fic: When the Wind is Southerly: Season 7 (5/5)

[readingrat]

A/N: We come to the end of the ride. I thank everyone who came along.

If you've been reading, but not reviewing, I'd be happy if you dropped just one line saying you read it. It's been a lot of work, and it would be nice to know that at least a handful of people profited from it in some way.

The ending is perilously close to crack fic. My sincerest apologies, but what the show gave me to work with is hardly to be squeezed into a credible plot line. This was the best I could come up with.

Again, many thanks to brighidsfire

  and to flywoman  for their help and encouragement. Without them, this story would never have got written.

---

XVI: Moving On

Guest Star: Gregory House (formerly MD, now PDV [Perpetrator of Domestic Violence])

The Final Chapter, that circles around until all loose ends are tied up firmly in a Gordian knot, swerves off to reveal the true nature of our hero's delusions, takes a quick detour into the physics of car crashes, picks up every known cliché on the way, and ultimately parks itself right in the middle of Certain People's opinions on physical altercations of a domestic nature.

Wilson had been trying to intercept Cuddy all day. He finally caught up with her when she exited the elevator in the lobby, a stack of papers in her hands.

"Have you seen House?" he asked.

Cuddy strode towards the clinic. "Yes. He finally talked to me."

"What did he say?"

"That he feels hurt," Cuddy said shortly.

"That's all?"

Cuddy stopped short. "This is House we're talking about. What did you expect?"

"He knows something. We need to talk to him. About everything."

Cuddy snorted and started off again. "Him admitting that he's hurting is as good as it's going to get. He'd rather pull all his stitches leading me a merry dance around the hospital than spend five minutes in my presence. He fled the ICU, and left me standing in the corridor outside the cafeteria."

"Maybe the hospital isn't the best place for a real talk. Invite him to your place," Wilson suggested, following her through the clinic doors.

Cuddy swung round to face him, lowering her voice and walking half backwards. "Wilson, I haven't got the time for this. Sanford Wells has approached HR asking for details of House's contract. Apparently he's worried that once I'm gone, other hospitals will start circling House like vultures, so he wants to up House's salary and benefits to counter potential offers. HR told him that they had an IT problem and couldn't access the data, then they informed me. I can keep Sanford at bay for a few days, but this time next week he'll know that House is not a doctor at PPTH any longer. My time has run out. I'll be fired and the board will sue me."

Wilson gaped. "Surely he won't ..."

"He will! Sanford is a nice guy, but first and foremost he's a businessman. If this comes out, we'll face a mass of litigations. Sanford will want to ensure that it's clear to all, especially to ex-patients of House's, that I alone am culpable and that the hospital holds no responsibility."

"All the more reason to talk to House," Wilson insisted, managing to insert himself between Cuddy and the door to her office.

"Not today," Cuddy decreed.

Wilson refused to budge.

"Today, I need to talk to my banker and to my sister."

Wilson's face was a polite question mark.

Cuddy gave a very exasperated huff. "I have a daughter. A daughter who will be a destitute orphan, the way things are going. My mother has disinherited me; the board will fire me and sue me until my last cent is gone. When I die, my daughter will be dependent on the charity of her aunt and uncle, unless I manage to put some money aside before the hospital bleeds me. Yes, it would be wonderful if House and I could clear the air before the thunderstorm breaks, but right now Rachel's future is my top priority."

"When are you meeting up with your sister?" Wilson persisted.

"Jerry, Julia and Josh are coming to my place for dinner."

"Jerry?"

"My banker. I'm hoping he can tell us how I can transfer a load of assets from my name onto Julia's without breaking too many laws."

"Then we'll talk to House afterwards. I'll bring him over."

"Whatever." Cuddy shrugged in a 'couldn't-care-less' manner and stepped past Wilson into her office.

---

House's car and his bike were outside his apartment in Baker Street. After parking his car behind House's, Wilson went inside and knocked on House's door.

"You know where the key is," House yelled from inside.

Wilson glanced around to make sure no one was watching before he took the key from the top of the door frame and let himself in. House wasn't on his couch and the television was off. The apartment was weirdly silent. Filled with a dark premonition Wilson advanced far enough to be able to view the entire living area.

House was sitting at his desk in front of his laptop, surrounded by a clutter of papers. Wilson started breathing again. "What if I'd been the pizza delivery guy?" he said with a sharpness born of relief.

House didn't glance up from his scribbling. "He also knows where the key is."

Wilson moved behind House and peered over his shoulder. The papers in front of him were covered with numbers and formulas. A few of them struck faint chords in Wilson's memory of loathsome physics lessons in high school. "What are you doing? Momentum? Velocity?"

