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Gotterdammerung
by Mer
Normally Gregory House wouldn't be caught dead at work on a Sunday, unless he was mired in a case or he actually was the case. But nothing was normal any more. Or rather everything had returned to normal, which was almost more than he could bear after two months of hope. Well, not quite everything. He hadn't talked to Wilson since their confrontation following alien boy's brain surgery. He had been angry when he'd left Wilson's office. Angry and hurt and shattered by the returning leg pain. He'd felt like he was free falling. Only the cane had grounded him.
It was easy to avoid Wilson at work. He knew every hiding place in the hospital and Wilson was smart enough not to push his luck by trying to find him. He buried himself in reading and research and ignored any sign of movement from the office across the balcony. When Cameron tried to distract him with a case that was obviously paraneoplastic syndrome, he forwarded it oncology without even asking for a consult.
It was harder at home. Everything reminded him of Wilson. The couch, the fridge, the DVD player Wilson still hadn't retrieved. He tried watching a repeat of The L Word on mute, but turned it off after five minutes. He was furious with Wilson, but he missed him. He had to break the silence, even if it meant having to listen to Wilson's constant nagging. When he woke up Sunday morning craving pancakes, he knew he had to let Wilson clear the air and his conscience.
That proved easier decided than done, however. Calls to Wilson's home and cell phones went straight to voicemail and House couldn't quite bring himself to page Wilson. He finally decided to drive over to Wilson's apartment and confront him in person. But no one was home, so he tried the next logical place - the hospital.
Wilson's Volvo was parked in its usual spot when House pulled up. More importantly, Cuddy's car was nowhere in sight. Nevertheless, he skirted past her office carefully on his way to the elevators. He wouldn't want her to think he was setting any kind of precedent.
He walked into Wilson's office without knocking and was enveloped in music. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating, that one of his illicit Vicodin tablets had been laced with LSD. The lights were off, except for a lamp casting a shallow light across the desk. A full orchestra sounded through the room, the music swelling to mask his entrance. He closed the door carefully behind him and stared.
James Wilson was leaning back in his office chair, eyes closed, his hands moving languorously to the music, occasionally punctuating a timpani beat of mimicking the trumpet solo. As the music built, his hands swept through the air, as if trying to gather stray notes to him. House leaned against the door and let the music flow over him. Watching Wilson lost in the music, humming softly along with the melody, he realized it was the happiest he'd seen his friend in weeks.
House flicked through his internal playlist and identified the piece as "Siegfried's Death and Funeral March" from Gotterdammerung. He vaguely remembered Wilson mentioning something about a new staging of the Ring cycle, but he had filed that piece of information away in his "couldn't care less" compartment and .
Wilson sat up when a clear soprano voice broke the mood, opening his eyes. He started when he saw House standing by the door, and turned down the volume on his computer speakers. "House? What's wrong?"
"Why do you assume something must be wrong? Maybe I just wanted to drop in."
"On a Sunday? When you're not even supposed to be at work?"
"Neither are you, and yet here we both are." House looked at his friend for the first time in days. Without the softening smile, Wilson looked exhausted, almost fragile. But when he really thought about it, Wilson had looked tired for weeks. He wondered how much sleep Wilson had lost while House was in the ketamine coma and recovering. "Surely you put in enough hours in the week without camping out on a Sunday."
"Live stream," Wilson said, gesturing at his computer. "The sound on my laptop is crappy, so I came in." He managed a tentative smile. "It's good music to do paperwork by."
House glanced at Wilson's desk, which looked suspiciously free of anything resembling work. "I can see that. So good it makes the paperwork disappear."
Wilson shrugged. "It's a long opera. I finished the last of the filing during Act II."
"Then what are you still doing here?" He couldn't understand why anyone would spend longer doing paperwork than absolutely necessary.
"Listening to Act III." Wilson had a talent for stating the obvious that made House want to strangle him at times. "Hush. It's almost over." He turned the music back up and closed his eyes again.
House limped over to Wilson's couch and sat down. It wasn't almost over, but he was happy to delay the conversation for another twenty minutes until Valhalla burned. "I can't believe you were listening to Wagner," he sniped after the final notes faded into applause. "The man was a rabid anti-Semite."
"Carl Orff agreed to rewrite Mendelssohn for the Nazis. And yet you gave me a recording of Carmina Burana."
Wilson had a point, which House had to concede or risk admitting that he hadn't actually known that particular fact. "Ah, but I'm famously insensitive. I've got a copy of The Sun Also Rises in my office for you."
