(no subject)
Title:Rush Down Darkness (2/3)
Genre: House MD/World War Z crossover
Pairing: House/Wilson
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the situation. I'm just a big dork.
Summary: In situations like this, the needs of the community are more important than the needs of the individual.
A/N: Sorry this is so late. Real life stress, etc., etc.
Part 1
Montpelier, Vermont.
When I come in, Dr. House is in the kitchen, making a sandwich. He sits at the kitchen counter and talks to me between bites.
What nobody talks about is how boring survival is. The first few weeks are busy busy busy: everyone is running around, bricking up windows, collecting weapons and food, treating the wounded. Then everything slows down, and time starts crawling. For most of us, survival was just a lot of sitting around, waiting for the worst to happen. For the generators to break, or the food to run out, or the zombies to get inside.
And inevitably, that boredom leads to trouble. Hell, I’d say boredom was the leading cause of death for most of the people that died in Princeton, that first year. Though if they’d gotten death certificates, they would have said things like suicide, or blunt head trauma.
-Would you care to explain that second one a little?
Not really. What’s there to explain? You take a random bunch of people from different backgrounds, from blue blood Young Republicans to old men who marched against Vietnam to the Latina women who vacuumed both of their floors for a living, all of them suffering PTSD, and stick them indefinitely in one building together, and give them nothing to do besides survive. There were about six hundred people occupying various parts of the university that first year. There was just under four-seventy the next. A few people left or were forcibly expelled, but most of that number were casualties. In my professional medical opinion, boredom accounted for half of those deaths. Stupidity took care of the rest.
-What was it like in Grads that first year?
Dozens of fistfights, more than a few rapes, some stabbings. There were more doctors in Grads, though, so fewer people dying of injuries. Still, there was only so much we could do.
Also, there were the ADS* cases and suicides. We had a higher number of those in Grads than in the other buildings. An anomaly. Someone should do a study.
-About that…
You want to know if I ever tried it again?
-If you’re comfortable talking about it-
[He waves off my comment, then finishes off the last of his sandwich before he speaks again.]
I never made him any promises. He never tried to force one from me. He knew what our odds were, especially that first year.
-What were they?
Dismal. Like the rest of the world. Especially that first six months, before Radio Free Earth came on air, and all we heard were a few spotty reports from over the Rockies, and then a whole lot of other people like us. The stranded. You knew that any day, your defenses might fail, or there’d be a swarm that would just overwhelm them. And if the ghouls didn’t get you, your food supplies might run out, or there could be a fire, or you could cut yourself and get septicemia. You could hear it happening to other people, as they screamed it out over the airwaves.
And then there was the living situation. We didn’t leave that building for four and a half months. Four and a half months of the same faces, every day. The same petty bullshit, the same conversations, the same gossip. Same stale air, unless you wanted to go out into the courtyards, which were always crowded.
Add chronic pain and a dwindling supply of drugs to all of that…
[He laughs.]
I heard there was a betting pool on when I’d go, and how many people I’d take with me. Hey, people had to find some way of amusing themselves.
So Wilson didn’t try and get a promise from me. That made it easier, knowing I could check out whenever I wanted, guilt-free. For the most part. Instead, he just… watched me. Carefully, that whole first year. He was the busiest person in Grads. It was him and a few other people, of which I was definitely not part, who were trying to take care of everyone, all the time, all these stupid assholes who’d been spoon-fed their whole lives.
He saw me everyday, long enough to make sure I was eating, and to kick back for a couple of minutes and trade a few dirty jokes and some of the more mundane gossip. He’d leave me a book, or a magazine from before the war, or some chocolate he’d traded somebody for. He… took care of me. Like he’d always done. I tried to do the same for him, because nobody can overwork themselves like James Wilson, but he had more practice.
[He pauses, and then smiles.]
We’d been there for about a month when he brought me to this room in the basement. He made it into this big surprise, made me cover my eyes before he'd open the door.
Turns out, it was a music room. Two pianos in it, along with a ton of other instruments, with enough soundproofing on the walls to make sure nobody in the next room over would hear, never mind the dead outside.
Thank fuck for that. That room is what got me through the autumn. And the rest of our time there.
