Fic: Undertow
Title: Undertow
Author: peace-and-war
Rating: M - themes.
Pairings: Cameron/House mention, Cameron/Chase mention, Cameron/Dead Husband mention.
Word Count: 674 words.
Disclaimer: I don’t own House, and I don’t gain anything.
‘Do I seem happy to you?’ Cameron asked, she knew he wouldn’t give a serious answer.
‘Never.’ House said this with a smirk on his face, little did he know how close to the truth he was.
She was stuck in the undertow.
Tired, drained. This was how she felt. Overwhelmed, overworked, underpaid. This was what had happened.
Once- she might have crawled under the carpet and let it go, make excuses for everyone, and just suffered in silence.
So, what had changed?
Nothing. She was still the girl who sat by her husband’s bed, watching him die. Watching him suffer- knowing there was nothing she could do.
Med school was her distraction. Working so hard, falling asleep with head on her textbooks, trying to distract herself from the death of her husband.
She could still hear the voices of everyone, they all had views on her husbands death- and their marriage.
‘Why’ja bother?’ - Her cousin.
‘It’s not worth it.’ - Her brother.
‘We know what’s going to happen. He’ll die, you mope for years and refuse to move on.’ - Her mother
‘You love him, he loves you, but is the pain worth it?’ - Her father.
Everyone was against her marriage. She did it out of love. Something some people would understand, and something some people would be completely oblivious to.
Some days, still, she still has to drag herself out of bed, because otherwise she would spend the whole day moping and pining.
She has to drag herself out of bed to prove to Chase that she is not broken- that she has moved on from House. Which she hasn’t.
After med school, she crashed.
She was lonely.
She was grieving.
She was self destructive.
She was caught in the undertow, being pulled by something she didn’t know, something she couldn’t see. Only something she could feel.
Even now- over ten years later, she still feels the pain of her husband’s death.
She can remember every night crying, every night drinking.
Every night cutting.
Just to numb the emotional pain.
It worked. So she just kept on going.
Now she had new memories to add to the repertoire of painful recollections.
The date.
The rejection.
The pain.
She remembers walking into work the next morning, with her head held high, just to fool everyone.
No-one was fooled. She had tear circled and puffy eyes.
However, no-one could see the cuts on her legs. No-one noticed her slight wince as she stood up, as someone brushed past her.
No-one could see the true pain she was in, physically and emotionally.
She had always been labelled as ‘Fragile.’
She remembers a joke that one of her classmates played on her during elementary school, which involved a ‘Fragile’ moving box sticker being slapped on her back, because she cried whilst being bullied.
She knew she would forever be stuck in this undertow of sadness, and emotional pain. Regardless of what she did, what she knew, she couldn’t stop it.
Her cries for help were not being answered, because she couldn’t let anyone see what was going on. What she was doing. She let others into her life, Chase, hell she even tried to let House in.
Not because she had a need to help everyone, but because she needed to know she wasn’t alone, that others were hurting, that others were suffering.
Maybe if he had let her in, she could be fine.
But he didn’t.
She wasn’t going to blame this all on him. That would be cruel.
But he was a factor, wasn’t he?
This was all running though her mind as she sat on the kitchen floor, knife in her hands poised, ready to make a cut on her arm.
‘I’ve had enough.’ She thought.
She stood up, and put the knife back in the drawer.
She finally realised that hurting herself was not the answer to curing her emotional pain. No matter how strong physical pain was, it could never completely drown out emotional pain.
She finally had swum out of the undertow.