Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cameron’s hands are slick with her blood.

It coats her gloves, her wrists, splashes her collar, hot and dark and endless. The trauma bay is a war zone, gauze shredded, clamps tossed aside, suction tubes choking on crimson foam. The monitors scream overhead, alarm after alarm, a maddening, unrelenting shriek that tells them what they already know.

“She’s coding again!” a nurse yells.
“BP’s gone!”
“Another amp of epi—now! Get OB back in here!” Cameron shouts, her voice nearly cracking.

A tremor runs through her arms as she resumes compressions, each push shaking the gurney. Violet’s abdomen is grotesquely distended, blood pooling beneath her. She is also bleeding profusely from the head. The fetal monitor reads only static. The OB, white-faced and stunned, stands beside the trauma surgeon, murmuring futile instructions as if hoping the baby might still fight for life.

“Massive transfusion protocol, keep the O-neg running!”

“Vitals?” Cameron barks.

“Nothing. No carotid. No femoral. Nothing.”

“Dammnit, charge the paddles again.”

The defibrillator shrieks to life.

Cameron grabs them, her face set, voice steel.
“Clear.”

The jolt rocks Violet’s body. A pitiful spasm.
They wait.

Flatline.

The OB finally speaks, voice quiet. “No fetal heart tones. Not viable.”

Cameron doesn’t look at her. “One more round.”

“Dr. Cameron—” the attending starts.

“She’s thirty. And thirty-five weeks pregnant. I’m not calling time on that.”

They go again. Compressions. Meds. Another round of current.

The trauma surgeon shifts awkwardly, knowing it’s futile, but no one dares stop her.

Violet’s skin is gray now. Her lips tinged blue. Her eyes are barely shut, just enough to look like she might wake at any moment.

Cameron slows. Her arms are aching. Her throat burns. She looks down at Violet’s chest, sinking deeper with every compression, and knows.
The body beneath her hands is no longer someone they can save.

The air changes.

“Call time,” the attending says gently, glancing at the clock.

Cameron doesn’t answer. She just leans over and presses her forehead against Violet’s collarbone, her voice a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Silence.

“Time of death: 10:41 a.m.”

_______________________________

The trauma bay transforms instantly.

The urgency dissolves into motionless ritual.

Someone pulls the curtain around the bed. Another switches off the monitor. The flatline disappears, replaced by stillness.

A nurse gently covers the infant’s body, delivered instantaneously post death, with a towel. So small. So quiet. The baby never had a chance. Just five pounds of grief in a blanket.

Cameron’s hands hover over Violet’s chest. Her jaw trembles. She looks like she’s been cracked down the middle.

“She said she wasn’t feeling well,” she whispers to the void. “She said she felt off.”

She picks up a cloth to clean Violet’s bloodied face, her movements slow, reverent.

“She came here,” she says. “I let her go. I should have tried harder”, she said, in particular to no one.

She wipes gently beneath Violet’s chin. Her hands are shaking. Tears stream down her cheeks and mingle with blood.

“I let her go home.”

The doors burst open. And then the screen.

Chase.

He’s breathless, coat half-buttoned, eyes already locking on the covered body on the table.

“Where is she?” he says.

His voice is hoarse.

Cameron turns to him, blood smeared across her cheek.

Chase sees it.

“No,” he breathes. “No. You said she was—”

“I tried my best,” Cameron says, her voice breaking.

Behind him, Foreman appears, equally stunned. He takes in the scene, the blood, the baby, the silence, and his face goes slack.

“What the hell happened?” he demands.

“She collapsed at the wheel, on the way to the hospital. Internal rupture. Massive placental abruption,” the OB mutters numbly.

“She was too far gone by the time EMS brought her in.”

Chase looks at Violet, what’s left of her, and his knees buckle slightly.

“I just saw her last week,” he whispers. “She looked tired, but, God, she looked okay.”

“She wasn’t,” Cameron says. “She wasn’t okay.”

Foreman turns sharply toward the door. “Does House know?”

“I—” Cameron’s voice falters. “Wilson was supposed to—”

___________________________________

Down the hallway, running footsteps echo.
Wilson.

His tie is half-askew. He barrels past the nurses’ station, scanning faces, eyes already frantic. His hands are shaking as he reaches the trauma bay doors.

“Where is she?” he gasps.

No one answers. Just the silence. The curtain. The blood-slick tiles.

He freezes when he sees Chase and Foreman. Cameron.

And the body on the table.

“Wilson,” Cameron starts.

He doesn’t move.

“Wilson–,” she tries again.

His voice cracks open. “No. No, no, no—”

He stumbles forward, gripping the side of the gurney like it might be a bad dream he can shake awake.
Violet’s hand slips from beneath the sheet.
Wilson sees it.

He grabs it—cold, still—and then finally breaks.
A sob tears from his throat. Ugly. Raw.

He presses her hand to his forehead like a prayer.
Behind him, Cameron covers her mouth with one trembling hand. Chase turns away, his face in his elbow. Foreman bows his head.

The grief in the room is thick, cloying. It clings to them. Sinks into the floors.

“She was scared,” Cameron whispers. “She came here because she was scared.”

“She was alone,” Wilson says bitterly, voice shredded. “House was… I don’t know what he was.”

“Broken,” Chase mutters.
“Angry,” Cameron adds.
“Too late,” says Foreman quietly.

Wilson pulls the sheet up, slowly, reverently.
Covers her hand.
Covers her face.
Covers the silence she left behind.
Distantly, a familiar gait is heard by all four.

House.

Chapter Text

~THEN~

Seven Years Ago.

Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, 08:47 AM.

Dr Violet Rowan’s First Day.

The hospital hallways smelled like antiseptic and regret.

Dr Violet Rowan, twenty-three, five feet of polite vengeance, and freshly matched into neurology, strode purposefully through the main corridor of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Her white coat, too crisp to have seen real blood, flared behind her like the cape of a woman who didn’t yet realize she was walking into the mouth of chaos.

Her hospital badge dangled sideways from her pocket, her neurology handbook was tucked under one arm, and in her right hand: a large, half-sipped coffee clutched like a lifeline. The coffee was black, strong, and insulted every time someone tried to add milk. In her backpack, nestled between a stethoscope and a portable charger, was a Tupperware full of pasta. She didn’t trust cafeteria food. She’d seen the Yelp reviews.

She was running on three hours of sleep and sheer caffeine-powered arrogance. In the last twelve hours alone, she had internally diagnosed two of her senior attendings, one with undiagnosed ADHD, the other with probable lactose intolerance based on the symphony of gurgles coming from him during rounds.

She was trying to be respectful. Really, she was.

She turned the corner too sharply. The universe, in its infinite comedy, punished her immediately.

*Thunk*

Her knee slammed into something hard and unyielding. An old, worn cane with a rubber tip that had seen better decades. She nearly tripped. The cane’s owner jerked back with a grunt, catching himself before he could fall, as if this wasn’t his first tango with hallway collisions.

“Fucking hell” the man snarled.

Her coffee splattered against the wall in a brown arc. The lid rolled off down the hallway like it had somewhere more important to be.

“Oh! shit—sorry—” she began, then saw him.

Salt-and-pepper stubble. Eyes like chipped glacial ice. Cheekbones carved out of pure cynicism. He looked like someone who’d won a beauty contest in hell and never let anyone forget it. And he was staring at her like she’d kicked his dog.

“You walked into me,” Violet said before she could stop herself. The training wheels on her respectful tone flew off.

His expression sharpened. “You walked into my cane.”

“You parked it in the middle of the hallway like a traffic cone.”

“I was walking.”

“Then walk better.”

“Are you always this disrespectful, or is this just how a young one greets the crippled?”

Violet narrowed her eyes. “Are you always this dramatic, or did I hit a nerve?”

A voice behind them sighed, long-suffering. “House…”

She turned. A second man was approaching. Brown hair, soft brown puppy-like eyes, lab coat slightly askew like he was trying his best and barely holding it together. He had the aura of a man who gave hugs and got panic attacks. Definitely ‘the’ Wilson.

“You okay?” he asked House, though his eyes flicked to Violet like she might be holding a grenade.

“Fine,” House muttered. “She just tried to assassinate me with coffee. She’s clearly a terrorist.”

Wilson frowned. “Are you… new?”

Violet smoothed her coat and tried to reassemble her politeness. “Yes. I am Dr Violet Rowan. New resident. Born in London. Travelled a lot growing up. Coffee-dependent. Sleep-deprived. Friendly when caffeinated.”

House leaned on his cane and tilted his head. “You’re young.”

She smiled, all teeth. “And you’re limping.”

Wilson choked. House’s brow crept up, equal parts insulted and impressed.

“Neurology,” he declared.

Violet blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve got the snark of psych, but you actually believe in organ systems. You’re too arrogant for peds, too self-aware for surgery, and you said ‘lactose intolerance’ in the hallway earlier. Only neuro walks in here diagnosing everyone before they get to their lockers.”

“Guilty,” Violet replied. “Though technically, my other guess was colorectal.”

“Charming,” House said. “So, a neurologist with a God complex and no filter. Are you the hospital’s new diversity selection or just a personal prank from Cuddy?”

“I try to be both,” she replied smoothly. “Efficiency.”

House leaned closer, eyes narrowing. “You’re either going to be brilliant or a lawsuit.”

Violet leaned in, matching his stance. “You can’t sue me if I outdiagnose you.”

Wilson stepped between them like a worried golden retriever. “Okay! Okay. Let’s reset. House, this is Dr Rowan. Dr Rowan, this is Dr Gregory House. He’s—”

“A menace,” Violet said.

“A legend,” House corrected.

“A problem,” Wilson sighed.

“—your worst decision and your only hope,” House concluded with a wink at Wilson.

Violet crossed her arms. “And yet somehow I’m underwhelmed.”

House smirked. “You’ll come around. They always do.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Or maybe I’ll just start carrying pepper spray.”

Wilson rubbed his face. “It’s her first day, House.”

“Exactly. The best time to traumatize her,” House said.

“You trying to scare me off?” Violet asked, deadpan. “Because my last supervisor bled out in an elevator. After that, everything’s just comedy.”

House blinked.

Wilson actually looked a little nauseous.

“…Now I really want to know how that happened,” House muttered.

“You’d have liked him,” Violet said. “He also made fun of my lunch.”

House glanced down. “What is in your bag?”

“Pasta,” she said. “Spicy enough to cause cardiac events in white men.”

“Wilson, tell Cuddy I’m taking lunch early,” House said, already reaching for her bag.

Violet swatted his hand away.

“Touch the pasta and I catheterize you through the nose.”

Wilson looked deeply regretful that he had not called out sick today. He looked like he was genuinely considering just backing away slowly. “I have actual patients to see,” he said.

“Coward,” House muttered.

“Adult,” Wilson corrected.

He gave Violet a nod that almost passed for “good luck,” then vanished down the hallway. She was now alone with the human equivalent of a raccoon.

House appraised her again, tapping his cane once against the tile like a judge about to issue sentencing.
“So. Violet. That’s a very pretty name for someone so… pointed.”

“You’re not the first man to say that,” she said, tilting her head. “The last one ended up with a concussion.”

House smirked. “You’ll fit right in.”

She sighed, adjusting her bag. “Look. I was trying to be polite. New hospital, new system, new politics. I was going to respect my seniors. Smile, nod, learn the coffee machine hierarchy. You know, blend.”

“And then you ran into me,” he finished.

“More like your cane found my kneecap.”

He stepped back, mock-hurt. “Oh no. Did my disability get in the way of your perfect little entrance?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Is this the part where I say sorry for being born able-bodied?”

He grinned. “No, this is the part where I test if you’re smart enough not to join my department.”

“Is that a warning?”

“It’s a dare.”

A beat passed between them, thick with challenge and unspoken amusement.

“You like being difficult, don’t you?” she asked.

“I like watching people try to outsmart me,” he said. “I don’t like when they succeed.”

“Well,” she said, smiling sweetly, “you’re going to hate me.”

He studied her for a moment. “I already do.”

“Then we’re off to a great start.”

“Where are you stationed?”

“Neuro in-patient. Rounds at ten. I got here early to set up my desk. And to find out who steals lunches from the second-floor fridge.”

“Guilty,” House said instantly. “But only if it’s labeled ‘gluten-free.’ It’s like a dare.”

Violet rolled her eyes and began walking. To her dismay, House followed.

“What, do I have a tail now?” she muttered.

“Just making sure you don’t trip over another disabled man.”

“I will trip you on purpose next time, I promise.”

They walked in companionable hostility down the hallway. House kept talking.

“You’re here early,” he said. “Overeager. Bet you were that kid who color-coded
her notes and had an existential crisis over an A-minus.”

“I was the kid who built an EEG in her garage at thirteen.”

“Ah, so worse.”

“And you were probably the kid who set frogs on fire and called it science.”

“No. That was Wilson. I just diagnosed them with melanoma.”

She glanced sideways at him. “Is there a reason you’re still here?”

“Curiosity.”

“You hate people.”

“I hate most people.”

“So why me?”

He shrugged. “Because you’re young, angry, sleep-deprived, and you insulted me before you even knew who I was. It’s refreshing.”

“Don’t fall in love,” she warned dryly.

“You wish,” he replied.

She stopped. He stopped, too.

Violet turned, hands on her hips. “Okay. What do you want from me, really?”

House leaned on his cane and looked at her—really looked at her, for the first time.

“Maybe I’m just bored,” he said. “Maybe I’m wondering how long you’ll last.

You’ve got the mouth of someone who’s had to fight to be heard and the spine of someone who doesn’t know when to quit. Which is adorable. Until you crash.”

“Is this your pep talk?”

“This is your reality check.”

“I’ve already lived it,” Violet said flatly.

House’s expression flickered, just for a second.

She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to.

A pause stretched between them. House didn’t look away. Neither did she.
And then,

“Lunch?” he asked.

She blinked.

“You just accused me of impending failure and now you want to eat with me?”

“I’m unpredictable. Also, you mentioned pasta. Which I’m now emotionally invested in.”

“No. You want to judge me by my spice tolerance.”

“Obviously.”

“I’m not sharing.”

“You’ll cave.”

“I’d rather die.”

“That can be arranged,” House said, turning and limping toward the elevator.

“Your flirtation tactics are tragic,” she called after him.

He didn’t turn around. “Wait ‘til you see my seduction ones.”
—————————————————————————————————————————

House didn’t head to his office right away.

Instead, he limped out to the back balcony near Diagnostics, the one nobody used except smokers and people who needed five minutes away from whatever flaming dumpster fire the hospital was offering that day. He leaned against the railing, tapping his cane idly against the tile. A wind blew in from the parking lot, carrying the faint whiff of antiseptic and car exhaust.

His mind should’ve been on the guy in ICU with unexplained seizures, or the lab report Chase left on his desk, or whether Cuddy was going to dock his budget again for stealing the surgical interns’ pudding cups.

But instead, annoyingly, disturbingly, his brain was stuck on Violet Rowan.

Twenty-three.

Twenty. Three.

Which made her the exact kind of person he should not be thinking about. Not like that. Not the way that made his pulse do weird things or made him remember, too vividly, the way she didn’t flinch, didn’t back down, didn’t care who he was.

There was no hero-worship in her eyes. No fear, either. Just an analytical gleam that said, “I’m here, and I’ve already seen worse than you.”

She was smart. Sharp enough to match him barb for barb. That wasn’t unusual. Cuddy could do it. Cameron used to try. Wilson did it in his own sad, nurturing way.

But Violet? She had the nerve. Fire. Arrogance that hadn’t yet calcified into bitterness.

Yet.

He should’ve brushed her off. Let her get eaten by the system. Watched her learn the hard way that brains and guts didn’t keep you safe in medicine, especially not if you were young and female and competent enough to threaten someone’s ego.

But instead, she had his attention.

And attention, when it came to Gregory House, was a dangerous thing.

He didn’t like the way it felt.

Like his brain had latched onto a puzzle, sure, but also something… else.

Something warm. Something insufferably human.

It had been years since he’d met someone who didn’t treat him like a landmine or a deity. She treated him like a person.

A frustrating, irritating person, but a person all the same.

And God help him, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to ruin her or protect her.
Probably both.

House sighed, shook his head, and muttered, “I’m losing it.”

Behind him, a voice said: “Well, that’s not new.”

He turned. Wilson stood there with two paper cups of tea. His eyebrows were raised just enough to be smug.

“You look like you’re thinking,” Wilson said. “It’s not unnatural. What happened? Forget where you parked your ego?”

“Violet Rowan”

Wilson handed him one of the cups. “The new neuro resident?”

“She diagnosed my addiction, insulted my cane, and threatened to spice me into oblivion. I think I’m in love.”

Wilson groaned. “House.”

“I said ‘think.’ I haven’t committed.”

“She’s twenty-three.”

“You sound like me.”

“No, I sound like someone who doesn’t want you to get slapped with an HR complaint.”

“She started it.”

Wilson gave him a look. “You always say that right before things explode.”

“I’m not going to seduce her.”

“That’s a first.”

“I can’t seduce her. She’d dissect me like a frog and then finish her coffee.”

Wilson paused, then nodded slowly. “…Okay. That’s actually fair.”

House looked away again, out over the parking lot. “She’s either going to crash and burn, or she’s going to be spectacular.”

Wilson sipped his tea. “You need to get laid.”

“Aww. If that is your idea of foreplay, at least buy me dinner first.”

Wilson stared at him. Then sighed.

House stood there. Deep in thoughts.

They both sipped their coffee in silence.

A while later, elsewhere, in the quiet corner of the second-floor lounge, Violet had found a moment to breathe. She was perched on the armrest of a worn faux-leather couch, flipping through patient charts and making annotated notes in the margins with frightening precision. Her pen had run out twice already.

Someone cleared their throat gently.

She looked up. Wilson stood there, a little sheepish, holding out a peace offering: a fresh coffee.

“No bribe needed,” she said, but accepted it anyway. “I wasn’t planning on stabbing House again today.”

Wilson smiled, easing down into the chair beside her. “He… actually kind of liked you.”

“Gross.”

“I know.”

They both took a sip.

“You’re… a little intense,” he added.

She looked at him over the rim of her cup. “Is that a polite way of saying ‘abrasive’?”

“It’s a polite way of saying House might have met his match.”

“I’m not here to match anyone,” she said. “I’m here to do my job, get through residency, and not let anyone steal my lunch.”

Wilson gave a half-laugh. “Good luck with that. He’s already planning how to steal your pasta.”

“I hope he does,” she said. “It’s got whole chilies and at least two surprise spice bombs. I’m not legally liable if he cries.”

Wilson nodded, clearly trying not to grin. Then, more gently: “You really diagnosed his tremor that fast?”

Violet looks up at him. Wondering when he realised that she noticed.

“I’ve been watching addicts since I was sixteen. The good ones hide it better.”

“You have someone in your life…?”

“My dad.” She said it quickly, without elaboration.

He nodded once, respectfully, and didn’t push.

“I didn’t mean to say it out loud earlier,” she admitted. “It just slipped. Sometimes I think my brain is hardwired for confrontation.”

“Then you’re in the right hospital.”

She looked over at him. “You seem… different.”

He smiled faintly. “I’m the other side of the magnet.”

“What, like, soft? Apologetic?”

“Still recovering from the last hurricane House dragged into our lives.”

She tilted her head. “So you’re the damage control?”

“Someone has to be.”

“Why do you stay?”

Wilson took a moment to think. “Because every once in a while, he’s not just an ass. He’s right. And when he’s right, he saves lives. That’s a hard thing to walk away from.”

Violet looked at him, really looked. “You’re a good man, Dr. Wilson.”

He smiled again, gentler this time. “You can call me Wilson.”

She extended a hand. “Violet.”

They shook.

“Are you actually okay?” he asked softly.

She considered the question. “I’m used to being underestimated. But it’s a new kind of weird when the senior-most diagnostician in the hospital calls you ‘young’ while trying to eat your lunch.”

“You’ll get used to him.”

“I hope not.”

“…Fair.”

A silence stretched. Then Violet glanced sideways. “Is he really always that dense?”

Wilson burst into laughter, warm and real.

She smirked. “That’s horrifying.”

“Welcome to Princeton-Plainsboro.”
—————————————————————————————————————————-

Dr. Lisa Cuddy did not knock.

She never knocked.

Her heels clicked into House’s office like a threat, long legs, sharp blazer, and an expression that could turn a scalpel dull.

House barely glanced up from the whiteboard. “Dr Cuddy! How lovely of you to interrupt my creative process.”

“You nearly ran over a new resident.”

“She ran into me. I was the stationary object. Technically, I’m the victim.”

“You threatened to steal her lunch.”

House blinked. “That’s what you’re mad about?”

“I’m not mad, House. I’m trying to keep HR out of my emails for one damn week.
It’s day one and you’ve already decided to pick a fight with the new neurologist?”

“She’s mouthy.”

“She’s competent,” Cuddy snapped. “And she’s not afraid of you. Which clearly bothers you.”

“I’m charmed.”

“You’re something,” Cuddy muttered. “Listen, I don’t care what emotional sandbox you’re playing in, just don’t drive her out of here.”

“She’s not that easy to drive off.”

Cuddy folded her arms. “Good. Because I’m putting her on your next consult.”

House whipped around. “What?”

“Patient came in from Trenton General. Seizures, hypotension, odd pupil response. It’s a neuro-mystery. And I want you to share it.”

“I don’t share.”

“Try. For once.”

“I already have a team.”

“Add her.”

“Is this about mentorship?” he said flatly. “Because I don’t need another duckling.”

“She’s a resident. Not a fellow. Mentoring her and asking for her inputs is not going to kill you.”

House gagged theatrically.

Cuddy turned and walked out without another word.

House scowled at the doorway. Then muttered, “Dammnit.”

Meanwhile, Violet was in the neurology bullpen trying to convince the shared office printer not to start smoking again. She was elbow-deep in her second patient chart when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

Foreman.

He looked mildly amused and also vaguely afraid. “You’re summoned.”

“By whom? God?”

“Worse,” Foreman said. “House.”

She groaned. “Please tell me it’s for lunch-related assault charges.”

“Consult.”

“Seriously?”

“Cuddy’s orders.”

“Well, that makes sense,” she muttered, gathering her notes.

When she arrived at Diagnostics, the chaos was instant.

A glass wall covered in dry-erase scribbles. Foreman pacing as soon as he entered, like it is his second nature. Chase half-asleep with a marker tucked behind his ear. Cameron leaning on the back of a chair with clinical earnestness. And House, of course, sprawled like a corpse on his recliner, playing with a laser pointer.

“You called?” Violet said, arms folded.

“Resident Barbie. Glad you could join us.”

“Why do you look like you’ve been hit by a statistics textbook?”

“Because we’ve had this guy for twelve hours and he’s already bled from three orifices,” Chase muttered.

“I didn’t ask how he looked like that,” Violet said. “I asked why.”

“Patient,” Foreman said quickly, “is a 39-year-old male, came in post-seizure. No prior epilepsy history. He was hypotensive, bradycardic, anisocoric on arrival. Initial CT clean. MRI pending. EKG showed arrhythmia.”

“No travel, no weird diets, no new meds,” Cameron added. “No substance use.”

“And no hobbies,” House said mournfully. “He’s boring and dying.”

Violet stepped toward the board. “Let me see the chart.”

House tossed it at her without looking. She caught it one-handed. His eyebrow twitched.

She flipped through it quickly, scanning labs. “This pupil response, fixed in one eye, sluggish in the other?”

“Yup,” Foreman said.

“No signs of raised ICP?”

“Not yet.”

“Then we’re dealing with something that mimics cranial nerve dysfunction without actual compression,” Violet murmured.

“She’s good,” Chase said under his breath to Cameron.

House heard it. His eyes didn’t leave Violet.

“And you’re sure it’s not just a seizure disorder?” she asked.

“We’ve ruled out epilepsy,” Chase said. “No family history.”

Violet tapped the whiteboard with her knuckle. “What about autoimmune encephalitis? Hashimoto’s? Paraneoplastic?”

“Too soon to jump to zebras,” Foreman replied.

“House loves zebras,” she shot back. “And besides, what if this guy is a zebra who got run over by the wrong horse?”

“Mixed metaphor,” House muttered.

“Accurate diagnosis.”

She started listing differential diagnoses with clean, sharp strokes on the board. Her handwriting was neater than House’s. It annoyed him.

“Alright,” House finally said, rising from the recliner. “Let’s make a neurologist useful. Violet, you’re with Chase. Go repeat the neuro exam. Focus on cranial nerves, especially II and III. Look for subtle drift, nystagmus, asymmetry. If anything so much as twitches wrong, I want to know.”

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Yes. Don’t kill the patient.”

“No promises.”

As the team filed out, House leaned on his cane and said to her, quietly,

“Impressive.”

She glanced back. “Flattery? So soon?”

“I don’t flatter,” he said. “But I am watching.”

She tilted her head. “That supposed to scare me?”

“No,” House said. “It’s supposed to warn you.”

Back in the elevator, Chase eyed her. “He never lets people in this fast.”

“I didn’t realize I was in.”

“You’re either in,” Chase said, “or about to be torn apart for sport.”

Violet sighed. “Story of my life.”

—————————————————————————————————————————

Violet was halfway through typing a consult note when her pager buzzed with
that particularly Cuddy-shaped urgency.

COME TO MY OFFICE. NOW.

She sighed audibly, glared at the blinking text like it owed her money, and shoved her chair back. Her coffee was lukewarm. Her patience was nonexistent. And her legs were tired. She’d been on-call for 28 hours and had just begun planning a nap under her desk like a clinically exhausted woodland creature.

