Because it's been a while...
Disintegration
By Angelfirenze
Disclaimer: Shore, Jacobs, Singer, et al., own everything. Partial and full quotes, etc., from various movies, cartoons, etc. I almost want to label this chapter a Batman crossover for the amount of detail I let House and myself go into. Apparently, I remembered more of the episodes I have him describe than I previously thought. Anyway, the lyrics belong to various bands. Another, insanely vague XF reference, but remember it's still only a show in this fic. Not to mention, a rather general reference to the X-Men and references to both the Marvel and DC universes, which I have a functioning, if not encyclopedic (like my own obsessions) knowledge of, thanks to my Batman (or Catwoman, really) fan sister. And now that I've written this, I realize I probably actually have a couple of episodes I truly enjoyed even if the fandom on the whole didn't fill me with the same fangirly squee it inspires in her. The movie Serenity is quoted, too, for a scene I think House would love. Oh, yeah, and the definition copied here is cited from the American Heritage Dictionary website. Good for fic writing.
Summary: He reaches forward and snatches up one of the cases, sending the others cascading to the floor. He starts to pick them up, but Wilson stops him, telling him to just go to his son.
He heard it as an order to stop making excuses.
Rating: R for boundless amounts of angst.
Notes: The inspiration for the tent comes from the movie, The Sixth Sense. If you've seen that, which most of you have, I gather you can imagine what it looks like. The sand angels (or a tiny version of them, anyway) come from the book, America by E.R. Frank.
Dedications: Oh, and I'd actually like to dedicate this chapter to marag, who wrote two of the best House/Batman crossovers I've ever read and I definitely encourage everyone who's enjoyed this so far to read them if you haven't already. The original, Changes are the Only Constant, and its sequel, When Kept or Revealed are works of absolute brilliance.
...If you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, you can find out firsthand what it's like to me...
His eyes open again and the familiar clanks and bangs of a magnetic resonance imaging machine are like footprints he can step into to regain his bearings. He's in the hospital, still, but he doesn't know what he's doing here. He does know his back hurts and head hurts and that he'd like very much to go back to sleep.
"You awake there, buddy?" That was Wilson, on the other side of the machine. He wants to say something, but words won't come out, only strings of vowels and consonants with no attendant definition. But he knows he's tired. He hopes Wilson knows it, too.
"You had another seizure, House," Wilson says softly. "I've got Foreman and Chase checking you out. You're okay. You trained them, after all."
House sighed and found himself sinking back into sleep. He decided to go with it, letting the noise and mess fall away again.
***
John stood in the mirror of the bathroom closest to the Intensive Care Unit. He tried to take a deep breath, but couldn't seem to. Lisa Cuddy's words kept repeating themselves over and over in his head.
...Do him a favor for once in his life and choose...
He felt a lump rising in his throat and swallowed hard against it. The reflexive action did nothing and he pitched forward, gripping the sink as he suddenly vomited.
Wiping the back of his mouth with a trembling hand, he reached for the paper towel dispenser next to the sink and yanked out a bunch. Dragging the coarse material over his mouth and hand, he remembered how Greg had moaned and cried, even half-asleep, at the feeling of the ice water he'd given his son earlier in the morning. He remembered years ago watching Greg sitting in the cold water filling their bathtub, his thin little body shivering and shivering while John stood watching. He would ask Greg if he was sorry for what he'd done yet and the boy would nearly shout in the affirmative, tears falling into the water, and John would say it was an insincere gesture of desperation and self-preservation.
Would make Greg sit in that water until he was so cold he couldn't get out himself. He learned that the first time, when Greg had been five, and had started to slide into the water. John had yelled, cursing and grabbing Gregory before smacking him for not maintaining the upright position he'd been ordered to, but the boy had flopped over in his arm, heedless of the slap.
John had stared then before panicking and spiriting the boy to his bed, ignoring the discarded toys that had caused the problem in the first place, and thrust the tiny boy under the sheets and blankets of his little bed. Gregory hadn't moved at all for the next three hours. John had wanted to punish him again for wetting his bed while he lay there, but instead thrust a washcloth and new bath towel into the boy's unsteady hands and told him to go clean himself up. He'd changed the sheets, himself, not saying anything when his wife had later pointed out that they didn't match the comforter. Blythe, he recalled, had been in Alexandria, then, visiting one of her brothers. John had never said anything and Gregory hadn't either. John listened to Blythe tell Gregory later he was a good boy for changing his sheets all by himself, but that next time he should call Mommy and ask which ones went with what so they could match. It could be a game.
But he'd known better the next time. The boy had to stay in so long as he learned his lesson, but not so long that he couldn't function afterward.
He lifted Greg out of the water and wrapped him in a towel, something in him keeping him staring at the bluish tips of Gregory's fingers and toes. The violent shivers that his body had given over to. He said nothing as he sat the boy on his bed and dried Gregory's feet. He tried vainly to push Gregory's hair into something resembling order, but gave up after a few minutes. He pretended Gregory was watching television when he heard sniffles coming from the little tent Blythe had insisted on letting him build. She said he needed somewhere to use his imagination if it bothered John so much to have him playing his games 'over the news'. He seemed afraid to go to the park and she didn't mind, saying she worried about some stranger walking up and snatching her little boy. Gregory had slept in the tent more often than he slept in his bed. Once, during one of Gregory's backyard punishments, he'd stared at the tent, angry and violent for reasons he couldn't be bothered to figure out, and he'd walked over and kicked the whole thing down, snatching his golf clubs back and cursing the boy.
...There is no you, there is only me...There is no fucking you, there is only me...
"You hadn't touched those golf clubs since you were a teenager and you know it," Blythe countered heatedly when she'd found out. She had been in the hospital with an infection or something after they lost the second baby. Gregory had been nine. She'd come home to find he would cry at odd moments, jumping at the smallest sounds. She would, too, John knew and to this day he wonders how close they really are. She'd woken up earlier that night to take a dose of the antibiotics she'd been sent home with and had walked past Gregory's bedroom--he wouldn't let her close the door, insisted on sleeping with a flashlight in reach his beside table every night even though his father yelled that he was too old for such 'goddamned pussy baby bullshit'--to find the shambles of Greg's tent strewn about the floor. She'd gone to investigate, thinking Greg had simply kicked it over in his sleep to find the golf clubs missing and Greg asleep and shivering in the corner. Her shock wouldn't let her react for a moment, but once she'd gotten her wits back about her, she got down near him as fast as she could and had hugged him, crying into his hair as he slept. She'd woken him because she couldn't carry him without ripping her stitches and coaxed him toward the living room. She took the clubs back from where they'd found them in the hall closet and together they had rebuilt the tent.
Greg had sniffled, quietly telling her where the various effigies went (he had all sorts of little statues--a crucifix of Christ, a miniature Buddha, even Lord Ganesha and little angels that he hung from the ceiling with string and safety pins. The Star of David necklace and mezuzah she'd bought him when they'd had a layover in Israel were positioned next to the makeshift doorway) and he had stared when they were finished, tears she didn't think he noticed sliding out of his eyes and he'd hugged her so fiercely she thought he was afraid she'd float away.
