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~Through the Window ~
by SapphireBlue
His tiny mouth opened and a soft and helpless cry escaped, immediately answered by a nurse. Five little fingers spread like starfish and reached out for her clumsily. A baby's nerve system was not mature enough, was too busy learning to seriously care about precision and motor coordination that went beyond sucking, crying and swallowing. And yet they were just perfect little wonders. And now that she had experienced it herself how improbable, almost impossible, it seemed to be to get pregnant she marvelled those creatures even more. Felt more longing, more sadness.
Subconsciously her right hand moved forward, touched the cold glass of the window in front of her. The coolness of the invisible barrier between her and all the newborns in the P.I.C.U. was soothing somehow, but also made her shiver deep inside where she's been feeling so cold already for the last few months.
Was she already turning into one of those bitter old spinsters ? Or was she just shaken, hurt and depressed by all the things that had happened to her in the past ?
Or...was she just lonely ?
Why had she wanted that child in the first place ? Because she knew a baby wouldn't run away, a child would always love her, need her, would be part of her. It was an extremely selfish wish just to fill her empty house with some life and her empty heart with some love. And she had so much love to give, she was tired of dating, of all the lies, the pretending and all those compromises. As a woman in Medicine you reach a point where you just can't take any more compromises. But maybe House was right after all, maybe this baby was not meant to be, maybe she would suck as a mother because she didn't really want to be a mother.
She just didn't want to be alone anymore, wanted someone to come home to.
She lifted her hand, pulled it away from the glass angrily.
How could it be that she had let him enter her heart, cross that threshold between them and let him hurt her so much ? Why had she allowed him to have this much power over her ? He was the biggest jerk she had ever met. He was, in fact, the summary, the concentrate, if not even the master - mix of all the bad screwed relationships she'd ever had. He was the incarnation of the wrong guy. And still...she could not help but like him. And not only that. She cared for him. And she cared about what he said, what he thought, even what he felt. Especially about what he felt for her.
It had startled her to see how much interest he had suddenly shown in picking the right guy for her baby's father. It had surprised her so much that she had even considered asking him to become her donor - luckily only for a very short blink of an eye.
Still, that idea had come to her mind out of nowhere, out of this dark corner in her heart where she seemed to hide her feelings for him from herself. She had asked him to choose a donor for her in the first place because he was even pickier than she was. But she would never have expected him to care this much, to put so much effort in that. Perhaps this was his way to express his feelings for her. In the end, though, she was pretty sure he had only gratefully embraced an opportunity to get distracted from his pain. In his case you never knew if it was just this insane pain or a soul deep inside him driving him to do these unexpectedly nice things.
And just when you thought you might give him a chance he would slap you right in the face when you least expected it.
Was this his game ? Did it make him feel better to hurt people ? Did causing pain alleviate his own suffering ? She shook her head and closed her eyes, saving the picture of all those little human beings dressed in light blue and pink to her memory.
Gregory House was a mystery. But he was an asshole in the first place and that didn't really seem to make it worth trying to solve that mystery. He wasn't even worth the time she spent here, wasted here, thinking of him, trying to figure out why he had hurt her so much. Was it his anger about the girl's case ? Or was it just his anger about the whole world and himself, triggered by the girl's case and her own helplessness in dealing with it ? Either way, the fact that he could get that angry at least showed that there was someone inside him. After all, anger still was an emotion, a sign of caring. Still was better than total indifference.
Her hand ran through her hair, pulling back a curl that had fallen into her face, tickling her cheek. ,Okay', she sighed, ,allow yourself one more look at those babies and then return to work, as usual. You have to get over this eventually. Over this baby thing, over this loneliness thing and over this House thing.'
She bit her lip when she felt a sudden rush of tears emerging in her eyes trying to break through, already dimming the lights around her. She still had a fair chance to get pregnant and she would try. She would not let House's stupid words keep her from trying again. She had managed to do all these impossible things in her career that people had told her about women could never achieve, so she would also manage this.
A door slammed. But she didn't turn around, she was absorbed by a little baby girl, not older than two days, who had opened her big dark eyes and looked at her with such intensity that she found it hard to believe that it was not on purpose. The baby probably couldn't even see her sharply but it broke her heart to feel this painful desire inside her while she was watching this beautiful little girl looking at the world. Not knowing anything about it, not understanding anything. Yet, it seemed that this baby already knew more about love than she would ever learn.
She felt the warmth of another person next to her and she was just about to move away with a self-controlled smile expecting a young mother or father next to her who had come to visit their child. But then she recognized the figure of Gregory House and it took her breath.
Not because he looked wrecked. Like he was carrying all this pain inside out now, visible AND tangible to everybody around him, but also because he didn't belong here. House and kids were like matter and anti-matter and everybody knew what happened when those two met. She almost felt the urge to protect those innocent beings from him, the Antichrist of Idealism and Hope.