Instead, she took the elevator up, knocked twice, and entered.

Cuddy didn’t look up.

“You’re transferring to Diagnostics,” she said flatly.

Violet blinked. “Sorry?”

Cuddy met her eyes. “Temporarily. Consult rotation. Three weeks. Effective immediately.”

“No.”

Cuddy arched an eyebrow.

“I mean it,” Violet said. “Dr Cuddy, please—please. I will clean the morgue. I’ll cover pediatrics, for God’s sake. Just, don’t make me work with him.”

“It’s a diagnostic case with neuro involvement. Unresolved for four days. Patient’s crashing. House requested the consult.”

“No, he requested entertainment,” Violet snapped. “You’re letting me be his chew toy.”

“You’re not a chew toy,” Cuddy said coolly. “You’re a scalpel. And he needs someone sharp.”

“I’m sharp from this side of the building.” She leaned forward, voice lower. “Look, you and I both know he’s brilliant, but he’s insufferable. And I’m not interested in being his emotional support intern.”

“You’re not,” Cuddy said. “You’re being given a case. And you’re going to solve it.”

Violet stood there for a beat, jaw clenched. “You’re enjoying this.”

“A little.”

She groaned. “Three weeks?”

“Unless he fires you first.”

“Which he probably will.”

Cuddy smiled sweetly. “Then make yourself indispensable before he can.”

Diagnostics Department.
Day 1 of Hell.

Violet walked in like a woman walking to her own execution. Clipboard in one hand, a reusable espresso cup in the other, and eyes that dared anyone to test her patience.

The team stopped mid-discussion.

Chase looked at her. “No.”

“Good morning to you too, Sunshine.”

“You’re not joining the team,” Foreman said bluntly.

“Trust me,” she muttered, walking past them to the whiteboard, “I’ve already tried to prevent this. Twice.”

Chase leaned against the table. “How’d that go?”

“I was threatened with Pediatrics.”

They made collective sympathetic noises.

House came limping in two beats later. “Ah. Look who lost the coin toss.”

“I didn’t lose anything. I was kidnapped.”

“You’re here because I let you be.”

“You’re here because you have a prescription pad.”

The team stared.

House smiled, slow and sharp. “God, I’ve missed this level of hate. You’re going to make Chase cry.”

“I’ll bring tissues.”

Foreman frowned. “Seriously, what’s the point of this? We’ve got three neurologists in rotation.”

“None of them figured it out,” House said, pointing to the file on the table.

“Thirty-year-old marathon runner. Double vision, acute weakness, autonomic crashes, negative for MS, negative for Lyme, clear spine. Neuro exam is inconsistent, pupils sluggish but reactive, and he passed out after eating scrambled eggs.”

“Egg allergy?” Chase offered.

“No rash, no histamine response. I’d say good guess, but it’s not.”

“Maybe it’s myasthenia,” Violet muttered.

“Already ruled out.”

She took the file, scanned it. Frowned. “Did you check for anti-GQ1b antibodies?”

The room fell silent.

House tilted his head. “What?”

“Anti-GQ1b. It’s rare. Acute ophthalmoplegia, muscle weakness, autonomic involvement, no spinal lesions—”

“You’re talking about Miller Fisher Syndrome,” Foreman said, incredulous.

“It’s a variant of Guillain-Barré,” Violet said. “But you won’t catch it on standard GBS workup. You have to specifically order the antibody panel.”
House stared at her.

“No way,” Cameron said. “That’s too rare.”

Violet shrugged. “So’s House.”

“That’s fair,” Chase said.

House took the chart back, flipping through labs, brows drawn together. “Nobody thought to test for that.”

Violet smirked. “Guess that’s why I’m here.”

He didn’t say anything. He just limped over to the phone and ordered the test.

Twenty-four hours later.
Anti-GQ1b: Positive.

The patient was transferred to ICU, began IVIG therapy, and within twelve hours, his symptoms began to reverse.

Diagnostics was silent.

House sat at the board, marker spinning between his fingers. He was scowling—but it wasn’t his scowl. Not the angry kind. The thoughtful one. The kind he only wore when someone had surprised him.

Violet leaned in the doorway, sipping her espresso like she’d never even cared.

“So,” House said finally. “Do we hate you less now?”

She shrugged. “I don’t need to be liked.”

Foreman grunted. “Congratulations. You and House can now bond over mutual contempt for everything.”

Chase frowned. “You really caught that just from the pupils and the eggs?”

“I read fast. And I don’t talk unless I’m sure.” She looked at House. “You know that.”

He nodded once.

“You’re still annoying,” she added.

“Yeah,” House said. “But so are most geniuses.”

She saluted sarcastically and walked out.

House watched her go, head tilted. Then, to no one in particular, he said, “She stays.”

Later that night, in her new corner of Diagnostics…

Violet dropped her bag on the floor, kicked her heels off, and pulled her hair up. There were still four more charts to read and a hundred reasons she should
regret letting herself get pulled in.

But beneath the exhaustion, beneath the chaos, beneath him—she felt something dangerous and rare.

Belonging.

She hated that.
She loved that.
God help her.
She might actually stay.
—————————————————————————————————————————

Flashback — Three Years before Violet joined PPTH.

Cuddy remembered the day like it was burned into her synapses, mostly because no second-year med student had ever marched into her hospital like they were there to evaluate it.

She had just stepped into the hallway outside Neuro when Dr. Patel stopped her.
“There’s a student you need to meet,” he said, sounding somewhere between impressed and alarmed.

“Do I?” Cuddy asked, already bracing herself.

“She’s… different. Very sharp. A little frightening.”

That was how Lisa Cuddy first met Violet Rowan: Twenty years old, a stethoscope too big for her neck, and eyes like she’d dissected the world already and hadn’t liked what she’d found. Her lab coat hung awkwardly, clearly borrowed, and her ID badge still said Student Doctor in that subtly patronizing font.

Cuddy hadn’t expected much.

Then Violet had started talking.

She had corrected Patel within five minutes.

“You’re testing for Wilson’s disease? But the tremor isn’t rhythmic, and there’s no history of hepatic dysfunction. I’d bet it’s paraneoplastic, possibly small cell.”

Patel had blinked. So had Cuddy.

Three hours later, Cuddy found her again, this time in the Neuro library, surrounded by books and a legal pad covered in notes written in the world’s tiniest, most murderous handwriting. She was cross-referencing radiology reports against pathology studies and sipping gas-station espresso like it was the blood of her enemies.

Cuddy stepped inside. “You’re Violet Rowan.”

Violet glanced up. “Let me guess. Someone tattled.”

“I run the hospital,” Cuddy said mildly. “When a student calls out a department head and gets backed up by the patient’s biopsy, it tends to get my attention.”

“I wasn’t trying to be insubordinate.”

“No,” Cuddy said, “you were just trying to be right.”

Violet didn’t smile. But something flickered behind her eyes. “That’s usually a problem.”

“Not to me,” Cuddy said. She sat down across from her. “Why PPTH?”
Violet paused. “I want to match here.”

“Neurology?”

“Yes. But not because it’s ‘clean’ or academic. It’s a power system. The brain makes people lie to themselves. It’s where science and behavior go to war. I want to be on that battlefield.”

Cuddy raised an eyebrow. “And what about the politics? This isn’t a fairy tale. We have egos. Silos. Arrogance. You’ll get trampled if you’re not careful.”

“I don’t intend to be careful,” Violet said. “I intend to be useful. And unforgettable.”

Cuddy had laughed. Then leaned forward.

“What if I told you there’s someone here you shouldn’t match with, but might need to?”

Violet tilted her head. “That sounds like a test.”

“Dr Gregory House,” Cuddy said simply. “He runs Diagnostics. He’s brilliant, destructive, and allergic to authority. If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to meet him.”

“Then why mention him?”

“Because if you do match here,” Cuddy said, “and you’re half the person I think you are, you’re going to end up crossing paths.”

“Why?” Violet asked.

“Because House needs someone to challenge him. And you—” Cuddy leaned back,

crossing her arms, “—you’re a blueprint for disaster.”

Violet blinked. “Is that a compliment?”

Cuddy smiled. “That’s me saying I’m keeping my eye on you.”

And from that day forward, she did.

Two years later, when Violet’s residency application landed in Cuddy’s inbox, complete with early early match pre-requisites, three peer-reviewed publications, and a sealed disciplinary report from another hospital where she’d been too correct too publicly, Cuddy barely hesitated.

She pushed it through. Fast-tracked. Overrode the match list.

And when Violet walked into House’s cane on day one?
Cuddy wasn’t surprised.
She’d seen it coming three years in advance

Chapter Text

~NOW~

The waiting room was too quiet. That in itself should have tipped House off.

He'd learned of the accident. He didn't get the full picture but thought maybe it would be a fracture and slight bruisings. 

Hospitals were never silent, someone was always crying, vomiting, screaming, or begging. But here, now, all he could hear was the faint tick of the wall clock and the distant hiss of automatic doors.

He leaned against the cold wall like he belonged to it, like he’d become part of the infrastructure. Something felt odd. Still, unmoving. The cane in his hand shifted only slightly with each pulse of his fingers. He told himself it was fine. That she was fine. That they were taking too long because she needed stitching or fluids. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing fatal. Then the trauma bay doors swung open.

Cameron stepped out. Her gown was soaked. Not just blood-spattered, but drenched, clinging to her scrubs like it had soaked through every fiber. Her hands were still gloved. She hadn’t even taken a second to remove them. She looked straight ahead, until her eyes found his.

House straightened, or tried to. He felt the cane tremble slightly under his weight. Cameron didn’t speak right away. She didn’t need to. Something about the way she was holding herself, like her whole body might collapse inward if she let go—spoke volumes.

“No,” House said, his voice barely more than breath. “No.”

Cameron took a slow step forward. “I am so sorry, House.” It was like she’d whispered the end of the world.

House didn’t blink. Didn’t move. He just stared at her like she was speaking a language he’d never learned. His eyes searched hers desperately, hunting for sarcasm, a cruel joke, a twist, anything but what she was really saying.

“She was already bleeding out when EMS got her out of the car,” Cameron said, voice cracking. “She was unresponsive on arrival. The fetus had no heartbeat. We tried—”

“Don’t say fetus,” House cut in, sharply. It sounded metallic in his throat. “That was my—” He stopped. His chest rose once, sharply. The end of the sentence died somewhere behind his teeth.

He looked down, just for a second.

Then he sat.

Hard.

He dropped, spine slamming against the wall, legs collapsing under him. The cane skittered off and clattered somewhere to the side, but he didn’t even turn his head to look.

His hands came up slowly, mechanically, to his face, like he was trying to hold his skull in place, to keep his mind from spilling out.

Cameron knelt beside him. She didn’t reach for him. She knew better. “She didn’t feel it, House,” she whispered. “She was unconscious before EMS arrived. Maybe even before the crash.”

He nodded, but it wasn’t acknowledgment. It was mechanical, a twitch.

“I was going to talk to her today,” he said flatly. “I was going to fix it.”

Cameron felt her throat tighten. She looked at the floor, at the blood on her gloves, and tried not to imagine what Violet must have felt like. The way her chest had collapsed. The way the baby, still, silent, far too small—had been lifted from her body with the hush of mourning already settling in the room.

Outside, the sliding doors whooshed open.

Someone came in.

Neither of them noticed.

House’s shoulders slumped further against the wall. His head tilted back, hitting it with a soft thud. His face was blank, expressionless in the worst way.

The kind of emptiness that came from shock that went too deep to scream.

Cameron sat with him for a long moment in silence.

Finally, she asked, “Do you want to see her?”

“No.”

It was immediate.

Too immediate.

She hesitated. “House…”

“I don’t want to see her like that.” His voice was flat. His eyes were glass. “I already saw her leave.”

“She didn’t leave,” Cameron said gently. “She died. There’s a difference.”

House turned his head slowly and looked at her. And for just a second, she saw it, beneath the vacant detachment, beneath the crushing stillness, something sharp and vicious.

Not anger. Not yet.

Just the precursor.

The beginning of a slow, smoldering descent into a grief so complicated it might never find its way back out.

“You think I don’t know that?”

Cameron looked down. “I think you’re still waiting for the door to open and for her to walk through it.”

He didn’t respond. Another nurse passed through the hallway behind them, glancing with pity toward the man on the floor and the woman beside him still wearing a stranger’s blood.

House finally moved. Just slightly. He rubbed a hand down his face and stared at the floor. “I said some things,” he said, barely audible. “I said some really bad things.”

Cameron swallowed. “We all do.”

“I don’t get a redo.”

“No,” she said quietly. “You don’t.”

Chapter Text

~NOW~

The hallway was cold, but House didn’t feel it. Didn’t register the sterile chill of Princeton-Plainsboro’s vents blowing against his neck. Didn't notice that Cameron had left to change her attire. Didn’t notice Wilson pacing a few feet away, running a hand through his graying hair, looking back at him with that helpless, haunted expression House had seen too often on other people. Not on Wilson.

But this time, it was different.

This time, it was his mess.

House sat on the bench outside Trauma unit, cane clenched so tightly his knuckles looked bleached. His thigh throbbed, but it was miles away, buried under layers of grief and adrenaline and something darker, colder. His mind wouldn’t stop replaying the sound of her sigh that morning, of Cameron telling him the news.

Violet.

Violet Rowan.

Love of his life. 

The mother of his child. 

Dead.

Not even legally for more than twenty minutes.

His breath came in slow, shallow bursts. Like his lungs didn’t want to cooperate either. Everything about him was disobeying orders, starting with his brain.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers cradling his forehead. The pressure helped for a second.

Then he heard it.

“You’re late, House.”

Soft. Familiar. That dry, deadpan tone like she was teasing him for being an idiot again.

His heart stopped.

Not literally, but it might as well have.

He raised his head sharply.

No one there.

No one speaking.

Wilson was still pacing.

And Violet’s body, her body, her, was still behind the trauma of room door.

Then the voice came again, closer this time, just to his left.

“You always come after the end. Never during the mess.”

His eyes snapped toward the source.

There she was.

Violet.

Wearing the same navy blue scrubs she’d had on earlier that morning, hair tied up in the usual way, two pens behind her ear, and a faint bruise on her wrist she’d earned during that code in the ICU two days ago. Everything about her was familiar. Tangible.

Except that she was dead.

House stared.

“Stop it,” he muttered, eyes locked on the empty hallway.

Wilson turned. “House?”

“I said stop it,” he barked.

But not at Wilson.

At her.

At the hallucination.

At the nothing.

Violet leaned against the wall across from him like she always did when waiting on a difficult consult, arms crossed, one hip popped out. She looked almost bored. But her voice sliced clean through the air when she spoke again.

“You said I was a parasite,” she said plainly.

House flinched.

“You said I was suffocating you. That marrying me was an act of masochism.”

“I say a lot of things,” he mumbled.

“You said I made you worse.”

He tried not to meet her eyes, but they burned into him. That quiet fury she always saved for when she was truly hurt, when the knife had gone too deep.

“You said I was trying to fix you,” she continued, “when all I ever did was stay.”

He shut his eyes tightly, as if he could blink her away.

But she didn’t vanish.

“You pushed me out of the bedroom. Out of the house. Out of your life. And now you’re sitting out here like some damn martyr.” She tilted her head. “Why? Feeling bad doesn’t undo anything.”

He opened his eyes and snapped, “What do you want from me?”

Violet stepped closer. Her footsteps made no sound. Her voice was cold and clinical, like a diagnosis: “I want you to say it.”

He scoffed bitterly. “Say what? That I killed you?”

“You didn’t kill me,” she said. “But you made it easier for me to die.”

He stood suddenly, face twisted, fury riding the edge of grief. “You think I wanted this? You think I knew the truck was going to hit your car? I was at the damn clinic, Violet.”

Wilson, worried for House is just looking at House not knowing how to snap him out of this. 

“I know,” she said. “That’s why it’s worse. You weren’t cheating. You weren’t off doing something reckless. You were just being you. Disconnected. Distracted. Too proud to answer when I called three times.”

House froze.

He had seen the missed calls.

And he had silenced them.

He remembered thinking, I’ll call her later. Let her stew a bit. That’ll teach her to bring up couples therapy again.

His stomach turned.

Violet stepped even closer. “You were going to leave, weren’t you?”

He stared at her ghost, silent.

“You packed a bag. It’s still under the bed. You were going to leave me, and I still made you coffee that morning. I was suffering, House. Don't forget, CARRYING YOUR CHILD FOR FUCK'S SAKE!”

The lump in his throat swelled, thick and raw. “Why the hell are you here?”

She smiled, but it was brutal. “Because you don’t get to rewrite this, House. You don’t get to bury me under pills and sarcasm and pretend I was never there.”

His eyes filled, furious at the betrayal of his own body.

“I wasn’t perfect,” she added, quieter now. “But I was yours. And you couldn’t even say you loved me unless I was already walking away.”

“I did love you,” he rasped.

“You loved the idea of me.”

“I married you,” he said, his voice cracking. “I don’t do that.”

“And you hated me.”

He sank back to the bench, exhausted, defeated.

Her voice softened, just slightly. “Do you remember?”

He looked up.

“What?”

“The first time you touched my wrist in the elevator and told me my resting tremor wasn’t Parkinson’s.”

He blinked. That day had been nearly six years ago.

“You were right,” she said. “And you cared. You tried not to, but you did.”

He didn’t speak.

“Do you remember when I came back after my probation? How you kept pretending you didn’t know I was still a resident there?”

He said nothing.

“Do you remember,” she asked finally, “the last thing you said to me?”

His breath hitched.

It hadn’t been poetic. Hadn’t even been a proper goodbye.

He’d shouted at her across the room that morning.

“Tell Wilson to shove that anniversary dinner up his ass. I’m not performing for you two clowns.”

And she’d smiled that patient, wounded smile.

Then she left.

And the truck didn’t brake.

“Yeah,” House whispered. “I remember.”

Violet stared at him, her expression unreadable.

Then she began to fade.

“You could have said it,” she murmured.

“I know.”

And then she was gone.

Only Wilson remained, staring in concern from the doorway.

But House just sat there, staring at the empty hallway, his eyes red.

Nothing more to say.

~THEN~

Residency, Violet decided about two hours into her first shift at Princeton-Plainsboro, was a lot like pledging a frat where everyone had access to syringes and a dangerously high caffeine tolerance.

She’d barely had time to find her locker before someone from diagnostics slapped a chart in her hands, called her “you,” and shoved her into a room where a 34-year-old man believed he was a lemur.

“You’ll get used to it,” the attending said as if it were a perfectly normal Tuesday and not the start of what Violet would later describe to Wilson as “a 365-day anxiety speedrun while a one-legged man screams at me in Latin.”

That one-legged man?

House.

God’s biggest mistake.

___________________________________

Month 1 -

“I think he likes you,” Cameron said kindly.

“I think he wants to eat my kidneys with a melon baller,” Violet replied, scrubbing what she hoped was brain fluid off her scrubs.

She had survived her consult with House. Barely.

“You missed the papilledema,” House had said during rounds, twirling his cane like a ringmaster and speaking loud enough to cause a local tremor. “Congratulations, Neurology. You’ve reinvented failure.”

Violet had gritted her teeth and replied, “Forgive me for not immediately recognizing textbook signs of raised intracranial pressure while the patient was trying to eat their pillow and screaming in Portuguese.”

House had smiled. “Snarky. I love that. You’ll go far. Or die early. One of the two.”

He left her alone for two days after that.

Then he stole her lunch and used her clinical notes as coasters.

Month 3 -

Wilson became Violet's Unlicensed therapist. 

“Did you know he microwaved my pens?” Violet demanded as she slammed her tray onto the cafeteria table next to Wilson, who barely blinked.

“Did they explode?” he asked mildly.

“They melted. Melted, Wilson. My neuro pens. Color-coded. With tabbed labels.”

Wilson took a sip of his coffee. “You’re making progress.”

“Oh, I am going to stab him. You understand that, right? I’m going to be on the news. ’Neurology Resident Murders Renowned Diagnostician in Bizarre Office Supply Incident.’”

Wilson shrugged. “We all have our coping mechanisms.”

“How do you cope with him?”

“I medicate.”

She blinked.

He smiled, just slightly. “And occasionally drink until I see through time.”

Violet grinned despite herself.

Month 5 -

Foreman was the first to realize she was not just another doe-eyed neurologist who cried during her first LP.

She was performing a cranial nerve exam while arguing about the accuracy of the House of the Dragon finale.

“Cameron, back me up. There’s no way Daemon would just—”

“Focus, Violet,” Foreman said, already pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I am focused. Look at his pupils. That’s a CN III palsy if I’ve ever seen one. You do the charting.”

“You’re arguing about incest fantasy shows during a consult.”

“Multitasking.”

Chase leaned in. “She’s growing on me.”

“I’m not a fungus,” Violet shot back. “But I do ruin men.”

Foreman left the room.

Chase clapped.

Month 9 -

Violet discovered House’s weakness by accident.

She had a post-call brain and was deeply caffeinated.

House was mid-monologue, pontificating in a lecture hall with all the dramatic flair of Hamlet if Hamlet had Vicodin and a grudge against neurology.

“Your failure to identify cortical dysplasia, Dr Rowan, is only surprising if one had any faith in the human brain to begin with. I personally think God outsourced the design to a drunk goat.”

She raised her hand.

House blinked. “Am I taking questions now? Are we in kindergarten?”

“I have a counter-theory,” she said sweetly. “I think God designed the brain to be hard. So doctors like you wouldn’t get cocky. Clearly, it didn’t work.”

The entire table blinked.

House stared at her.

Then he broke into a slow, predatory grin. “Oh, I like you.”

From then on, she was his favorite.

Also, his main target.

He filled her locker with latex gloves filled with pudding.

"HOUSE I AM GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!"

End of Year One - 

“You’re going to miss me when I rotate out,” Violet said one evening.

House looked up from his clinic chart. “Will I?”

“You won’t admit it. But yeah. You will.”

“Bold assumption.”

“Fact,” she said.

She sat beside him in silence for a while.

Wilson passed by, saw them sharing the same Twizzlers, and sighed.

Later that night, she stormed into Wilson’s office.

“I swear to God, I don’t understand him.”

“House?”

“He acts like he hates me, but then he lets me sit in his office and eat all his snacks and doesn’t even insult my shoes.”

“Maybe he doesn’t hate you.”

“He said I was a ‘disease with bangs.’”

Wilson shrugged. “That’s practically a compliment.”

“Last week he handed me a diagnostic chart shaped like a penis.”

“He does that to Chase too.”

“Is he.....is he flirting with me?”

Wilson blinked. “It’s possible.”

“I thought he was asexual and emotionally unavailable.”

“He is.”

Violet paused. “Am I okay?”

Wilson patted her back. “No, but none of us are.”

___________________________________

Later, the hospital was empty in the way only 2:47 a.m. could make it.

Hallway lights flickered faintly overhead, casting long, tired shadows. The walls felt hushed, as if they too were waiting for morning. Violet stood outside the diagnostics office, bag slung over one shoulder, her badge still clipped and forgotten against her coat.

She was the last one to leave. Or so she thought.

A cane tapped the linoleum behind her.

House.

Of course.

He always waited until everyone else had gone before slinking out like a roguish phantom, like the rules of space and time didn’t apply to him. Maybe they didn’t.

She didn’t turn. Just pressed the elevator call button and watched the numbers descend with sleepy disinterest.

“You didn’t finish your consult notes,” he said.

She exhaled. “I’ll write them when I wake up. Unless I die first. Which is honestly 50/50.”

House leaned against the wall beside her, close enough to smell the remnants of coffee and Vicodin and whatever soap he used when Wilson forced him to bathe.

“You’re shaking.”

She blinked.

“What?”

He didn’t look at her. Just nodded toward her right hand. “Your fingers. Tremor at rest.”

She glanced down. Her hand was indeed trembling, subtly, but noticeably against the strap of her bag.

“Tired,” she muttered.

“Exhausted. Stressed. High caffeine intake. Your sympathetic nervous system is having a rave.”

“Thanks, I’m aware.”

The elevator dinged.

They moved inside.

He turned, just slightly, and without asking, reached out and took her wrist in his hand.

His palm was warm. Dry. Callused. Clinical.

Her breath caught.

He held her wrist with the focus of a surgeon and the stillness of someone trying to feel the pulse of something far more delicate than skin and veins.

“It’s not Parkinson’s,” he said softly, eyes fixed on her hand.

She tried to scoff. Failed.

“Would’ve been a hell of a twist,” she murmured, attempting levity.

“Too poetic,” he replied. “You’re not a tragic character. You’re annoying.”

His thumb moved once across the inside of her wrist. Just a brush.

She didn’t pull away.

The elevator doors slid open. Neither of them moved.

“I’ve seen it before,” he said after a moment. “Residents who burn too hot. Bodies don’t like that.”

“So what, I need to be… duller?”

He looked at her, finally.

“No,” he said, like it was obvious. “You just need to last.”

The air between them felt heavier than the hallway around them. As if something had settled in the silence that neither could name.

Violet swallowed. “Why do you care if I last?”

House tilted his head. “I don’t.”

But his hand didn’t let go right away.

The tremor in her hand stopped. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe she just stopped noticing it.

“Go home, Rowan.”

She nodded once. Quiet. The elevator chimed again, impatient.

He let go of her wrist.

They stepped outside.

As they begin to part ways, he looked at her with something unreadable in his eyes, something almost human, and said:

“Don’t forget to write your notes.”