...But underneath, we're not so tough...Oh, but love is not enough...
After everything was back to the way it had been, he'd taken her father's camera that she'd given him and took pictures of the tent from every angle, inside and out. They had developed them in the bathtub the next morning while John was at work and he'd put them in a stack in his special shoebox where he kept his seashells and rocks and his marbles and the expanding flashcard collection she used to help him master each new language he picked up. She had told him all these things the next day, after sending Greg to the Reynolds' house for some time with their daughters. Greg seemed to like playing with girls better than boys. He had told her he could read his books and tell them things and they wouldn't call him a show-off or a know-it-all. They wouldn't laugh at him for being small and skinny.
"Why did you tear down his things? What on earth has he done to you and what the hell--" he'd stared at her then because even though she was still quiet, she never swore. Certainly not at him. "Did you think you were doing? He's a boy, John. Not a Marine. And he is certainly not a burden or whatever you've been entertaining! If he is, then you know where you can go."
When Gregory was thirteen, they'd transferred back to Japan. Gregory applied to a boarding school there with Blythe's help as he'd later found out, had been accepted, and they saw little of each other excepting holidays. Even then, Gregory wouldn't talk to him. Stock answers and vague inferences became the only responses he got from a (once, he remembers) effusive and imaginative young boy. It was only when he wasn't in the room that he saw anything of the Gregory he'd known before. The same distance--like a moat and drawbridge with crocodiles and all manner of dangerous beasts--between John and his son never seemed to matter with them and he wonders how they can manage such a thing. Even then, they'd had inside jokes and little games. She could say but two words of a sentence and elicit a rare smile before she even finished. Even now, she's the only person besides Lisa that he's ever let touch his piano.
They had no such same wavelength, John knew, and he blinked furiously to dispel the burning sensation he could feel behind his eyes. Desperate to distract himself, he turned the cold water tap on full and thrust his hands under the spray until they ached and burned. He brought his hands up again and let the water drip down his arms, the sensation like an itch spreading across his skin. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, the tears he'd fought trailing faintly down the sides of his now-runny nose.
Pussy! his father, Christopher's voice hissed in his mind. Stop fucking crying!
He grit his teeth and thrust his hands back under the water, ignoring the shocks of pain shooting up his fingers and back into his wrists. He doesn't need a drill sergeant. He needs a father.
John took a deep, ragged breath and reached for more paper towels. ...A father... He needed to find Wilson.
...I've gone all this fucking way to end up back at the start...
***
"You want to watch movies with Greg."
Wilson was standing next to a lighted board in his office, going over scans that he could see Gregory's name printed on in the corner. Wilson was looking at him now, a faintly confused expression on his face, but John could see the latent anger in those brown eyes. James has been cold to him for quite a while and he guesses that he's inferred a lot from Greg's mannerisms and reactions what sort of (non) relationship he's had with his son. He hates that James has every right to hate him, just as he knows Greg does, knows Lisa does, but has to put his shame aside for now if he wants to succeed in this plan.
But it's not a plan, really.
Gregory plans things, he knows, goes through great lengths for everything from a science fair project or a paper to a prank or (when he felt the very rare urge) cooking. Greg lived for his work, John knew, like his father had before him. The difference was that Greg did the work he wanted to do and not because it was expected of him. He wasn't in medicine for money or praise or a reputation (though from the little information he gleaned during his infrequent visits, John knew he garnered varied forms of all three). He didn't follow orders or protocol. John had no idea what he followed, really. His son has little faith in humanity, he knows, and that's largely his fault. The only people he seemed genuinely at ease with were those others had cast off or disregarded for various reasons. He'd arrived with Blythe once for a visit while Greg was working in Philadelphia and had watched discreetly as his son had treated a second-degree burn and a bad-looking break on a young boy's hand and arm. He'd maintained eye contact with the boy--something John had never been privy to, even when he wanted it--had asked what superheroes the boy liked (the kid had been wearing a Wolverine t-shirt, John had later seen as the boy's girlfriend walked him and his gauze and plaster-wrapped arm away from the clinic), had gone into detail about some issue or other where this Wolverine character and all these other mutants had staged some apparently epic battle. They'd chatted back and forth about it the entire time Greg was setting the kid's bones, even joking that something called 'admantium' would come in real handy right about then. He'd made a thrusting movement with his right hand and a 'SNIKT' noise and the kid had chuckled, nodding.
"Totally. Wolverine kicks all kind of ass. Peter Parker's got nothing on him."
"That kid from Pleasantville? Well, I can't say they picked the wrong guy to play him--now, Jean Claude Van Damme would have been a very bad choice. And I like Batman best, really--or actually, the new Batgirl is cool."
"Oh, come on, Babs was totally hot. And that red hair--almost as good as Scully!"
"Cass doesn't have to say a word. She could kill you without moving. Babs had to become Oracle before she could do that. And that was with mind control. Mind control's never cool when you're on the receiving end. Plus, it totally kills the pleasure. Anyway, Scarecrow's got a lock on that. I'll assume you've seen at least one episode of The New Batman Adventures--the one that came on the WB?"
The kid nodded and Greg had continued. "The episode 'Never Fear'--I mean, aside from the obvious highlight and rather suggestive scene where Bats and Roxy Rocket gave new and important meaning to joining the Mile-High club on those damned rockets--the part where Bruce is in that fake-assed mustache--and how the hell everyone in Gotham continually falls for that thinly-disguised pile of crap--"
The kid had laughed at that and Greg had cut him off by setting another bone, which morphed the laugh into a howl and a swearword. "You're a dick, you know."
Greg had nodded carelessly and continued, "The part where Scarecrow has those moron henchmen gas Idiotically Disguised!Bruce with the fear serum and he promptly dangles one of them out of the window with the grappling hook and then takes that Batarang and slices the cord thinner and thinner until the guy's practically out of his mind and confesses. And then Bruce just leaves him there and it's Tim's short ass that has to haul this guy who's twice his size back through the window. Say nothing of the crocodile pit or that scene on the train and how Robin had to trap Batman with one of his own gadgets to get him in one place long enough to stop Scarecrow. He told Batman that he was out of control--that he'd lost the ability to distinguish between what was right and necessary and his own whims. So he had to leave Bruce like that for his own protection and the health and sanity of everyone else. That's probably my favorite Tim Drake/Robin moment. That and this one episode where he had to go to Bruce's contrived wedding with one of Poison Ivy's little homunculi and he's standing there waiting for Alfred to pick him and Dick up and his face is stuffed with cake. Heh. Because who wouldn't stuff their face if they had the chance? Hell, I do."
The kid had gotten this awed expression on his face and Greg shrugged and asserted that he was partial to something called the 'DC universe', himself, along with a fair amount of a segment of it called 'DC Vertigo' comics.
"Like Hellblazer?" the kid had asked, smirking. Greg had grinned wickedly and quoted something that the boy had laughed loudly at and Greg had half-heartedly complained that if he didn't sit still, he was going to have to set the broken bones all over again, so shut up, would he?
Blythe had laughed softly, her eyes brighter than they'd been in a long time. It was like that when they saw Greg. A part of her would come alive that he'd otherwise never see.
...I've been screaming for years, but it gets me nowhere...