-How else did people get through the months?
There were a lot of card games. Some of the doctors started taking on medical students as apprentices, sort of. Others taught classes. Wilson bribed me into giving piano lessons to anyone who wanted them and wasn’t a complete idiot.
[He shrugs.]
Everyone got claustrophobic. Winter couldn’t have come soon enough. It was the light at the end of a zombie-infested tunnel.
Winter meant you could go outside. You could move. You could breathe again. Suddenly, people who’d been unable to stand the sight of each other would team up and have snowball fights. Wilson and I had an all-out war. I won, by the way. Make sure to include that in your interview: Dr. House won the epic snowball battle, despite persistent rumors to the contrary.
Of course, we had hypothermia and frostbite to deal with, and the flu and strep throat and pneumonia and people with lung conditions from all the shit in the air, and all kinds of other dumb shit besides. Not to mention how fucking cold it was all the time until we got enough fuel for the generators. But still, it was like a party instead of a battle for the first time in months, especially those first few weeks after the snowfall.
Hell, you could smash in the skulls of all the frozen zombies that had set up camp outside the buildings. Great stress relief, let me tell you. Let go of some pent up rage.
And we could replenish the supplies. I made damn sure I had enough whiskey to get me through the next year.
-Is it true that you had the idea of spreading out all the skilled students and workers?
[He nods.]
It was an obvious idea, but hey, flattery gets you everywhere.
Before, everyone was clustered. There were a lot of doctors and med students in Grads, but no engineers. Plenty of environmental studies nerds in Chancellor Green, but nobody who knew how to operate a ham radio. All the campus security and ROTC kids, who were pretty much the only ones who’d ever used guns, were on opposite ends of the campus, with all the privileged brats and white-collar professionals in between.
A lot of people moved out of the building, and a lot of new people moved in. Wilson stayed, so I did too. He became the unofficial head of Grads. Wilson was the good guy, organized everything in that building and still had time to treat your boo-boos. I became the unofficial boogeyman, which suited me fine. Kind of like Phantom of the Opera, only I couldn’t find a cool mask. Or maybe Batman…
-Can you tell me more about your role in the Grads building, Dr. House?
[He glares at me.]
You know it’s all a matter of public record now, right? I gave my statements to those Civilian Inquiry morons** and they cleared me of all charges. Eventually.
-I’ve read the records, and your statements. I’d like to hear what you have to say about it now, when you’re not facing jail time or the suspension of your license.
Are you insinuating I lied under oath? I hear they still practice flogging with those charged with slander, you know.
-No they don’t. And I’m not insinuating anything, only that I’d like to hear what you have to say about your role in the community of the Grads building.
[He continues to glare for a moment, then, surprisingly, breaks out in a smile.]
You’re good. I’ll give you that. I hear you interviewed the former defense secretary, and actually got him to tell you to fuck off.*** Not everyone gets told off by former White House staff. Good one.
-Actually-
I did the dirty work. That’s what you want to know about, right? Not the “put your nose to the ax grinder” dirty work, I didn’t shovel shit or wash dishes. My leg excused me from a lot of grunt labor. I did the kind of dirty work that nobody really wants to hear about until they need somebody to blame. But still, it needed to be done, and I was the logical choice. I’m an amoral, unrepentant bastard with an ability to do the kind of simple math that makes everyone uncomfortable. That’s a quote, by the way. I’m not the first one to say it.****
Ask any battlefield surgeon. Sometimes, to save a life you have to take off a limb. It's callous, it's cruel. Problem is, it was necessary.
The first one was a serial rapist. I don't know if he'd been one before the war, or if it was the shock and trauma manifesting as sexual predation. At the time, I didn't give a fuck. All I knew is that he'd raped three women in the building and threatened to kill them if they told anyone. I found out about it when one of his victims asked me to perform an abortion on her. And you have to realize how desperate she must have been to come to me.
That saying, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going?" That's the biggest load of horseshit. A few people rise to the occasion, a lot more hide beneath their beds, and then a few of them totally lose it. That's pretty much the anthem of the whole war, isn't it?
-Dr. Wilson, did he approve of your actions?
