I Hate It's a Wonderful Life Rip Offs
Title: I Hate It's a Wonderful Life Rip Offs
Author: Razor840
Pairing: H/C
Rating: T
Warnings: Season 4 Finale
Summary: Fic Fest Fic for HilandMum, who asked for: Ice Cream, Reindeer, and a House/Cameron Kiss and who didn't want: Huddy, Skis, or a sad ending. I hope you like this fic. Work's been kind of kicking my ass as of late and I'm really that happy with how this came out.
House knew he was hallucinating. Something had gone wrong when he was under hypnosis and Chase and Wilson’s attempts to revive him were now a distant hum on the periphery of his consciousness. It was actually fascinating in a way, that his wounded mind was rebelling in this fashion. He was no longer in the bar with Amber, he wasn’t on the bus. He was standing on a sidewalk watching it drive away without him. Snow was falling but he didn’t feel the cold. He didn’t really feel anything, other than the vague understanding that he was trapped. There seemed to be no pretense of reality in this hallucination, as if his mind didn’t even feel the need to play tricks on him.
When he stepped onto the slush covered street, his leg gave no indication that it couldn’t handle his weight. This was new. In this mental prison he was no longer crippled. Light seemed to cast no shadows. Laws of physics and science were broken just for the hell of it and why would his mind, of all minds, work in that way, even in its wounded state? There was still the pressing problem of Amber and regaining his connection to Wilson but again, these were distant flashes of light on the horizon that couldn’t even begin to be tackled or compartmentalized. Fear was a rational reaction that he understood from a detached, clinical perspective but it crept into his mind and actually affected him. This was new. He was scared of the unknown again, when only pain had frightened him for so many years.
He was walking through an undefined, impersonal urban landscape. For some reason, it was Christmas. He hated the lines, the people, the general tone and tempo of the Holidays. He didn’t necessarily object to the orgy of consumption (he liked orgies) but the constant grind of people, stupid turkey frying accidents and the like, made it interminable for someone who loved the puzzle of medicine but loathed a great many patients. The stupid Darwin Award winners that flooded emergency rooms around Christmas made it almost impossible to find interesting cases.
Maybe his mind was getting revenge for all of the abuse he heaped on his body. Maybe it had sentenced him to a ten year coma in Christmas Hell. If that was the case, he should get something to eat and see if his synapses could register taste. He knew what things tasted like, he knew how things felt, and he wanted to see how complete this fantasy prison was.
Everything was too clean. It was almost a mockery of a cityscape, a set piece. His analytical mind told him that nothing was real, that this was simply an illusion, a coma dream, but he was trapped and so he decided to go along with it, to see where it lead him.
His favorite diner in New York was tucked away on a side street surrounded mostly by office space. If one steered clear of it during the lunch hours, the chances of facing a full room of idiots were practically nil. They had the best Reuben in the world, he had come to that determination scientifically even though Wilson pulled out his Jewish credentials and always disagreed with him. House knew he was right. This wasn’t New York, this wasn’t the Skyline Diner, and the mechanized reindeer in the shop window couldn’t really exist, no company would ever produce something that horrible.
He felt no pressure, not cold when he pushed the door open and the bell, which normally rung to alert the waitresses to the presence of a customer was silent although when he looked up, it was there. It was a perfect copy of the last time he had been there, in the late Nineties. Nothing, save for the horrific reindeer and the complete lack of people, was different.
“Do you want a booth or a table?”
“Cameron?”
She was dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, the general uniform of the place. She carried a pen and an order pad. Her hair was reddish-brown again and she was wearing her glasses.
“What are you doing here? Why would it be you, of all people?”
“This is your hallucination. It is odd though. You could have put me in one of those retro, 1950s waitress outfits with a skimpy skirt. Although this one is a little different isn’t it? You’re aware, you’re scared. I hope I don’t represent something negative, something to be feared? Although technically I’m you, talking to you, right? With your mind as damaged as it is, I could just be random synapses firing, cells dying.”
“You definitely aren’t Cameron. You aren’t desperately worried about me. You aren’t rending your garments, shedding tears.”
“Killing a guy can get you emotional. I could probably hold it together under these circumstances. Plus, we’ve already established that I’m not really Cameron.”
“Did I miss something about Amber? Did I see something that I can’t remember?”
“I don’t know. Presumably you got on the bus with her but you aren’t there right now. You’re here. Is this just a random escape? You’re not dead. We don’t believe in the afterlife. Could we have been wrong? Or is it something about you? Remember the last dream you had? In the end, it was all about you.”
“That isn’t why I did this. I have to get where I need to go.”