She smiled faintly, and then the doors closed.

But the ghost of his hand stayed on her skin for hours.

And years later, when everything would fall apart, that moment would come back to House, quiet, and heavy with everything neither of them said.

Chapter Text

~NOW~

She was only thirty.

Thirty.

And pregnant.

And she had coffee with him this morning.

Wilson sat slouched on the plastic chair, elbows on his knees, hands laced together so tight his knuckles looked like bleached pebbles. His lab coat was wrinkled, smeared with some stranger’s blood, though he didn’t know when that happened. His pager had long stopped buzzing. Nothing existed beyond the heavy silence in his chest and the faint beeping of some monitor behind the trauma curtains.

Violet’s curtain was still drawn. Trauma 3.

They always draw the curtain when there’s nothing left to see. Nothing you can fix. When what lies beneath it becomes evidence, not a person.

Wilson stared at it. Stared so hard it almost wavered like heat on pavement. His ears rang. He couldn’t remember the last time he blinked.

“She was fine this morning.”

That’s what he’d said. Repeated. Clung to.

“She was fine.”

She laughed. She called House an emotionally constipated Neanderthal. She dunked a biscotti in her coffee, tapped it against the mug with an air of ceremony like she was at a royal tea party, then grinned at him when it fell apart and sank.

She said she was going to talk to House tonight. “No more avoidance,” she’d said, rolling her eyes but hopeful. “I’m not afraid of him. I want answers.”

Wilson told her, gently, to go easy. That House had been… strange, recently. Off his axis.

She had smiled and said, “So am I.”

Now she was gone.

Just like that.

Something in Wilson had gone with her. A fault line had opened wide beneath his feet and swallowed all the meaning in the world.

Violet Rowan. House’s wife. Wilson’s best friend. His secret safe, his emotional lighthouse, his co-conspirator in surviving House.

Violet, who always understood too much and said too little. Who never let her sadness stain her strength. Who’d bled through her fingertips for the people she loved and never asked for anything in return.

And now—now she was nothing but memory.

He didn’t know how to breathe without her.

He felt it before he saw it, movement in the corner of his eye. A shuffling. 

Wilson looked over.

House was turned around.

Leaning against the wall like he didn’t need the cane, like gravity no longer applied to him. His face was expressionless. His eyes, however, were glass.

Wilson followed his gaze.

There was no one there.

But House was staring at something—someone, with fierce intensity, his pupils dilating like he’d seen the sun itself.

Wilson’s heart cracked wide open.

Because he knew.

He knew what House was seeing.

Violet.

House was hallucinating her.

And the worst part, the part that gutted Wilson down to his marrow, was that he could almost see her too. If he closed his eyes. If he tried hard enough. If he let himself believe.

“House,” Wilson said softly.

But House didn’t respond. His eyes were wet now. Red-rimmed. Wide.

His lips moved like he was trying to speak to her.

To Violet.

To the version of her that still existed in his mind, just a few feet in front of him. Maybe smiling. Maybe touching her stomach. Maybe telling him it was all a mistake, that she was still here, still breathing, still his.

Wilson stood slowly. He didn’t dare approach.

He felt paralyzed by his own helplessness.

This was House. Brilliant. Impossible. Cruel. Unshakable. He was the one who broke people, not the one who broke.

But now, watching him reach out into empty air, just a small, trembling twitch of fingers, Wilson felt something unravel inside him. A sob that didn’t rise to the surface. A scream that got stuck in his throat.

There was nothing he could say.

No words. No comfort. No damn anything.

He’d spent his entire life trying to help people.

And now, when it mattered most, when the man he loved as a brother was hallucinating his dead wife just feet away from her cooling body, Wilson had nothing.

Just silence.

*

He remembered when Violet first came to Princeton-Plainsboro.

House was instantly suspicious. Then intrigued. Then terrified.

He fought it every step of the way. But she didn’t.

She matched him. Temper for temper. Wit for wit. She exposed his humanity like a surgeon peeling away dead tissue to find something vital underneath.

They got married in a courthouse on a Tuesday.

No flowers. No witnesses.

Just House, Violet, and a very annoyed clerk.

Wilson signed the license.

And when House limped away afterward, mumbling about taxes and legal benefits, Violet had grabbed Wilson’s hand and whispered, “He’s happier than he’ll ever admit.”

And she was right.

God, she was always right.

He thought of the babies. The one she loved like her lifeline and the other she never got to hold. 

“Her babies,” Wilson whispered aloud, voice cracking.

Now, her son will grow up without a mother. 

House sank to his knees.

Not collapsed. Not dramatic. Just… gave up.

His head tilted slightly. His hand hovered in the air like he wanted to catch a wisp of something before it disappeared.

Wilson couldn’t bear it.

Couldn’t look at him like that.

Like a man made of glass, cracking silently under the weight of the invisible.

Still, he didn’t move.

Didn’t interrupt.

Because what do you say to a man who sees the ghost of the only person who ever loved him and knows, knows deep in his bones that she is gone?

What do you say to yourself, when you’ve lost your best friend, your person, and the world keeps spinning like it’s just another Thursday?

He wiped his face, found tears there.

Wilson sat back down. Rested his hands on his knees. Looked up at the fluorescent lights until his vision blurred.

Let House have his ghost.

Let himself have his grief.

There was nothing else to give.

_________________________________

There was a curtain still drawn across Trauma 3.

Wilson stood facing it like it might rear up and attack him. His shoes felt glued to the floor, but the sterile scent of antiseptic and iron pulled him forward. His legs moved before his brain agreed to it. Just a step. He'd already seen her. He pulled the cover over her. But he needed to see her again. 

Then, 

“Don’t.”

The voice was raw. Cracked like something dying.

Wilson froze mid-step.

Behind him, House stirred for the first time in what felt like hours. He hadn’t stood, hadn’t moved much at all since Cameron had come out of Trauma and said the words, flat, quiet, final.

“I am sorry, House.”

Wilson, when he learned of what happened, didn’t remember sitting down. Didn’t remember the part where the world tilted and never righted itself. He hadn’t cried. Not really. Not yet. Because Violet Rowan had coffee with him just this morning. Because she was only thirty. 

Because this wasn’t real.

“I said don’t,” House repeated, louder now, though not shouting. The edge in his voice wasn’t anger. It was pain. Panic. His fingers clenched the armrest of the chair like it was the only thing tethering him to gravity. “Don’t go in there. That’s not her. That’s just… leftovers.”

Chase and Foreman stood a few feet away, fresh from the trauma room. They looked pale, shaken, eyes hollow. They weren’t doctors right now. Just people. Just men who’d seen something they couldn’t unsee.

Neither spoke.

They didn’t need to.

Wilson turned his head slowly, just enough to see House still hunched in the waiting room chair, back bowed like something had caved in. Like grief had carved a canyon in his chest and left him unable to breathe.

House’s eyes weren’t on him. They weren’t on anything in the room. They were fixed somewhere invisible. Somewhere inside.

“You have to see her,” Wilson said, gently now. Like a person trying to lead a dog out of traffic. “We both do.”

“No,” House replied again, this time quieter. Firmer. “You can. I can’t.”

Wilson stepped toward him. Dropped to a crouch to bring himself eye-level.

“House…”

House blinked at the sound of his name. 

“I was going to talk to her today,” House murmured, almost as if the thought had just remembered itself. “I was going to apologize. I was going to—” His mouth twisted, pain contorting the words before they escaped. “I was going to try.”

Wilson sat beside him, slowly, not touching him. Just near enough to remind him he wasn’t alone. The silence that followed was thick and oxygenless.

Finally, House spoke again.

“She said I made her feel like a ghost.”

Wilson didn’t move. The words hung in the air like smoke.

“She said that two days ago. In the kitchen,” House continued, voice barely more than breath. “She said she was already dead and I just hadn’t noticed.”

Wilson’s throat tightened, sharp and raw.

Because of course she said that.

Of course Violet, brave and too-young and fiercely alive, had fought to be seen while the man she loved buried himself in self-defense mechanisms and barbed sarcasm. Of course she was fading in front of them and no one realized just how much.

“She wanted you to see her,” Wilson whispered. “She wanted to be visible again.”

House gave a stiff nod. “I know.”

They sat there, two aging men surrounded by the echo of something beautiful and gone. Not doctors now. Just grief-stricken boys who’d loved the same woman in different, broken ways.

“You want me to go in? And do you want to, with me?” Wilson asked finally.

House didn’t look at him.

“No,” he whispered. “I want to stay right here and pretend I said the right things when I had the chance.”

Wilson reached out. Placed a hand on House’s shoulder, tentative and feather-light. There was no reaction. Just the faint rise and fall of breath, irregular like everything else in the world now.

Then, slowly, Wilson stood.

One foot in front of the other.

He walked the long corridor toward the curtain, each step a defiance of what lay behind it. Chase and Foreman flanked the wall near House, silent as sentinels. They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t offer comfort. They simply existed in the space, witnesses to the unraveling.

Wilson’s fingers closed around the edge of the curtain.

And he hesitated.

He remembered every single moment he’d shared with her. Not just the big ones—her wedding day, her pregnancy announcement, the night she sobbed in his car for three straight hours—but the small ones. The inside jokes. The dumb movies. The way she’d texted him whenever House made her want to throw a chair through a window.

He braced himself.

And pulled the curtain back.

The room was dim and quiet. Too quiet.

She lay on the stretcher, a white sheet pulled up to over her face. He had done that. The monitors had long since gone dark. He lowered the sheet. Her hair was damp. Her lips slightly parted. Her skin had the pallor of something no longer inhabited.

Wilson moved closer, barely aware of his feet carrying him.

Violet.

She looked like she might wake up at any moment and tell him this was a mistake. That she’d been asleep. That she just needed five more minutes.

She looked younger.

More peaceful than he’d ever seen her.

But her hands were cold.

Wilson took them anyway. Held them between his palms.

“Hi,” he whispered.

There was a lump in his throat, too large to speak through. Still, he tried.

“You scared the shit out of us,” he said, smiling through tears. “You always had to be dramatic. Even in death.”

He exhaled shakily. Blinked rapidly.

“I miss you already,” he murmured. “He does too. He just doesn’t know how to say it.”

He bent slightly. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

Then let go.

She was gone. Not in theory. Not in metaphor. But gone.

Wilson pulled the sheet up over her shoulders, pausing one last moment.

Then stepped back out into the hall.

*

House hadn’t moved.

But his eyes snapped up the moment Wilson returned.

They searched his face.

And Wilson didn’t say a word.

He sat again.

This time closer.

And waited.

It was House who broke the silence.

“I think I thought she’d never really leave,” he said. “Like she’d always be there. Like no matter how much I pushed her, she’d just… stay.”

Wilson didn’t respond.

“I knew she was pregnant,” House said suddenly, eyes red. “Back when it happened. I knew. I overheard her telling Cuddy. She thought I hadn’t, but, I knew. And I didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask. Didn’t even bring it up until she said it herself.”

Wilson turned slowly to look at him.

House was breathing heavily now, like each confession stripped skin off his chest.

“I didn’t ask,” he repeated. “Because I didn’t want to deal with the part where she might actually leave me one day. But it flowed out in the wrong way.”

Wilson didn’t know what surprised him more—that House had known, or that he’d been so afraid to lose her to the point he had refused to acknowledge the events happening in his life.

“She did what she had to do. She acted as a mother to Eli more than your wife that day, House,” Wilson said, voice low.

House gave a bitter half-laugh. “Yeah.  Maybe. Maternal Instinct. She was right but I made it hard.”

Silence stretched.

Finally, Wilson reached into his coat and pulled out a folded paper. Violet’s bracelet. The one she always wore.

“She had this on,” he said. “I thought you’d want it.”

House took it.

He stared at it for a long time. Then curled it in his fist and brought it to his chest.

“I wasn’t good to her,” he whispered.

“You tried,” Wilson said.

House shook his head. “No. I was going to try. I just… waited too long.”

Wilson said nothing. Because sometimes silence was the only language grief understood.

They sat like that for a long time.

Two men surrounded by friends and ghosts.

Waiting for the world to make sense again.

"Maybe she breathed her last thinking I didn't love her".

_________________________________

~THEN~

“You need to control your emotionally stunted hellbeast,” Violet snapped, slamming her coffee down on Wilson’s desk so hard that half of it sloshed onto a patient chart.

Wilson didn’t even flinch. He reached for a tissue, dabbed at the corner of the file, and looked up at her calmly. “I assume we’re talking about House.”

“No, I’m talking about the other six-foot misanthrope who fake-limped into Le Bernardin last night dressed like a biker-chic mortician.”

Wilson raised an eyebrow. “He showed up at your date?”

Violet folded her arms and paced in tight, agitated circles, her heels clicking like punctuation marks to her fury. “Not just showed up. Oh no. That would’ve been too civil. He commandeered the table. Pretended he was my protective brother and spent the entire evening describing in elaborate detail how I had once stitched a human ear to a cantaloupe in med school as part of an ‘experimental sculpture phase.’”

Wilson’s hand went to his mouth, trying to smother a laugh. It failed. Miserably.

“It’s not funny!” she barked.

“It’s a little funny.”

Violet threw herself onto his couch like a starlet in a silent film. “He introduced himself as Bartholomew Splicington. And when my date—who, by the way, was a very sweet neurosurgeon with actual conversational skills—asked what he did for a living, House told him he was a professional nipple curator for the MoMA.”

Wilson wheezed.

“Professional nipple curator, Wilson.”

“Okay, that part is funny.”

“I hate him.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do! I want to strangle him with a catheter. I want to tape bubble wrap to the underside of all his chairs so every time he sits down, it sounds like he’s farting in Morse code. I want to inject all his Vicodin with glitter glue.”

Wilson laughed until he had to wipe his eyes. “He’s obviously doing it on purpose.”

“Of course he’s doing it on purpose!” Violet snapped. “He does this every time I so much as look at someone with a working prefrontal cortex. The last guy? He hacked into the hospital paging system and made it sound like I was urgently needed in the urology department during our dessert. The guy ghosted me before the tiramisu even landed.”

Wilson leaned back in his chair, still grinning. “I think you might be the only person alive who House messes with because he likes you.”

Violet snorted. “He doesn’t like me. He likes chaos. I’m just the poor idiot orbiting the epicenter.”

Wilson gave her a look. “He knows your schedule by heart. He somehow knows exactly when you leave the OR. He even memorized the name of your cat.”

“He told me my cat sounded like a venereal disease.”

“Which means he Googled your cat.”

Violet opened her mouth, paused, then slowly closed it again. Her brows furrowed.

Violet wasn't finished, resumed pacing again like a cat in a cage while Wilson watched her from behind his desk, his lips twitching with barely concealed amusement.

“He told my date—my date, God help me cause I don't even know which one it was, Wilson—that I once performed brain surgery while reciting Hamilton. And when I tried to correct him, he rapped the entire second verse of ‘My Shot’ while miming a craniotomy with a butter knife! In the middle of a Michelin-starred restaurant!”

“I mean, points for commitment—”

“Don’t defend him!” Violet flung a hand toward the ceiling in exasperation. “Do you know what it’s like to try and flirt with someone while House is describing cerebrospinal fluid leakage like it’s part of a romantic charcuterie board?!”

Wilson opened his mouth, whether to apologize, deflect, or simply laugh again was anyone’s guess, when a knock came at the office door.

The door opened before either of them could answer.

Chase and Foreman stepped in, each holding a chart, looking vaguely apologetic. Chase spoke first.

“Sorry to interrupt, but we were wondering if you had a minute to consult on—”

“Absolutely not,” Violet snapped, spinning around and pointing at them like a prosecuting attorney. “Does this look like a good time to you?”

Chase blinked. “Uh…”

“Does the wild gesturing, raised voice, or the visible murder aura not suggest to you that I’m in the middle of something?!”

Foreman raised an eyebrow. “We just need five minutes.”

Violet advanced a step. “You can have five years when I’m finished dismantling the psychological profile of a certain narcissistic limping gremlin who thinks sabotaging my social life is some sort of love language!”

Wilson winced behind his mug of coffee. “She’s not exaggerating.”

Chase looked confused. “You mean… House?”

“Ding ding ding! Gold star for the Aussie!” Violet clapped sarcastically. “Next week we’ll cover basic pattern recognition.”

Chase gave a half-laugh, then realized too late that it wasn’t safe. “Sorry. I just—he showed up at your date again?”

“In leather. And a fake accent. Told the hostess we were half-siblings from Transylvania. Called me ‘Violate Rowanovich.’”

Foreman blinked. “…He really doesn’t want you dating, huh?”

“Wow, Dr. Foreman, thank you for that keen analysis,” Violet snapped. “Truly, we are blessed by your gift for the obvious.”

Wilson sighed and leaned back, raising a hand to the two men. “Guys, come back later. Preferably when the emotional storm system has passed.”

Chase glanced at Violet, then wisely took a step back. “Right. We’ll just… circle back in an hour.”

“Circle back with snacks,” Violet added. “For my suffering.”

Foreman muttered, “Man, you really are the only person on Earth who could survive both a date and a workplace relationship with House.”

Violet crossed her arms. “I am a modern medical martyr. History will remember me.”

“Or canonize you,” Wilson muttered.

The door shut behind them.

Wilson turned back to Violet, who resumed pacing.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “They walked into the storm.”

Wilson smiled. “I’m just surprised they walked out.”

“…Do you think he’s actually—”

“Falling for you? Yes.”

“—plotting my death? Because I do think I saw chloroform in his coat pocket yesterday.”

Wilson rolled his eyes. “You’re in denial.”

“I’m in hell.”

“You like it.”

Violet gave him a long, withering glare. “I like a lot of things, Wilson. Functional air conditioning. Orthopedic insoles. Post-call sleep. Nowhere on that list is ‘Gregory House in a leather jacket telling my date that I collect colon polyps as a hobby.’”

Wilson couldn’t help but grin again.

“She stormed out,” Violet muttered. “The hostess. Not me. She thought House was about to mug the wine steward. I had to bribe her with three Yelp reviews and a tray of petit fours.”

“You stayed?”

“I had to. I was afraid he’d burn the place down out of spite.”

Wilson leaned forward. “But did you actually talk to him?”

Violet stared at her lap for a long beat.

“We argued about Kantian ethics. Then we argued about cats. Then we ordered mussels and fought over the last one like savages.”

Wilson blinked. “…That sounds suspiciously like a date.”

“It was not a date,” Violet said firmly.

“You shared seafood. There was fighting. At some point, I assume he insulted your intelligence and you insulted his soul?”

“…and his sock choices.”

Wilson pointed. “Textbook House-romance.”

Violet groaned and let her head fall back against the cushions. “He’s impossible. He’s childish and condescending and drives me insane. I swear to God, Wilson, if he ruins one more potential relationship, I’m going to steal his cane and beat him with it until he begs for mercy in medical Latin.”

Wilson chuckled, then said gently, “Have you ever asked him why he does it?”

“He’ll deny everything.”

“Still. Try.”

Violet sighed. “The problem is… sometimes I think he actually listens. Like, genuinely listens. I’ll be halfway through a rant about NIH funding and he’ll just say something that proves he caught every word. And other times, he treats me like I’m a mildly amusing traffic cone.”

“He does that when he’s scared.”

“Scared of what? Me? I weigh like a hundred and ten pounds and most of it’s sarcasm.”

Wilson leaned back with a smile. “Exactly.”

There was a long silence.

Violet sat upright again, brushing hair out of her face. “He’s a menace, Wilson.”

“Sure.”

“A deviant.”

“Absolutely.”

“And if he shows up on my next date, I will drag him into couples therapy myself.”

Wilson raised an eyebrow. “So there’s going to be a next date?”

Violet paused.

Then, begrudgingly: “…Possibly.”

“I’ll make sure House is busy with clinic duty that night.”

She grinned. “You’re a good friend.”

“Just trying to keep the nipple curator off the streets.”

*

Later that night, House stood outside Violet’s apartment with a smug little smirk on his face and a takeout bag from that same seafood place.

“I brought mussels. And a laminated chart of famous nipple curators. For science.”

Violet didn’t even hesitate.

She grabbed the bag, stepped aside, and muttered, “If you sabotage my love life again, I’m supergluing your Vicodin bottle shut.”

House smirked.

But he didn’t try to deny it.

Because somewhere beneath the sarcasm, beneath the games and jabs and elaborate schemes, he had fallen for her.

He just hadn’t admitted it yet.

And Violet, God help her, maybe hadn’t admitted it either.

But she let him in anyway.

__________________________________

~NOW~

Thirty minutes passed before House finally stood.

No declaration. No drama. Just the sound of the cane scraping lightly against the linoleum, and the quiet groan of weight being shifted onto reluctant joints. He didn’t look at Wilson, or Foreman, or Chase. His gaze stayed fixed ahead, on the space beyond the trauma room door. The curtain still drawn.

He didn’t ask who was waiting.

Didn’t say he was ready.

He just rose like a man who had no choice but to walk.

Each movement was careful. Mechanical. Not the defiant limp of routine, but the slow choreography of someone doing something they’d rehearsed only in nightmares.

Cameron was standing at the threshold. Her hands were clasped together in front of her, gloves long since discarded, her scrubs stained with a streak of something dark and dried at the shoulder. She had aged in the past hour, eyes red, expression pinched at the corners like she was holding something in that threatened to burst out.

“I cleaned her face,” she said gently, as if speaking too loudly might wake the dead. “Closed her eyes. And the fetus — the baby has been taken to the morgue. You don’t have to look if—”

“I’ll look.”

That was all he said. Flat. Final. Clinical. Not brave. Not broken. Just inevitable.

She nodded and stepped aside. Her face didn’t follow him in. She couldn’t.

The curtain slid open with the softest whisper of rings on metal.

The lights in the trauma room had been dimmed. The buzzing fluorescent harshness replaced with a more forgiving wash of gold, but it made everything look more unreal. Like a painting of death instead of the real thing. The gurney was still in the center of the room. Still. Silent. The machines unplugged, the monitors blank, cables neatly coiled like they were trying to be respectful.

Violet lay there.

Pale.

Still.

The white sheet covered her body from the chest down. Her face was framed by dark hair someone had gently combed back behind her ears. Her lips were closed. Her eyelids, too. Hands by her sides.

She looked peaceful.

Too peaceful.

Wrong.

House didn’t rush. He walked in like he was entering a museum exhibit. His cane tapped gently across the tile. No one followed him inside.

He didn’t speak.

Not at first.

He simply looked.

Violet.

There was a time he couldn’t go ten minutes without hearing her voice. That sharp, dry wit. That low murmur when she was angry but trying not to cry. The occasional half-laugh that caught in her throat, usually when he’d said something too inappropriate in the wrong moment and she couldn’t help but find it funny.

Now she was quiet.

Unmoving.

Unreachable.

He stood at her side, hovering just beyond the boundary of the sheet, as if touching it might confirm the finality of what lay beneath. His eyes didn’t blink much. They just roamed her face, slowly, as if searching for the part of her that might still be real. Still present.

He didn’t find it.

“I yelled at you,” he said. The words barely reached the air.

They hung there, invisible and heavy.

He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t apologize. It wasn’t a confession, just a statement. A point of data. Something he couldn’t erase from the timeline.

He didn’t cry.

Not yet.

House studied her forehead. The faint crease between her brows was gone. He used to mock her for it. Told her she’d overdeveloped the “serious face” muscle. She used to reply by flicking him in the middle of his own forehead, right between the eyes.

Now, smooth. Blank. Clean.

Her hands, he saw, were cold. He didn’t touch them. Didn’t have to. He’d held cold hands before. He knew what they felt like. But these were her hands. The ones that used to cup his jaw when she was trying to get through to him. The ones that used to drum along his back lazily when she couldn’t sleep. The ones that trembled, slightly, when she first told him she was pregnant.

He hadn’t answered her then.

She’d gone quiet for a long time after that.

He took a breath. Shaky. Shallow.

“I touched you like you were an obligation,” he murmured. Another line. As much for himself as for the room.

It was a truth. Not dramatic. Not performative. He didn’t try to redeem himself with it. He just laid it down like a card on a table.

He didn’t cry.

But he did lean closer.

Not touching.

Just closer.

His gaze hovered over her face.

Her nose was the same. Small. Slightly upturned. She used to complain about it, but he always liked it—it crinkled when she smiled. He couldn’t remember the last time she smiled.

The bruises around her temples were faint, now yellowing. Cleaned. Cameron’s work. But he noticed. He catalogued them. Every detail.

That mouth. Once so full of fight. That voice—sarcastic, low, unafraid—now silenced.

Her body beneath the sheet, he didn’t let himself think of what had been lost there. The pregnancy. The almost-child. The parts of Violet he’d never get to know.

He felt like someone had taken a scalpel to his chest, opened him up, and removed the one part of himself that still made him human.

He didn’t cry.

He just stood.

“I was so angry at how you disappeared into yourself,” he said, very quietly. “I didn’t see how far gone you were.”

No one answered. There was no one to answer. Only the empty chair in the corner. The faint tick of the wall clock. The ghost of a life never fully lived.

He stepped back slightly. His hands clenched around the cane, knuckles white.

It had been easier to make her the villain. To paint her withdrawal as petulant, her depression as deliberate. Easier to accuse than to ask. He told himself she was distant because she didn’t love him. That she’d changed. That pregnancy made her clingy, unpredictable, inconvenient.

What a joke.

She had been vanishing before his eyes, and he was too obsessed with preserving his fortress to notice. He thought if he ignored the cracks, they wouldn’t widen.

Now the house had collapsed.