[Instead of answering, he takes up his cane and walks out the backdoor. I follow him; he’s lit a cigarette and smokes it while looking out over the backyard. The sun is setting over the mountains.]
People think it was like a mafia movie, or like I was some kind of hired gun, the KGB of Grads. They imagine Wilson and I sitting on a bench in the courtyard, I don’t know, feeding ducks and speaking in some kind of cryptic code. [He affects a Russian accent.] “I hear you’re having trouble with so-and-so on the third floor. You want I should take care of him?”
It’s a fucking joke. For one thing, we’d already eaten any kind of bird that was still stupid enough to be caught in a net, and the courtyards were the most crowded places in the buildings. Not a good place to conspire to kill someone.
And for another, we never talked about it, not like that. I didn’t take orders from him, or anybody else running things. I wasn't a hired hitman. Wilson and the rest of the people in charge kept things running. I stepped in when something broke down.
[He smokes for a minute, visibly trying to calm himself.]
I wouldn't have told him. I didn't want him to know. He had enough crap on his mind, and I wasn't proud of what I'd done. Of course, he figured it out anyway.
He didn't condone it at first. Actually, that’s a massive understatement. When he put the pieces together, he nearly hit me. He didn’t talk to me for close to a week. And it was all over a fucking rapist, though I was the only one who ever called him that. He'd assaulted three women, and they were only the ones that I knew about. Who knows how many others there were?
Simple math, like I’d said before. You fuck over one person to keep the rest of them safe. But it's hard to tell that to someone with a Superman complex.
Wilson understood, eventually. “The needs of the community are more important than the needs of the individual.” His own words, coming back to bite him in the ass. When he’d said it, it had been excuse for him running himself almost to exhaustion. When I said it, it was to explain why I’d just forced a serial rapist to leave the campus at gunpoint at three in the morning. It was as good as a death sentence, but still better than that asshole deserved.
-There were others?
[He nods.]
-How many over the years?
[He takes a drag of his cigarette, lets the smoke out slowly.]
Not many. More than anyone wanted there to be, though.
Wilson hated it, but he was smart. He knew what the stakes were. And I didn’t go off half-cocked. I wasn’t an idiot about it, I wasn’t some blood-crazed killer all fucked up from drugs and psychological trauma, and he knew that. He watched me. If he’d seen the slightest sign that I was about to become a gun-toting vigilante… he would have stopped me.
-Did you ever talk about it?
No. Not like that. There was one time… This is off record. Get that? I see this in print and I sue your ass into the ground. Not for me, but for him.
-Dr. Wilson was cleared as well-
Off. The fucking. Record. Got it?
-Yes, all right.
[He takes a deep breath.]
I had nightmares. Well, shit, so did everyone, but mine weren’t just about zombies. They were about… the things I did. In Grads. They didn’t all go quietly as the first. And there were a couple of times when it got bad. Messy.
Wilson and I shared a room. Shit, since this is off the record, I might as well tell you that sometimes we shared a bed, too. If you crack a joke, I’ll break your jaw.
-I wasn’t. And I’m not going to out you.
I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, it has fuck-all to do with anything-
-Please continue. If you're willing, I’d like to hear it.
All right. I don’t know if Batman ever got nightmares, but I had some hellish ones. And one time, this was the second year in… or maybe the third. I don’t know anymore. Anyway, I must have woken him. And he shook me awake, and… [He shifts, uncomfortable.] Waking up was always bad. I’d get the shakes. He held me through them that night, until I finally stopped. Then he told me he was sorry. About what I had to do. About the responsibility I’d taken up. He said he trusted me. More than anyone in that building, he trusted me.
[He takes a final drag from the cigarette, then drops it into an empty mug on the porch.]
That’s enough. You should leave.
-Actually, I had a few more questions-
Come back tomorrow. Actually, come back next week. Let an old man get his beauty rest.
*ADS: Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome. Alternately known as Apocalyptic Despair Syndrome.
**Post-War Civilian Inquiry Court: a special national court convened after the war, in order to investigate claims of treason, murder, conspiracy, and other felonious charges brought against civilians in the Blue Zones.
*** See interview with Grover Carlson, former defense secretary of the pre-war government. His actual words were, “Grow up.”