He stared at her, frankly, directly in the eyes as he always did. To make sure his sting would hurt. Or to tell her something he couldn't express in words. Sometimes his blue-eyed stare seemed like a cry for help. At least that's what she wanted to see there, it made him look more human and vulnerable and would excuse his insanely outrageous behavior.
,,I've been looking for you. And I finally found you. Just had to follow the loud ticking of a hormone-driven biological clock", he barked at her in his usual cocky tone but she ignored all of that, focused on the true meaning of this conversation.
She gave him a cold, unimpressed look. Her bright blue eyes were piercing his surface looking for a heart inside.
,,Looking for me ? Why ? Needed someone to wipe your ass ?"
She heard her own voice sounding more bitter than she had wanted it to. And she continued, not being able to hold herself back. Not willing to. Although she already hated herself for exposing that wound he had caused to him, allowing him to rub salt into it.
Still, she sarcastically added: ,,Oh, I forgot, this would be Mom's business."
To her own surprise he looked away silently. He turned around, looked at the babies.
He liked babies. He knew people would be surprised to hear that coming out of his mouth. But he liked them. They were cute, cuddly, stupid. How could you not like them ? And he understood that women needed them, it was just encoded in their genes, they couldn't help it. Whenever women saw babies it didn't matter how well-educated or how tough they were, they all would just freak out losing their minds completely, forgetting about all this trouble with tons of dirty laundry, smelly diapers and the pain of labor. It was just as female as the quality of caring and loving.
Two qualities Cuddy herself was the queen of. He knew. Because there was no other reason why she had saved his ass so many times without getting anything for it. Like a lioness who would instantly kill for her cubs Cuddy could turn into a wild animal herself when she sensed one of her close staff members being threatened. Actually, usually it was only him who was threatened, and still she never even hesitated to save him. He sometimes wished it was more than just her almost biological need to take care of everything and everybody. And in fact, he was pretty sure, that there was more, but he would never know. She would never tell him because he wouldn't let her. That was his trick, chasing people away so that they wouldn't get hurt even worse by coming closer. But maybe this time he had crossed a line. This time it had been him who had come too close.
Probably because he had wanted to chase her away once more, feeling threatened by all this silent intimacy that had developed between them over this whole pregnancy issue. He had been the only person to know about her in-vitro-fertilization, because she trusted him for some strange reason, because she obviously even liked him.
She liked him despite him. Despite all that he was. For all that he was.
And just when she had started to soften a little towards him he had stabbed her in the back. Had touched that most vulnerable spot on purpose. Yes, he had crossed a line. He had caused pain. And here were the news: He felt sorry for that. She was the last person he had wanted to hurt in that absolutely idiosyncratic moment. The result being her absolutely cold taciturnity, something completely unusual in their relationship. She had ignored him ever since. And this showed him that she knew him better than he had thought, she knew that this would upset him, she had that power over him. She could hurt him, too. And that made her special.
He took his eyes from the babies and looked at her, followed the sharp line of her well-defined profile that was so beautifully framed by her dark-shimmering curly hair. And he looked at her eyes, whose bright blue stared into the abyss of her thoughts, of her own soul. She blinked, her tear-sprinkled lashes waving like the wings of a butterfly. Her hand moved through her hair, brushing a strand away absently. But it fell back, the curl jumping up and down, brushing against her cheek.
He had to admit it: She was beautiful and he was obsessed with that beauty. But he could not allow himself to go beyond that obsession, to fall in love with her. He liked her too much to let her enter his mad world. This whole awkward moment showed that their worlds were not supposed to collide because she wanted the world to be okay and he just loved seeing the world falling apart. Embracing the things you could not change was the best way to cope with them. And that made her - not him - the tragic figure in this play.
Then it hit him again: This pain. It was different from the physical pain that drove him crazy all day. It was a heart-twisting pain that came to him in the middle of a thought whenever he saw her marching through her hospital like a soldier surrounded by this wall of professionality that still could not hide her loneliness, her desire to be loved. Her grace just yelled for love. But her job scared them all away. It was a tragedy with those women these days. Certainly, there was no way he could ever help her with that. But he had hurt her badly adding to all that pain she must have felt all those times when the fertilizations failed. Because of him this wall around her seemed to be even weaker and he didn't like that, he needed the old Cuddy.
He needed the woman who would yell at him when he screwed up, who would fight for him, who would not give up on him. He needed her to be okay because he was lost without her stability. She had always been there throughout those years ever since they had met in medical school. She had always stood out from the crowd like a sharp ray of light, he could not imagine this light fading into a weak dim glow now just because of this. Because of him.
,,I am an asshole", he suddenly declared. A half-hearted moan was her only comment on that statement and he insightfully decided to continue.
,,Yeah, we all know that. But I don't think you should trust an asshole's judgement on your abilities to be a mother."
