That's Not The Issue.
That's Not The Issue- Sequel to All Puzzles Have A Solution
To amypinkpoison who convinced me to make this into a threeshot, because I was only thinking about it, and because she rocks, and continually makes me want to become a better writer after all her awesome in-character fanfic.
DISCLAIMER:I do not own House, Cameron, Chase or any of the characters Dave Shore owns. Lily, and the husband I will proclaim as my own b/c they are canon, and b/c I can! So there.
WARNING: Reader discretion advised.
Ten Years Ago
Allison Cameron sat in her once again lonely apartment. Her husband, now her daughter had died. The lights were off, and she was sitting on the floor in the corner of her living room. The half empty bottle of spirits was in her hand. Tears ran across her face. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, and brought the bottle back to her mouth. This was not going to be a long term solution to her pain, but it sure did numb it for now. The alcohol was mixing with the sedatives she took about three hours before. Her eyes were getting heavy, she couldn't stay awake. She capped the bottle just before the bottle of spirits fell out of her hand. She fell back against the wall, limp as a doll.
Why today, of all days, did her memories flash before her eyes? The one day when she did not want to deal with her past, it flashes up before her and makes her powerless again. It was like Deja Vu. The little Thompson girl died on the operating table, and Cameron was in the gallery watching idly by, tears running down her face. It was Deja Vu. Cameron fled the gallery, not wanting to stay around, not wanting anyone to watch the pain that was hitting her, and not wanting to expain her past to another person because she would almost definately break down, and she did not know if she would be able to pick up the pieces again.
She let the memories of her day wash away with the steady stream of the hot water cascading over her body. She sat, knees pulled up to her chest on the shower floor, letting the cold tiles soothe her, and the hot water cleanse her. That was all she could take. The tears just started falling hard and fast until she could no longer distinguish the hot water and the tears mingling on her face.
The television was flickering in the corner, but she was too pre-occupied to care. She had out in front of her a scrapbook. A scrapbook which contained all of her daughter's photos, her birth certificate, the wristband she received when she was born, and the excerpt from the paper. She pulled it out and read it.
Congratulations to
Allison Cameron
A baby girl Liljana Rose Stevenson.
Born on the 15th of August 1995.
"A ray of hope flickering in the
ever darkening universe."
Just for a second, a memory of holding Lily, crying with happiness because she was finally here, and crying with sadness because her father would never see her, and she would never see her father, who was so ecstatic that Cameron fell pregnant.
She was interrupted from this thought by a knocking on the door.
"Just a minute." She called out. She rubbed her hands over face, wiping away the tears she didn't realise had fallen. She hastily closed the scrapbook, and did not notice the birth excerpt on the floor.
She opened the door and saw Chase standing there.
"You okay Allison?" He called her Allison. He barely ever called her Allison.
"Yeah. You want to come in?"
"Sure." Chase came in and sat down on her couch.
"Want a drink?"
"Okay, coffee would be good." Chase spied the newspaper clipping on the floor. He read it. The conversation between House and himself suddenly became clear.
Cameron walked out of the kitchen with two cups of coffee. Her face went deathly pale as she saw he had the clipping in his hands.
"Allison, I'm so sorry."
"Get out." It was so quiet, he thought he had misunderstood.
"What?"
"GET OUT!" She screamed.
Chase looked at her for a fraction of a second.
"Fine." He got up and left, not looking back as he slammed her door behind him.
She poured the coffee down the sink, and reached for the forbidden spirits bottle. She hunted down the sedatives from her medicine cabinet. She popped four and downed them with a glass of water. The last time she opened the bottle, she had effectively attempted suicide. This time she was going to do it right. Pushing that thought aside, she sat back down in the corner of her living room, drinking the spirits until she passed out.
The next ten hours were an incoherent mess. There was House, trying to wake her up. There were people in her apartment, and paramedics were trying to keep her awake. She didn't regain coherency until the next day.
She woke up, to find House by her bedside playing his GameBoy. The room was dark, there were multiple monitors beeping inconsistently.
He heard her movement.
"God Allison." House just stared at her. She knew he was judging her for what she had attempted to do, but she didn't care. It was her decision, and her decision alone.
"I'm not a god." No sarcasm, no humor. Just a flat, slightly dry comment.
"We thought we lost you." Thought? She wanted them to lose her, because she did not want to be here, not anymore.
"We?" That meant others wanted to save her.
"I thought I lost you." That meant more to her than House would ever realise.
"Why did you save me? Why didn't you just leave me there like I wanted to?"
He had no answer for that.
"I wanted to die House! And you fucking stuff it up for me!"
"You don't want to die! You just think you do!"
"I'M NOT ONE OF YOUR PUZZLES TO SOLVE!"
"No, that’s a job for the psychiatrist."
"Great. More people know."
"Cameron? You tried to kill yourself! Normal people do not want to do that!"
"Normal’s not normal if you're not normal. I get that! I'm not normal! I've been married, had a kid all before I'm twenty five! I've seen death so many times, it seems easier to die than watch another person die."
"You work in a job where you cheat death everyday. You save lives."
"I couldn't save the ones who meant the most to me."
"None of us can. That’s why I couldn't work on you."
That stopped Cameron in her tracks. She stared suspiciously at him. "You didn't work on me?"
"Course not. I felt like I was going to stuff it up, stuff you up."
"You actually care?" She was asking, begging him to answer truthfully, because she would not stuff it up a third time. There were no third chances in her family.
"If you are paraphrasing, yeah. I do care."