He closed his eyes. Just for a moment. The inside of his eyelids burned.

When he opened them again, she was still dead.

Still. Cold. Gone.

He reached out, very slowly, and adjusted a strand of hair near her temple. Just a nudge. Like she might care. Like it mattered.

Then his hand fell back.

He didn’t speak again.

There was nothing else worth saying.

Minutes passed.

Outside, the hallway was silent. Wilson hadn’t left. Chase and Foreman were still posted like statues. Waiting. Not rushing.

When House finally turned, he didn’t look back.

He left the room like a man walking away from the only battlefield that ever mattered.

He stepped through the curtain, past Cameron’s careful silence, past Wilson’s tight-lipped waiting. His face was blank, but not unreadable. It was the face of someone who had seen something unspeakable and survived it.

Just barely.

He didn’t say goodbye to the room. Or the people in it.

He didn’t have to.

He stood there.

Out of Trauma 3.

" Now what?"

Chapter Text

~THEN~

“Why do you keep doing this?”

Wilson’s voice wasn’t angry. Just exhausted. He leaned against the kitchen counter, arms folded across his chest, watching House unceremoniously toss a bottle of whiskey into the cabinet they both pretended wasn’t part of their daily routine.

“I’m not doing anything,” House said flatly, not looking at him.

“You are . You scheduled clinic duty for her, again , in the middle of her dinner with Ian from Radiology.”

House shrugged. “Coincidence. Besides, Ian from Radiology laughs like a dying squirrel. She’s doing herself a favor.”

Wilson sighed. “House, she’s twenty-four. She’s barely got time to eat between rotations and cleaning up after your messes. She finally goes on a date, and you conveniently trap her at the clinic?”

House glanced over, his expression neutral, but his eyes sharp. “She’s a resident. Not a contestant on The Bachelor . Maybe she should focus on medicine instead of Tinder.”

“That’s rich,” Wilson muttered. “Coming from the guy who once had a three-hour argument with Cuddy about why clinic hours were unconstitutional.”

House didn’t answer. Instead, he limped across the kitchen, opened the fridge, and stared into it like salvation might be tucked behind last week’s takeout.

“She doesn’t even like Ian,” he said after a pause. “He chews with his mouth open.”

Wilson raised an eyebrow. “Did she tell you that?”

“No.”

Silence.

House’s jaw tightened slightly.

Wilson waited.

He didn’t push. Not yet. He didn’t have to. The tension hanging in the air did enough of the talking.

“She’s not—” House started, then stopped. “She’s not dating material.”

“Oh, so now you’re a relationship prophet?” Wilson asked dryly. “You sabotaged three different dates. Ian. Omar. And, my personal favorite, Max, who you told had a terminal STD .”

House winced. “Max was a med student. I did him a favor. He shouldn’t be dating up the academic ladder. It’s predatory.”

“She’s a resident, not a victim,” Wilson snapped.

“She’s young .”

There it was. Said too quickly. With too much force.

Wilson folded his arms again. “And that bothers you why?”

House didn’t answer. He pulled out an expired yogurt, threw it in the trash, and shut the fridge a little too hard.

Wilson kept watching him. He didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to see the cracks forming.

House was unraveling. Not dramatically. Slowly. Almost imperceptibly. But it was there, in the sharpness of his sarcasm, in the way his eyes flicked toward the hallway where she sometimes walked barefoot, hair damp from the shower, wrapped in a ridiculous oversized hoodie that probably belonged to one of them. Probably him.

“You like her,” Wilson said softly.

House snorted. “No.”

“House—”

“I don’t like her.”

Wilson didn’t push further. He knew that voice. It was the same one House had used about Stacy, about Cuddy, about every woman who’d ever managed to get under that cynical, calcified shell of his. Denial so reflexive it came before breathing.

But Wilson knew better.

And House did too.

________________________________

She was too young.

That’s what he told himself every time he caught his eyes lingering too long.

Twenty-four. Barely out of med school. Bright-eyed, ruthless with her ambition, sharp-tongued in ways that reminded him uncomfortably of himself.

But not broken.

Not yet.

She still believed in things. Still stayed up reading neurology journals and annotating them in the margins with multicolored pens. She baked on her nights off, usually something overly spiced or underbaked, and left the results in mismatched Tupperware containers labeled in cursive.

She cried once after a particularly brutal case and apologized for it afterward like it was a weakness.

He told her it was stupid.

Then stayed up that night thinking about it.

Violet.

Too poetic for Princeton-Plainsboro. Too delicate to be reduced to a title or ID number.

But she wasn’t delicate.

She was terrifying.

She challenged him in rounds. Called out flaws in logic with the kind of certainty that came from someone who read . Who cared . Who hadn’t yet learned that medicine wasn’t about saving everyone, it was about losing slowly, methodically, until you learned to stop noticing.

She still noticed.

House hated that about her.

But mostly he hated the way he noticed her back.

_______________________________

It wasn’t attraction, he told himself.

She was a resident.

Twenty. Four.

She used sparkly pens. She put her phone on silent in the OR because she respected protocol. She said thank you to nurses. She called Wilson “sir” for two months before he begged her to stop.

She couldn’t possibly be—

But then there were moments.

Little moments.

Like when she leaned over his shoulder to peer at a scan, the scent of rosemary and coffee clinging to her like something warm and homey.

Or when she cursed in Arabic under her breath after a long shift and then laughed at herself, cheeks flushed from exhaustion and caffeine.

Or when she fell asleep in the diagnostics lounge with a textbook on her chest, mouth slightly open, hair a mess, arms crossed like she was hugging herself.

House didn’t look.

Not really.

Just… observed.

Scientifically.

Clinically.

It wasn’t liking . It was data collection.

He watched the way she listened when patients talked, even the ones who rambled. He watched the way she stood too still when she was upset, like if she moved, she might break.

He noticed she chewed the inside of her cheek when she was lying. That she gave Foreman dirty looks when he interrupted her. That she always— always —saved Wilson the last muffin.

He catalogued it all. With no intention of doing anything with it.

Because he didn’t like her.

He couldn’t.

She was twenty-four.

_________________________________

So he sabotaged the dates.

It wasn’t jealousy.

It was common sense.

Omar was a smug neurosurgeon and clearly only interested in getting into her scrubs. Ian was dull. Max was barely coherent unless you put a chart in front of him.

House did what any protective senior would do.

He redirected.

He misfiled her schedule. Assigned her clinic. Told a few well-placed lies.

She didn’t know.

Or maybe she did.

Maybe that’s why she started avoiding the common spaces. Why she stopped baking. Why her laughter became rarer, brittle around the edges. Why she flinched a little whenever he entered the room.

Good, he thought.

Better.

Let her think he’s the bastard everyone else knows him to be.

It would keep her safe.

_________________________________

One night, she left a sticky note on the table.

Please tell House not to touch my bag. Thanks. Also, that’s my coffee.

No signature.

Just pink ink and a little cartoon rabbit drawn in the corner.

House stared at it for too long.

He didn’t touch the bag again.

He left the coffee untouched. 

_________________________________

“You can’t keep doing this,” Wilson said again, days later.

House didn’t answer.

“House. You’re probably hurting her.”

“She’ll survive.”

“Will you?”

House looked up then. Really looked.

“I’m not doing anything,” he said, voice low.

“You are.”

House tilted his head slightly, like considering something far away.

“She’s not supposed to matter,” he said. “She’s supposed to rotate out. Go fall in love with some cardiologist and live in a house with a picket fence and seasonal throw pillows. That’s what people like her do .”

Wilson’s voice softened. “And you think you don’t get to want that.”

House didn’t reply.

Because he didn’t know how to want something he wasn’t supposed to have.

__________________________________

Violet passed him in the hallway later that week.

She didn’t speak.

Just gave him a tired look. Not angry. Not hurt.

Just tired .

Like she didn't have it in her to keep questioning why he does what he does. 

Like she was running out of ways to explain herself to someone who would never listen.

Her hoodie sleeves were too long. Her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness.

She was twenty-four.

And House, forty-six, and furious with himself, watched her go.

Just observed.

Like always.

And told himself, once again, that it meant nothing .

___________________________________

It began with a cough.

A dry, harmless sound at first, easily dismissed. Violet didn’t think twice about it. It was flu season, and she had three back-to-back admissions in Neuro and a consult pending in ICU. Her body was tired, but her mind was sharp, and as long as she kept moving, she figured she’d outpace whatever virus was trying to catch up with her.

She was wrong.

By hour twelve, the cough had worsened. Her head felt heavy, and her scrubs clung to her skin with the kind of clammy dampness that wasn’t just from running around. A sheen of sweat traced the back of her neck, and her throat was raw. She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead in a rare moment of stillness, and felt the unmistakable heat of fever.

But her pager buzzed again before she could think too much about it.

Trauma consult.

Neuro involvement.

She took a deep breath, tucked the thermometer she’d stolen from the nurse’s station back into her pocket, and pushed forward.

*

By the 24-hour mark, her legs ached with a persistent dullness, and her hands trembled slightly when she wrote notes. She attributed it to exhaustion and caffeine withdrawal. No time for food. No time for breaks. She’d stopped checking her temperature after it crept past 101°F. A low-grade fever. Nothing she couldn’t work through.

She told herself this was what residency was. Resilience. Endurance. Quiet suffering.

No one noticed, or maybe they did, but no one said anything.

She answered pages with clipped efficiency. She presented during rounds with more sharpness than usual, because she was terrified that if she didn’t, someone might realize something was wrong.

She didn’t limp, didn’t slouch, didn’t show her cards.

She was still Violet Rowan, top of her class, cool and caustic and House-like in all the worst ways.

Except underneath the sarcasm, her skin burned.

*

Thirty-six hours in, she found herself in a supply closet, bent at the waist, panting.

Her heart was racing. Her vision had gone spotty after walking up a flight of stairs too quickly. Her hands braced the metal shelf as she tried to regulate her breathing. The fever had spiked, though she couldn’t say by how much, she’d stopped checking.

She wanted to lie down.

God, she wanted to lie down.

Just five minutes on a cool tile floor.

But her pager buzzed again. A seizure on the east wing. Neurology consult requested.

She wiped the sweat from her upper lip with the sleeve of her coat, popped two more ibuprofen tablets into her mouth, swallowed dry, and kept walking.

*

By hour forty-two, she stopped feeling real.

The hospital corridors blurred at the edges, and voices sounded distant and warped. She responded on autopilot, driven not by clarity but muscle memory.

She double-checked meds. Ordered MRIs. Whispered to herself under her breath to stay awake. Stay focused. Stay in control.

She splashed cold water on her face in the restroom and didn’t recognize herself in the mirror. Her lips were cracked. Her cheeks flushed with fever. Her eyes, usually sharp, looked dazed, distant.

She considered, for the briefest of moments, going to House or Wilson.

And then she laughed. Bitter. Hollow.

She couldn’t. Not now.

If they saw her like this, they’d send her home.

Worse, House would ridicule her. “Oh, finally admitting you’re mortal?”

She didn’t want pity.

She didn’t want kindness.

She wanted to finish her shift. Prove she could handle it.

She had to.

*

Hour forty-eight.

It was 4:37 p.m.

The hospital had gone quiet, unnervingly so. Her fever hovered somewhere above 102°F now. She hadn’t eaten anything in nearly a day and a half. Water tasted metallic. The hallway lights flickered faintly overhead as she made her way to ICU for one last review.

The floor felt uneven beneath her feet, and her hands curled tightly into fists to hide their tremor. She felt cold and hot all at once, skin burning under her coat and her fingers like ice.

The patient’s chart swam in her vision. She squinted, trying to focus, but the words didn’t make sense anymore.

Then, her vision doubled.

She blinked. Once. Twice.

The page shifted again.

And then everything tilted.

She stumbled, just a bit, enough to knock into the wall. A nurse nearby turned.

“Dr. Rowan?”

“I’m fine,” she croaked.

The nurse didn’t believe her. “You’re pale. You’re sweating. Are you okay?”

“I said I’m fine ,” she snapped, the words too harsh, too loud. Her voice cracked in the middle of it.

The nurse backed off slightly, startled.

But Violet was already walking away.

If she stopped now, she wouldn’t start again.

*

Violet Rowan hadn’t slept in 48 hours.

Correction, she had technically closed her eyes for four minutes in the elevator between Neurology and Diagnostics, but only because her blood pressure momentarily tanked and she blacked out against the wall panel. Small things.

She had powered through two overnight shifts, five patients in neuro ICU, one neuropsych evaluation, a full consult for House’s team (which he never acknowledged, the bastard), and four cups of coffee she’d stolen from the Cardiology break room. She was also running a low-grade fever that, as of yesterday morning, had upgraded from “meh” to “someone set my organs on broil.”

And still, she refused to quit. Like a raccoon in a trap.

At exactly 6 :13 p.m., she staggered into the Diagnostics conference room with the coordination of a blindfolded goat, flopped into a rolling chair, attempted to sip a glass of water, and missed her mouth entirely.

House, in his office with the blinds drawn and Chopin playing far too dramatically on his speaker, noticed nothing . Or at least pretended not to. He was very busy solving a crossword with his feet on the desk, writing the word “syphilitic” into every blank space.

Enter Wilson.

He came barging in, moral compass first, sleeves rolled up, jaw set like a concerned elementary school principal.

“House.”

“Doctor Wilson,” House drawled, without looking up. “Come to confront me about sabotaging the neurology resident’s fourth failed attempt at a social life? She needs to know the CDC still frowns on emotional cooties.”

“She’s twenty-four , House,” Wilson snapped. “Not a nun. Not your possession. You can’t just—”

He paused.

Looked between the blinds, through the office window, into the conference room.

“Wait… is that… Violet?”

House didn’t turn around. “She’s fine.”

“She looks dead.”

“She always looks dead. That’s her default aesthetic. Kind of like if Daria went to medical school and forgot what a comb was.”

Wilson walked to the door connecting House’s office to the conference room, opened it quietly… and froze.

Violet was hunched over the table, hair half in her face, one hand loosely gripping a pen she hadn’t used in twenty minutes. Her eyes were glassy. Her skin was greyish. She blinked once, and then again—and then tried to speak.

“Blerghhhgh.”

That was it. Not a word. Just a noise.

Wilson stepped in fully, concern rising. “Violet?”

She looked up. And blinked. But not at him—somewhere vaguely near him, like he was a blurry cactus.

He touched her arm gently, and yanked his hand back like she was a stovetop.

“Jesus Christ—House, she’s boiling !”

House slowly stood, now vaguely interested. “Hmm.”

“HOUSE.”

“I heard you. You said she was hot. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about her.”

Wilson glared, stormed back into the conference room just in time for Violet to weakly sit up straighter… and then promptly double over and vomit onto the floor.

“Oh my God,” Wilson groaned. “House!”

Behind him, House finally limped over, cane in hand, and peered down at the puddle like a food critic. “Hmm. Mild notes of bile, acetone… trauma. Classic.” He looked at Violet, who was panting and half-folded in her chair. “What’s the matter, Resident Barbie? Tired of pretending you’re immortal?”

Violet—glorious, stubborn Violet—grabbed the edge of the table and wheezed, “Don’t admit me.”

Wilson blinked. “What?”

“No admission,” she croaked. “They’ll bench me. I will look weak. Just—do what you can. Here.”

“You need to be monitored , Violet. In bed , in a hospital, not—”

“No admission ,” she repeated. “Do it in-house. Improvise.”

House raised an eyebrow, visibly impressed. “So much for Hippocrates. I like her.”

“You would,” Wilson muttered.

House turned toward the hallway. “Someone find a janitor. We’ve got a Code Barf.”

“House.”

“Relax. I know a guy.” Of course, he does.

House wandered out into the hall and reappeared ten seconds later with Maurice, the eternally unfazed janitor who cleaned up after at least one bodily fluid disaster per week in Diagnostics.

Maurice took one look at the vomit and sighed like a man about to go into battle.

“Again?” he said flatly.

Wilson, meanwhile, had half-lifted Violet out of her chair and was guiding her, more like dragging her, into House’s office.

She wasn’t quite conscious. Not unconscious either. Just riding some fever dream wave of delirium, murmuring a mix of Arabic, Latin anatomy terms, and something that might’ve been a Star Wars quote.

“Seriously,” Wilson panted, nearly tripping over her limp legs, “how did no one notice she was this bad?”

“I noticed,” House said. “She walked into a glass door this morning and called it a ‘micro-concussion test.’”

“House!”

“I thought it was a bit!”

They reached House’s office, and Wilson awkwardly maneuvered Violet onto the old, questionable chaise lounge by the bookshelf. She collapsed onto it like she’d been shot, arm flung over her eyes.

“She’s burning up,” Wilson muttered, pressing the back of his hand to her cheek again. “We have to check her temp.”

House reached into his desk drawer, and pulled out a digital thermometer, a stethoscope, a full emergency med kit, and two IV bags like he was a prepped waiting for the apocalypse.

Wilson paused.

“What the hell?”

“What? You thought I wouldn’t have a stash?” House replied. “We live in chaos. You gotta be chaos-ready.”

“You have fluids in here?”

“I also have injectable ketamine and a bottle of Vicodin signed by Elvis. Wanna see?”

“No!”

But House was already kneeling beside Violet, surprisingly gentle for someone who routinely made nurses cry.

He slipped the thermometer under her arm, watched the numbers rise, then whistled.

“103.8.”

Wilson gaped. “She should be unconscious.”

“She is,” House said. “She just hasn’t realized it yet.”

Violet mumbled something unintelligible. Possibly about MRI contrast protocols. Possibly about war crimes. Either way, she wasn’t really present anymore.

Wilson shook his head. “We have to cool her down. Fluids, antipyretics, fast. Can you—”

“Already on it,” House said, snapping on gloves like a surgeon in an action movie. “Pass me the alcohol wipes.”

Wilson handed them over. “You’ve done this before.”

“You think this is the first time someone’s tried to die in my office? Please. I got shot here, remember? ” He looked up like he was sinking in nostalgia. "Good times".

They worked in tandem, Wilson prepping the IV site, House carefully pushing acetaminophen through a makeshift oral syringe. Violet slurred something and batted at House’s arm with the strength of a soggy cat.

“She thinks you’re a spider,” Wilson observed.

“She’s not wrong ,” House replied.

They got the IV running. House kicked a small fan over and turned it on her. Wilson used a damp paper towel from the med kit to pat down her neck and forehead.

Violet began to shiver.

“That’s a good sign,” Wilson said. “Body’s trying to regulate.”

“Or she’s reenacting Titanic . Either way, thrilling.”

Then something shifted.

House’s gaze lingered longer than necessary.

His usual sarcasm faded into something quieter. Not soft. House didn’t do soft, but… still.

He reached out and brushed Violet’s damp hair off her cheek.

She leaned into it.

Wilson watched it happen. The intimacy of it. The practiced ease of House pretending it was nothing, even as his fingers lingered longer than they should’ve.

Oh.

Oh.

Wilson didn’t say anything.

He just stood there.

House finally looked up, met Wilson’s gaze, and immediately masked everything behind a raised eyebrow.

“What?” he snapped.

“Nothing,” Wilson said innocently. “Just observing.”

“Then observe your way out of my office.”

But Wilson didn’t move.

Violet let out a soft, whimpering sigh. The kind that made House look back at her like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to curse her out or curl her into a blanket.

She mumbled, “Don’t let them take me to radiology, it’s… loud… and the frogs have guns.”

Wilson blinked. “Should we sedate her?”

House shrugged. “I want to hear where this frog war goes.”

Wilson’s pager beeped. He glanced down and sighed.

“I’ve got to go. Oncology consult.”

“Run along, Mother Hen.”

Wilson gave one last glance at Violet, who was starting to settle, cheeks still flushed, brow furrowed. Then at House, who, despite the scowl, had pulled a second blanket over her and was absently checking the IV drip like he didn’t even know he was doing it.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Wilson said.

“I’m not the one who cooked my brain like an overripe tomato,” House shot back.

As Wilson opened the door to leave, he paused, turned.

“You definitely like her.”

House didn’t answer.

Didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Just stared down at the delirious neurology resident curled up on his couch like a fevered kitten.

“Sure,” he muttered. “I like impending lawsuits and ethical disasters. Who doesn’t?”

And with that, Wilson left.

The door clicked shut behind him.

And House stayed.

Watching.

Waiting.

Pretending he didn’t care. Exactly like a man who did.

__________________________________

Six hours passed.

Outside, Princeton-Plainsboro had gone from frantic to graveyard quiet. The overnight shift had taken over. Hallway lights were dimmed to half-bright. Monitors beeped in quiet rhythms. Nurses moved like shadows.

Inside House’s office, time had grown still.

Violet was asleep. Deeply, heavily, unnaturally. Her fever had dropped after meds, hydration, and House’s emergency med stash, but she hadn’t woken. She barely stirred, save for the occasional twitch of her fingers or the faintest sound when she shifted under the blanket. Her skin was still too warm, but the worst had passed.

She lay curled on House’s battered chaise lounge, an IV bag suspended from a makeshift hook, one of his guitar stands bent into reluctant service. A cool washcloth lay across her forehead. The fan hummed beside her. Her hoodie, soaked with sweat hours ago, had been peeled away and replaced by one of House’s old Princeton sweatshirts. It was comically oversized on her, sleeves covering her hands, collar slipping off one shoulder.

House hadn’t left.

He’d told Wilson to go, tossed out some crude joke about frog rebellions and radiation, but he himself hadn’t moved much since. He sat slouched in his desk chair, one leg propped on the table, flipping occasionally through a journal he wasn’t reading.

He’d made himself coffee, twice.

Didn’t drink either.

Instead, he just sat there. Eyes flicking now and then toward the couch. Watching.

He told himself it was to monitor her vitals.

That’s all.

He told himself he was still here because someone had to make sure she didn’t aspirate or seize or god-knows-what in the middle of the night. That it wasn’t because her breathing sounded different when she turned on her side, or because her hands kept curling into fists like she was fighting even now.

It wasn’t because, when she let out a soft whimper in her sleep, he instinctively got up—quietly, gently, and adjusted the blanket without a word.

It wasn’t because he gave a damn.

He was just the guy with a fully stocked illegal medical cabinet and a functioning air conditioner.

Totally coincidental.

Totally uninvested.

The door creaked open just past 3:00 a.m.

Wilson stepped in, hair a mess, tie askew, and eyes rimmed with fatigue. He looked like he’d just walked out of a warzone, which, to be fair, Oncology often was.

He paused when he saw the room.

Violet still out cold.

House still there.

Wilson blinked. “Huh.”

House didn’t look up. “Don’t start.”

Wilson walked in anyway, stepping around the detritus of old journals and half-used med packs.

“I figured you’d call Chase or Cameron,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Or make a janitor sit with her while you went home to mope in the bathtub.”

“Chase would charge per hour. The janitor union refused after the third bodily fluid incident this month.”

Wilson smiled faintly. “So you stayed.”

“Someone had to keep her from licking a light socket in her sleep,” House replied dryly.

Wilson sat down in the guest chair, rubbing his eyes. “How’s she doing?”

“Fever dropped to 101.2 an hour ago,” House said, tossing him the thermometer. “Respirations fine. Pulse stable. IV’s holding. She stopped mumbling about gun-toting frogs around midnight.”

Wilson checked the readouts himself, out of habit, mostly, and nodded. “You did good.”

House scoffed. “Don’t say that. I’m allergic to praise.”

“She’d have been admitted to ICU if she collapsed anywhere else.”

“She wanted to stay here,” House said. “She begged, remember? So technically, this is her fault.”

“You drugged and hydrated her with contraband in your office,” Wilson said. “This is, technically, both your fault.”

House said nothing.

Violet shifted slightly on the chaise. Her brow creased like a dream had gone sour. She made a small sound, not pain, just confusion, and curled tighter into herself.

Wilson watched as House subtly leaned forward.

“Don’t,” House warned him preemptively, voice a low growl.

“I didn’t say anything,” Wilson said, too smoothly.

“You were thinking it.”

Wilson grinned. “Fine. I’ll shut up.”

But his eyes lingered.

There was something absurdly tender about the way House moved, quick to cover her foot when it slipped out from under the blanket, precise when adjusting the IV drip. All gruffness and muttering, sure, but there was no mistaking it:

He cared .

He’d built a fortress around himself, yes. But this, this chaos-ridden, 103.8°F, barely conscious resident, was somehow inside it. And he was furious about it.

Wilson watched him and thought, God help her. She’s got no idea he’s in love with her.

The silence stretched a while.

Wilson exhaled, soft. “You haven’t even gone to the bathroom, have you?”

“I peed in a mug.”

“House!”

“Kidding.”

House sighed, dragged a hand through his hair, and leaned back in his chair.

“She’s reckless,” he muttered. “Stupidly, suicidally overachieving.”

Wilson tilted his head. “Remind you of anyone?”

House scowled at him. “Don’t be cute.”

Violet murmured something again, barely audible.

House stood, went to her side, and crouched without thinking. His fingers brushed her pulse point. The contact was casual, practiced.

Her lips moved.

“…Dr. House?”

He stilled.

Her eyes fluttered but didn’t open.

“…your Vicodin’s in the top drawer… I didn’t take any… just organized it by half-life.”

House blinked.

Wilson bit his tongue.

“She reorganized your drugs while delirious?”

“She’s… terrifying,” House admitted.

Violet didn’t wake.

But the room shifted. Just a little.

Wilson stood.

“She’s lucky,” he said, meaning it.

House didn’t answer.

He just watched her sleep.