"Yeah, I would," John said now and Wilson stared at him a little longer before sighing and laying Greg's scans carefully on top of the disarray that currently littered his desk.
Then they walked around the corner and Wilson unlocked the door to reveal Greg's office and the mess within. There was something crumpled in the corner under the coat rack and Wilson let out an abrupt sigh before going to pick it up and brush it off.
It was Gregory's white lab coat, still new-looking, he wore it so rarely. There was something crammed into the pocket and Wilson pulled it out, blinking and biting his lip for some reason. It was a dark red silk tie with tiny patterned squares all over it, neatly folded inside the haphazardly discarded coat.
"H-how nice of him to hide it," Wilson said, his voice hitching slightly. He didn't elaborate, instead folding the tie back up and opening one of Gregory's file cabinet drawers and laying it gently on top of what were actually stacks of folded oxfords, t-shirts, jeans, and various sets of scrubs. John wondered then where Greg kept his patients' files.
Wilson turned back around then and John was surprised to find that the other man was crying. Wilson brushed past him, determinedly ignoring him as he threw open Greg's closet door and reached toward the back (past stacks of folders that he now guessed were the files he'd wondered about) with both hands. He extracted a stack of DVDs, most of the titles of which John had never heard of. Then another. And another stack beside that one. There were more, but Wilson stopped and turned back to him, folding his arms and watching him.
American Beauty...Clerks...The Boondock Saints...Adaptation...Stranger Than Fiction...Constantine...The Butterfly Effect...Garden State...Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle...Pi...Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back...Running with Scissors...Dogma...Serenity...Full-Metal Jacket--
Now that one John had definitely heard of. That and American Beauty were probably the only ones and that was because Blythe had gotten him to watch it by sitting through Rio Bravo for the 'four-billionth time'.
Thumbsucker...The X-Files: Fight the Future...High Fidelity...The Cell... Three separate Matrix movies...Shaun of the Dead...Donnie Darko...Kinsey...Requiem for a Dream...Memento...Accepted...Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning...Dead Poets' Society... a remake of Flight of the Phoenix...The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys...Napoleon Dynamite...The Iron Giant...Empire Records... four different Harry Potter movies in a boxed set...three Saw movies...three John Hughes movies...
"We could live like phat rats if we were the blunt connection in Shermer, Illinois," Wilson says absently and laughs to himself while picking up the Dogma. John stares at him for a bit, but Wilson doesn't pay him any attention, doesn't move at all, and he goes back to look at the selection before him.
He doesn't know which one to pick. He doesn't have the faintest idea which one Greg would like to see first. He realizes, not for the first time, that he knows nothing at all substantial about his son. Eye color, hair color, sure--obvious shit like that that he and every other idiot with a working set of eyes can figure out. Blythe and Lisa and James are the ones who know the important things. The smaller (more beautiful, he thinks now) things that he's never let himself be patient enough to notice. He' never been patient, period, and he'll be paying the price long after...
Oh, God.
Wilson is watching him now. He seems to be used to waiting. In fact, there's a strange little smile on his face that he can't figure out. There's something funny happening right now? If so, he'd really like to be let in on the joke. But that would mean he's earned the right to know and he understands more than anything else about his son that he won't find out if Greg doesn't want him to. No amount of military training prepared him for the challenge of raising a child, let alone a genius whose acuity far outstripped his even in earliest childhood (he remembers hearing Greg clamber onto the piano stool and tap the notes of melodies like a regular child would read a primer...only Greg made it look easy. He was writing his own pieces by the time he was eight. Blythe told him that she hadn't done that until she was at least twice his age and then only at the behest of her piano teacher, who wanted to challenge her) and confounded him to this day.
He reaches forward and snatches up one of the cases, sending the others cascading to the floor. He starts to pick them up, but Wilson stops him, telling him to just go to his son.
He heard it as an order to stop making excuses. How often had he told Gregory that? Greg would tell him that he didn't make excuses. He thought of reasons. Reasons why he wouldn't eat the Lima beans or stuffed peppers his mother had slaved over half the day. Lima beans felt funny in his mouth and he didn't like the taste of them nor green peppers. He couldn't even eat whatever it was after the peppers had been removed, saying the taste was still there, permeating the stuffing. Blythe would make Greg his own stuffing without peppers and John would complain that she was making too much effort for an ungrateful little ass who didn't deserve to eat if he couldn't appreciate the meal given to him.
He'd sent Greg outside to sleep in the backyard the first time. Not five minutes later, Blythe had marched Gregory back into the house and told him to wash his hands. He could eat in his room that night as long as he promised to be careful and cleaned up if he made a mess at his desk. She had come back and told him calmly that if he ever made her son sleep in the backyard again--she had a funny feeling he waited until she was visiting family members off-base or busy on long errands to carry out these 'punishments' (or abberations as she called them)--or take any more ice cold baths or stand in his underwear outside of the goddamned Post Exchange for an hour after getting a 'B' on a history test--then he was going to wish he'd never come back from Vietnam and wished he'd never married her because it was obvious he already wished they'd never had Gregory. She'd grabbed his plate and glass then and emptied his unfinished dinner down the garbage disposal.
She didn't talk to him for three days after that and when she did, it wasn't to apologize.
***
Greg opened his eyes and immediately closed them again, the bright light of the partially opened blinds sending shards of pain radiating into them. There was a sharp intake of breath and then the light dimmed and he could look again. He sighed in relief, expecting to see Mom but thoroughly surprised to see Dad instead. He lay for a while, a strange blankness filtering through his already faulty thought process as he tried to think of why this man would do anything to comfort him instead of telling him to tough it out like everything else.
Then he saw his three-dimensional snake puzzle lying on his bed and before he'd thought about it, he was reaching for it. It was solved already and he closed his eyes and let his fingers slide the raised sections of snake in various directions before opening his eyes to find it satisfactorily jumbled. He felt his arms getting tired, one of them was starting to tingle from being in their ninety-degree angle, but he ignored that and shifted the pieces, trying to put the puzzle together. After taking two breaks to rest his increasingly heavy arms, he found himself angry again. He should have solved this stupid, easy puzzle by now. He's solved it in two fucking minutes so what the hell is the problem now? Before he realizes what he's doing, he flings the puzzle away and it lands on the floor with a clatter. Dad is staring at him now and he closes his eyes and hates the tears he feels building again. He feels his body hitching and grabs at the sheets and blanket covering him before scrubbing his face with them, trying to smash the tears into the fabric. He hears a sigh over him before hands pull the blanket away from his face. His father is watching him now, a...sad expression on his face. The snake puzzle is in his hands and Dad lays it back on the bed, where he can get it. He picks it up again and starts shifting the pieces around again, wondering why he's bothering.
"D'ya know what Lisa said to me?" Dad asks quietly, his eyes trained on the blanket in his hands. Greg feels himself shiver and Dad frowns and lays the blanket back down on top of him, tucking the sides around him. He blinks, confused, and Dad sighs again.
"She said I needed to figure out if I wanted to be a drill sergeant or a father to you because she and Wilson and your momma aren't going to let me ruin however long you have..."
