I'm just a little unwell [Buffy & House] Crazy House FTW

[whattingawhat]

They kept her tied down most of the time but today she'd been good. She'd taken her medicine, she hadn't attacked any of the orderlies and she'd talked to the shrink. As a result, they'd taken her restraints off and let her have a little bit of freedom. She stayed in her room anyway. It hurt when she tried to interact with everyone else. It

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[whattingawhat]

Buffy didn't know how long she'd been here. She'd spent the first several weeks drugged within an inch of her life. Every time they took her off the drugs, she broke someone--arms, legs, collarbones, concussion--you name it she'd caused it in the orderlies. It took them several more weeks after she'd stopped fighting for anyone to come around her and even now, they drew straws to decide who would be her orderly for the day.

"Already got a shot," she said without looking up. "It's not night yet." The only reason she knew it wasn't night was because of the high, small window with bars above the bed. It had been months before they'd allowed her a window at all.

They gave her a shot to make her sleep and a shot to make sure she didn't flip out on them. Twice a day. Every day because pills took too long and she had to take so many she'd end up gagging on them.

She didn't stop to consider or look up to see if it was someone besides a doctor. No one else came to see her. They were scared of her. Even the residents here had heard about the girl that goes crazy and hurts everyone.

[huge_ego_sry]

A shot? That turned House's anger to curiosity - well, it was an angry curiosity. He rushed forward (as best as he could) and grabbed her by the shoulders, very aware that she might right hook him. Maybe hoping for it.

"Buffy. It's me, it's Greg. I'm not here to give you any shots, I'm here to get you the hell out!" He was yelling, but he didn't really care who heard. He needed her to hear.

[whattingawhat]

Buffy tensed up when he grabbed her by the shoulders and then flinched at the sheer volume of his voice. It took her a moment to 'recognize' him.

"You're not real," she told him. "My therapist said so. Y-you're a product of my daddy issues, my abandonment issues, my authority issues and my mortality issues. I remember you...so you can't be real."

Although he felt awfully real and he sounded awfully real. Sorry no incoming punch just yet, House. She was on enough thorazine to kill a horse but there was a little fight left there. Enough fight that she looked confused, gnawing at her bottom lip as she reached out to run her fingertips across the scruff on his jaw.

[huge_ego_sry]

House rolled his eyes at first. When her fingers touched his chin, he smiled but there was no joy in his eyes. She really believed that he was a figment of her imagination.

Well, he's had a little experience with the real thing. "If I'm not real, then that means you made me up. If you made me up, my only source of information comes from your brain. Knowing that, if I am a hallucination, how am I able to pronounce 'erythropoietin'? How about 'urolithiasis'?"

It was pretty mean and kind of rude, just up House's alley.

[whattingawhat]

If it weren't so very in line with her memory of Greg, she might have been angry or offended or hurt. It was though and that made a tiny bit of hope flutter in the very pit of her stomach.

"I can pronounce them. It's just more fun to eerie protein and your rosary," she said a tiny bit defensively. She furrowed her brow, watching him carefully. "Real Greg wouldn't come get me. He'd think I left him and be pissed and all walls up."

It was the most she'd talked in weeks.

[huge_ego_sry]

He smiled wider, some satisfaction entering his mood. "Your version would. A hallucination can't surprise you." House leaned forward slowly and pressed a kiss to Buffy's forehead.

"A real person, however. They can change, even just a little."

[whattingawhat]

The kiss to her forehead surprised her but it also swayed her to the side of him being real. She closed her eyes a little and leaned into him.

"Okay," she took a deep breath and tried to think an escape plan out. She didn't know if House had a plan or not but she was slipping into General Buffy mode. Give the girl a little hope and she'll take over the world.

"They're going to come give me a shot in a few hours because this one will start wearing off. If we break out at night, there are fewer orderlies and guards. They're scared of me. I've broken something on nearly every one of them."

She looked up at House, some of those issues surfacing again that the shrink drilled into his head. "If you back out after I start fighting them they'll lock me in a cell without a window and chain me to the bed."

[huge_ego_sry]

House just smirked. "Kinky," he murmured and backed off to give her room to get up as well.

At the mention of fighting, he furrowed his brow. House knew Buffy's abilities but he wasn't completely convinced that she'd be able to punch them both out of this place on her own. "Very Terminator. But what happens when they bring out the cattle prods?"

