Adaptations 'verse: "While You Were Out."

[lit_luminary]

Title: While You Were Out
Author: lit_luminary
Rating: PG-13 for medical realism.
Characters/Pairings: House, Wilson; House/Wilson friendship.
Summary: In the end, what matters is how much House is willing to do.
Notes: This piece is now fully revised, expanded, and integrated into the fabric of the ‘verse. As always, thanks to resourceress7 for her

Comments

[lit_luminary]

Thank you so, so much. I was going for stark and brutal, because that's the reality of chronic pain and incurable injury. Unfortunately, canon really doesn't appreciate how much of House's behavior is actually an adaptive response to pain (that is, not merely "House being an ass").

And when Chase's behavior changes in similar ways (one of the advantages of staying with Diagnostics at PPTH is that his colleagues have all been trained to accept those adaptive behaviors, no matter if they take unconventional and/or antisocial forms), there won't be anything to blame but the injury and the pain. People won't be able to say that this was always his personality.

Of all the 'verses I work in, this is the most difficult one--first because of the extent of the research involved, and secondly because it's emotionally wrenching. There's no aspect of Chase's life that won't be altered by this--and worse, the combination of disability, pain and fatigue will narrow what was already a small, work-centered world, closing off other possibilities.

He'll adapt. But he'll also wonder--often--if what he can still have in his life justifies the fight for it.

[anounceofshag]

"He'll adapt. But he'll also wonder--often--if what he can still have in his life justifies the fight for it." Even your comments are insightful. Thanks for a great story.