_________________________________

Three hours later, the new day crept over Princeton-Plainsboro like a hungover intern: sluggish, grey, and resentful of all alarm clocks. The hospital corridors came alive again with beeping monitors and grumbling coffee machines. Fresh scrubs appeared like soldiers arriving for the next war.

And somewhere in the eye of it all, Violet Rowan opened her eyes.

Everything was wrong.

First off, she wasn’t in her bed.

Or her apartment.

Or a call room.

She was in… a very dim, very cluttered office.

It smelled like floor cleaner, old coffee, and a faint, unmistakable note of Vicodin.

Her eyes blinked blearily at the ceiling tiles, which she vaguely recognized.

She tried sitting up.

Tried.

Her muscles responded like overcooked spaghetti trying to do yoga.

She groaned, rolled sideways instead—and that’s when she noticed the very clear fact that she wasn’t wearing her own clothes.

Nope.

Definitely not her black sweater or her navy-blue scrubs.

She was in a gigantic, faded grey Princeton shirt with a collar so wide it slid off one shoulder. It looked ancient. Smelled like antiseptic and a hint of… some kind of man’s deodorant that probably hadn’t been in production since Bush was president.

There was a blanket on her. Not a hospital blanket. A real one. Lumpy. Probably never washed. Something told her it had cat hair.

An empty IV pole stood nearby like a ghost of last night’s bad decisions. The line had been disconnected, cleanly. A small band-aid sealed the spot on her inner elbow.

What the hell?

Violet blinked again.

Diagnostics.

That’s where she was.

She knew this office.

House’s office.

She looked around.

No House.

No Wilson.

Just a steaming, untouched mug of coffee sitting on his desk. Still warm. Like it had been made for someone who’d left mid-thought.

It was 6:56 a.m.

The clock mocked her.

The sun was just beginning to edge through the slats in the blinds. The light turned her haze-yellow skin into something almost ghostly. Her throat was dry. Her body felt like she’d been steamrolled by something that hated her personally.

She remembered… walking into Diagnostics. Sort of. She remembered having a fever. She remembered maybe vomiting?

She did not remember why she was horizontal in House’s office wearing House’s shirt like some feverish one-night stand with an authority figure.

“Oh God,” she whispered to herself. “What the fuck.”

She sat up. Her brain sloshed around in her skull like a snow globe.

She took inventory:

• Fever: mostly gone. Residual weakness and the urge to die: still present.
• Pride: currently deceased.
• Shirt: absolutely not hers.
• Dignity: somewhere in the same landfill as her ID badge, which was also missing.

Staggering to her feet was a challenge. Gravity laughed. Her spine creaked. Her hair felt matted and damp. The post-fever lag hit her like a gentle truck.

She looked down at herself again and muttered, “Okay. Okay. This is fine. This is… salvageable.”

The locker room was mercifully empty when she shuffled in like a Victorian ghost on Nyquil. Her own locker was a miracle of civilization. She dragged her duffel bag out and made a beeline for the showers, peeling off the borrowed shirt with a level of suspicion usually reserved for crime scenes.

The hot water helped.

It didn’t answer any questions, but it made her skin feel like it belonged to her again.

When she emerged, dressed in fresh scrubs and semi-human again, her reflection confirmed her suspicions: she looked like a raccoon who’d been on a 48-hour bender and lost a fight to a hairbrush.

Her eyes were sunken. Her cheeks blotchy. Her lips chapped. She was still vaguely sweating.

But she was upright.

And that counted for something.

“Violet?”

She nearly jumped out of her shoes.

Cameron stood near the sinks, just coming in, hair pulled into a tight ponytail, coffee cup in hand. Behind her, Chase was awkwardly wrestling with his locker like it had offended him.

“You look like death,” Cameron said gently, stepping closer. “What happened?”

“Oh, uh—” Violet forced a laugh, the kind that could power a dying Roomba. “Just a fever. Long night. Overdid it. I’m fine now.”

“You’re not fine,” Chase muttered, eyeing her pallor. “You look like you lost a duel with influenza.”

“Really. Just a small viral thing. I passed out in Diagnostics last night. Must’ve slept it off.”

“In House’s office?” Cameron blinked.

Violet froze.

Shit.

She hadn’t said where she’d been.

Cameron raised her brows meaningfully.

Chase, like the golden retriever he was, just looked confused.

Cameron’s eyes slid down.

At the pile of clothes Violet had dumped into the laundry bin.

The unmistakable grey Princeton shirt, now soggy with fever sweat.

“Is that… House’s shirt?”

Violet blinked. “What?”

Cameron pointed. “You were wearing House’s shirt.”

Violet looked down, then at the laundry. She stared for exactly one second too long.

“No, that’s—it’s mine.”

Cameron tilted her head. And took the shirt. “It’s gigantic. House wears this. And he doesn't shower here.”

“It is not his. I borrow people’s clothes all the time,” Violet said with a shrug, pretending her brain wasn’t actively melting down. “Wilson left it lying around once. I never gave it back.”

“Since when do you wear Wilson’s clothes?”

“He has… surprisingly good taste. Soft cotton. He shops at that organic overpriced place.”

Chase was now completely lost.

Cameron crossed her arms. “Violet, are you sure you’re okay? You were burning when I saw you yesterday. Wilson said you had a high-grade fever. They apparently called a janitor to clean up.”

“Oh my God,” Violet groaned. “Did I vomit in the conference room?”

Cameron nodded with a grimace.

Chase said, “There was a memo.”

“Kill me,” Violet muttered, hiding her face behind her locker door.

Cameron’s voice turned gentler. “Violet… you really should’ve gone home. You should’ve been admitted.”

“I didn’t want to be benched. There’s too much work. I’m already behind. House will destroy me if I fall off the schedule.”

Cameron gave her a strange look. “House? I don't think he would have.”

Violet blinked. “What? What do you mean?”

“I mean… I heard he stayed the whole night, on the way to the locker room. With you. Wilson had a shift. House didn’t leave.”

That gave Violet pause.

Her internal monologue screeched to a halt like a dog on linoleum.

“Wait. He stayed?”

“Yeah,” Cameron said slowly. “Didn’t he tell you?”

“I don’t remember anything,” Violet said honestly, brain catching fire. “I thought I… blacked out or something. I thought someone dumped me on the couch like a sad plant and left me there.”

“You were apparently semi-conscious for hours. You kept muttering nonsense. House changed your IV and tracked your fever.”

Chase added, “I saw him at 2am before going home. Looked like crap.”

Violet leaned against the locker, stunned.

“I don’t get it,” she said finally. “Why would he—?”

“You don’t remember anything?” Cameron asked gently.

Violet shook her head.

Cameron gave her a long, speculative look.

Then, very softly, with no judgment: “Well. You should ask him.”

Violet left the locker room still in a daze.

Still weak.

Still reeling.

House had stayed?

House, who regularly forgot her name in meetings, who assigned her the worst consults, who mocked her lunches and accused her of dating radiologists to spite him?

That House?

Stayed?

All night?

She didn’t know what to do with that.

Didn’t know if she was supposed to be grateful, mortified, or suspicious of organ theft.

But one thing was clear:

She’d been delirious.

And now, she had to face House.

Wearing clean scrubs.

Looking like she’d crawled out of a fever grave.

And with zero memory of what might’ve happened while she was babbling about frogs with guns.

She groaned softly.

And marched toward Diagnostics like a woman going to trial.

Violet didn’t make it far from the locker room.

She turned the corner past Diagnostics, heading toward the glass doors, trying to pretend her legs didn’t still wobble slightly beneath her. The hallway was quiet. Early shift. The silence should have been a mercy.

Instead, it became the perfect echo chamber for her brain’s latest act of betrayal.

He stayed with you all night…

Cameron’s voice. Mild. Gentle. Invasive.

And now her thoughts were spiraling.

She didn’t remember anything . Not after entering the conference room. Her memory was like a chalkboard someone had taken a wet rag to. Just a vague mess of shapes—flashes of spinning lights, nausea, someone touching her wrist, maybe a whisper in the dark.

House’s shirt had been on her body.

Why the hell would he take off his shirt for her?

She froze mid-step.

Dead stop in the hallway, halfway between Diagnostics and panic.

Her face lit up with heat. Blood surged to her ears. Her heart thudded against her ribs like it was trying to abandon ship.

“Oh God ,” she whispered, half aloud.

Her mind, helpfully, began serving her up images she hadn’t asked for:

— House pulling her closer while she was delirious

— Her babbling nonsense about feelings

— Her kissing him because of course she would be that kind of moron in a fever haze

— House looking at her with that infuriating, unreadable smirk while she practically climbed into his lap with sweat-drenched desperation—

“OH MY GOD .”

This time it wasn’t quiet.

A nurse walking by gave her a startled look.

“…Sorry,” Violet mumbled.

She leaned against the nearest wall, head pressed to the cool glass, trying not to scream.

Had she touched him?

Had she confessed something?

Had she tried to make a move ?

And worse: what if he let her? What if that’s why she was in his shirt? What if he—

No. No. No . That was impossible. House was her boss. He’d never —

But it was House . He didn’t exactly follow HR protocols. He also wasn’t exactly immune to chaos. What if she’d been babbling, and he’d—

Her skin prickled with dread.

She couldn’t remember.

Not one second.

Her body had clearly been rearranged. IV fluids, change of clothes, tucked into his stupid ratty chaise lounge. She’d been handled , medically and physically, and she’d slept in his office. For hours .

Her legs moved again, but her brain was now on fire.

What if he knew something?

What if she’d said it?

Worse, what if she’d acted on it and he hadn’t stopped her out of pure amusement?

Violet groaned.

The floor felt like it might open and swallow her whole.

She didn’t know what was worse, the fever… or the possibility she’d accidentally thrown herself at Dr Gregory House with a 103.8°F brain and no memory to defend herself with.

Her dignity?

Buried at sea.

*

House leaned back in his chair, one leg slung over the armrest like he owned the entire medical industrial complex, phone tucked between shoulder and cheek.

“Still alive?” Wilson asked.

“No thanks to your melodramatic lectures and her refusal to accept biology,” House muttered, fiddling with a paperclip. “Yes. She’s up. Fever’s down. She’s no longer hallucinating about frog warfare.”

“So she’s okay?”

“She’s not in my office throwing up anymore, so, yeah. Probably.”

Wilson paused. “Wondering what else she mumbled in delirium.”

House rolled his eyes so hard they practically echoed.

“Unless you count reciting a grocery list in Arabic, which actually sounded more Turkish to be honest, and accusing the janitor of being a lizard spy from Saturn—no. No love confessions. No declarations. No feverish snogging. She didn’t try to straddle me, Wilson.”

“Okay, jeez . Just asking.”

“I’ve had more romantic tension with a vending machine.”

Just as he said it, the door to Diagnostics flew open.

Bang.

Violet.

Wide-eyed, freshly showered, clutching her bag like it held nuclear codes.

She marched in with the force of a SWAT team, very purposefully not looking in House’s direction.

House blinked, still on the phone, watching as she made a beeline to the conference table.

She grabbed her notebook. Her bag. Her half-used pen. A rogue scrunchie. Three paperclips.

Still no eye contact.

“Uh-oh,” House murmured into the phone. “The fever ghost returns. And she’s on a mission.”

Wilson chuckled faintly. “Does she remember anything?”

“Oh, clearly not. She’s got that look.”

“What look?”

“You know. The ‘oh-god-did-I-kiss-him-in-a-fever-dream’ look.”

There was a beat of silence.

“…Did she?”

“No,” House said dryly. “But that’s the best part. S he doesn’t know she didn’t. ”

Wilson groaned. “You’re the worst.”

“She’s avoiding eye contact like I’m holding blackmail.”

Violet zipped her bag with such ferocity the zipper screamed.

She still hadn’t said a word.

Still hadn’t looked up.

Just as she turned to bolt, House couldn’t resist.

“ WHAT? NO THANKS TO THE OLD MAN WHO KEPT YOU FROM GOING FULL ROTISSERIE? ”

Violet squeaked.

Actually squeaked . Like a door hinge.

And then sprinted.

Sprinted like someone was actively chasing her with a syringe and a wedding proposal.

The door slammed behind her.

House leaned back again, perfectly smug. And letting a laugh, out loud. 

Wilson was still on the line.

“…What the hell just happened?” he asked, half-laughing.

House picked up his coffee. Sipped.

“She thinks she made out with me.”

“You could’ve corrected her. ”

House smirked. “Could have. Didn’t.”

“House.”

“She left faster than Foreman when someone mentions emotional vulnerability.”

“You’re evil.”

“And hydrated. Unlike her, until I saved her life. Not that she thanked me. I even lent her my favorite shirt. Ungrateful brat.”

Wilson sighed.

“You like her.”

“She stole my Vicodin drawer to alphabetize it in her dreams. Of course I like her.”

House hung up.

Smugly.

Chapter Text

~THEN~

Violet Rowan had never run that fast in her life. She had bolted out of Diagnostics like it was a crime scene and she was the sole suspect, and now she was home, face buried into her pillow, emitting a steady stream of muffled screams and groans.

“Mrrrrgggghhh.”

She kicked her blanket over her head. Then kicked it off. Then buried herself under it again.

“Why did I have to survive,” she hissed.

The image of House, still as a statue, shouting after her, “No thanks to the old man?” haunted her like a cursed lullaby.

“Did I—did I touch him?” she whispered to herself, voice hoarse. “Did I… did I say anything? Did I lick his face? Oh God. I licked his face.”

She groaned again.

Ding dong.

She froze.

“Oh no.”

Ding dong.

“I am not here,” she whispered. “I am a corpse. I am a spirit. I died of shame.”

She dragged herself off the couch like a weary soul crawling out of purgatory. She shuffled to the door, opened it a crack.

And there stood Wilson.

Holding a paper bag. With what smelled like fresh bagels and coffee.

“Hi,” he said brightly. “I brought carbs and shame-drowning fuel.”

She stared at him.

“You heard,” she said miserably.

He blinked. “I saw.”

She groaned. “House told you.”

“Oh yeah. He gave me a play-by-play.”

“Did he tell you I kissed him?!”

Wilson smiled gently. “He told me you didn’t.”

Violet stared, blinking.

And then dramatically collapsed face-first into the couch cushions.

“Oh thank God,” she mumbled. “Oh God. I thought...I thought I mounted him like a fevered maniac. I thought I—Wilson!”

“I know,” he said, setting the bag on the coffee table. “I figured.”

“Why didn’t you stop me yesterday?!”

“You were half-conscious and babbling about frogs with tactical weapons. Stopping you from not kissing House wasn’t exactly on my to-do list.”

She peeled herself halfway off the couch and flopped sideways. “I thought I was going to have to fake my own death.”

Wilson handed her a coffee. She didn’t take it. He kept it in her line of vision anyway, like a hostage negotiator.

She stared at the ceiling. “I hate this.”

He settled into the beanbag beside the couch and started unwrapping a bagel. “You hate what?”

“Everything. My body. Fever. Mortality. Memories. House. The fact that House changed my IV line and gave me his shirt and now I have to die.”

“You don’t have to die.”

“I want to die. I almost made a ‘thank you for not letting me aspirate while delusional’ card but couldn’t figure out if I should use a frog sticker or a gun.”

Wilson started eating. “You know what this is?”

“What.”

He pointed his bagel at her. “This is textbook post-fever anxiety plus House proximity syndrome.”

“House proximity syndrome?”

“It’s a very serious condition. Side effects include dry wit, emotional constipation, and fantasizing about putting your boss in a straitjacket and a tuxedo.”

Violet made a sound that might’ve been laughter. Or death.

Wilson sipped his coffee. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I passed out. That’s not sleep. That’s a forced reboot.”

“You were very dramatic.”

“Of course I was. I was dying and in House’s office.”

“You threw up in the conference room.”

“I knew it! But I didn't believe when Cameron and Chase told me this” she wailed.

Wilson chuckled. “Maurice’s mop still hasn’t forgiven you.”

She groaned. “So I did all that, and then woke up half-naked in House’s sweatshirt, and he didn’t even have the decency to not be attractive about it?”

Wilson raised an eyebrow. “You think House is attractive?”

“NO. I MEAN—NO. That’s not the point.”

“Oh, but now it is.”

She squinted at him. “Stop smirking.”

“I’m just saying,” Wilson said, shrugging innocently, “most people don’t panic about having kissed someone unless they wanted to kiss that person.”

She paused. Stared at the ceiling.

Then turned away dramatically. “Shut up.”

Wilson beamed. “That’s a yes.”

“No, it’s not!”

“You sprinted out of Diagnostics so fast, Chase texted me asking if we had an active shooter.”

Violet groaned into a pillow.

Wilson took another bite of his bagel. “It’s okay, you know. Liking House. It’s not contagious.”

“I don’t like him.”

“You’re lying so hard, I can taste it.”

“I don’t like him, I just… want to punch him in the mouth and then maybe accidentally hold his hand for three to five hours.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Okay maybe I like some things about him.”

“Like?”

“Like… that he stayed. That he didn’t admit me. That he, oh God, he gave me his shirt—WHO DOES THAT?!”

“Someone who didn’t want you to wake up in a hospital gown in front of Chase?”

She blinked. “That’s… disturbingly considerate.”

“He sat by you for six hours. Didn’t even go home.”

She deflated.

“Oh no.”

Wilson grinned. “Yes.”

“I hate this.”

“You don’t.”

“I do. Because now I owe him. And the only thing worse than liking Gregory House is owing Gregory House.”

Wilson laughed. “You might be better at hiding it than him, but you’re just as emotionally repressed.”

Violet’s head snapped up. “He likes me?!”

Wilson blinked once. Slowly. Like someone who just realized they stepped into a trap of their own design.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied that!”

“I was… generalizing.”

“You said I’m better at hiding it than him. That means he likes me worse than I like him, which means I like him, which...oh my God, I hate you.”

Wilson grinned. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re evil.”

“Learned from the best.”

She groaned again, rolling off the couch like a dying possum and hitting the floor with a thump.

“You’re both unbearable,” she declared into the floorboards. “And I’m going to move to Tibet.”

“You’d still find a neuro case there and email House about it.”

“…Shut up.”

He took a long sip of coffee. “You know what’s funny?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“You and House are like two cats pretending not to want the same patch of sunlight.”

Violet blinked up from the floor. “What does that even mean?”

“It means you hiss at each other a lot but keep ending up in the same room. And for some reason, everyone else has to clean up the fur.”

“You are so weird.”

“You’re welcome.”

She flopped back onto the couch and sighed. “I wish I could just rewind yesterday.”

“You’d probably still barf in the same spot.”

“No,” she said. “I’d barf on House’s desk and assert dominance.”

Wilson almost choked on his coffee.

They sat there for a while. Her horizontal. Him chewing bagel like a Greek chorus. No judgment. Just vibes.

Eventually, Violet said, more softly, “Thanks for staying. Yesterday.”

Wilson nodded. “You’re one of the good ones, Violet.”

She rolled onto her side, expression unreadable. “You think House knows?”

“That you didn’t actually lick his face in your sleep?”

“That I—” she covered her eyes, “God, I hate feelings.”

Wilson smiled. “He knows something. But not everything.”

“You’re enjoying this way too much.”

“I’m invested,” he said. “Like a soap opera. You and House are my favorite disaster couple. I’m just waiting for the part where someone ends up shirtless and bleeding during a monologue.”

She groaned. “You need hobbies.”

“I have them. One of them is teasing you.”

“And what’s House’s hobby?”

Wilson tilted his head. “Currently? You.”

She hurled a pillow at him.

He ducked, laughing, and took another bite of bagel like he hadn’t just dropped the biggest truth bomb of her entire year.

Violet lay back down. Covered her face again.

“I’m going to scream into the void.”

Wilson passed her the coffee she hadn’t touched.

“You’ll feel better after caffeine. Or at least better equipped to survive your next awkward run-in.”

“Don’t say it.”

“Say what?”

“Don’t say I’ll see him today.”

“You work in the same department.”

She wailed into the pillow.

He chuckled.

They stayed like that for a long while. One bagel, one hangover-from-hell fever, one monumental misunderstanding, and a hell of a lot of unspoken truths between them.

But as Violet finally sipped her coffee, cheeks still red, hair still slightly wild—

Wilson just watched her.

And thought, God help them both.

__________________________________

Of course.

Of course the universe decided that tonight, after she’d fever-babbled her way through a medical crisis and accused herself of sexually harassing her boss in a Vicodin-soaked fugue, Violet, House, and Wilson would all be stuck on the same night shift.

It wasn’t even a normal night shift.

It was a “patient crashing every hour, mystery thick enough to choke a giraffe, and everyone’s pager is already blinking red” kind of shift. Naturally, House had pulled Chase, Foreman, and Cameron back into the warzone too. They’d barely walked into the hospital before House had slapped the case file onto the table like it owed him money and barked, “We’re staying late. Cancel your dinner plans, your haircuts, and your Tinder hookups.”

And Violet?

She was trying not to have a complete psychic breakdown.

First rule of this shift: Don’t make eye contact with House.

Second rule: Do not let House think you’re acting weird.

Third rule: Oh God, why is he looking at me like that?

They were two hours into the madness. Diagnostics was alive with noise. Everyone was pacing, debating, bickering over differentials, and slamming folders on the whiteboard. Violet sat perched at the corner of the table, mostly silent, scribbling notes like her pen was a weapon against fate. She didn’t speak unless spoken to, didn’t crack a single sarcastic comment. She didn’t even snark at Chase, which had really alarmed Chase.

House, being House, noticed immediately.

“You’ve said exactly three words in two hours,” he said, not even looking up from the labs.

Violet didn’t look up either. “Focusing.”

“On what? Your inner monologue? Should we give her a CT for internalized shame?”

“Just working,” she muttered.

House squinted at her like a scientist examining a misbehaving lab rat.

“I’m sorry, has someone removed your spine?” he asked, turning to Cameron. “Can we check for that? Maybe she donated it to Wilson’s Feelings Foundation.”

“I’m fine,” Violet said stiffly, still not looking at him.

Wilson, passing by the glass doors, poked his head in just in time to witness her face go from “mildly annoyed” to “I wish I could fall through the floor and become a fossil.”

House didn’t even glance at Wilson. He was already back to the board, marker in hand.

Chase leaned in and whispered, “Is she okay? Did she hit her head?”

Foreman raised a brow. “Is this her version of polite?”

“She’s broken,” House muttered. “The fever short-circuited her. Great. I finally start to respect her, and her brain goes into safe mode.”

The thing was: Violet had begged Wilson earlier that day not to say a single word.

“I swear to God, if you even hint that I like House, I will leave used q-tips in your cereal box,” she hissed.

“I won’t say anything,” Wilson promised, holding up both hands. “You can trust me.”

“And don’t pity me either. And no gentle nudging. And absolutely no smiling like I’m a character in a Jane Austen novel.”

“Got it.”

“Because I’m already dying, Wilson. I have reached my social expiration.”

“I will take this secret to the grave.”

“Good.”

Pause.

“But, do you love him?”

She threw a pillow at him.

*

Now, six hours into this infernal shift, Violet had already visited Wilson’s office three times.

Each time was a carefully coordinated stealth operation. She’d poke her head in, looking like a haunted Victorian child, and hiss, “I need five minutes of not being in the same airspace as House.”

And Wilson, already equipped with tissues, snacks, and the patience of a thousand saints, would sigh and hand her a Diet Coke.

“You could just talk to him,” he offered during the second visit.

“I’d rather die in a dumpster fire.”

“You already did. Last night. It was called 103.8°F and projectile vomit.”

“Then I got reincarnated into a sitcom character, apparently.”

On her third visit, she curled into Wilson’s beanbag chair and muttered, “He keeps staring at me like I’m broken.”

“Maybe he’s just trying to figure you out.”

“Or maybe he’s wondering if I remember something.”

Wilson said nothing.

She glanced at him suspiciously. “You didn’t tell him anything I said, right?”

“I swear.”

“Did you laugh when he told you I didn’t kiss him?”

“Not at you.”

“Wilson.”

“I laughed beside you.”

“God.”

*

Back in Diagnostics, the air was thick with test results and unspoken tension.

The patient was a 35-year-old teacher, fainting spells, fever, arrhythmia, and—because the universe was feeling extra—rashes forming weird constellation shapes on her legs.

“Stills? Behçet’s?” Cameron offered.

“Negative pathergy test,” Foreman shot down.

“Could be paraneoplastic.”

“Nothing’s lighting up on PET.”

Violet mumbled something about connective tissue markers.

House spun on his cane. “I’m sorry, do we have a ghost in here?”

She winced.

“I said, maybe she has undiagnosed mixed connective tissue disorder,” Violet repeated, louder this time. “It would explain the Raynaud’s, the rashes, the fatigue.”

“Ah,” House said, grinning. “The patient isn’t dying, she’s just a walking autoimmune Pinterest board.”

Violet flushed.

“You used to argue with me,” he said, narrowing his eyes.

“You used to be wrong more often,” she shot back, too fast.

The room went quiet for half a second.

House blinked.

Foreman raised his eyebrows like, there she is.

Chase quietly made a tally mark on the back of his clipboard under “Violet snaps back.”

House’s mouth quirked slightly.

“Well,” he said, turning back to the whiteboard, “maybe the fever didn’t eat your brain. Or maybe you’re just cranky because I didn’t let you die in peace on my couch.”

Violet choked on air.

Foreman looked very confused.

“Wait, you were the one on House’s couch last night?”

“Foreman,” Violet hissed. “Don’t.”

“No wonder the whole place smelled like menthol and poor decisions.”

“Foreman.”