Dad takes a breath and Greg is astonished to see tears in his eyes. "They aren't going to let me fuck up the end of your life like I fucked up the beginning and--and the middle."
Dad bites his lip and sighs. "I'm...I'm sorry. I know I've never let those words mean very much for you. I know I've never let anything mean very much for you. I wasn't anything like I should have been to you. I wasn't the father you needed and I was unfair to you and taught you that trust and promises and hopes and dreams and wonder and curiosity and your own choices don't mean shit and I...God, Greg...I'm so sorry. You were just a kid. I...you were right. I couldn't g-get back at my...at my father and my...brother. So I took it out on you. But you're not Jesus Christ and I shouldn't have made you their scape goat. You didn't have anything to be sorry...for...ever."
For...ever. Forever. Greg thinks then about the first time his mother read him the definition of 'forever' out of the dictionary. He'd been four.
ADVERB:
1. For everlasting time; eternally: No one can live forever.
2. At all times; incessantly: was forever complaining about the job.
NOUN:
A seemingly very long time: It has taken forever to resolve these problems.
His father was speaking again. "The Koreans killed my brother five years before you were born. I was sixteen. My...father...well, the Japanese killed him in Pearl Harbor, when I was six. I still don't know how to feel about that. Maybe I'm jealous...that they took away my chance to get revenge. Maybe I'm thankful because they saved me. I just...I don't know. But none of that matters, really. Not when I've done to you a lot of the things they did to me. I'm no better than them. No fuckin' better at all."
He's starting to stare because his father is crying. He's sitting in the chair next to his bed and he starts to fall forward and Greg can see now that the door is closed, which is good, but then his father halts and tries to pull himself back upright. Greg lays the hand with his IV leads on top of the back of Dad's head and Dad's forehead drops forward to touch the blanket and he shudders and cries silently and Greg can see a wet spot of tears spreading forth and his mind is still a strange blank slate.
Dad lurches back then and Greg blinks and his hand falls to the bed because he didn't expect it and Dad takes a deep breath and leans forward to press the heels of his hands into his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he says again and sits back to rub his reddened eyes again. Greg blinks again and looks at the blurry cabinet that holds the syringes and extra blankets and gowns.
There's the equally blurry form of a DVD case on top of it. Dad follows his line of sight and then says, "Oh, hey, you need your glasses, don't ya?"
His voice is still clogged with mucus, but Greg doesn't say anything or move as Dad gets his glasses from the table next to his bed and places them on his face like Mom had done.
Everything's clear now and his eyes don't hurt so much. Dad gets to his feet and goes to the cabinet, picking up the DVD and showing it to him. It's one of his.
Serenity.
"Wilson got this from your office for me. He had me pick one. It..." he frowns again, swiping a hand back across his eyes. "It shouldn't have taken twenty damned minutes, but I picked one. You've got a hell of a lot of movies. And even more at your apartment. Anyway...I...I thought maybe you wanted to watch one. You can think about that for a while instead of all this. Stop working for once and take a little vacation."
He waves a vague hand around the room. "Blythe said that Lisa told her that you doctors hate bein' patients because you know everything that could happen. She said we're the lucky ones because we have the luxury of ignorance. I...I never thought about it like that. Apparently, bein' a doctor's a lot like bein' a soldier. You don't stop just because the war--or case...is over. Not even for yourself."
Dad is looking at his leg now and sniffing some more. Then he sighs and they both look at the puzzle. Dad laughs a bit. It's solved. The snake is coiled and still.
"Ready to watch this now?"
Greg blinks and nods his head as best as he can. He's not tired...exactly...it's just hard to move a lot. He gets out of breath and his back and neck and head and arms and hands and legs all start hurting. Everything hurts. Dad picks up the remote for the bed and presses the up button. The head of the bed rises so that he can see the television and DVD/VCR that Cuddy sprung for all the private and heart patients to have. When there's enough donations she wants to put them in all the rooms, but there aren't enough yet. He wonders why she gave him one when he's such a pain in the ass.
He watches as Dad puts the movie in and gives him the remote. He starts the movie and they watch in silence until his favorite part comes. Simon is patching River up after her freaked out rampage through the club on Beaumonde.
"They're afraid of me."
"I'm sorry."
"They should be. But I'll show them. Oh, God."
Simon shushes her, but she continues, crying and staring past him. Greg knows she's psychotic. He even knows how that feels. Desperation (and ketamine) can make you a little bit crazy, he's learned. He doesn't realize that he's saying her lines along with her. That he's crying, too.
"It's okay. Hey, it's okay."
"Show me off like a dog. Old men covered in blood. It never touched them, but they're drowning in it. I don't know what I'm saying--I never know what I'm saying."
"In the Maidenhead, you said something. When you were triggered, do you remember?"
Flashes of dead, dessicated bodies that remind Greg of Zeppo after he sliced him open with the microsurgery robot in his head (all in his mind, but the blood felt so real. Just like the bullets that ripped him open.) and he shivers again. He doesn't realize Dad is watching him.
"The captain saw you say something on the feed."
"Miranda."
"Miranda."
"Ask her."
"Who is Miranda?" But River looks down, staring at something in her own head, and doesn't say anything.
"Am--" Simon hesitates, then continues in the same soft voice. "Am I talking to Miranda now?"
And River (and Greg, too) gives him a look that says he should know better.
"No. Not right. But I um...I think when they triggered you...it somehow brought this up. This memory."
And River (and Greg, who's staring at the screen and his father can see the same sort of horror in his eyes even if he doesn't know where it comes from) looks at Simon and says, "It isn't mine."
She starts crying earnestly and Greg sees Zeppo's body being sliced open with the robotic arm and scalpel, feels the blood spray and hit him (even though it didn't happen that way at first--the scene changes a little every time. Everything gets worse every time) and he's crying now, too, but can't tell.
"The memory, it isn't mine. And I shouldn't have to carry it, it isn't mine. Don't make me sleep again."
The pleading is in his voice, too, and his father is staring at him and biting his lip to keep from crying again because he knows that the memories his son refers to are his, not River's. Greg's burden is an overabundance of imagination and he's read enough books and suffered enough to know and imagine what his father has done, what was done to him, and it makes him cry and most times no one sees it and he thinks that no one can see it now. He can't even see it so how can anyone else?
Simon promises that he won't make River sleep, but she cries again and says, "Put a bullet to me," and Greg says it, too, softly, but loud enough for Dad to hear. He laughs like River laughs, and it hurts to hear and they both say, "Bullet in the brain pan, squish," and Dad (who looks at him, scared) and Simon both say, "Don't say that."
And Simon continues, "Not ever. We'll get through this." And Dad has his arms around Greg now and is breathing deep and heavy and Greg can hear his heart beating fast and is so tired but he doesn't want to sleep, like River doesn't, because Moriarty comes back and shoots him again and every time someone else is in the room or he's all alone and every time he dies.
He's going to die anyway. He doesn't know why anyone did anything then. He certainly doesn't know why anyone does anything now.
"Things are going to get much, much worse," River says, and Greg nods because it's true. John backs away from him and calls a nurse.
...Sleep...Just sleep..The hardest part is letting go of your dreams...