****This is unverified.
Part 3
Genre: House MD/World War Z crossover
Pairing: House/Wilson
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the situation. I'm just a big dork.
Summary: In situations like this, the needs of the community are more important than the needs of the individual.
A/N: Sorry this is so late. Real life stress, etc., etc.
Part 1
Montpelier, Vermont.
When I come in, Dr. House is in the kitchen, making a sandwich. He sits at the kitchen counter and talks to me between bites.
What nobody talks about is how boring survival is. The first few weeks are busy busy busy: everyone is running around, bricking up windows, collecting weapons and food, treating the wounded. Then everything slows down, and time starts crawling. For most of us, survival was just a lot of sitting around, waiting for the worst to happen. For the generators to break, or the food to run out, or the zombies to get inside.
And inevitably, that boredom leads to trouble. Hell, I’d say boredom was the leading cause of death for most of the people that died in Princeton, that first year. Though if they’d gotten death certificates, they would have said things like suicide, or blunt head trauma.
-Would you care to explain that second one a little?
Not really. What’s there to explain? You take a random bunch of people from different backgrounds, from blue blood Young Republicans to old men who marched against Vietnam to the Latina women who vacuumed both of their floors for a living, all of them suffering PTSD, and stick them indefinitely in one building together, and give them nothing to do besides survive. There were about six hundred people occupying various parts of the university that first year. There was just under four-seventy the next. A few people left or were forcibly expelled, but most of that number were casualties. In my professional medical opinion, boredom accounted for half of those deaths. Stupidity took care of the rest.
-What was it like in Grads that first year?
Dozens of fistfights, more than a few rapes, some stabbings. There were more doctors in Grads, though, so fewer people dying of injuries. Still, there was only so much we could do.
Also, there were the ADS* cases and suicides. We had a higher number of those in Grads than in the other buildings. An anomaly. Someone should do a study.
-About that…
You want to know if I ever tried it again?
-If you’re comfortable talking about it-
[He waves off my comment, then finishes off the last of his sandwich before he speaks again.]
I never made him any promises. He never tried to force one from me. He knew what our odds were, especially that first year.
-What were they?
Dismal. Like the rest of the world. Especially that first six months, before Radio Free Earth came on air, and all we heard were a few spotty reports from over the Rockies, and then a whole lot of other people like us. The stranded. You knew that any day, your defenses might fail, or there’d be a swarm that would just overwhelm them. And if the ghouls didn’t get you, your food supplies might run out, or there could be a fire, or you could cut yourself and get septicemia. You could hear it happening to other people, as they screamed it out over the airwaves.
And then there was the living situation. We didn’t leave that building for four and a half months. Four and a half months of the same faces, every day. The same petty bullshit, the same conversations, the same gossip. Same stale air, unless you wanted to go out into the courtyards, which were always crowded.
Add chronic pain and a dwindling supply of drugs to all of that…
[He laughs.]
I heard there was a betting pool on when I’d go, and how many people I’d take with me. Hey, people had to find some way of amusing themselves.
So Wilson didn’t try and get a promise from me. That made it easier, knowing I could check out whenever I wanted, guilt-free. For the most part. Instead, he just… watched me. Carefully, that whole first year. He was the busiest person in Grads. It was him and a few other people, of which I was definitely not part, who were trying to take care of everyone, all the time, all these stupid assholes who’d been spoon-fed their whole lives.
He saw me everyday, long enough to make sure I was eating, and to kick back for a couple of minutes and trade a few dirty jokes and some of the more mundane gossip. He’d leave me a book, or a magazine from before the war, or some chocolate he’d traded somebody for. He… took care of me. Like he’d always done. I tried to do the same for him, because nobody can overwork themselves like James Wilson, but he had more practice.
[He pauses, and then smiles.]
We’d been there for about a month when he brought me to this room in the basement. He made it into this big surprise, made me cover my eyes before he'd open the door.
Turns out, it was a music room. Two pianos in it, along with a ton of other instruments, with enough soundproofing on the walls to make sure nobody in the next room over would hear, never mind the dead outside.
Thank fuck for that. That room is what got me through the autumn. And the rest of our time there.
-How else did people get through the months?