“Did you guys snuggle?”, Chase asked.

House, still writing, said, “She was unconscious, you freak.”

Violet was going to combust.

“I had a fever. I didn’t snuggle anyone.”

“I gave her drugs, not a foot massage,” House added.

“Okay, can we not talk about my vulnerable unconscious body like it’s a lunch order?!”

Cameron, mercifully, redirected the conversation back to the patient.

But Violet remained tomato-red and silent, arms folded tightly, eyes fixed on the wall like she could melt into it if she focused hard enough.

House didn’t comment again.

But he did glance at her.

Frequently.

*

Around 3 a.m., the patient finally stabilized. The team split off to rest, write notes, or pretend they weren’t emotionally compromised medical professionals.

Violet, who had the energy of a wet napkin at that point, slumped into a chair in the Diagnostics lounge and debated whether she could fake a fainting episode to be sent home.

Wilson’s door was dark—finally resting. She didn’t want to wake him.

House, though?

Still pacing the hallway.

Still not coming into Wilson’s office, despite passing it four times.

It hit her then.

He was avoiding Wilson.

Probably on purpose.

And if he was avoiding Wilson… he was probably embarrassed too.

Not about anything she did, but maybe… about what he did.

Or what he felt.

And suddenly, the awkwardness wasn’t so one-sided anymore.

She watched House disappear down the hallway and felt her stomach twist in a way that wasn’t leftover nausea.

It was… understanding.

Of the quiet kind.

*

By 6 a.m., the emergency had ended, the patient was stable, and the Diagnostic department had once again won a battle against the infinite horrors of biology.

Violet gathered her things in silence.

House was by the whiteboard, sipping coffee, scribbling one last test he wanted in the morning.

She passed behind him, wordlessly.

But as she reached the door, he called, “You’re still weird.”

She paused.

Turned slightly. “What?”

“You’ve been acting like I licked your face.”

She blinked. “…I did not say that.”

“Didn’t have to. You’ve got the guilt of someone who thought about it.”

Violet’s lips parted in protest, but no sound came out.

He smirked.

She stared.

And then, in a rare, rare moment, she smirked back.

Just a little.

Nothing was said.

She left.

House turned back to the board.

Behind the glass wall, Wilson passed by with a coffee and looked in, raising his eyebrows.

House shook his head slightly.

And smiled.

*

Violet, walking down the hallway in the soft glow of morning, thought only one thing:

This was going to be so much worse before it ever got better.

And weirdly enough…

She was fine with that.

__________________________________

It started like every other day.

Violet showed up early, nursing a thermos of burnt black coffee, hunched over the diagnostics table like it owed her money. Cameron was first to arrive, then Foreman and Chase in half-hearted sync. House shuffled in fifteen minutes late, holding a clipboard like a weapon and already mid-rant about the hospital cafeteria’s “failed attempt at passing tofu as a protein source.”

So far, typical.

Except it wasn’t.

There was something wrong.

Not in the way House was always wrong. Chronic sarcasm, misanthropy, and questionable hygiene. But something beneath that. Something in the way he moved. He was slower. Not limping slower, wearing his body differently, like gravity had taken personal offense to him.

Violet clocked it before anyone else.

But she didn’t say anything.

She never really pried. House never liked questions that weren’t laced in pathology or accusations.

So, she stayed quiet. Sipped her coffee. Let the others argue over labs and presentations while she pored over vitals.

House, however, wasn’t simply off.

He was vicious.

By the time he’d eviscerated Chase’s suggestion and mocked Foreman’s handwriting “Have you considered asking your frontal lobe for help?”, the team was rattled but managing.

Then came Violet’s turn.

She offered a thoughtful analysis of their patient’s deteriorating cognitive function. It was subtle, logical, built off data the others missed.

House didn’t even let her finish.

He turned toward her, voice like vinegar.

“You think you’re the clever one, don’t you? The prodigy with impeccable record. Newsflash, you’re not special. You’re a glorified med student with a caffeine problem and a hero complex. Stop playing neurologist Barbie and stay in your damn lane.”

The silence in the room was immediate.

Cameron froze, horrified. Chase visibly winced. Foreman, who had survived five years of House’s mouth, looked stunned.

Violet’s hand paused on her pen.

Her lips parted slightly. She blinked once. Twice.

But she didn’t say anything.

She didn’t fight back.

Didn’t make a snide remark.

She just swallowed and looked back down at her notes, knuckles white against her clipboard.

House turned and walked out like nothing had happened.

*

She spent the next few hours trying to keep it together.

She had a patient to monitor. A case to help solve. But her brain kept replaying his words, each syllable like glass.

“Stay in your lane.”

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t let herself.

Until later.

Until after the patient seized.

Until the blood pressure tanked and the intubation wasn’t fast enough and the oxygen saturation hit the red zone and then—

Coma.

Violet stood over the monitor, shaking. She didn’t speak. Didn’t move until the nurses physically guided her out of the room.

She’d missed something. She’d cleared a dose too early. Too confidently. A decision she should’ve checked. A judgment she would never have made on a normal day.

But she hadn’t been thinking clearly. Her hands hadn’t been steady. Her mind kept drifting to his words, like a slap she couldn’t dodge.

And now her patient, a young woman, was in a medically induced coma.

*

She didn’t say anything to the team.

Didn’t go to House. Or Wilson. Or Cuddy.

She just walked.

To her locker. To the stairwell.

Out into the rain.

*

Wilson only found out because he noticed House wasn’t pacing.

That, and Violet hadn’t shown up for rounds.

By noon, he’d walked down to Diagnostics. House was in his office, spinning his cane like it was a roulette wheel of avoidance.

“You seen Violet?” Wilson asked casually.

“Nope.”

“She didn’t tell you anything?”

“Should she have?”

Wilson tilted his head. “You snapped at her. In front of everyone. Like, brutally. Chase looked like he needed CPR.”

House rolled his eyes. “She’s not made of glass. She’ll survive.”

Wilson didn’t respond.

Instead, he said, “She made a serious error in med orders. Patient’s in a coma.”

House’s fingers stopped spinning the cane.

“Violet doesn’t make mistakes like that,” Wilson added, quieter now.

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t. Not like this.”

House’s eyes flickered.

“What happened?” Wilson asked.

House didn’t answer.

*

At 2:00 PM, Cuddy called Wilson to join the emergency board session.

They were reviewing Violet’s license. Her charts. Her decisions.

The room was cold and clinical. Voices sharp.

“She pushed a dose without cross-checking renal values. A first-year mistake.”

“This is a pattern of overconfidence—”

“No,” Wilson cut in. “It isn’t. This is not Violet Rowan’s standard. You all know that.”

He saw Cuddy watching him. Quiet. But her eyes said I agree. But I can’t save her unless you help me.

They debated. For an hour. Some wanted her expelled from the program. Some feared a lawsuit. Some, like Wilson, fought for understanding.

Eventually, a compromise emerged.

Two month suspension. Two months probation after that.

No patient contact during suspension. No independence during probation. Full observation, written reports, and psych evals.

The board voted.

And that was that.

*

Wilson left the boardroom and immediately tried her number.

No answer.

Tried again.

And again.

Eventually, he went to her apartment.

Lights off. No car in the lot. Mailbox untouched.

*

House was back in his office when Wilson came in.

“You knew something was off,” Wilson said flatly. “You knew she wasn’t okay.”

“She said nothing.”

“You didn’t give her a chance.”

House turned away. “You think I did this?”

“I think,” Wilson said, “that whatever you’re going through is eating you alive, and instead of asking for help, you decided to snap at the person who trusted you.”

House didn’t speak.

“You cut her down, and then she made a mistake she never would have made otherwise.”

Wilson stared at him. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you better hope she’s okay.”

House stared at the window.

Wilson left.

*

Violet sat alone, hours away, phone face down beside her on a park bench. Rain dripped off the edge of her hoodie.

She wasn’t angry.

She was empty.

She wasn’t used to failing.

Wasn’t used to silence from House. Or absence from Wilson. Or how easily the hospital, her home, had closed ranks on her when she stumbled.

She thought about the patient’s face.

Then House’s voice.

And then the silence after it all.

And she didn’t cry.

She just… sat.

Like a puzzle that no longer knew what picture it was supposed to make.

Like someone who didn’t know where to go.

__________________________________

The call came while Violet was sitting on the floor of her apartment, her back against the fridge, her stethoscope still looped loosely around her neck like a ghost of purpose. Her phone buzzed once, twice. She stared at it.

Cuddy.

She answered on the fourth ring.

“Dr Rowan,” Cuddy’s voice was calm. Professional. Measured in a way that made it worse.

“Yes, Dr Cuddy,” Violet said, quietly.

“I just left the board meeting. They’ve voted. Two-month suspension, followed by two months of probation. You’ll be reassessed after that.”

Violet didn’t flinch. Her tone didn’t waver.

“Understood.”

“I know this wasn’t intentional. You’ve been one of our most diligent residents. But the mistake was serious.”

“It was,” Violet said, simply.

“You won’t be allowed on hospital premises during your suspension,” Cuddy continued. “And I’d strongly suggest taking the time to rest. Reflect. Talk to someone. Whatever you need.”

“Okay.”

A pause.

“I wish I could say more,” Cuddy added, her voice gentler now. “But I’m sorry, Violet.”

“Thank you for letting me know,” Violet said. “And thank you… for not ending everything.”

Cuddy hesitated. “Take care of yourself.”

The line disconnected.

Violet set the phone down on the floor and stared ahead, blank-eyed. Then, slowly, she took off her stethoscope, coiled it carefully, and tucked it inside the top drawer of her kitchen cabinet.

*

Back at Princeton-Plainsboro, Wilson was pacing.

He’d tried calling Violet three more times. No answer.

House, meanwhile, hadn’t left his office.

Wilson knocked once before stepping inside.

“Cuddy told me,” House said. “Suspension. Two months.”

House didn’t look up. He was scribbling over a medical journal with a red pen like it owed him something.

“You going to pretend you don’t care?” Wilson asked.

No answer.

“You pushed her,” Wilson continued. “Harder than you’ve pushed anyone in months. You’ve been cutting all of them down. But her? You were cruel.”

House’s hand paused. “She made a mistake.”

“She didn’t make that mistake in a vacuum,” Wilson snapped. “She made it after you tore her apart in front of the team like she was worthless.”

“I didn’t ask her to screw up.”

Wilson stared at him. “What is going on with you?”

Silence.

Wilson stepped closer. “I know you, House. This isn’t just about the case. What is it?”

House finally looked up.

His eyes were bloodshot. Exhausted. Bitter.

“My dad died last week,” he said flatly.

Wilson froze.

“What?”

“I didn’t go. Didn’t care. Didn’t even open the letter until yesterday.”

Wilson sat down slowly.

“I thought it wouldn’t affect me,” House continued. “Turns out, pretending he wasn’t real doesn’t make the grief fake.”

Wilson was quiet.

“She was there,” House added after a pause. “Rowan. Always there. And I… I couldn’t deal with her being better than me at keeping it together.”

Wilson swallowed hard.

“And now she’s gone,” House said, voice low. “Because of me.”

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

___________________________________

The phone rang at 12:07 a.m.

Wilson was halfway through grading oncology case reports in his apartment, glasses askew, tie loosened, TV humming in the background with a muted late-night sitcom. The name on the screen stopped his heart.

Violet.

He answered on the first ring.

“Violet?”

There was a pause on the other end. Static. A faint echo. The soft sound of an announcement over a loudspeaker somewhere in the background.

 “Hi.”

He sat up straighter. “Are you okay? Where are you? I’ve been trying to—”

“Don’t,” she said gently. “I’m not really calling for questions.”

That stopped him. He breathed in slowly. “Okay.”

There was another pause. He could hear her breathing. Controlled. Steady. Like she’d rehearsed this.

“I’m at the airport,” she said, eventually. “I’m going home. Back to London.”

Wilson shut his eyes. The sound of it hit him harder than he expected.

“For how long?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know. Maybe… long enough.”

He nodded to himself, even though she couldn’t see it. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation, you know.”

“I just… I needed to go. I kept thinking I could stay and fix this, but I think the only way I can come back is if I leave first.”

Her voice cracked—just slightly.

“I’m not running,” she added quickly. “I’m just… trying to remember who I was before this place broke me a little.”

“I understand,” Wilson said. And he did.

She didn’t mention House.

He didn’t bring him up.

There was so much more he could say. So many things that didn’t fit into words, how proud he was of her, how unfair all of this felt, how much her absence would echo through every hallway she once filled with biting sarcasm and late-night coffee.

But he knew Violet. And Violet didn’t want goodbye speeches.

Just space. And dignity.

“Text me when you land,” Wilson said, finally.

“I will.”

“I mean it. Just so I know you’re safe.”

She hesitated, then said softly, “You’re the only one I wanted to say goodbye to.”

Wilson blinked hard. “I’m honored.”

“I’ll come back when I’m whole again.”

“You don’t have to be whole,” he murmured. “You just have to be ready.”

Another long breath.

“Okay,” she said.

And then, quietly, “Goodnight, Wilson.”

He smiled faintly. “Goodnight, Violet.”

The call ended.

And somewhere, through the silence of his apartment, Wilson sat in the glow of his phone screen long after she was gone, wondering if House had any idea what he’d just lost.

___________________________________

~NOW~

Cuddy’s morning had been a special kind of hell.

Four hours of back-to-back meetings, each more tedious than the last, and all of them about money. Budget cuts, staffing, malpractice insurance, resource allocations for the next quarter. Every suit in the building had something to say about what could be taken away. Not a single one had a solution.

By the third meeting, her stomach had begun to knot. She hadn’t eaten. Not so much as a granola bar. Rachel had refused to get dressed that morning, cried about her hair, spilled milk on Cuddy’s only clean blouse, and made them both twenty minutes late. She’d dropped Rachel off with the guilt still hot in her throat. No goodbye kiss. Just the slam of a car door.

She hadn’t had a moment to breathe.

Not until now. It was close to noon. The hallways had quieted. The fluorescent buzz and distant echo of pagers were almost comforting. Almost.

She headed for her office, finally ready to sit down, maybe inhale some coffee and pretend this job wasn’t slowly bleeding her dry.

Then she saw them.

Far down the corridor, by the windows—Chase, hunched over slightly, rubbing Cameron’s back in small, repetitive circles. Cameron, face angled away, shoulders curled inward, trying to disappear into herself. Her scrubs were stained—blood, likely—but that wasn’t rare in the ER. What was rare was the look on Foreman’s face.

He was standing nearby. Not pacing. Not on his phone. Just standing. His arms crossed, but not in defensiveness. It looked like he was physically holding something in. Holding himself in.

All three of them were barely speaking, but she could hear the occasional whisper. Disjointed. Muffled.

She took a few steps closer.

“…Dr. House…”

“…Rowan… she—”

Cuddy frowned. Her heels clicked against the tile.

“What’s going on?” she asked, tone carefully neutral.

Cameron didn’t respond. She shook her head, mouth pressed shut like she was afraid that opening it would unleash something she couldn’t control. Her face was blotched. Wet.

Chase glanced at her, eyes rimmed red. Hesitating.

It was Foreman who stepped forward.

“There was an emergency,” he said slowly, like every word had to be picked out of a minefield. “A trauma case… about an hour ago.”

Cuddy waited. She could already feel her heart picking up. The pulse in her ears was loud.

“It was Rowan,” Foreman finished. His voice cracked, just barely.

Cuddy blinked.

She opened her mouth, but the words didn’t come.

Dr. Rowan.

Violet.

No. That couldn’t be right.

No one had paged her. No Code Blue had been called that she’d been alerted to. Surely someone would’ve. She was the Dean of Medicine. She would have been notified if one of her senior staff had coded, let alone died.

She shook her head slowly.

“I… what?” she managed.

Chase cleared his throat, still rubbing Cameron’s back.

“She was brought into Trauma 3. Around ten thirty. She didn’t make it.”

Cuddy stared.

Didn’t make it.

The words hovered over her like smoke. They didn’t register. They didn’t make sense.

Died?

Violet Rowan died?

“No one told me,” she said sharply. “How did she—what happened? Was it an MVA? Was she attacked? Was she alone?”

“She collapsed when driving,” Foreman said. “From internal bleeding. Pregnancy-related. Then the car was hit by a truck. They rushed her in. We tried.”

Cuddy’s breath hitched. She felt like the ground beneath her had just tilted six degrees and never corrected.

She put a hand to her mouth.

“Where is she?”

“Still in Trauma 3,” Foreman said softly.

And then she was moving. Turning sharply on her heel before she knew what her legs were doing. She was walking fast now, down the hallway, heart pounding, breath shallow. The tile blurred slightly as she passed it. Her vision narrowed to the end of the corridor.

When she turned the final corner, she nearly collided with Wilson.

He was slouched on the bench outside Trauma 3, elbows on his knees, hands pressed against his forehead. His hair was a mess. His tie undone. His shoes unevenly laced. She hadn’t seen him look this way since Amber.

“Wilson,” she said, her voice too soft.

He didn’t look up.

She sat beside him. Slowly.

“What happened?”

He dragged his hands down his face, hollow-eyed, and looked over at her without really seeing her.

“I had coffee with her this morning,” he said. “She said she was going to talk to House tonight. She was… fine.”

“She was thirty,” Cuddy whispered.

Wilson nodded. Then shook his head. Then didn’t move at all.

Cuddy took a breath, tried to level her voice. “Where’s House?”

“Locked himself in his office,” Wilson murmured. “Saw her once. And really said nothing afterwards.”

Cuddy’s stomach dropped.

Then she stood. Slowly. Her knees felt weak.

The door to Trauma 3 stood just a few feet away.

She made her way over, passing a nurse by the door.

The nurse turned. “Dr. Cuddy,” she said, eyes wide. “We’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I just heard,” Cuddy replied.

The nurse swallowed hard. “The fetus was delivered post-mortem. We couldn’t save it. It’s already been transferred to the morgue.”

Cuddy’s jaw clenched. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

The nurse glanced down at her clipboard. “Dr. House hasn’t signed any release paperwork. As next of kin, he should be giving us direction, but—he hasn’t. We can’t locate Dr. Cameron to authorize temporary measures. Could you…”

The words started to echo in Cuddy’s head.

Next of kin.

Morgue.

Instructions.

Violet Rowan was dead.

And her child was, too.

And House, Gregory House, hadn’t signed anything. Hadn’t said anything.

Cuddy nodded. A numb, jerky movement. “I’ll… I’ll take care of it.”

The nurse gave her a solemn nod and turned away.

Cuddy stepped toward the door.

It was cracked open slightly. Just enough.

She entered the trauma room.

It was quiet.

Dim.

Violet lay on the gurney, her body still and straight beneath a crisp white sheet. Her face was calm. Eerily calm. Her long dark hair was tucked neatly around her head, a soft contrast to the pale waxen quality of her skin.

She looked… less like Violet, somehow.

Cuddy stepped closer.

Her shoes were silent.

She stopped at the bedside and looked down.

The last time she’d seen Violet, they’d fought. Not a serious fight. Just the usual kind. Cuddy asking if she was overworking herself. Violet brushing it off, saying she was fine. House was the one who needed a sabbatical, not her.

“You’re doing too much,” Cuddy had said.

“You hired me to do too much,” Violet had replied, dryly.

And now, here she was.

Still. Cold.

Gone.

Cuddy clenched her fists at her sides.

Why didn’t I know?

Why didn’t someone tell her sooner? Why hadn’t House screamed? Why hadn’t Wilson paged? Why did this feel like something she had to find out instead of something that stopped the whole hospital in its tracks?

She looked down at Violet’s face again.

There had always been something wild and unbreakable in Violet. She was the one who tamed House, who understood him without asking him to change. Cuddy envied her for that. Maybe even resented her. But she respected her, always.

And now, this.

She reached out. Brushed a stray hair off Violet’s cheek.

Her fingers trembled.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

She didn’t know what she was apologizing for.

For not being there? For not protecting her? For all the ways the system failed? For how cruel this world was to women who gave everything?

She wasn’t sure.

She didn’t linger much longer.

When she left the room, Wilson was still sitting in the hallway.

“I’ll talk to the morgue,” she said, her voice a rasp. “Handle the forms. Make arrangements.”

He just nodded.

“I need to go to House.”

“He may not open the door.”

She nodded.

She turned on her heel and walked toward Diagnostics.

She had paperwork to sign.

She had a ghost to visit.

She had a man to scream at.

She didn’t know which would come first.

Chapter Text

~NOW~

Eli’s small hand was buried in Lea’s, his new caretaker, a soft-spoken nurse hired to fill the fragile gap while his world slanted on its axis. His other arm clutched the well-worn paperback of Goodnight Moon , its spine cracked, corners worn, pages softened by countless bedtime readings with his mother.

“I see Daddy’s bike!,” he chirped, pointing down the polished hallway toward the familiar hospital door.

Lea tightened her grip. “Yes, sweetie.” They approached the security desk near the main entrance. The fluorescent lights seemed to hum with expectation.

“I’m here to drop off Eli Rowan-House for Dr Rowan,” Lea told the guard. She offered a polite smile.

The guard’s face shifted subtly. Professional courtesy remained, but the edges stiffened. She picked up the phone and dialed.

Behind her, miles away, three phones buzzed consecutively: Violet’s, then House’s, then Wilson’s—an impossible chorus delivering identical news.

Wilson emerged from ICU, his shoes thudding sharply against the tile, each impact echoing in the cavernous corridor like a funeral drum. He’d intended only to check on a patient’s platelet drop, a routine cross-check that should have taken minutes, not become an all-consuming alert ripping at his nerves. He was literally needed and could not avoid and had to put himself together. But then his pager had buzzed with an urgent summons: security needed him at the front desk, something about a pediatric drop‐off. His name was flagged in bold.

A ripple of unease chased the buzz in his pocket, and adrenaline spiked in his blood, cold and urgent, coiling under his skin like static. He hadn’t paused to think, only bolted from the ICU, leaving monitors and murmurs behind in pursuit of an unknown emergency.

Beside him, Cuddy’s heels clicked in even, practiced rhythm. three clicks, pause, three clicks. Her posture taut beneath her crisp white coat. She carried a stack of files under one arm, each page a testament to budget meetings and personnel nightmares. Her plan had been simple: find House, talk to him, make sign the relevant  forms for Violet and their deceased child, drag him, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the light of responsibility. She’d made it halfway to Diagnostics when Wilson’s phone vibrated against his chest.

He froze mid-stride, like a man whose feet suddenly discovered quicksand. The shrill buzz felt wrong in the hush of approaching lunch hour. Cuddy glanced back. Her brow arched. “What is it?”

Wilson stared at the screen as if it had betrayed him. He swallowed. “Security.”

“Security?” Her voice cracked on the second syllable, a tiny fissure in her armor. She’d always been unflinching, never thrown by shadows of crisis. But something in Wilson’s tone, faltering, raw—shook her. She pivoted and followed him instead of continuing to Diagnostics.

They reached the main desk, rounding the corner like detectives on a trail. Fluorescent lights overhead hummed. The antiseptic tang of the hospital was stronger here, even though a swarm of visitors and staff bustled beyond.

And there he was.

Eli.

The four year old boy stood clutching Goodnight Moon as if it were a lifeline, its battered cover peeling back at the seam. He wore blue overalls, the denim faded from repeated washings, and tiny light-up sneakers that blinked red with each heartbeat. His hair—his mother’s hair—hung in soft curls around a small, hopeful face. His eyes, unmistakably blue, like his father, were wide filled with life. The corridor stretched long in front of him, and he scanned it with his large eyes, full of urgent expectation.

“Uncle Wilson!” he called, voice high and bright, cutting through the tension like a single, crystalline bell.

Wilson stopped so abruptly that Cuddy nearly ran into him. His breath caught, fast and shallow. For a moment, he stood rigid, the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders. Then he crossed the distance in two strides, dropped to one knee, and scooped Eli into his arms with a tenderness that belied his size.

Eli pressed against him, warm, soft, alive. Wilson closed his eyes briefly, letting the boy’s tiny heartbeat ground him. He had seen thousands of newborns, comforted toddlers facing grim diagnoses, and hugged countless grieving families. But nothing—nothing—had prepared him for the fragile weight of Violet Rowan’s son in this moment.

Lea hovered behind them, arms folded anxiously. Young, kind-faced, dressed neatly, she had been hired part‐time by Wilson himself when Violet first began missing mornings. On better days, she brought charts, offered tea, and joked about bedtime stories. Today, confusion and concern flickered across her face like shadows.

“He wanted to see his mama,” Lea explained quietly, stepping forward. “I told him she was at work, and he insisted I bring him to the front.” Her voice was soft, as though afraid of shattering something fragile.

Wilson’s mouth opened and closed. He glanced down at Eli, then up at Lea, searching for words that would make sense of this impossible moment. “She’s not…” His voice cracked, raw with pain. He swallowed and tried again. “She’s not available right now.”

Lea blinked. “Oh. I—I’m sorry. Is she with a patient?”

“No,” Wilson murmured, forcing his eyes away from the small face pressed into his shoulder. He could feel the boy’s breath, soft and hopeful, against his collar.

Eli wriggled in his arms, little hands clutching Wilson’s coat. “Where’s Mama?” His voice was small but insistent, a whispered question that wrapped itself around every stunned heartbeat.

The question landed like a quiet detonation in the sterile corridor. The bustle around them slowed, as if the hospital itself held its breath.