...TBC...
part one, part two, part three
x-posted to house_cuddy, housefic, and my journal
By Angelfirenze
Disclaimer: Shore, Jacobs, Singer, et al., own everything. Partial and full quotes, etc., from various movies, cartoons, etc. I almost want to label this chapter a Batman crossover for the amount of detail I let House and myself go into. Apparently, I remembered more of the episodes I have him describe than I previously thought. Anyway, the lyrics belong to various bands. Another, insanely vague XF reference, but remember it's still only a show in this fic. Not to mention, a rather general reference to the X-Men and references to both the Marvel and DC universes, which I have a functioning, if not encyclopedic (like my own obsessions) knowledge of, thanks to my Batman (or Catwoman, really) fan sister. And now that I've written this, I realize I probably actually have a couple of episodes I truly enjoyed even if the fandom on the whole didn't fill me with the same fangirly squee it inspires in her. The movie Serenity is quoted, too, for a scene I think House would love. Oh, yeah, and the definition copied here is cited from the American Heritage Dictionary website. Good for fic writing.
Summary: He reaches forward and snatches up one of the cases, sending the others cascading to the floor. He starts to pick them up, but Wilson stops him, telling him to just go to his son.
He heard it as an order to stop making excuses.
Rating: R for boundless amounts of angst.
Notes: The inspiration for the tent comes from the movie, The Sixth Sense. If you've seen that, which most of you have, I gather you can imagine what it looks like. The sand angels (or a tiny version of them, anyway) come from the book, America by E.R. Frank.
Dedications: Oh, and I'd actually like to dedicate this chapter to marag, who wrote two of the best House/Batman crossovers I've ever read and I definitely encourage everyone who's enjoyed this so far to read them if you haven't already. The original, Changes are the Only Constant, and its sequel, When Kept or Revealed are works of absolute brilliance.
...If you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, you can find out firsthand what it's like to me...
His eyes open again and the familiar clanks and bangs of a magnetic resonance imaging machine are like footprints he can step into to regain his bearings. He's in the hospital, still, but he doesn't know what he's doing here. He does know his back hurts and head hurts and that he'd like very much to go back to sleep.
"You awake there, buddy?" That was Wilson, on the other side of the machine. He wants to say something, but words won't come out, only strings of vowels and consonants with no attendant definition. But he knows he's tired. He hopes Wilson knows it, too.
"You had another seizure, House," Wilson says softly. "I've got Foreman and Chase checking you out. You're okay. You trained them, after all."
House sighed and found himself sinking back into sleep. He decided to go with it, letting the noise and mess fall away again.
***
John stood in the mirror of the bathroom closest to the Intensive Care Unit. He tried to take a deep breath, but couldn't seem to. Lisa Cuddy's words kept repeating themselves over and over in his head.
...Do him a favor for once in his life and choose...
He felt a lump rising in his throat and swallowed hard against it. The reflexive action did nothing and he pitched forward, gripping the sink as he suddenly vomited.
Wiping the back of his mouth with a trembling hand, he reached for the paper towel dispenser next to the sink and yanked out a bunch. Dragging the coarse material over his mouth and hand, he remembered how Greg had moaned and cried, even half-asleep, at the feeling of the ice water he'd given his son earlier in the morning. He remembered years ago watching Greg sitting in the cold water filling their bathtub, his thin little body shivering and shivering while John stood watching. He would ask Greg if he was sorry for what he'd done yet and the boy would nearly shout in the affirmative, tears falling into the water, and John would say it was an insincere gesture of desperation and self-preservation.
Would make Greg sit in that water until he was so cold he couldn't get out himself. He learned that the first time, when Greg had been five, and had started to slide into the water. John had yelled, cursing and grabbing Gregory before smacking him for not maintaining the upright position he'd been ordered to, but the boy had flopped over in his arm, heedless of the slap.
John had stared then before panicking and spiriting the boy to his bed, ignoring the discarded toys that had caused the problem in the first place, and thrust the tiny boy under the sheets and blankets of his little bed. Gregory hadn't moved at all for the next three hours. John had wanted to punish him again for wetting his bed while he lay there, but instead thrust a washcloth and new bath towel into the boy's unsteady hands and told him to go clean himself up. He'd changed the sheets, himself, not saying anything when his wife had later pointed out that they didn't match the comforter. Blythe, he recalled, had been in Alexandria, then, visiting one of her brothers. John had never said anything and Gregory hadn't either. John listened to Blythe tell Gregory later he was a good boy for changing his sheets all by himself, but that next time he should call Mommy and ask which ones went with what so they could match. It could be a game.
But he'd known better the next time. The boy had to stay in so long as he learned his lesson, but not so long that he couldn't function afterward.
He lifted Greg out of the water and wrapped him in a towel, something in him keeping him staring at the bluish tips of Gregory's fingers and toes. The violent shivers that his body had given over to. He said nothing as he sat the boy on his bed and dried Gregory's feet. He tried vainly to push Gregory's hair into something resembling order, but gave up after a few minutes. He pretended Gregory was watching television when he heard sniffles coming from the little tent Blythe had insisted on letting him build. She said he needed somewhere to use his imagination if it bothered John so much to have him playing his games 'over the news'. He seemed afraid to go to the park and she didn't mind, saying she worried about some stranger walking up and snatching her little boy. Gregory had slept in the tent more often than he slept in his bed. Once, during one of Gregory's backyard punishments, he'd stared at the tent, angry and violent for reasons he couldn't be bothered to figure out, and he'd walked over and kicked the whole thing down, snatching his golf clubs back and cursing the boy.
...There is no you, there is only me...There is no fucking you, there is only me...
"You hadn't touched those golf clubs since you were a teenager and you know it," Blythe countered heatedly when she'd found out. She had been in the hospital with an infection or something after they lost the second baby. Gregory had been nine. She'd come home to find he would cry at odd moments, jumping at the smallest sounds. She would, too, John knew and to this day he wonders how close they really are. She'd woken up earlier that night to take a dose of the antibiotics she'd been sent home with and had walked past Gregory's bedroom--he wouldn't let her close the door, insisted on sleeping with a flashlight in reach his beside table every night even though his father yelled that he was too old for such 'goddamned pussy baby bullshit'--to find the shambles of Greg's tent strewn about the floor. She'd gone to investigate, thinking Greg had simply kicked it over in his sleep to find the golf clubs missing and Greg asleep and shivering in the corner. Her shock wouldn't let her react for a moment, but once she'd gotten her wits back about her, she got down near him as fast as she could and had hugged him, crying into his hair as he slept. She'd woken him because she couldn't carry him without ripping her stitches and coaxed him toward the living room. She took the clubs back from where they'd found them in the hall closet and together they had rebuilt the tent.
Greg had sniffled, quietly telling her where the various effigies went (he had all sorts of little statues--a crucifix of Christ, a miniature Buddha, even Lord Ganesha and little angels that he hung from the ceiling with string and safety pins. The Star of David necklace and mezuzah she'd bought him when they'd had a layover in Israel were positioned next to the makeshift doorway) and he had stared when they were finished, tears she didn't think he noticed sliding out of his eyes and he'd hugged her so fiercely she thought he was afraid she'd float away.
...But underneath, we're not so tough...Oh, but love is not enough...