There were a lot of card games. Some of the doctors started taking on medical students as apprentices, sort of. Others taught classes. Wilson bribed me into giving piano lessons to anyone who wanted them and wasn’t a complete idiot.
[He shrugs.]
Everyone got claustrophobic. Winter couldn’t have come soon enough. It was the light at the end of a zombie-infested tunnel.
Winter meant you could go outside. You could move. You could breathe again. Suddenly, people who’d been unable to stand the sight of each other would team up and have snowball fights. Wilson and I had an all-out war. I won, by the way. Make sure to include that in your interview: Dr. House won the epic snowball battle, despite persistent rumors to the contrary.
Of course, we had hypothermia and frostbite to deal with, and the flu and strep throat and pneumonia and people with lung conditions from all the shit in the air, and all kinds of other dumb shit besides. Not to mention how fucking cold it was all the time until we got enough fuel for the generators. But still, it was like a party instead of a battle for the first time in months, especially those first few weeks after the snowfall.
Hell, you could smash in the skulls of all the frozen zombies that had set up camp outside the buildings. Great stress relief, let me tell you. Let go of some pent up rage.
And we could replenish the supplies. I made damn sure I had enough whiskey to get me through the next year.
-Is it true that you had the idea of spreading out all the skilled students and workers?
[He nods.]
It was an obvious idea, but hey, flattery gets you everywhere.
Before, everyone was clustered. There were a lot of doctors and med students in Grads, but no engineers. Plenty of environmental studies nerds in Chancellor Green, but nobody who knew how to operate a ham radio. All the campus security and ROTC kids, who were pretty much the only ones who’d ever used guns, were on opposite ends of the campus, with all the privileged brats and white-collar professionals in between.
A lot of people moved out of the building, and a lot of new people moved in. Wilson stayed, so I did too. He became the unofficial head of Grads. Wilson was the good guy, organized everything in that building and still had time to treat your boo-boos. I became the unofficial boogeyman, which suited me fine. Kind of like Phantom of the Opera, only I couldn’t find a cool mask. Or maybe Batman…
-Can you tell me more about your role in the Grads building, Dr. House?
[He glares at me.]
You know it’s all a matter of public record now, right? I gave my statements to those Civilian Inquiry morons** and they cleared me of all charges. Eventually.
-I’ve read the records, and your statements. I’d like to hear what you have to say about it now, when you’re not facing jail time or the suspension of your license.
Are you insinuating I lied under oath? I hear they still practice flogging with those charged with slander, you know.
-No they don’t. And I’m not insinuating anything, only that I’d like to hear what you have to say about your role in the community of the Grads building.
[He continues to glare for a moment, then, surprisingly, breaks out in a smile.]
You’re good. I’ll give you that. I hear you interviewed the former defense secretary, and actually got him to tell you to fuck off.*** Not everyone gets told off by former White House staff. Good one.
-Actually-
I did the dirty work. That’s what you want to know about, right? Not the “put your nose to the ax grinder” dirty work, I didn’t shovel shit or wash dishes. My leg excused me from a lot of grunt labor. I did the kind of dirty work that nobody really wants to hear about until they need somebody to blame. But still, it needed to be done, and I was the logical choice. I’m an amoral, unrepentant bastard with an ability to do the kind of simple math that makes everyone uncomfortable. That’s a quote, by the way. I’m not the first one to say it.****
Ask any battlefield surgeon. Sometimes, to save a life you have to take off a limb. It's callous, it's cruel. Problem is, it was necessary.
The first one was a serial rapist. I don't know if he'd been one before the war, or if it was the shock and trauma manifesting as sexual predation. At the time, I didn't give a fuck. All I knew is that he'd raped three women in the building and threatened to kill them if they told anyone. I found out about it when one of his victims asked me to perform an abortion on her. And you have to realize how desperate she must have been to come to me.
That saying, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going?" That's the biggest load of horseshit. A few people rise to the occasion, a lot more hide beneath their beds, and then a few of them totally lose it. That's pretty much the anthem of the whole war, isn't it?
-Dr. Wilson, did he approve of your actions?