Cuddy, still standing near a vending machine alcove, watched them. Her eyes were wide, disbelief etched into every line of her face. The child’s purity of expectation, the unshakable belief that his mother simply wasn’t here, but would come, shattered the last defenses they had built against truth.

Wilson turned his face away from the desk, blinking rapidly to clear misted vision. He looked at the windows lining the lobby, saw his own reflection—pale, broken, haunted. He could not answer. His throat closed, and all he could manage was a single, shuddering breath.

Cuddy stepped forward before the silence could consume them. She knelt beside Eli and Wilson, folding one hand around Eli’s small back. Her other hand found Eli’s elbow. Her voice was steady but soft, like a lifeline. “Hey, sweetheart.”

Eli looked up, his blue eyes shining. “Aunty Lisa!”

Cuddy gave him a tight, trembling smile. “Hi, baby.”

He offered her the book. “I brought this. Mama said we’d read tonight.”

Cuddy reached for Goodnight Moon , her fingers brushing the worn spine. The dedication was inscribed on the inner flap in Violet’s handwriting: To my moonbeam. Love always, Mama. Her throat constricted, and she forced herself to swallow hard.

“This is a good book,” she said, voice tight. “I—thank you for bringing it.”

Eli’s lip quivered. “Will Mama read it?”

Wilson’s arms tightened around the boy. He crouched lower, an effort to meet Eli’s gaze. “Eli… Mama is very tired right now.” His voice shook. “She won’t be able to read it today.”

Eli frowned in confusion. “Is she taking a nap?”

Cuddy’s hand flew to her chest. Tears pricked her eyes. She turned her face away from Lea’s kindly gaze, ripping at her own composure.

Wilson cleared his throat, painfully. “Yes,” he whispered. “A really long nap.”

Eli pondered that, small brow furrowed. “When she wakes up, can I lie down next to her?”

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Wilson’s eyes burned. Cuddy pressed her lips together so tight they threatened to split. Lea backed away, eyes glistening.

“She loves you very much,” Cuddy said finally, and the words sounded like an apology and a plea all at once.

Eli nodded solemnly, satisfied by the promise. He rested the book against Wilson’s chest and laid his small head on Wilson’s shoulder, curling into the familiar warmth.

Behind the desk, Lea wiped at her cheeks. No one noticed. The corridor, once bustling, seemed hushed, as if mourning had cast a shadow over every passing figure.

Cuddy stayed kneeling beside them, hands folded in her lap, every breath trembling with the weight of unspoken grief. She imagined how she would explain this to Rachel—what could possibly make sense of a boy waiting for a mother who would never return. She reminded herself to hug Rachel tighter today.

Wilson kept his arms wrapped around Eli, swaying gently, rocking him as though guiding him to sleep. A single tear slid down his cheek, falling onto the boy’s head.

“Mama,” the child whispered, eyes closed. “I miss her.”

Wilson kissed the top of Eli’s curls. “I know, buddy.” His voice cracked. “So do I.”

Cuddy rose slowly, careful not to disturb the fragile tableau. She looked at Wilson, then at the book clutched in Eli’s hands, and finally at the silent windows that reflected grief in every frame.

With a gentle nod to Wilson, she stepped back, determined to do what had to be done. In a hospital, life and death marched side by side, and now the next steps were hers to navigate: contacting the morgue, dealing with paperwork Violet would have loathed but that must be done.

Yet for this moment, this stolen second between two broken adults and one small, hopeful child, Cuddy let silence reign.

They stayed like that, three hearts tethered by loss, rocking and waiting, as the hospital carried on around them, unaware of the fracture at its center. And in that quiet vigil, they honored a promise no one could keep: that Violet Rowan’s son would someday hear her voice again, reading him Goodnight Moon one more time.

But for now, they simply held him, and each other, as the bright hallway lights seemed to dim in respect of what they had lost, and what they would never get back.

*

From the second floor above, House stared down through the atrium window, unseen.

He hadn’t meant to look.

But the sound of Wilson’s voice, soft and hoarse, and high pitched childish squeals, had drawn him there like a moth. He saw the small bundle in Wilson’s arms. The familiar overalls. The book.

The ache hit him so hard, he staggered back.

He closed his eyes.

He had nothing left to say

Chapter Text

You hadn’t meant to stop walking. But you did.

Lights were dimmed. That time of evening when the hospital exhales, right before night shift clocks in, when the fluorescent flicker gets softer and you can hear the goddamn vending machine wheeze.

You passed Diagnostics and saw the lamp on. No one else. Just her.

She was barefoot on the couch. Big. Immensely pregnant. Skin pale. Hair a little frizzy. One knee tucked under the other. Like a kid playing house.

And Eli, he was draped across her lap like a kitten, thumb in his mouth, other hand curled around that stupid book. Goodnight Moon. The same battered copy she made you read the week he got RSV. You thought the pages would fall apart before he got better.

She was whispering. Voice so low it barely stirred the air.

You couldn’t hear the words, but you knew the rhythm. The cadence of it. The lilt she gave to ‘Goodnight noises everywhere.’ Like she believed it.

One hand on her belly. The other tracing slow, absent-minded lines through Eli’s curls. Like she forgot she was in a hospital. Like none of it could touch her.

You stood there longer than you should’ve. Pretended you were adjusting your cane. Scratching your jaw. Waiting for… something.

She looked up once. Not at you. Just… into the glass. Past you.

You don’t think she saw you.

Maybe she did.

Maybe she always did and just didn’t say anything.

You told yourself it was fine. Told yourself you’d say something later. Some sarcastic remark about moon rabbits and barefoot hippies. Maybe tease her about letting Eli drool on your couch.

But you didn’t.

You walked away.

You keep thinking about that night now.

It’s the only image you can conjure that isn’t soaked in blood or static or the flat tone of a monitor screaming finality.

You think about her thumb, gently stroking Eli’s hair. You think about how she looked—bare, unarmored, exhausted, and impossibly full of love.

You didn’t deserve that version of her.

You didn’t even knock on the glass.

Chapter Text

~THEN~

Two months.

Eight weeks. Fifty-six days.

That’s how long it had been since Violet Rowan walked out of Princeton-Plainsboro, her badge turned in, her locker emptied, her eyes dry but her hands shaking.

The medical error hadn’t killed anyone. It had almost, but not quite. Cuddy made that clear when she handed Violet the papers.

“You’re not being punished. You’re being protected. And if you don’t believe that now, you will someday.”

Violet didn’t believe it then.

But maybe… maybe she did now.

*

The plane ride from Heathrow to Newark was forgettable. The customs line was not. Violet, now leaner, tanner, and noticeably stronger, had spent most of the wait fiddling with the edge of her hoodie sleeve, running her fingers over the old callus where her pen used to sit. She had thought about texting Wilson. She didn’t.

She wanted her return to feel normal.

Even if nothing about it would be.

She stepped into PPTH like a shadow returning to its body. Same buzzing lights. Same overpolished floors. Same vague scent of bleach and vending machine soup.

Her probation badge clipped awkwardly to her scrubs, she ducked into the locker room, deposited her things, fixed her hair.

And then, with a grin spreading across her face, she launched her first plan.

*

Wilson returned to his office from rounds to find it meticulously reversed.

Every item on his desk—his pens, his nameplate, the framed photo of his dog from med school—had been flipped upside-down. His entire bookshelf was now in alphabetical order… by author’s middle name. And a Post-it sat on his keyboard.

Welcome back to the twilight zone.

– Sincerely, The Ghost of Probation Past

He froze.

Then blinked. Once. Twice.

A laugh left his chest before he could stop it.

He didn’t even get to turn around before he was tackled into the world’s tightest hug.

“God, I missed you,” Violet breathed into his shoulder.

Wilson turned, stunned, and wrapped his arms around her like he didn’t trust she was real.

“Violet?”

She stepped back just enough to beam at him. She looked different. Tighter in the face. Stronger in the arms. Her usual uneven tan was now a sun-kissed glow.

“I thought I was hallucinating,” he said.

“You still might be,” she replied. “I didn’t bring tea. That’s usually how you know I’m real.”

“I—” he started, then stopped. His throat tightened.

“You didn’t text,” he said, not accusingly, just… honestly.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Violet murmured. “Every time I opened my phone, it felt like I still hadn’t earned my way back here. Or you.”

Wilson nodded. He understood.

“You look good,” he said softly.

“I feel better.” She tilted her head. “You?”

He hesitated. “I am okay. And, House is… House.” She hadn't asked about him but he said it anyway.

Something flickered behind her eyes. She nodded.

__________________________________

House hadn’t said her name once.

Not out loud.

But Wilson noticed, of course. Noticed the way he’d occasionally enter the office, stop mid-sentence, and stare at the chair Violet used to take.

Noticed the small white box shoved behind House’s file cabinet. He had found it when looking for a missing radiology scan.

Inside: her old badge. A hair tie. Two black Pilot G-2 pens. A sticky note that read: YOU NEED TO STOP TOUCHING MY BAG. In violet ink.

He never asked about it.

And House never said a word.

But sometimes he’d sit in the diagnostics conference room, hand hovering at his mouth, eyes narrowed at nothing in particular. Not thinking. Remembering.

__________________________________

Violet’s return didn’t make a splash. She didn’t want it to. She kept her head down, worked her probation rotation in internal medicine, smiled when spoken to. She laughed with nurses. Ate lunch alone.

But one by one, the old team found her.

Chase spotted her in the cafeteria and did a double-take so exaggerated he nearly spilled his coffee. “You look like someone who just did two months of yoga and therapy,” he said.

“I did one of those,” Violet grinned. “Guess which.”

Cameron hugged her. Tight. No words. Just breath in, breath out.

Foreman was more reserved. A nod. A murmur: “Good to see you back.” But his eyes softened in the way they rarely did.

Still, she didn’t go near Diagnostics.

Didn’t go near him.

Not yet.

But God, she thought about him.

On the bus. In the stairwell. While folding her clean coat into her locker. While pulling a chart from the nurses’ station. His voice floated up like a habit.

Those labs are useless unless you’re trying to bore the disease into submission.

She smiled at that. Laughed once.

She didn’t see him.

Not yet.

But she felt him in every corridor.

___________________________________

Wilson sat with her on a bench outside the hospital on her third day back. The sun was dipping behind the trees. Her ID badge gleamed silver under the dying light.

“He hasn’t been the same,” Wilson said quietly.

Violet looked up.

“You probably guessed that.”

She said nothing.

“He doesn’t say your name,” Wilson continued. “Not even once. But he keeps a box. A box of you things. I didn’t ask. I just put it back.”

Violet swallowed.

“I still think about the night I left,” she said finally. “I thought about turning back so many times.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I was angry. At myself. At the whole system. At him. But I also understand why he acted that way that day.”

Wilson didn’t speak. He acknowledged the fact that she knew about his father's passing. He let her sit with that.

“And then I was ashamed,” she added. “I thought… if he wanted me, he’d call.”

Wilson looked away. “He did want you.”

She didn’t reply.

The wind shifted slightly. Leaves skittered across the path.

Violet looked at her shoes. “I’m not assigned to Diagnostics right now. But it’s the only place I see when I close my eyes.”

Wilson nodded slowly. “Give it time.”

She laughed. “Time is the only thing House doesn’t believe in.”

___________________________________

Meanwhile, in Diagnostics, House did what House always did: mocked clinic patients, abused his whiteboard, and belittled interns with a precision only caffeine and grief could sharpen.

He told himself he didn’t care she was back.

Didn’t ask Wilson.

Didn’t go near Internal Med.

But on the fourth night, he found himself outside her old locker.

Just… standing.

It had been cleaned out. Sterile. Nothing personal left.

He stared at it for five minutes before turning and limping away.

___________________________________

It wasn’t until couple of weeks into her return that Violet saw him.

By accident.

She stepped into the elevator at 10:12 p.m., ready to head home, hair damp from a post-call shower. Scrubs wrinkled. Bag slung over one shoulder. Her hand reached out—

And the doors opened.

There he was.

House.

Same coat. Same cane. Same expression. Almost.

Except not.

Something in his face flickered. Not surprise. Not anger. Something closer to being gut-punched.

Violet stepped back, instinctively.

Neither of them spoke.

He didn’t move.

Just watched her.

Her chest rose and fell, uneven.

The doors began to close again.

She didn’t stop them.

He didn’t either.

*

That night, she lay in bed, eyes wide open, heart pounding. The shape of him still burned into her eyelids.

And House?

House pulled out the box.

Opened it.

Ran his thumb over her handwriting.

Then closed it again.

Too soon.

Too late.

___________________________________

The gala was already a headache before it began.

House had dodged it for the last three years, feigning bronchitis, jury duty, a sudden hatred of neckties. This year, though, Cuddy made it clear: attend or your budget is mine to cut.

So he stood there now, nursing a scotch he didn’t want, in a suit he didn’t own, in a hotel ballroom that smelled like champagne and self-congratulation. Princeton-Plainsboro’s annual charity gala, black-tie mandatory. Rich donors. Empty speeches. Too much perfume.

He was in the corner, as always. Cynical. Untouchable.

Until she walked in.

Violet didn’t announce herself. She never did.

She just arrived. Quietly and Unhurried. Slipping past the wide double doors on Wilson’s arm. A vision in midnight satin blue.

Her dress was off-shoulder, which wrapped around her, silk satin that caught the low amber light like a dream. Corset-fit through the waist, dipping just enough to hint, then cascading freely to her knees. Her collarbones were delicate, neck graceful, emphasized by a single silver pendant that shimmered when she turned her head.

Her hair—black as ink, sleek at the crown and spilling down her back in glossy waves—framed her face with elegance that didn’t ask for attention but took it anyway.

Makeup, rare on her, was subtle and disarming. Her lashes feathered with dark mascara. Her lips were rosy and glossed. A whisper of blush gave her skin a softness that almost defied reality.

And those white heels. Tasteful. Daring.

Wilson said something in her ear that made her laugh.

That’s when House saw her.

It wasn’t recognition that struck first.

It was arrest.

The kind that makes sound drop out of a room. That makes breath stutter and blood forget how to move. He blinked once, slowly, like trying to reset vision.

Her smile, though not directed at him, was real.

And for a second—just a second—he forgot the box in his drawer.

He forgot the empty locker, the sticky note, the hallway stares.

He just saw her.

*

Violet hadn’t looked for him.

She hadn’t let herself.

But she felt it.

That unmistakable friction in the air. A prickle up her neck. The burn of being watched not just by eyes, but by memory.

And when she turned her head, carefully, slowly—

There he was.

Their eyes met.

It was quiet violence.

No nod. No smile. No reaction on her face at all.

But House, he looked like someone had taken a defibrillator to his ribcage. Expression unreadable. Eyes locked.

She held the gaze for a beat too long.

Then turned back to Wilson and walked deeper into the room.

__________________________________

“Don’t say it,” she murmured, once they were past the line of sight.

Wilson raised a brow. “I wasn’t going to.”

“You thought it, though.”

“I did,” he admitted. “But I also think I’ve never seen you look like this.”

“Like what?”

He paused. “Like yourself. And someone else, too.”

She smiled without showing teeth. “That was the goal.”

Across the room, House downed the rest of his drink.

He didn’t follow her. Didn’t corner her at the bar. Didn’t insult her date choice.

He just stayed in the corner.

Watching the only woman he had ever been stupid enough to want leave a wake of grace and unfinished business in every step.

___________________________________

House doesn’t move when Violet walks past.

Doesn’t look away, doesn’t speak. Just watches her from the corner of the ballroom like she’s something he imagined into existence, and is terrified to test the illusion.

She doesn’t acknowledge him.

Not with a glance. Not with a nod.

Nothing.

Wilson notices.

He’s not looking for drama, not tonight. He’s her escort, after all. Her chosen companion for the night. He showed up in a pressed tux, borrowed cufflinks, and a deep, unspoken hope that the air would stay light between them.

It had. Until now.

Violet’s laughter from earlier—the low, melodic one she reserves for old friends and harmless jokes—has vanished. What’s left is a serene mask. Composed. Beautiful. Distant.

Her hand rests loosely on Wilson’s arm as they walk, not for support, but form. Like a woman sculpted into poise.

House watches them cross the floor, his expression unreadable.

Wilson used to think House’s capacity for pain was bottomless. But now, he’s not so sure. Because House’s gaze doesn’t even harden. It just… dulls. Flattens, like a man watching himself bleed out quietly beneath his own suit.

They pass each other once at the hors d’oeuvre table. Violet reaches for a glass of sparkling water. House takes nothing.

There’s a second, barely that, where they stand side by side.

Wilson holds his breath.

But Violet doesn’t speak.

She lifts her drink, turns on her heel, and walks away without so much as a blink in House’s direction.

House remains rooted to the spot, expression stone-like.

Wilson doesn’t know what’s worse, the fact that House doesn’t call out to her, or the fact that Violet doesn’t even look like she considered it.

It’s not cold.

It’s something worse.

It’s indifference.

*

Later, Wilson finds Violet by the gallery wall, pretending to admire one of the auction items—a framed abstract, blue swirls on white canvas.

He stands beside her.

“You okay?” he asks quietly.

She smiles. “Of course.”

The same smile she used on press conferences and donor luncheons. Real enough to pass, but never close enough to touch.

Wilson watches her for a moment. Watches her sip her drink, angle her body with practiced grace, look through the glass as if the reflection didn’t exist.

“You saw him,” he says finally.

It’s not a question.

Her gaze stays forward. “Mm.”

“You didn’t speak to him.”

“No.”

She says it lightly. Carelessly.

But Wilson has known her long enough.

That silence isn’t empty.

It’s full. Heavy. Weaponized.

And maybe that’s what startles him most—how much control she has. Over herself. Over the situation. Over him.

“You don’t miss him?” he asks.

She turns to him then. Slowly.

“I didn’t say that.”

“So?”

“I just learned how to live without him,” she says, almost like she’s explaining a recipe. “And I’m not sure I want to unlearn that.”

Wilson blinks. His breath catches slightly.

“Even after all this time?”

She sips again. “Especially after all this time.”

He watches her closely now. Watches the tilt of her mouth, the exact way she avoids eye contact when saying something that costs her more than she’s willing to admit.

“You know,” Wilson murmurs, “for a while, I thought House was the cruel one.”

Violet laughs softly. Not a bitter sound. Not angry. Just tired.

“Maybe he still is,” she says.

Wilson shakes his head. “No. Not tonight.”

She doesn’t answer.

Because what would she say?

That she had imagined seeing House again a thousand times? That every scenario, every night in London, ended with her picturing him saying something?

An apology. A confession. A question. Anything.

And yet now, here, he said nothing.

And so did she.

It would have been easier if he’d come with fire. Sarcasm. Mockery. That she could have answered.

But this?

This quiet?

This unspoken ache?

She couldn’t touch it without drowning.

___________________________________

Back across the room, House is leaning on his cane like it’s the only thing keeping him from sinking into the floor.

He hasn’t taken a drink in a bit.

Hasn’t spoken to anyone, really.

Wilson sees it.

And for the first time, he thinks: Maybe she’s worse than him.

Not because she means to be.

But because House has always made his damage loud. Visible. Violent.

And Violet? She buries hers in beauty. Grace. Controlled breath and elegant gowns and good posture. She walks past him like he’s a memory she’s done grieving.

And House....lets her.

Because maybe that’s the punishment he thinks he deserves.

Or maybe he’s just afraid he’d shatter if she turned around.

___________________________________

The rest of the night is a blur of speeches and clinking glasses.

House leaves before dessert.

Violet doesn’t watch him go.

Wilson stands at her side the whole time.

And all he can think is how two people who once knew every inch of each other now live in the same room like ghosts occupying different timelines.

Not angry.

Not fighting.

Just…

Gone.

From each other.

In the most permanent way silence knows how.

___________________________________

The Uber smells like lavender air freshener and leather cleaner.

It’s too cold. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes your throat ache.

Violet sits in the back, legs crossed at the ankle, dress smoothed carefully across her lap like she’s trying to hold herself together with silk. The hem is wrinkled from sitting too long. Her heels are pinching. Her lipstick is faded.

She doesn’t speak.

Neither does the driver.

She had smiled all night. Said all the right things. Toasted donors, laughed at old jokes, leaned on Wilson’s arm like she wasn’t slowly unraveling beneath the corset bones and sequined spine of a dress she’d bought with him in mind.

She didn’t expect him to come.

Not really.

And yet, the second she saw him…

The ache returned like it had never left.

He looked… the same. A little more tired. Maybe slightly thinner. The same grey suit. The same guarded mouth. The same eyes that used to make her feel like the only person in the room.

Except tonight, they looked past her.

Like she was nobody.

Like she was done.

And maybe he was right.

Maybe he had moved on.

Maybe her silence had been too long, her absence too final.

But none of that stopped the way her chest tightened when she caught his scent in the room. That faint trail of soap and musk and something distinctly him. None of it stopped her hand from curling into a fist at her side to stop from reaching for him. Or the way her knees shook, barely, when they stood side by side and didn’t speak.

She didn’t cry then.

She didn’t cry when she walked away.

But now?

Now the city glides past in a blur of yellow light and storefronts, and the night is slipping off her shoulders like a second skin.

And she does.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Just a quiet, unstoppable unraveling.

Tears slide down her cheeks in slow, embarrassed lines. She doesn’t sniffle. Doesn’t sob. Just… breaks.

Silently.

Her hand, still wearing the silver ring she bought in London, tightens around the edge of her clutch.

She turns her face toward the window, away from the driver.

She doesn’t wipe the tears away. She lets them fall.

Because she loves him.

And tonight proved that.

And the worst part, the part that cleaves through the center of her chest, is the awful, gnawing thought that maybe he doesn’t anymore.

That maybe silence, left too long, calcified into goodbye.

___________________________________

The ballroom is almost empty now.

Chairs half-pushed in. Half-drunk wine glasses abandoned on tablecloths. The band is packing up quietly, talking in low voices. The donors are long gone—carried away in black town cars, laughter echoing into the night.

House is still here.

Not because he wants to be.

Because he doesn’t want to go back. Not yet. Not with her perfume still clinging to the fabric of the evening.

He tells himself he’s just checking to make sure no one left behind any prescriptions or bottles. It’s a lie even he doesn’t bother defending.

And then he sees it.

Near the coat check. Half-hidden under a chair.

A white silk shawl. Thin. Lightweight. Smells like jasmine and vanilla and something… soft.

He bends slowly, one hand gripping the cane, the other reaching down. His fingers brush the fabric, and a static buzz moves through his arm.

It’s hers.

She must’ve taken it off when the ballroom got too warm. Or maybe Wilson helped her with it.

Or maybe she left it on purpose.

He presses it between his palms.

The lights buzz overhead.

House doesn’t move.

For a long time.

Then, without folding it, without brushing it off, he slips it into the inner pocket of his coat and walks out into the cold.

No cab.

No destination.

Just the shawl against his chest and her ghost in his throat.

___________________________________

Violet isn’t in her scrubs when she opens the door.

She’s in an oversized hoodie and socks. Her hair is down, but sleep-mussed. No makeup. Eyes pink around the edges.

She looks small.

Wilson holds out a paper cup of coffee.

“You don’t have to invite me in,” he says softly. “Just figured you wouldn’t want to walk into IM without caffeine.”

Violet hesitates.

Then steps aside.

Inside, her apartment is clean but quiet. No music. No candles. Just the remains of a half-finished cup of chamomile on the table. Her heels from the gala lie near the couch, kicked off in a hurry. Her dress is draped over the back of a chair, zipper still half-undone.

Wilson doesn’t comment.

He hands her the coffee.

She takes it with both hands.

Silence hangs like morning fog.

“You didn’t sleep,” he says eventually.

She doesn’t deny it.

He sits down. Waits. Gives her the space she won’t ask for.

When she finally speaks, it’s soft. Almost fragile.

“I wanted to talk to him.”

Wilson just nods.

“I couldn’t speak.”

He nods again.

“And I think… I think if I had, I would’ve broken.”

Her voice quivers. She sips. Doesn’t look at him.

“I thought I’d grown stronger,” she whispers. “But the moment I saw his face… I realized I’ve just been building walls. Not healing.”

Wilson leans forward, elbows on knees.

“He didn’t speak either,” he says gently.

She doesn’t respond.

“He stayed all night. Left after dessert. Didn’t talk to anyone. Didn’t touch the bourbon.”

She looks up at that. A flicker of disbelief.

“Found your shawl,” Wilson adds. “Took it with him.”

Violet blinks.

Her mouth parts, closes again.

And then—

Her breath catches.

Wilson watches the shift, like a crack in ice just before it breaks.

“I cried in the car,” she admits.

“Figured.”

He smiles faintly. “You’re not worse than him, Violet. Just… different in how you bleed.”

She laughs, watery. “Is that your medical opinion?”

“I’m an oncologist. I know metastasis when I see it.”

That makes her laugh for real. Just once. Then she covers her mouth.

She’s still holding the coffee when the tears return. This time not as silently.

Wilson stands. Sits near her. Doesn’t hug her. Just lets her have her moment. She deserves that dignity.

And maybe when she’s ready, she’ll go to him.

But for now, Wilson just sits with her.

In the quiet.

Where possible loss and love are still learning how to live in the same body.

Chapter Text

~THEN~

Monday morning.

Violet walks into the hospital ten minutes early, wearing pale blue scrubs and a coffee she didn’t buy herself. Wilson had left it on her desk with a note that just said: “You’re not special. I was already going to the lobby.”

She smiled anyway.

It lasted until she saw the wheelchair.

House. In a wheelchair.

Coasting down the corridor like he was king of the burn unit, pushing himself with theatrical effort, his bad leg extended like a tragic relic from a battlefield no one asked about.