After everything was back to the way it had been, he'd taken her father's camera that she'd given him and took pictures of the tent from every angle, inside and out. They had developed them in the bathtub the next morning while John was at work and he'd put them in a stack in his special shoebox where he kept his seashells and rocks and his marbles and the expanding flashcard collection she used to help him master each new language he picked up. She had told him all these things the next day, after sending Greg to the Reynolds' house for some time with their daughters. Greg seemed to like playing with girls better than boys. He had told her he could read his books and tell them things and they wouldn't call him a show-off or a know-it-all. They wouldn't laugh at him for being small and skinny.
"Why did you tear down his things? What on earth has he done to you and what the hell--" he'd stared at her then because even though she was still quiet, she never swore. Certainly not at him. "Did you think you were doing? He's a boy, John. Not a Marine. And he is certainly not a burden or whatever you've been entertaining! If he is, then you know where you can go."
When Gregory was thirteen, they'd transferred back to Japan. Gregory applied to a boarding school there with Blythe's help as he'd later found out, had been accepted, and they saw little of each other excepting holidays. Even then, Gregory wouldn't talk to him. Stock answers and vague inferences became the only responses he got from a (once, he remembers) effusive and imaginative young boy. It was only when he wasn't in the room that he saw anything of the Gregory he'd known before. The same distance--like a moat and drawbridge with crocodiles and all manner of dangerous beasts--between John and his son never seemed to matter with them and he wonders how they can manage such a thing. Even then, they'd had inside jokes and little games. She could say but two words of a sentence and elicit a rare smile before she even finished. Even now, she's the only person besides Lisa that he's ever let touch his piano.
They had no such same wavelength, John knew, and he blinked furiously to dispel the burning sensation he could feel behind his eyes. Desperate to distract himself, he turned the cold water tap on full and thrust his hands under the spray until they ached and burned. He brought his hands up again and let the water drip down his arms, the sensation like an itch spreading across his skin. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, the tears he'd fought trailing faintly down the sides of his now-runny nose.
Pussy! his father, Christopher's voice hissed in his mind. Stop fucking crying!
He grit his teeth and thrust his hands back under the water, ignoring the shocks of pain shooting up his fingers and back into his wrists. He doesn't need a drill sergeant. He needs a father.
John took a deep, ragged breath and reached for more paper towels. ...A father... He needed to find Wilson.
...I've gone all this fucking way to end up back at the start...
***
"You want to watch movies with Greg."
Wilson was standing next to a lighted board in his office, going over scans that he could see Gregory's name printed on in the corner. Wilson was looking at him now, a faintly confused expression on his face, but John could see the latent anger in those brown eyes. James has been cold to him for quite a while and he guesses that he's inferred a lot from Greg's mannerisms and reactions what sort of (non) relationship he's had with his son. He hates that James has every right to hate him, just as he knows Greg does, knows Lisa does, but has to put his shame aside for now if he wants to succeed in this plan.
But it's not a plan, really.
Gregory plans things, he knows, goes through great lengths for everything from a science fair project or a paper to a prank or (when he felt the very rare urge) cooking. Greg lived for his work, John knew, like his father had before him. The difference was that Greg did the work he wanted to do and not because it was expected of him. He wasn't in medicine for money or praise or a reputation (though from the little information he gleaned during his infrequent visits, John knew he garnered varied forms of all three). He didn't follow orders or protocol. John had no idea what he followed, really. His son has little faith in humanity, he knows, and that's largely his fault. The only people he seemed genuinely at ease with were those others had cast off or disregarded for various reasons. He'd arrived with Blythe once for a visit while Greg was working in Philadelphia and had watched discreetly as his son had treated a second-degree burn and a bad-looking break on a young boy's hand and arm. He'd maintained eye contact with the boy--something John had never been privy to, even when he wanted it--had asked what superheroes the boy liked (the kid had been wearing a Wolverine t-shirt, John had later seen as the boy's girlfriend walked him and his gauze and plaster-wrapped arm away from the clinic), had gone into detail about some issue or other where this Wolverine character and all these other mutants had staged some apparently epic battle. They'd chatted back and forth about it the entire time Greg was setting the kid's bones, even joking that something called 'admantium' would come in real handy right about then. He'd made a thrusting movement with his right hand and a 'SNIKT' noise and the kid had chuckled, nodding.
"Totally. Wolverine kicks all kind of ass. Peter Parker's got nothing on him."
"That kid from Pleasantville? Well, I can't say they picked the wrong guy to play him--now, Jean Claude Van Damme would have been a very bad choice. And I like Batman best, really--or actually, the new Batgirl is cool."
"Oh, come on, Babs was totally hot. And that red hair--almost as good as Scully!"
"Cass doesn't have to say a word. She could kill you without moving. Babs had to become Oracle before she could do that. And that was with mind control. Mind control's never cool when you're on the receiving end. Plus, it totally kills the pleasure. Anyway, Scarecrow's got a lock on that. I'll assume you've seen at least one episode of The New Batman Adventures--the one that came on the WB?"
The kid nodded and Greg had continued. "The episode 'Never Fear'--I mean, aside from the obvious highlight and rather suggestive scene where Bats and Roxy Rocket gave new and important meaning to joining the Mile-High club on those damned rockets--the part where Bruce is in that fake-assed mustache--and how the hell everyone in Gotham continually falls for that thinly-disguised pile of crap--"
The kid had laughed at that and Greg had cut him off by setting another bone, which morphed the laugh into a howl and a swearword. "You're a dick, you know."
Greg had nodded carelessly and continued, "The part where Scarecrow has those moron henchmen gas Idiotically Disguised!Bruce with the fear serum and he promptly dangles one of them out of the window with the grappling hook and then takes that Batarang and slices the cord thinner and thinner until the guy's practically out of his mind and confesses. And then Bruce just leaves him there and it's Tim's short ass that has to haul this guy who's twice his size back through the window. Say nothing of the crocodile pit or that scene on the train and how Robin had to trap Batman with one of his own gadgets to get him in one place long enough to stop Scarecrow. He told Batman that he was out of control--that he'd lost the ability to distinguish between what was right and necessary and his own whims. So he had to leave Bruce like that for his own protection and the health and sanity of everyone else. That's probably my favorite Tim Drake/Robin moment. That and this one episode where he had to go to Bruce's contrived wedding with one of Poison Ivy's little homunculi and he's standing there waiting for Alfred to pick him and Dick up and his face is stuffed with cake. Heh. Because who wouldn't stuff their face if they had the chance? Hell, I do."
The kid had gotten this awed expression on his face and Greg shrugged and asserted that he was partial to something called the 'DC universe', himself, along with a fair amount of a segment of it called 'DC Vertigo' comics.
"Like Hellblazer?" the kid had asked, smirking. Greg had grinned wickedly and quoted something that the boy had laughed loudly at and Greg had half-heartedly complained that if he didn't sit still, he was going to have to set the broken bones all over again, so shut up, would he?
Blythe had laughed softly, her eyes brighter than they'd been in a long time. It was like that when they saw Greg. A part of her would come alive that he'd otherwise never see.
...I've been screaming for years, but it gets me nowhere...
