.
Outside, the last leaves had left the trees, leaving them naked as they tried to reach the grey sky with their naked branches. She tilted her head and squinted her eyes to look at the trees more closely, but they were just as scary as before. There was no beauty in the dead.
(
“Allison, “ a voice called behind her suddenly, and she turned around and saw him standing there, “nice to meet you again,” he said it like it was a funny joke, his smile widening across his face.
“Charlie,” she breathed out in a happy greeting, smiling back at him.
“A cup of coffee?” He held up a steaming cup of coffee in front of her so that she could smell it from where she stood, making it impossible for her to refuse him. Nodding eagerly, she took a step towards him and grabbed the cup, taking it from his hands.
“Mhm, very nice,” she said as soon as she had taken a sip from it and looked up at him again. “How come I always meet you here?” She asked, tilting her head, which caused blond locks of hair to fall in her face.
“I work here,” he said, blinking slowly, his long eyelashes touching his scarred cheek, and he almost looked adorable.
“You do?”
“Yes,” his eyes were smaller when he smiled, almost hiding the green-brown eyes behind thick brown lashes. Then he stood there, quiet, his shoulders relaxed, head tilted, and eyes boring into hers. It amazed her, how well she understood what he was trying to say, like her own thoughts whispered it to her. Who are you? With widened eyes she could not come up with a way to answer this question. She thought she was going crazy.
)
Then suddenly her view wasn’t of naked trees, depressingly dark and dead, standing on a frozen ground, it was black, but yet she knew she could still see. After blinking a few times she understood she was looking at a jacket, but did not dare to look up and meet this man’s face. This was a man for sure, no doubt about it at all, and really, she didn’t need to look up to know who this man was. Maybe she should have been scared, or worried, but she wasn’t feeling anything at all, so she just continued staring straight forward. Not even curiosity took a hold of her.
“Lovely jacket, ” he said in an agreeing voice. “Can’t say the same about yours though.” And in her mind she could see his childish scrunched up face and she almost felt resentment towards him.
“Who are you?” Dana interrupted him with her sharp voice, annoyance cutting through it like a knife.
“Dr. House, I’m surprised she hasn’t told you already,” House said, like he didn’t believe that she did not know. Dana’s husband cleared his throat in an uncomfortable way, trying not to get mad at this man. “Wheelchair, huh? Too heavy for your legs to carry you?”
“Please, Dr. House, stop,” Dana begged, her voice a little less sharp, but just as biting. She could imagine her face, eyes trying to conquer a staring battle with House. The truth was that she did not know who was more stubborn of the two of them, and who would win. Probably House, since Dana knew better than to waste her time.
After that he was quiet for a while, and everything else became so much louder. But he did not leave, he simply stood there, and she knew he was thinking, his body still in the same pose.
“What’s wrong with her?” House demanded, and she could feel Dana’s husband stiffen beside her. This was something that you did not speak of, at least not in front of her.
“None of your business,” Dana spoke up again, her voice betraying how rude she thought this man was.
“I can find out what she has,” he was smug now, so sure of himself, so sure that he could cure her.
“We are going to meet with her doctor soon, and they will tell us,” suddenly Dana’s husband spoke up, and House turned his whole body to look at him, and stayed quiet a while.
“You’re her brother.”
“Half- brother,” he corrected him.
“Did I introduce myself? Oh, how rude I am; Greg House!”
“John,” Dana’s husband answered, “John Smith,” he continued with a smug tone, and she could almost see his smile.
“Why did you take her to the hospital?” House reached over the table and took her sandwich. She watched him under her arms as he inspected the sandwich quietly, and then looked at her, his eyebrows knitted together in a perfect frown. “You gonna eat this?” To answer him she leaned back and lowered her head. To anyone else this would’ve been a gesture of shyness, or avoidance maybe, but to him as he stood there watching her reaction, her response was so clear she might’ve just screamed it at him.
No, you take it.
It stunned him; he suddenly had nothing to say. It wasn’t telepathy, or anything supernatural, but still he couldn’t explain it. Never before had he experienced this, so he looked at her stunned, putting down the sandwich again.
“What happened to her?” House asked in a softer voice, knowing this would get him more information than any other technique. The reactions were alarming to him; both her brother and his wife glanced down on the table.
“We don’t know really, she doesn’t... speak,” John finally managed to get out, his voice low and sad. It angered her a bit, that they couldn’t understand that she was speaking to them all the time, but they were too blind to see. Her body tensed a bit, leaning back further, pressing into the back of the wheelchair causing it to roll backwards a bit. House jerked away from her suddenly freaked by it, how quickly he could feel her anger washing over him by just glancing at her.
John and Dana looked at him in confusion as he quickly nodded his head and left them. She watched him as he left, quickly trying to escape the cafeteria. Calmly watching him, thinking back at the House she used to know. This was him, but still he was so different.
(
She started to meet him more and more often, he was suddenly appearing everywhere. Later she learned that he was a lawyer, and the hospital’s most liked one, so he was always running errands everywhere, and he did not mind it. He minded it even less when he ran into her.
Everything was easy around him, even though few things were said, the conversation never seemed too light or meaningless. Each word was pronounced with great importance. Nothing was said in vain.
He bought her coffee, and little by little he took on a role in her life, starting to creep his way into her mind after work hours when she was sitting at home. At home she would muse over the thought of him, of him and her, and she would smile because it seemed so right.
He bought her coffee and she smiled.
)