[whattingawhat]

Buffy got up slowly, her hand still against the wall, head bowed. She traced patterns on the wall that might have been battle plans or just words over and over again. Her words contradicted her posture. If anyone were to walk by they'd assume crazy!Cripple was just talking to crazy!anger management girl. That wasn't her intention. She merely wasn't cure how to bridge the gap yet.

"Uhm...I can take one hit but two..." she looked up to the barred window. "I don't think you'll fit even if I could pull the bars out without someone noticing."

She looked over her shoulder at House a second before returning to her invisible wall art. "Better plan?"

Because he wasn't the crazy one here. At least in theory.

[huge_ego_sry]

House pursed his lips in thought. He had kind of been joking about the shocking, but at the same time in a place like this it might not be such a fairy tale. They needed something more concrete, something that would assure her escape.

"Better plan. I distract, you escape. I walk out later." He looked up at the window she'd reference before and then back at her. "Can you really rip off the bars?"

[whattingawhat]

Right because he wasn't here against his will. Buffy had kind of missed that part with the whole being crazy deal. She stared at him a moment, tears welling up and lower lip trembling. She didn't cry but only because she was holding it back.

"You really did come looking for me." When no one else in her memory had. Of course she wasn't entirely certain they were all real. Only that he was. She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She looked up at the bars and nodded.

"I think so. Once all of this crap metabolizes through my system." And it would within a few hours. "It will be loud though."

[huge_ego_sry]

House watched her for a moment, the sarcasm and impatience falling from his face. He remembered that feeling, realizing that certain things were and were not real.

She was so unsure; so not Buffy. It made him angry again that she had been reduced to this but he reached forward and smoothed back some of her hair gently, and nodded. "Of course. Once I heard..." he trailed off before going on to how he heard and the resulting countless fights over the phone to Cleveland about it.

"It's not important. Trust me. It'll take awhile for me to sufficiently stir up enough distraction, but you'll be free and clear once it starts." He then detailed the car parked at a far parking lot with the keys in it for her. Every institution he visited, he put a rental car out there just in case.

[whattingawhat]

His explanation made her feel better and frightened her at the same time. Either it was all true and everyone in her head was real or she was making up another world to try and escape the real one. Apparently, according to the shrink, she had issues with reality and she was excellent at escapism.

She nodded, following along with his plan. "Okay...what about you? Do I pick you up somewhere after or...are you going to call a cab? I don't have my bag or credit cards or anything to get a room."

Once she was out she was on her own or she was stuck returning to a place that they hadn't looked for her because she was causing too much 'bad press'.

[huge_ego_sry]

He smiled then, and shook his head. "There's a map in there. Drive to Hertz instead of Enterprise, where they'll probably be waiting for you once they get your plates. I'll meet up with you there after they happily let me check myself out, shouldn't be more than an hour." This was one instance where the idiocy of people was something House was grateful for.

"After that you can go wherever you want. You don't need morons to tell you what to do." And by that he not only meant the institution but Buffy's "team" or "friends" as well. He had more than a little hope that she'd want to come back to Princeton with him.

[whattingawhat]

Buffy nodded in response. For the first time in months it seemed like she was going to be able to get out of here. His plan made sense and he was going to meet up with her. There was still that fear that this was just another life she'd made up in her head but the only way she was going to know was if she took that chance. She ducked her head, tugging at her hair and looked up at House. She gnawed on her bottom lip, not certain she should say the words on the tip of her tongue. What if she'd gotten her memories mixed up and this was nothing more than a man being nice to her but it didn't feel like that. It felt like more.

"This is because I'm really good in bed, isn't it?"

The expression she gave him after that was wary, as if she half expected to be chastised or have him gasp in horror. It sounded like memory her or real her or...which ever version of her wasn't locked up in this place and if everything lined out right, it sounded like something she'd tell him.

"And if those are my daddy issues coming out and we really-if that part isn't-I should never, ever talk."

Well that certainly sounded like her.

[huge_ego_sry]

House chuckled low, and a crooked grin spread across his face. "Well, why the hell else would I put up with you?"

He determined that she must have been starting to feel more herself after that comment, though the second, more unsure statement annoyed him. Not that Buffy herself annoyed him; but her insecurity was not her own, it was instilled and it was not going to go away very easily. Rather than let himself get upset, however, he just continued on being House. "By the way, daddy issues are also why I put up with you. They're hot."