Chapter Text
It's dark when House wakes up. It's both unsettling and restful, then House remembers everything and his heart suffers in silence.
The shadows gambol together on the walls of the room, the different sounds don't harmonize to make a soft song, badly harmonized and realized but which gives House a feeling of gratitude, he tries to make himself believe that he'll be all right, he tries to fool his soul into believing that he's no longer suffering, or at least that he's suffering less, the same soul that was bathed in suffering from an early age.
Suddenly, the man remembers that his leg is strong enough to make an effort, strong enough to walk. House gets out of bed, he's cold, he sees his damaged leg, his hair is shrivelling, he wants to go back to the warmth of his hospital bed, but he decides to carry on, and as soon as he puts his bare foot on the floor, he regrets his decision.
The night is so silent that he can hear himself sighing. In a second he's almost fallen over, luckily he takes part of his bedside table in his hand, he's made some noise, he's still crouched down when he looks out into the corridor, the noise has died down, and nobody's there yet.
When he comes out of his room, he can make the same observation: nothing, the world is empty, the world is no more, he's like a ghost creeping through the darkness of the night, never to see the light of day again.
House decides not to take his cane, so as not to make a noise, and he clings to everything he can find as he runs, chairs, desks, benches, a few door handles. He doesn't know where he's going, honestly he's lost, he's never really paid much attention to his workplace but now he realizes how much he's going round in circles, how much everything looks the same, how much it could all be a trap.
He's tired. Of walking, of going in circles, of moving on, of carrying on, of living... And yes, even in the deepest death one is tired of surviving...
House sits on a bench, groaning in pain as he holds his leg, his head against the wall, his eyes raised to the earth-toned ceiling. When he lowers his head, he sees the brown door a few meters away. The little "Dr James Wilson" sign he's read so many times almost stares back at him.
The man steps forward and miraculously the damn door opens.
The office is frozen, unchanged from what he'd seen last time. The same knick-knacks, the same papers, the same pens out, the same folds on the sofa, it wouldn't even surprise him to see Wilson sitting at his desk.
When House steps forward he spots a file that intrigues him, it's pure white as if it were a secretary's file from God's closest domain.
He's carried away by what he sees.
Wilson's photo scares him. The words "cause of death" in bold make him tremble yet he continues reading as if nothing had happened. His heart breaks, his soul is destroyed, he annihilates himself again. It hurt, so much it just felt like burning every second. Yet he always came back, for Wilson. It hurt, but he was still there clinging to a tiny thing that didn't make him crumble. Come to think of it, it was no different from before.
It was all back, the pain, the tears, the newness of feeling that took every second of his life that was now his death. The tears were flowing, his face was wet and he could have drowned in them. His heart was tearing itself apart, crying out, screaming out the injustice, the suffering, everything came back, even fresher, even more horrible, even more painful, even more and it would never stop.
Yet House kept reading.
"Car accident as a result of which the patient who was a passenger at the time lost his life, the driver was his friend, Dr. Gregory House."
He'd killed James Wilson.