Foreman walked past him without blinking.

Foreman muttered, “No one’s even surprised.”

Chase tried to give Cameron a high five only to be ignored.

Violet said nothing. Just sipped her coffee. Watched the absurdity roll past her like a fever dream with a grudge.

House didn’t look at her. Not once.

But his voice echoed down the hallway loud enough for everyone to hear:

“Somewhere out there, a poor, deserving disabled person is enjoying my parking spot. I hope they choke on the moral high ground.”

Wilson sighed so hard from behind the nurses’ station, he nearly passed out.

___________________________________

Later

“House. It’s a wheelchair-accessible spot. You’re not paralyzed.”

“No. Just morally burdened.”

Cuddy pinched the bridge of her nose. “The ADA doesn’t exist so you can sulk in high gear.”

“She parks crooked.”

“She’s in a wheelchair.”

“So am I. Look at me go.”

He gave one dramatic push and knocked over a biohazard bin.

“House,” Cuddy said tightly, “your tantrum isn’t cute. You can’t intimidate a wheelchair user out of a parking space.”

“Then I’ll adapt,” he said, grinning. “Give me one week. I’ll prove I qualify.”

Cuddy stared at him.

“You’re betting me your own discomfort just to prove a point?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

She squinted. “You last in that thing for one week—clinic hours, rounds, cafeteria traffic—and I’ll talk to Facilities.”

House raised a brow. “You swear?”

“I’ll consider it.”

He shook her hand with the smuggest grip humanly possible.

__________________________________

By noon, the wheelchair had crashed into three carts, jammed one elevator, and House had deliberately reversed into a vending machine that didn’t carry his chips.

“I’m adapting,” he said when Wilson passed him in the hallway.

“You’re regressing.”

“I’m fighting for my rights, Wilson.”

Wilson crouched beside the chair. “You know what’s easier than this? Therapy.”

“Is it covered by parking validation?”

“God, I miss when your self-pity was quieter.”

House grinned.

Wilson’s smile faltered.

Then he asked, like it didn’t matter: “You saw her, didn’t you?”

House didn’t answer.

Didn’t look up.

Just adjusted the wheels and rolled away.

Meanwhile…

Violet pretended she wasn’t listening.

Pretended she didn’t glance over her charts just to hear the ridiculous squeak of House’s wheelchair against linoleum.

Pretended her hand didn’t pause mid-note when he cursed after hitting the water fountain.

Pretended this wasn’t exactly the kind of distraction she used to secretly love.

But she said nothing.

And House didn’t say anything to her, either.

Whatever they were doing—

Avoiding?

Preserving?

Punishing?

—it was a cold war made of hallway stares and deafening silence.

Still, when she passed the Diagnostics lounge that afternoon and saw House spinning slowly in a circle to reach the whiteboard…

She didn’t speak.

But she left a sticky note on the board while he was out of the room.

One word.

Clockwise.

He found it.

And for the first time in weeks, he smiled.

Just a little.

___________________________________

House made it to Day 6.

Six full days of dragging himself around PPTH in a wheelchair, terrorizing interns, jamming doors, pretending to be helpless at the coffee cart, and clipping several ankles (none apologetically). He had a horn attached to the chair by Tuesday. By Thursday, he started doing three-point turns in crowded elevators.

Wilson had begged him to stop by Day 3.

“You’re making it harder for actual disabled people.”

“I’m raising awareness.”

“You’re raising cortisol levels.”

But House didn’t quit. He was so close.

Which is why it was all the more tragic, and hilariously inevitable, that he lost on Day 6, not to exhaustion, not to a confession, but to a vending machine.

*

Flashback: The Cafeteria

Wilson was mid-lunch when he heard it:

“YOU UNGRATEFUL CAPITALIST BOX OF LIES!”

He didn’t even look up. Just sighed.

Foreman peeked around the corner. “Is he…”

“Yup.”

“Again?”

“Mhm.”

House was trying to reverse his wheelchair uphill into the vending alcove to reach his sour cream and onion chips, which had jammed. Again. For the third time this week.

He had already written a four-page manifesto against this specific machine.

But this time, House didn’t just curse and bang the glass.

No.

This time, he stood up.

Fully. Loudly. Dramatically.

And kicked the machine.

Right in front of Cuddy.

And two nurses.

And a very startled woman in a real wheelchair, trying to refill her water bottle.

The silence that followed was long and biblical.

Cuddy blinked.

“You just stood up.”

House froze. Mid-lean.

“…No, I didn’t.”

“You stood up and kicked a vending machine.”

“Didn’t see any security cameras.”

“There’s literally a sign that says ’Area Under Surveillance.’”

“I identify as horizontal.”

“Get out of the chair, House.”

“No.”

“Out.”

“I still qualify emotionally.”

“Dr House.”

He sighed. Stood. Stretched his back. “It was the chips.”

Cuddy crossed her arms. “The chips?”

“They betrayed me.”

“Out. Of. The. Spot.”

“Big wheelchair thinks it’s won. But this isn’t over.”

“You lasted six days. I’m impressed. Now walk to Clinic duty like a grown man.”

House kicked the vending machine again, less dramatically. “You think this is a loss. I think it’s performance art.”

*

Later, in Diagnostics

House stormed into the lounge, dumped the wheelchair against the glass, and collapsed into his regular seat with a grunt. The limp was exaggerated for effect.

Foreman raised an eyebrow. “What happened?”

“I was persecuted.”

Chase looks up, “Let me guess. You lost the bet.”

“I liberated the parking spot.”

Cameron without looking up, “By standing up in front of witnesses?”

“She had no right to look that smug,” House muttered, glaring at the vending machine in his mind.

The room was quiet for a beat.

Then—

A sticky note appeared on the board.

Next time: Snacks first. Ego second.

No signature.

But the handwriting was unmistakable.

House stared at it.

And this time, he pocketed it.

He just sat back and grinned. Pained, petty, quietly pleased.

__________________________________

Later That Evening, Wilson stopped by his office to grab his jacket.

Violet was there, reading a chart.

“I heard he lost.”

She didn’t look up. “Tragically.”

Wilson chuckled. “Didn’t peg you as a fan of vending machine vengeance.”

“I’m not.”

Beat.

“…But I am a fan of sticky notes.”

He gave her a long look. “You know you’re driving him crazy.”

“I know.”

“You okay with that?”

She finally looked up, and for a second. Just a second. There was softness in her eyes.

“I’d like him to miss me a little,” she said.

Wilson smiled faintly.

“He does.”

___________________________________

House was late.

Which, in itself, wasn’t unusual. He’d made tardiness a sport. But this morning, something about it sat wrong. Foreman noticed it first. No witty text, no clatter of his cane down the hallway. The conference room felt off without his bitter sarcasm humming under the fluorescent lights.

Then came the email.

All physicians under disciplinary review must report to the state board hearing by Friday.

Wilson was the first to read it. His face paled.

He didn’t have to guess. Not this time.

By noon, he found House not at his desk, not in Diagnostics, but in the janitor’s closet, sitting on an upturned mop bucket, clutching a pill bottle with white-knuckled hands.

Wilson stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

“So. They’re serious.”

House didn’t look up. “Usually are when the words ‘felony’ and ‘unfit for duty’ make the rounds.”

Wilson exhaled, long and tired. “You have to detox. Immediately. Not tomorrow. Not after one last refill. Now.”

“I know.”

Wilson blinked. “You—what?”

House finally looked up. His eyes were bloodshot. Not from withdrawal. Not yet. Just exhaustion.

“I know,” he repeated. “They found the forged scrips. The pharmacy flagged it. They brought it to Cuddy. Cuddy brought it to legal. Legal brought it to the board.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“What’s there to say?” He leaned back against the cinderblock wall. “I’m out of lifelines.”

For a moment, Wilson said nothing.

A beat passes.

“Does Violet know about this?”

House didn’t answer.

“You haven’t told her?”

Still, silence.

Wilson stepped forward. “I think she deserves to know.”

“No,” House said. “She deserves better.”

__________________________________

The clinic room was dimmed, blinds drawn, air conditioning too high. House lay on the cot, a saline IV in one arm, his whole body curled slightly against the ache beginning to burn under his skin.

This wasn’t his first detox.

But it might be the first one he wasn’t running from.

He’d signed the papers himself this time. Wilson had watched.

Three days.

Three days of supervised withdrawal or they’d file criminal charges for drug fraud. Immediate suspension. License revoked.

This was mercy.

But it felt like hell.

___________________________________

The first hint came when Wilson dodged her eyes in the hallway.

Not the usual I know something snarky about you dodge. This was tighter. Like he was holding in a secret too big to joke about.

Then, House’s pager went off during a consult, but the nurse said he was “on leave.”

On leave?

House never took leave unless someone died. Or unless someone made him.

That’s when Violet started looking.

___________________________________

She found Wilson in the oncology break room.

Coffee. Empty chairs. The hum of a vending machine no one used anymore.

“You were avoiding me,” she said, arms folded, voice even.

Wilson didn’t look surprised. Just sad.

“He didn’t want you to know.”

“He never wants me to know. That’s how he lives. God, I shouldn't even be pissed. We were nothing in the first place.”

“Not this time.”

“Then what?” Her voice cracked, barely. “What is he doing?”

Wilson hesitated.

“Detox.”

That one word hit her like a stone.

“Now?”

Wilson nodded. “He had no choice. State board found the forged prescriptions. They gave him a deadline. Get clean, or face felony charges and lose everything.”

She blinked. Her throat went dry. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Because it’s House. He doesn’t want to be seen like this. Especially not by you.”

Especially not by the woman who once left him to heal alone.

___________________________________

It was afternoon when she found the clinic room.

Cuddy had let her through with a quiet nod. No words.

Inside, it smelled of antiseptic and sweat.

House lay curled on his side, visibly shaking, clutching a blanket like it might anchor him to the mattress.

He hadn’t shaved. He hadn’t eaten. His eyes flicked open when she stepped inside, but he didn’t speak.

He didn’t have to.

Her breath caught at the sight of him. Fragile. Burning. Not reduced to nothing, but damn close.

She pulled up a chair. Sat quietly.

He watched her for a moment before turning his head away.

“You’re not supposed to see this,” he rasped.

“You didn’t give me a choice.”

“I didn’t want to be a burden.”

“You never were,” she whispered. “You just never trusted me enough to let me carry any of it.”

His jaw tightened.

Then she reached out—slowly, carefully—and laid her hand over his.

He flinched at the touch. Not in pain. In shame.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said.

“You’re already doing it.”

She laced her fingers through his.

And for the first time since they parted, he didn’t pull away.

___________________________________

The hospital let House go that afternoon.

Not because he was better.

Because there was no more they could legally do. His vitals were stable. No seizures. No suicidal ideation. Just the slow, jagged unraveling of a man trying to claw his way out of hell one molecule at a time.

Wilson was supposed to drive him home.

But Violet was already in the lobby with his discharge paperwork in her hand.

She didn’t ask.

She took the keys from Wilson, nodded at the nurse, and helped House into the car herself.

Wilson hesitated.

“You sure?” he asked, brows drawn, voice full of layered meaning.

She turned, quiet but certain. “He doesn’t want anyone to see this.”

“You’re not just anyone.”

“I know.”

Wilson looked at House, slouched in the passenger seat, jaw clenched like he’d rather bite through bone than accept help.

“Call me if it gets bad,” Wilson said, stepping back.

“It’s already bad,” Violet replied. “That’s why I’m staying.”

___________________________________

House’s apartment looked the same as it had two months ago.

Except dimmer.

As if the light itself had grown cautious.

She helped him inside slowly, an arm slung around her shoulders, his cane forgotten in the backseat. He didn’t argue. He didn’t joke. He just moved, stiff and wordless, one step at a time.

When they reached the couch, he collapsed into it with a groan.

She stood there for a moment, letting silence thicken between them.

Then she moved. Efficiently and quietly.

Blankets.

Water.

A small bowl of ice cubes for his neck.

She dimmed the lights.

Closed the blinds.

Made the room as quiet as she could.

House didn’t say thank you.

But his head tilted toward her, as if listening for a breath he didn’t deserve.

*

He didn’t sleep.

Not really.

He trembled and jerked, teeth gritted, sweat soaking through his T-shirt. His body was a live wire, desperate and panicking, every nerve screaming for the thing he couldn’t have.

Vicodin.

Just one. Just one pill to shut the noise down.

But there were none. She’d emptied the apartment. Every drawer, every bottle, every hiding place. She even checked the piano bench.

And he knew it.

So he suffered.

And she stayed.

Sitting on the floor beside the couch, knees drawn up to her chest, fingers brushing over his wrist when he shook too hard. She kept ice water by his lips when he was too feverish to think straight.

Around 2 a.m., he finally spoke.

“It’s crawling under my skin.”

She looked up.

“My spine. My chest. It’s moving.”

She didn’t blink.

He swallowed. “Don’t let it win.”

“I won’t.”

*

By the second night, 

The fever broke around midnight.

It returned by dawn.

He started hallucinating.

Not vividly. Not yet.

But his eyes flicked around the room like he was following something invisible.

“Don’t,” he murmured, once, eyes locked on the corner of the ceiling.

She moved toward him.

His head snapped to her. “She’s in the corner.”

“Who?”

He blinked.

Then shook his head slowly. “Never mind.”

She sat beside him again. He leaned into her without asking.

“I see you,” he muttered, voice barely audible. “Even when I shouldn’t.”

Her hand moved to his back. Light. Steady.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not.”

“You will.”

Her fingers curled slightly against his shoulder. “Then let me lie a little longer.”

*

It hit around 4 a.m.

At first, the apartment had taken on a strange stillness — not silence, exactly, but the kind of eerie quiet that settles after a storm and before another. A limbo of discomfort. Pain ebbed and flared like waves against bone.

House hadn’t moved in hours.

Until suddenly, he did.

A warning groan, the sound he made when nausea built to a point past reason, and then he shoved the blanket aside and staggered, too quickly, off the couch.

His body buckled mid-step.

He crashed against the wall, then slumped to his knees.

Violet was there before he even called her name — not that he would have.

She knelt beside him just as the first retch came, violent and dry and guttural. His fingers clawed at the floor; he couldn’t catch his breath.

The second wave hit harder.

She held his shoulders, firm and steady, adjusting his position so he didn’t choke. When the bile finally came, she barely flinched. Just reached for the bowl she’d placed nearby hours ago, anticipating this.

She didn’t recoil.

She didn’t grimace.

She just wiped his mouth with a damp cloth when it was over, crouched beside him on the cold hardwood, her knees red from the pressure, her breath slow and even as his came in heaves.

“Don’t look at me,” he gasped, voice thick with shame and acid.

“I’m not,” she whispered.

But she was.

Gently.

Deliberately.

Like someone who wasn’t afraid of what he was.

His body trembled — from pain, fever, rage at himself.

And she stayed.

One hand on his back, the other brushing the damp hair off his forehead.

She didn’t say I told you so. Didn’t say you deserve this.

Just:

“You’re okay. It’s just the drug leaving.”

And in the quiet that followed, when the tremors eased and he leaned against her like a man too tired to pretend anymore,

House let her hold him.

Just for a minute.

Just long enough to remember what mercy felt like.

*

Later, hallucination so cruel, it was almost cinematic.

He saw Violet.

Not the real one. Not the quiet, patient figure curled beside him with a cool cloth. But a version burned into his mind. The one who smiled in the conference room, clipboard in hand, eyes bright with discovery. The one who used to argue, match him, make him ache with how completely she saw him.

She was standing by the piano.

Wearing that ridiculous cardigan she always forgot to take off. Barefoot. Smirking.

“You look like hell, House,” Dream-Violet said.

He tried to speak.

Nothing came out.

“You keep waiting for people to stop loving you,” she said. “And then you make sure they do.”

He blinked. “You left.”

“You let me.”

He reached for her.

But she was already gone.

*

On third morning, he woke up gasping.

Violet had fallen asleep in the armchair, head tilted against her hand. When he jerked upright, she jolted awake instantly.

“Nightmare?”

“Dream.”

“Good or bad?”

“Worse.”

She stood. Walked over. Sat beside him again.

His hand found hers under the blanket.

Didn’t squeeze. Just held.

Like a drowning man clinging to the edge of a raft.

*

By the third afternoon, he could eat toast.

Barely.

She brought it to him without comment. No fuss. No condescension.

He took it. Sat up a little. Chewed slowly.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked finally, voice hoarse.

She looked at him. Not pitying. Not angry. Just there.

“Because I love you.” There was no pretense when she said that.

He stared at her.

“I’m not saying that to make you better,” she added, softer now. “I’m saying it because you don’t believe anyone should.”

Silence.

“You shouldn’t,” he said.

“But I do.”

He looked down.

And whispered, “I don’t know how to deserve this.”

She leaned in, kissed his forehead.

“You don’t have to earn everything, House.”

___________________________________

Wilson came by the next day.

Let himself in with the spare key.

Stopped in the doorway.

Saw House on the couch. Pale, disheveled, exhausted—but alive. Awake. Eating cereal.

Violet was curled beside him, one hand absently tracing circles on the fabric of his sleeve.

House looked up at him. Met his eyes.

Didn’t joke.

Didn’t lie.

Just nodded.

Wilson smiled faintly.

“Guess I’m not needed here.”

“You never were,” House rasped.

Violet rolled her eyes. “He’s lying.”

Wilson shrugged. “Good. I missed that.”

He left the groceries on the counter.

Told them he’d be back later.

And for the first time in a very long time, he left without dread in his stomach.

___________________________________

The sun had already risen, though you wouldn’t know it by the state of the apartment.

The blinds were still drawn, casting a pale gray wash over the furniture. Shadows clung to the corners of the room. The couch, crumpled and sunken, was still damp with old sweat and crumpled blankets. The faintest scent of saline and bleach lingered in the air.

Gregory House hadn’t moved for hours.

Not from exhaustion this time, not from fever. Not because his body was revolting from lack of opioids. That storm had passed.

It wasn’t relief.

It was emptiness.

The kind that echoed.

He lay flat on the couch, eyes open, staring at the ceiling like it might offer something — a reason, an answer, a numbness that hadn’t already been stripped from him.

Everything in him felt raw. Scraped. Not just physically, but in a way that made him feel like a man made of nerve endings.

The worst part wasn’t the pain.

It was the silence in his mind.

He could hear everything now. Too clearly. His own thoughts sounded louder than they ever had with Vicodin muffling them — all jagged and chaotic, looping in cruel, sharp circles.

You’re not the man she thinks you are. You’re not the man anyone should love. You’re nothing but the mess you tried to medicate.

He closed his eyes.

They stayed closed for a while.

And then he felt it — soft, barely there: the couch dipping beside him.

The familiar rustle of her hair.

A breath, slow and even, not far from his ear.

Violet.

She didn’t say a word.

She never announced her presence like Wilson did—with worry or analysis or gentle lectures dressed in compassion. She didn’t fill the space with reassurances he couldn’t stand to hear.

She simply was.

That alone was staggering.

He turned his head, just slightly.

She was lying next to him on the couch, one leg curled beneath her, the other draped lightly over the blanket he hadn’t bothered to straighten. She wore a soft, worn sweatshirt and pajama pants that probably weren’t hers. Her face was bare, lashes casting faint shadows against her cheeks.

Her hand — steady, warm — was moving slowly, rhythmically, along his chest.

Just her fingertips.

Just a soft rub over the cotton of his T-shirt, like she was tracing the shape of his heartbeat.

It startled him, how badly he needed that.

Not even the touch, but the fact that she was still here. After all of it.

After vomiting. After hallucinations. After he called her every ugly thing his shame could weaponize. She had stayed.

And now she was quiet.

Soothing.

Unflinching.

Her fingers moved again, brushing lightly over his sternum. Not possessive. Not sexual. Just there. Just grounding.

He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“Still alive?” she murmured, not opening her eyes.

He huffed softly, the closest he could get to a laugh. “Physically.”

She nodded. “That’s a start.”

Her hand stayed where it was, gentle and slow.

He didn’t know how to name what was happening between them. Didn’t want to ruin it by trying.

He just knew he hadn’t felt this safe in years. Not since before the infarction. Not since before pills became survival.

Violet shifted, just a little closer. Her forehead now touched his shoulder.

“I should be used to silence by now,” he said hoarsely.

“But you hate it,” she whispered back.

“Sometimes it’s worse than the pain.”

Her hand paused, then resumed. “It’ll get easier. The quiet won’t always echo.”

He didn’t respond.

They lay there, unmoving.

At some point, he turned slightly, not enough to startle her, but just enough to let his arm brush her hip. Just enough to feel her warmth along his side.

He closed his eyes.

The withdrawal was over. The damage wasn’t.

But he could feel her breath rising and falling near him.

And in that silence, for once, he wasn’t completely alone.

___________________________________

It was almost 5 p.m.

The sun outside slanted through the blinds in slices, golden and lazy. The fever had broken for good. The nausea had retreated. House wasn’t better, but he was no longer unraveling.

He hadn’t moved from the couch in hours. Not because he couldn’t—he could. He just hadn’t found a reason yet.

Violet padded into the living room, holding two mismatched mugs.

“Ginger tea,” she announced, gently nudging his foot.

He looked at her like she’d just offered him a live scorpion. “You made tea.”

“I also didn’t poison it. I know. My mistake.”

He smirked faintly, sitting up with a groan. Every joint ached. His shirt clung to his back. He hadn’t changed in three days.

Still, he took the mug. Sipped.

And blinked in surprise.

“This doesn’t taste like grass.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ve poisoned me before, haven’t you?”

She didn’t deny it. “Maybe just emotionally.”

He chuckled softly, the sound brittle but real.

Violet set her tea down and settled across from him on the other end of the couch. One leg curled under her. She watched him over the rim of her mug.

“You need a shower,” she said suddenly.

He didn’t argue.

He just raised an eyebrow. “You volunteering to supervise?”

Her lips twitched. “Do you want me to?”

House paused.

His smirk faltered, became something softer.

“I want… something.”

That was as close as he could get to honesty in that moment.

She understood.

*

She laid out towels.

Found a clean shirt that might still fit him and left it folded on the counter. The shower steamed gently behind the door, fogging the mirror. He stood at the threshold like someone approaching a shrine, unsure if he’d be let in.

“You’ll feel better,” she said, leaning against the doorframe.

“You keep saying that like it’s guaranteed.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

That quieted him.

He stepped inside.

Violet waited outside the bathroom, sitting on the hallway floor like a sentry.

She heard the water run.

No curses. No shouting.

Just the sound of him stepping back into something ordinary.

When he emerged twenty minutes later—damp-haired, pale, barefoot, shirt clinging to him like paper—he looked cleaner but just as wrecked. Like a man who’d fought the sea and come crawling back to shore.

Violet stood. Met him in the hallway.

“You look less… haunted.”

“I still feel like roadkill.”

“You smell better than roadkill.”

“Thank you.”

*

Back on the couch, she handed him a plate.

Toast. Honey. Sliced apple. Nothing fancy.

He ate slowly, watching her the way people watch fires—not afraid, just mesmerized by the warmth. She was also eating. 

“You stayed,” he murmured.

“You needed someone.”

“No. I needed you.”

That made her go still.

He meant it.

And not because she’d held the bucket. Or wiped the sweat. Or cleaned up the mess. But because he couldn’t imagine crawling through those hours without the sound of her voice anchoring him to the room.

Violet swallowed hard.

He reached out, slow, clumsy. Brushed a crumb from her lower lip.

She looked at him. Breath caught.

He leaned in.

Careful.

Tentative.

Their mouths met in a kiss so quiet, it could’ve been a thought.

Just the press of his lips against hers. A whisper of a moment.

Her hand slid up to rest lightly against his jaw, fingers tracing the curve of his stubble.

For ten seconds, it stayed soft and still.

A sigh into him.

A closing of space.

And then—

snort.

House pulled back, confused.

“What—?”

But it was too late.

Violet was laughing.

Utterly, helplessly laughing.

A hiccup of a giggle first. Then a full, contagious ripple of laughter that cracked from her ribs and tore through the quiet like a match to dry leaves. She doubled over, hand clamped to her face, eyes shut tight.

House blinked at her, stunned. “Did I… miss your mouth?”

She shook her head, gasping through tears.

“Then what—?”

She couldn’t answer.

She was laughing too hard to breathe.

He watched her, dumbfounded for a beat—then, finally, something softened in his face.

A lopsided smile bloomed, lazy and crooked.

He ran a hand through his damp hair and leaned back against the couch.

“Well,” he said. “There goes my remaining self-esteem.”

Still giggling, she slid closer to him, pressing her forehead to his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she choked. “I don’t even know what happened. You were just… so sincere. And your face was… I don’t know, it just happened.”

“Good to know I’m a punchline in your nervous system.”

“You kissed me like it was the last ten seconds of your life.”

“It felt like it was.”

Violet quieted. Her laughter dissolved into something breathless and warm.

She looked up at him.

He wasn’t mocking her.

He wasn’t wounded, either.

He was just… there. Soft-eyed. Steady. Calm in the ruins.

And for the first time since she’d come back to Princeton, he looked at peace.

Not the desperate, spiraling kind.

But the kind that dared to be quiet.

That wanted, still, even after the worst of everything.

Violet exhaled, curling into his side.

Her hand found its way to his chest again, right over his heartbeat.

She rested her palm there.

Didn’t say anything.

Didn’t need to.

House’s hand covered hers.

And for once, he didn’t try to fill the silence with wit or sarcasm or fear.

He just closed his eyes.

And breathed.