"Yeah, I would," John said now and Wilson stared at him a little longer before sighing and laying Greg's scans carefully on top of the disarray that currently littered his desk.
Then they walked around the corner and Wilson unlocked the door to reveal Greg's office and the mess within. There was something crumpled in the corner under the coat rack and Wilson let out an abrupt sigh before going to pick it up and brush it off.
It was Gregory's white lab coat, still new-looking, he wore it so rarely. There was something crammed into the pocket and Wilson pulled it out, blinking and biting his lip for some reason. It was a dark red silk tie with tiny patterned squares all over it, neatly folded inside the haphazardly discarded coat.
"H-how nice of him to hide it," Wilson said, his voice hitching slightly. He didn't elaborate, instead folding the tie back up and opening one of Gregory's file cabinet drawers and laying it gently on top of what were actually stacks of folded oxfords, t-shirts, jeans, and various sets of scrubs. John wondered then where Greg kept his patients' files.
Wilson turned back around then and John was surprised to find that the other man was crying. Wilson brushed past him, determinedly ignoring him as he threw open Greg's closet door and reached toward the back (past stacks of folders that he now guessed were the files he'd wondered about) with both hands. He extracted a stack of DVDs, most of the titles of which John had never heard of. Then another. And another stack beside that one. There were more, but Wilson stopped and turned back to him, folding his arms and watching him.
American Beauty...Clerks...The Boondock Saints...Adaptation...Stranger Than Fiction...Constantine...The Butterfly Effect...Garden State...Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle...Pi...Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back...Running with Scissors...Dogma...Serenity...Full-Metal Jacket--
Now that one John had definitely heard of. That and American Beauty were probably the only ones and that was because Blythe had gotten him to watch it by sitting through Rio Bravo for the 'four-billionth time'.
Thumbsucker...The X-Files: Fight the Future...High Fidelity...The Cell... Three separate Matrix movies...Shaun of the Dead...Donnie Darko...Kinsey...Requiem for a Dream...Memento...Accepted...Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning...Dead Poets' Society... a remake of Flight of the Phoenix...The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys...Napoleon Dynamite...The Iron Giant...Empire Records... four different Harry Potter movies in a boxed set...three Saw movies...three John Hughes movies...
"We could live like phat rats if we were the blunt connection in Shermer, Illinois," Wilson says absently and laughs to himself while picking up the Dogma. John stares at him for a bit, but Wilson doesn't pay him any attention, doesn't move at all, and he goes back to look at the selection before him.
He doesn't know which one to pick. He doesn't have the faintest idea which one Greg would like to see first. He realizes, not for the first time, that he knows nothing at all substantial about his son. Eye color, hair color, sure--obvious shit like that that he and every other idiot with a working set of eyes can figure out. Blythe and Lisa and James are the ones who know the important things. The smaller (more beautiful, he thinks now) things that he's never let himself be patient enough to notice. He' never been patient, period, and he'll be paying the price long after...
Oh, God.
Wilson is watching him now. He seems to be used to waiting. In fact, there's a strange little smile on his face that he can't figure out. There's something funny happening right now? If so, he'd really like to be let in on the joke. But that would mean he's earned the right to know and he understands more than anything else about his son that he won't find out if Greg doesn't want him to. No amount of military training prepared him for the challenge of raising a child, let alone a genius whose acuity far outstripped his even in earliest childhood (he remembers hearing Greg clamber onto the piano stool and tap the notes of melodies like a regular child would read a primer...only Greg made it look easy. He was writing his own pieces by the time he was eight. Blythe told him that she hadn't done that until she was at least twice his age and then only at the behest of her piano teacher, who wanted to challenge her) and confounded him to this day.
He reaches forward and snatches up one of the cases, sending the others cascading to the floor. He starts to pick them up, but Wilson stops him, telling him to just go to his son.
He heard it as an order to stop making excuses. How often had he told Gregory that? Greg would tell him that he didn't make excuses. He thought of reasons. Reasons why he wouldn't eat the Lima beans or stuffed peppers his mother had slaved over half the day. Lima beans felt funny in his mouth and he didn't like the taste of them nor green peppers. He couldn't even eat whatever it was after the peppers had been removed, saying the taste was still there, permeating the stuffing. Blythe would make Greg his own stuffing without peppers and John would complain that she was making too much effort for an ungrateful little ass who didn't deserve to eat if he couldn't appreciate the meal given to him.
He'd sent Greg outside to sleep in the backyard the first time. Not five minutes later, Blythe had marched Gregory back into the house and told him to wash his hands. He could eat in his room that night as long as he promised to be careful and cleaned up if he made a mess at his desk. She had come back and told him calmly that if he ever made her son sleep in the backyard again--she had a funny feeling he waited until she was visiting family members off-base or busy on long errands to carry out these 'punishments' (or abberations as she called them)--or take any more ice cold baths or stand in his underwear outside of the goddamned Post Exchange for an hour after getting a 'B' on a history test--then he was going to wish he'd never come back from Vietnam and wished he'd never married her because it was obvious he already wished they'd never had Gregory. She'd grabbed his plate and glass then and emptied his unfinished dinner down the garbage disposal.
She didn't talk to him for three days after that and when she did, it wasn't to apologize.
***
Greg opened his eyes and immediately closed them again, the bright light of the partially opened blinds sending shards of pain radiating into them. There was a sharp intake of breath and then the light dimmed and he could look again. He sighed in relief, expecting to see Mom but thoroughly surprised to see Dad instead. He lay for a while, a strange blankness filtering through his already faulty thought process as he tried to think of why this man would do anything to comfort him instead of telling him to tough it out like everything else.
Then he saw his three-dimensional snake puzzle lying on his bed and before he'd thought about it, he was reaching for it. It was solved already and he closed his eyes and let his fingers slide the raised sections of snake in various directions before opening his eyes to find it satisfactorily jumbled. He felt his arms getting tired, one of them was starting to tingle from being in their ninety-degree angle, but he ignored that and shifted the pieces, trying to put the puzzle together. After taking two breaks to rest his increasingly heavy arms, he found himself angry again. He should have solved this stupid, easy puzzle by now. He's solved it in two fucking minutes so what the hell is the problem now? Before he realizes what he's doing, he flings the puzzle away and it lands on the floor with a clatter. Dad is staring at him now and he closes his eyes and hates the tears he feels building again. He feels his body hitching and grabs at the sheets and blanket covering him before scrubbing his face with them, trying to smash the tears into the fabric. He hears a sigh over him before hands pull the blanket away from his face. His father is watching him now, a...sad expression on his face. The snake puzzle is in his hands and Dad lays it back on the bed, where he can get it. He picks it up again and starts shifting the pieces around again, wondering why he's bothering.
"D'ya know what Lisa said to me?" Dad asks quietly, his eyes trained on the blanket in his hands. Greg feels himself shiver and Dad frowns and lays the blanket back down on top of him, tucking the sides around him. He blinks, confused, and Dad sighs again.
"She said I needed to figure out if I wanted to be a drill sergeant or a father to you because she and Wilson and your momma aren't going to let me ruin however long you have..."
Dad takes a breath and Greg is astonished to see tears in his eyes. "They aren't going to let me fuck up the end of your life like I fucked up the beginning and--and the middle."