[Instead of answering, he takes up his cane and walks out the backdoor. I follow him; he’s lit a cigarette and smokes it while looking out over the backyard. The sun is setting over the mountains.]
People think it was like a mafia movie, or like I was some kind of hired gun, the KGB of Grads. They imagine Wilson and I sitting on a bench in the courtyard, I don’t know, feeding ducks and speaking in some kind of cryptic code. [He affects a Russian accent.] “I hear you’re having trouble with so-and-so on the third floor. You want I should take care of him?”
It’s a fucking joke. For one thing, we’d already eaten any kind of bird that was still stupid enough to be caught in a net, and the courtyards were the most crowded places in the buildings. Not a good place to conspire to kill someone.
And for another, we never talked about it, not like that. I didn’t take orders from him, or anybody else running things. I wasn't a hired hitman. Wilson and the rest of the people in charge kept things running. I stepped in when something broke down.
[He smokes for a minute, visibly trying to calm himself.]
I wouldn't have told him. I didn't want him to know. He had enough crap on his mind, and I wasn't proud of what I'd done. Of course, he figured it out anyway.
He didn't condone it at first. Actually, that’s a massive understatement. When he put the pieces together, he nearly hit me. He didn’t talk to me for close to a week. And it was all over a fucking rapist, though I was the only one who ever called him that. He'd assaulted three women, and they were only the ones that I knew about. Who knows how many others there were?
Simple math, like I’d said before. You fuck over one person to keep the rest of them safe. But it's hard to tell that to someone with a Superman complex.
Wilson understood, eventually. “The needs of the community are more important than the needs of the individual.” His own words, coming back to bite him in the ass. When he’d said it, it had been excuse for him running himself almost to exhaustion. When I said it, it was to explain why I’d just forced a serial rapist to leave the campus at gunpoint at three in the morning. It was as good as a death sentence, but still better than that asshole deserved.
-There were others?
[He nods.]
-How many over the years?
[He takes a drag of his cigarette, lets the smoke out slowly.]
Not many. More than anyone wanted there to be, though.
Wilson hated it, but he was smart. He knew what the stakes were. And I didn’t go off half-cocked. I wasn’t an idiot about it, I wasn’t some blood-crazed killer all fucked up from drugs and psychological trauma, and he knew that. He watched me. If he’d seen the slightest sign that I was about to become a gun-toting vigilante… he would have stopped me.
-Did you ever talk about it?
No. Not like that. There was one time… This is off record. Get that? I see this in print and I sue your ass into the ground. Not for me, but for him.
-Dr. Wilson was cleared as well-
Off. The fucking. Record. Got it?
-Yes, all right.
[He takes a deep breath.]
I had nightmares. Well, shit, so did everyone, but mine weren’t just about zombies. They were about… the things I did. In Grads. They didn’t all go quietly as the first. And there were a couple of times when it got bad. Messy.
Wilson and I shared a room. Shit, since this is off the record, I might as well tell you that sometimes we shared a bed, too. If you crack a joke, I’ll break your jaw.
-I wasn’t. And I’m not going to out you.
I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, it has fuck-all to do with anything-
-Please continue. If you're willing, I’d like to hear it.
All right. I don’t know if Batman ever got nightmares, but I had some hellish ones. And one time, this was the second year in… or maybe the third. I don’t know anymore. Anyway, I must have woken him. And he shook me awake, and… [He shifts, uncomfortable.] Waking up was always bad. I’d get the shakes. He held me through them that night, until I finally stopped. Then he told me he was sorry. About what I had to do. About the responsibility I’d taken up. He said he trusted me. More than anyone in that building, he trusted me.
[He takes a final drag from the cigarette, then drops it into an empty mug on the porch.]
That’s enough. You should leave.
-Actually, I had a few more questions-
Come back tomorrow. Actually, come back next week. Let an old man get his beauty rest.
*ADS: Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome. Alternately known as Apocalyptic Despair Syndrome.
**Post-War Civilian Inquiry Court: a special national court convened after the war, in order to investigate claims of treason, murder, conspiracy, and other felonious charges brought against civilians in the Blue Zones.
*** See interview with Grover Carlson, former defense secretary of the pre-war government. His actual words were, “Grow up.”
****This is unverified.
Part 3