“You didn’t sleep for days, you got drunk, had head trauma, and then put yourself under hypnosis. I’m not even bringing all of the pills you’ve probably taken in the last 48 hours into the equation. Maybe you’ve finally lost the plot. It was really only a matter of time.”
“You’ve never talked to me like this.”
“Yes I have. You just never listened to me before. Who you thought I was when I first started working for you was never the real me. You just kept to your first diagnosis. You stubbornly clung to it even when you had every indication that you were wrong. Most people are like that though. Did you really think that Wilson was capable of sleeping with one of his patients before it happened? How does it feel to be so ordinary?”
“In the abstract that was always a possibility. I was right about you. When I was healthy, you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Of course that had nothing to do with how you treated me in the previous year. I’m not allowed to change my mind?”
“People don’t change. Do I actually get to order something or does this establishment only deal in dime store Psychology?”
She brought him an ice cream sundae. It was loaded down with melted caramel and chunks of Baby Ruth, his favorite. He could taste the cold, the sweetness. In his mind he knew it was possible that he registered what the sundae tasted like but it seemed so real, as if this dream was taking over and he’d never get back. Just as that thought entered his mind, everything began dissolving before him. It was like a Dali painting, then everything went black.
“We’re going to do this again?”
He was in a surgical room. Cameron was sprawled out on the table. The robotic incision machine loomed over her, as it had in the hallucinations he had experienced after he’d been shot. He was standing right in front of the control.
“Do you ever wonder about the last time this happened? Do you wonder what it really meant?”
Dream Cameron was really starting to piss him off. Which meant that he was pissing himself off. That actually made sense, as he was a master at annoying people.
“I wonder what would happen if I killed you right now.”
“I guess it would depend on what you thought the controls actually did. How far you assumed the blood would spurt, etc. I don’t think it would bring you back though,” she continued talking as he worked the controls, the robotic arm lowered and began cutting the buttons off of her top.
“The last time this happened, I just assumed I was exhibiting a sub-conscious fear of your vest tops.”
Suddenly they were sitting in a restaurant. It was The Restaurant. She was dressed exactly how he remembered.
“Are you going to get the check?”
He absently reached for the bill and opened the binder. He shocked and disgusted at what he saw.
“This is what I was supposed to figure out? ‘Everything’, what does that even mean? Do I secretly like saccharine bullshit? Was I wrong? Were you really going to fix me,” Cameron seemed pensive for a moment, almost annoyed.
“I think I’m going to stop talking to you like a person because I’m not a person, I’m part of you. Why are things fucked up for us? Why did this happen? We blame ourselves for Amber because she wouldn’t have been on that bus if it wasn’t for us. We can’t handle losing Wilson, We had a hard time dealing with losing the old team. Why was it like that? We’ve had other teams in the past. Cameron, Chase, and Foreman were horribly flawed people but they were perfect for us and we didn’t want to lose that. Cameron, me, I didn’t want to be just a cipher for you. I wanted to be a person, I wanted something from you but I don’t think either of us ever really figured it out. It’s the same with Wilson, Cuddy, other people who have done crazy things for you. You’ll get through this. Wilson will forgive you. In the end, that doesn’t matter. You’ll feel guilt over that. It’s the same with me, I feel the way I feel. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t the right thing for me. Not everyone can fight against the current like you do. You know what you need to do. There are people who believe in you, people who love you.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” he felt something in his leg, a twinge of pain.
He was awake and in the hospital, overwhelming pain seemed to seep out of his very pores and it was slightly dulled by what he could tell was a massive dose of morphine. A deep, unfamiliar pain in his chest signaled to him that he’d had a cardiac infarction. He was alive.
“Fuck, House,” It was Cameron.
Cameron and the nurses swarmed over him, checking his vitals and adjusting his drip. He noticed that she didn’t any excess oil in her hair. She hadn’t been doing the bedside vigil thing. Maybe it wasn’t Cameron at all, maybe the pain wasn’t helping him see things as clearly as he’d like.
…
“Kiss me,” she was cuddled up next to him on the couch, he hated that.
He turned to her and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek and then turned back to the television, annoyed. She laughed.
“This level of domesticity is so humiliating for a dangerous, James Dean type like myself. They were all right. You’ve ruined me,” she laughed again.
“I know, and everyone said you’d destroy me and I’d end up a broken woman. Except for Wilson.”
“God. He didn’t do that big brother thing did he? He gave me condoms on our first date. What did he give you, lube?”
It was a relationship with a real person. She kissed him again. They were living together. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but it wasn’t falling. He watched walk into the kitchen to get some more ice cream. He felt happy.