Dad bites his lip and sighs. "I'm...I'm sorry. I know I've never let those words mean very much for you. I know I've never let anything mean very much for you. I wasn't anything like I should have been to you. I wasn't the father you needed and I was unfair to you and taught you that trust and promises and hopes and dreams and wonder and curiosity and your own choices don't mean shit and I...God, Greg...I'm so sorry. You were just a kid. I...you were right. I couldn't g-get back at my...at my father and my...brother. So I took it out on you. But you're not Jesus Christ and I shouldn't have made you their scape goat. You didn't have anything to be sorry...for...ever."
For...ever. Forever. Greg thinks then about the first time his mother read him the definition of 'forever' out of the dictionary. He'd been four.
ADVERB:
1. For everlasting time; eternally: No one can live forever.
2. At all times; incessantly: was forever complaining about the job.
NOUN:
A seemingly very long time: It has taken forever to resolve these problems.
His father was speaking again. "The Koreans killed my brother five years before you were born. I was sixteen. My...father...well, the Japanese killed him in Pearl Harbor, when I was six. I still don't know how to feel about that. Maybe I'm jealous...that they took away my chance to get revenge. Maybe I'm thankful because they saved me. I just...I don't know. But none of that matters, really. Not when I've done to you a lot of the things they did to me. I'm no better than them. No fuckin' better at all."
He's starting to stare because his father is crying. He's sitting in the chair next to his bed and he starts to fall forward and Greg can see now that the door is closed, which is good, but then his father halts and tries to pull himself back upright. Greg lays the hand with his IV leads on top of the back of Dad's head and Dad's forehead drops forward to touch the blanket and he shudders and cries silently and Greg can see a wet spot of tears spreading forth and his mind is still a strange blank slate.
Dad lurches back then and Greg blinks and his hand falls to the bed because he didn't expect it and Dad takes a deep breath and leans forward to press the heels of his hands into his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he says again and sits back to rub his reddened eyes again. Greg blinks again and looks at the blurry cabinet that holds the syringes and extra blankets and gowns.
There's the equally blurry form of a DVD case on top of it. Dad follows his line of sight and then says, "Oh, hey, you need your glasses, don't ya?"
His voice is still clogged with mucus, but Greg doesn't say anything or move as Dad gets his glasses from the table next to his bed and places them on his face like Mom had done.
Everything's clear now and his eyes don't hurt so much. Dad gets to his feet and goes to the cabinet, picking up the DVD and showing it to him. It's one of his.
Serenity.
"Wilson got this from your office for me. He had me pick one. It..." he frowns again, swiping a hand back across his eyes. "It shouldn't have taken twenty damned minutes, but I picked one. You've got a hell of a lot of movies. And even more at your apartment. Anyway...I...I thought maybe you wanted to watch one. You can think about that for a while instead of all this. Stop working for once and take a little vacation."
He waves a vague hand around the room. "Blythe said that Lisa told her that you doctors hate bein' patients because you know everything that could happen. She said we're the lucky ones because we have the luxury of ignorance. I...I never thought about it like that. Apparently, bein' a doctor's a lot like bein' a soldier. You don't stop just because the war--or case...is over. Not even for yourself."
Dad is looking at his leg now and sniffing some more. Then he sighs and they both look at the puzzle. Dad laughs a bit. It's solved. The snake is coiled and still.
"Ready to watch this now?"
Greg blinks and nods his head as best as he can. He's not tired...exactly...it's just hard to move a lot. He gets out of breath and his back and neck and head and arms and hands and legs all start hurting. Everything hurts. Dad picks up the remote for the bed and presses the up button. The head of the bed rises so that he can see the television and DVD/VCR that Cuddy sprung for all the private and heart patients to have. When there's enough donations she wants to put them in all the rooms, but there aren't enough yet. He wonders why she gave him one when he's such a pain in the ass.
He watches as Dad puts the movie in and gives him the remote. He starts the movie and they watch in silence until his favorite part comes. Simon is patching River up after her freaked out rampage through the club on Beaumonde.
"They're afraid of me."
"I'm sorry."
"They should be. But I'll show them. Oh, God."
Simon shushes her, but she continues, crying and staring past him. Greg knows she's psychotic. He even knows how that feels. Desperation (and ketamine) can make you a little bit crazy, he's learned. He doesn't realize that he's saying her lines along with her. That he's crying, too.
"It's okay. Hey, it's okay."
"Show me off like a dog. Old men covered in blood. It never touched them, but they're drowning in it. I don't know what I'm saying--I never know what I'm saying."
"In the Maidenhead, you said something. When you were triggered, do you remember?"
Flashes of dead, dessicated bodies that remind Greg of Zeppo after he sliced him open with the microsurgery robot in his head (all in his mind, but the blood felt so real. Just like the bullets that ripped him open.) and he shivers again. He doesn't realize Dad is watching him.
"The captain saw you say something on the feed."
"Miranda."
"Miranda."
"Ask her."
"Who is Miranda?" But River looks down, staring at something in her own head, and doesn't say anything.
"Am--" Simon hesitates, then continues in the same soft voice. "Am I talking to Miranda now?"
And River (and Greg, too) gives him a look that says he should know better.
"No. Not right. But I um...I think when they triggered you...it somehow brought this up. This memory."
And River (and Greg, who's staring at the screen and his father can see the same sort of horror in his eyes even if he doesn't know where it comes from) looks at Simon and says, "It isn't mine."
She starts crying earnestly and Greg sees Zeppo's body being sliced open with the robotic arm and scalpel, feels the blood spray and hit him (even though it didn't happen that way at first--the scene changes a little every time. Everything gets worse every time) and he's crying now, too, but can't tell.
"The memory, it isn't mine. And I shouldn't have to carry it, it isn't mine. Don't make me sleep again."
The pleading is in his voice, too, and his father is staring at him and biting his lip to keep from crying again because he knows that the memories his son refers to are his, not River's. Greg's burden is an overabundance of imagination and he's read enough books and suffered enough to know and imagine what his father has done, what was done to him, and it makes him cry and most times no one sees it and he thinks that no one can see it now. He can't even see it so how can anyone else?
Simon promises that he won't make River sleep, but she cries again and says, "Put a bullet to me," and Greg says it, too, softly, but loud enough for Dad to hear. He laughs like River laughs, and it hurts to hear and they both say, "Bullet in the brain pan, squish," and Dad (who looks at him, scared) and Simon both say, "Don't say that."
And Simon continues, "Not ever. We'll get through this." And Dad has his arms around Greg now and is breathing deep and heavy and Greg can hear his heart beating fast and is so tired but he doesn't want to sleep, like River doesn't, because Moriarty comes back and shoots him again and every time someone else is in the room or he's all alone and every time he dies.
He's going to die anyway. He doesn't know why anyone did anything then. He certainly doesn't know why anyone does anything now.
"Things are going to get much, much worse," River says, and Greg nods because it's true. John backs away from him and calls a nurse.
...Sleep...Just sleep..The hardest part is letting go of your dreams...
...TBC...
part one, part two, part three
x-posted to house_cuddy, housefic, and my journal