New Fic: A Towered Citadel

[namasteyoga]

Title: A Towered Citadel
Author: Namaste
Rating: Gen, PG13
Summary: Wilson sins, House wants to know why.
Beta: Auditrix, with additional input from Extrabitter
Author’s Note: I wanted to challenge myself to take a look at the darker side of Wilson, and the strains on Wilson and House’s friendship. Hopefully it worked. This begins pre-infarction

Comments

[joe_pike_junior]

Ant. Eros, thou yet behold'st me?
Eros. Ay, noble lord.
Ant. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish,
A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion,
A towered citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon't, that nod unto the world
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,
They are black vesper's pageants.

Great stuff. I love a new Namaste fic.

I like stuff that looks at Wilson in this way. Not because I don't like him, especially, but because he isn't the golden boy that some people make him out to be.

Great stuff. And House, even as he plays a supporting role, sticks out in this - the friend, the dependent.

Cheers
Armchair Elvis.

[namasteyoga]

Aw, you get the cookies! Chocolate chip? Sugar cookies? I'm glad you liked it. I was digging around for a title -- had a working title and one other possibility when I ran across the Antony & Cleopatra quote. I liked the idea of the tenuous, the invisible, the difficult to grasp aspects of the quote and thought it fit the story. (That and the whole passion v. responsibility issue.)

[joe_pike_junior]

How about an Anzac bikkie?

I think it fits like a perfectly fitting glove from the custom glove factory.

Don't you love it when stuff just works like that? That's why I don't mind leaving something to mellow for a while if, while being happy with it, I know there might just be something else that's waiting to come along.
Mind you, stuff doesn't always come along. And sometimes I'm just impatient. But when it works? Brilliant.

Well done.

[nightdog_barks]

*shakes head*
Good God, namasteyoga. If I were to start listing everything I like about this story this comment would be the size of the Los Angeles telephone directory.

So quiet, so understated. This feels like an autumn story, somehow. The coiled violence beneath Wilson's surface, yet he never lashes out. House, pushing and pushing because he can't not push. The walls, the fortresses, built up stone by stone. I wonder how heavy those stones are.

Bravo. Just ... bravo.

[namasteyoga]

Thanks very much. This was a devil of a story to wrap my brain around. Everything was very nebulous and interior, but I didn't want a monologue. I'm glad you picked up on the undercurrent of violence. I think it'd be hard for Wilson to admit his issues, so he'd have to be pushed, and he wouldn't be happy about it.

[toolazytowork]

This expression of enjoyment will be sorely lacking in poetics.
Ne'ertheless-this rings so true. Wilson is just achin' to be. (To reference a Replacements song)
Really, very good stuff.

[namasteyoga]

Poetry is not required. "I was not born on a rhyming planet," to quote from another Shakespeare play. I just steal poetry as references to make myself look smart.

I'm glad you liked it.

[stephantom]

Very nice. Great exploration of Wilson. I think this analysis was right on target, with the need to be the perfect, likeable guy. And the way House and Wilson pick at each other. Really enjoyed this.

[namasteyoga]

Thanks, though I'm not sure any one explanation actually covers all the bases with Wilson. He's a slippery one.

[bironic]

Whew. What a trip. Excellently handled exploration of what makes Wilson tick, what he doesn't want to know about himself, what House won't leave alone, and what it might take to get Wilson to really try and change (though he might falter along the way). It's a nice touch that after blowing up at House because he won't face the truth about his own behavior, Wilson calls him from the bar like a life-line: "save me from myself." Someone once said about a pair of characters in another fandom that they're close like no others on the show because one was inside the other's walls before the walls went up. I think that applies here too with House and Wilson - they're inside each other's fortresses, sometimes picking away at the foundation, other times providing reinforcement.

And you hit so many notes in this. It's funny (“So the reason why you ignored everything we’ve had together is because you didn’t have jumper cables?” and “I get the idea, Roget,” Wilson says.), it's complex (Wilson reminds himself that he knew House would push him. He

[namasteyoga]

Thank you. One of the things I love about writing House and Wilson -- in whatever version of a relationship you may see them in -- is that they're both highly intelligent and they play off of each other so well. It's almost as if they know what's going to be said, and have the perfect response at hand.

And one of the things that made this hard to write was that I had to also take their friendship into a dark area. There's a conversation going on in Housefic_Pens on fight scenes, and one of the things I noted there is that I think you have to allow the characters to get mad at each other. To be angry. Yet their friendship is strong enough to survive anger.

[bironic]

It is. And yet it's also strong enough, and they're both sharp enough, that their fights must get very intense, as you've shown here, so the friendship must be strong enough all over again to overcome that.

[namasteyoga]

That's one reason why I intentionally used only House and Wilson in this (other than a brief snatch of memory on Wilson's part). I felt like getting other characters involved would weaken the overall impact, since only House can push Wilson this far -- and the same is true for Wilson pushing House.