"Do you mean Hemingway didn't intend Robert Cohn to be the most sympathetic character in the book?" Wilson looked down and carefully arranged the few remaining files on his desk, neatening the work area, and then shutting down his computer. Finally, he looked up, a tiny smile quirking the corner of his mouth. "I forgive a lot for genius," he said, his tone rueful, but his expression hopeful.
It was the opening House had been waiting for. "That's stupid," he replied. "I don't forgive at all." He watched the hope fade, and let that feed and burn away the last of his anger. "I've been thinking about making an exception, though." The hope flared again, filling the hole left by the anger.
But then Wilson looked away. "Forgive Cuddy then," he said softly. "It was my idea. I was the one who convinced her."
House hadn't expected that. But it was what had always drawn him to Wilson - his unpredictability, despite outward appearances. "She's paid her penance. What about you?"
"People wait years for a ticket to Bayreuth. Every year, when you send in an order form, your request gests logged into the box office system and then rejected. You have to build up a credit of negatives before you earn your ticket."
House knew Wilson well enough to understand that it wasn't a non sequitur. "And you don't think your credit is high enough yet?"
Wilson stared down at his hands. "Do you know Gtterdmmerung?" He picked up a pen and twirled it through his fingers. "Siegfried betrayed Brnnhilde, whether he meant to or not. And she destroyed him for it. She was the only one who could, because she both protected him and made him vulnerable."
"And who are you?" House asked, his voice low, but steady. "Siegfried or Brnnhilde?"
Wilson looked up and the desolation in his eyes nearly made House shiver. "I thought that was obvious. I'm the betrayer and the destroyer."
"Not the protector?"
Wilson shook his head. "Not the protector. No matter how hard I try."
"I don't need your protection." But House knew that was a lie. Wilson had covered for him, deflected attention from him, and fought for him too many times to count. "I just need your friendship."
"I don't know how to separate the two." Wilson put the pen down and laid his hands flat on his desk blotter, as if in supplication. "I can't just stand by and watch you destroy yourself."
"Even if it destroys our friendship?"
Wilson flinched, but didn't look away. "If I have to sacrifice our friendship to save you, I will."
House let that sink in for a moment and then shook his head. "Don't be such a drama queen, Brnnhilde" he mocked. "You want me to get you a horse and a funeral pyre?"
"Do you think I enjoy lecturing you like a three year old? Wilson retorted. House raised one eyebrow and Wilson chuckled, albeit bitterly. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I do. Because it's better than the alternative. It's better than doing nothing while you kill yourself with the motorcycle or the pills. Or watching you fall apart when the puzzle pieces don't fit together. Or waiting for the next lunatic with a gun to decide he didn't like something you said or did." His voice cracked, and he bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood.
House stared at the tiny drop of blood welling on Wilson's lip and remembered his hallucination. He had never needed to hit Wilson to draw blood. "You never dealt with it, did you?" he realized. "The shooting."
"There was nothing to deal with," Wilson replied, wiping the drop away with a quick swipe of his hand. "I wasn't there."
"That's kind of the point."
This time Wilson didn't just flinch, he shuddered and curled into himself.
"What do you think you could have done if you'd been there?" House asked, trying to keep his voice calm and even. "Used your magic powers of manipulation to talk him out of shooting me? Tackled him from behind? Stepped in front of the bullet?" When he realized he'd struck home, he pressed harder. "What do you do? Lie awake at night imagining ways to save the cripple?"
That was too much for Wilson, who stood up and tried to push past House. House stuck out his cane to stop him, whacking him on the shins for good measure.
Wilson yelped and then stared down at the cane. He didn't say anything to House, just drew his hands down his face and retreated back to his chair.
"You're the one who thinks he's god," House continued. "You're the one with the saviour complex. You can't cure your patients, so you try to cure me instead."
"I'm not trying to cure you," Wilson whispered. "I'm just trying to keep you from crashing and burning."
House deliberately looked down at the cane. "Too late." He pushed himself upright, hating how much effort it took. The memory of movement seared through muscles that could no longer obey. He limped towards the door, knowing without looking that Wilson had turned his head away from the sight.
"House!"
House stopped and looked behind him. He was wrong. Wilson was watching him, not with pity, or even guilt, but with regret. Whether it was regret for his lie or regret for all that had been lost, House didn't know. He didn't even care.
Wilson looked as though he were prepared to drop to his knees and grovel. He opened his mouth to say something, but then just shook his head. "I'm sorry."
It was what he had come for, but House found it no longer mattered. He kept walking to the door. "You're not forgiven," he said, pausing before he pulled it open. "But we're okay." It wasn't the truth. But it was enough for now.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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