,,Ironically your judgements on people's abilities are usually pretty right", she replied in a soft but distant tone and gazed at him from the side but looked away before his eyes could meet hers.
,,Yes, but as strange as it may seem to you, sometimes even I may be wrong. And this time I was," he answered mockingly and she rolled her eyes, not knowing what it was that made her listen this time, that kept her from just walking away from him, leaving him there, in all his crappy self-loathing and miserable loneliness.
Maybe she was waiting for an apology as he continued. Her arms folded in front of her chest and she turned away from the babies to look at him from the side while he was staring down at his feet where he was drawing imaginary circles with his cane. His voice suddenly sounded sincere, soft and - in a way - even sorry.
,,You care more than anybody I know. Even about people nobody else cares about. You saved my ass a thousand times by risking your job for it."
He paused and looked at her for a moment, not long enough to allow her any insight into his feelings. Then he looked back through the glass window in front of them, his eyes following the nurses doing their jobs.
,,You cry a mother's tears over a patient who is cured from an incurable disease, you feel a mother's relief whenever you watch another one of those couples taking their premature baby home after dreadful weeks in the P.I.C.U. You express a mother's anger over your staff member's mistakes that mess with our patients' health. And back then you experienced a mother's helplessness and fear of her daughter dying in one of the best equipped hospitals in North America. You represent the perfect image of a mother, if I didn't know better I'd say you were the reincarnation of Holy Mary. How could you even believe for a minute that I was right back there ?"
Now he did look at her furiously, his words sounding like accusations, not hiding anything from her anymore. His eyes were burning, he was mad. Mad at her for having been so vulnerable, mad at himself for having been so invidious. So careless while being confronted with all her caring for everybody and everything.
,,You are meant to be a Mom !" he yelled at her, obviously stirred up completely by his own monologue.
For a moment they just stared at each other trying to figure out where they were heading for in this conversation. Their blue eyes glaring at each other before he looked away, almost embarrassed by his impulsiveness.
And she realized that he had once again made her speechless. This moment turned out to be just as intense as the moment that had caused all this. Her wall broke down and she didn't know what to say, her gaze went back and forth between him and the babies behind the glass window. She ran her hand over her forehad trying to think but her mind was blank, she was too confused. Too touched by his actual concern that he was trying to hide behind his anger so pathetically.
But then she shook her head. This was not enough. Not this time. They had known each other for too long, they were friends, maybe even more, by some odd definition.
And her ice-blue eyes told him, wordlessly imprinting her pain in his soul. She wanted him to feel what she felt, if he was even capable of those emotions she wanted to pay him back this time. She wanted to hurt him, to stir him up, she wanted to see that he cared for her.
Her voice sounded just as cold as her stare felt inside his chest when she spoke.
,,I actually never risked my job to save your ass. And I never would."
Her lips pressed together in a thin red line, her eyebrows lifted slightly over her darkening eyes and then she just turned away from him. Disappointed and tired of him, of his inability to just say ,,sorry".
She knew this was just as much emotion as he could show in a conversation so she knew that this was it. They wouldn't go any further or deeper. He had missed another chance to convince her that all those times she had defended him against others she had been right. There was so much more floating above them and between them, so much that they could have told each other, so much they could have learned from each other. So many chances they might have, as colleagues, as friends...Though he would never be courageous enough to face all of it. And she was running out of time and of reasons to give him any more chances.
While she was walking away she could still feel his eyes staring at her back, felt his loneliness reaching out for her once again. She heard him taking a deep breath in synchrony with her own breathing as if to say something and once again she gave him another chance and stood still to listen.
,,I am sorry", he grunted unwillingly feeling like he was surrendering to her completely. He knew that would make her turn around. But she didn't. He saw her dropping her head down, saw her shoulders tighten but he couldn't see the bitter smile and the tear that fell from her lash, rolled down her cheek and ended in the corner of her mouth leaving a salty taste on her lips. When she lifted her head again she continued walking away from him.
,,About the in-vitro. You should try it again", he added to his apology, thereby hoping to erase this feeling of naked surrender. And once again she didn't turn around. Instead she silently shook her head, closing her eyes over his complete incapability to be who she wanted him to be, who she knew he was deep inside. Who she hoped he was deep inside because otherwise she would be scared of him too much.
,,Just missed another chance, Greg", she whispered regretfully to herself and pushed the swinging door to the stairway open. Only once more did she allow herself to look back at him before she left the P.I.C.U. floor and promised herself never to return to it again.
Her eyes were still glistening with tears like sapphires but her smile was soft and forgiving, almost pitiful when she left him alone.
She knew that one day she would be a mother, that she was not meant to be alone forever. But she was not so sure about him, she feared that his lonely path of self-destruction would kill him one day and that no one would care. No one, except for her. And that scared her even more because she felt that she had already entered his world, long ago.
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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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