House draped an arm over the papers so that most of what he had written was covered up. The screen of the laptop, however, showed a frontal car crash. Wilson looked at it pointedly. "My new career: crash test dummy," House said casually. "How much does a car weigh?"

"No idea. About a ton?"

"We'll go with that." House scribbled a last number onto the top paper in his pile and let the air out of his cheeks in satisfied little pops. He swept the pile into the bin, slammed the lid of the laptop shut and rose. "Okay, let's pack."

He stumped into his bedroom, not bothering to check whether Wilson was following him. There he drew out a small suitcase from under his bed, the same one he'd taken to Mayfield two years ago. After throwing it on the bed and opening it, he went over to his wardrobe. An assortment of clothes sailed onto the bed.

Wilson automatically started folding them together and placing them in the suitcase. When a short-sleeved yellow shirt with a palm-tree print landed in front of him, he stopped short. "Where are you going?"

"To Goa." At Wilson's look of disbelief House said defensively, "Hey, you're the one who said something has to change. I'm going to the beach," a pair of flip-flops landed in the suitcase, "relaxing," Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ricocheted off the bed's headboard and joined the flip-flops, "sipping cocktails in the sun." A bottle of sunscreen hit Wilson's shoulder. "Dominika's there already - she has booked a cottage by the beach."

As though jolted awake, Wilson remembered why he was here. He pointed an accusing finger at House. "You know. I know that you know."

House stopped what he was doing to muster Wilson, his head tipped to one side. Then he said lightly, "Okay. I know that you know that I know. Your turn."

Wilson's outstretched finger was now shaking. "You know that Cuddy has cancer."

House's eyes slid away. "Yes."

"How?"

"She wouldn't have broken up with me if she'd been healthy," House explained as though stating the obvious, turning back to the contents of his wardrobe.

Wilson loyally rose to Cuddy's defence. "You weren't there when she needed you; you came to her bedside stoned! Even if she was healthy, she'd have a right to expect more of her boyfriend."

"I wasn't her boyfriend. I'm the fragile nutter she was babysitting so that he didn't have to be committed. If she was healthy, there'd be all the more reason to keep an eye on me after my slip-up with the vicodin. She dumped me instead, risking a full-blown relapse, which means that her own problems superseded her need to protect me." House gave Wilson a quod-erat-demonstrandum look as he placed a pile of T-shirts into the suitcase.

The puzzlement in Wilson's face gave way to growing comprehension. He gaped speechlessly, his hands balled to fists.

House huffed in annoyance. "You morons! Did you really believe I wouldn't notice that my balls were turning blue?"

Wilson found his voice again. "It seemed more likely than the alternative - that you were espousing the ideal of platonic friendship."

House shrugged. "One grabs what one can get. Cuddy cooked for me, played Savagescape with me, watched crappy movies with me and felt guilty enough to let me grope her every now and then."

Deliberately ignoring the veiled accusation behind House's words, Wilson returned to his original agenda. "Okay, so you aren't on a bender because your girlfriend tossed you out; you're on a bender because Cuddy's dying." When House snorted in amusement, Wilson's voice rose. "House, we need to talk about this."

"I am not on a bender. Give a guy who, for nine whole months, was only allowed to look but not to touch, a break. So, I spent a few days with hookers and some recreational drugs. But after that I got to work."

"The word 'work' implies a productive or creative process. You," Wilson pointed his finger again, "married a hooker and maimed your leg. Is this your new career as a performance artist?"

"I made a business contract with a nurse and carried out a pre-clinical study on an innovative drug," House corrected wearily, taking a few documents out of his bedside drawer and placing them in a zip pocket of the suitcase.

"House, you took a lethal drug! I know you're in pain, ..."

"Really?" House swung around to face Wilson.

" ... but that isn't pain management. That's suicide!"

"I wasn't talking about CS 804." House scanned the bookshelf over his bed, reaching out to take a medical journal down. He thrust the journal at Wilson after opening it to a page that showed heavy underlining and text marking. "Here - you should know all about it. I borrowed this journal from your office."

"You took my edition of 'Anti-Cancer Drug Design'?" When House didn't deign to answer, Wilson looked at the article House had marked so heavily. "Sharma Pharmaceuticals' new cancer drug?" he said somewhat sceptically. "Their early clinical trials in India seem quite promising, but heaven knows how reliable the data is."

"Are you prejudiced against the scientific standards in up-and-coming Asian countries?" House baited.

"I know a doctor whose opinion of colleagues who publish in Indian medical journals is scathing, to put it mildly."

House's face took on a saintly look. "It's never too late to recognize the error of one's ways."

"The last I heard, Tenogrin hadn't been approved for clinical trials in the US," Wilson said unenthusiastically.

"Thanks to the might of our own pharmaceutical lobby."

"That may well be, but in the meantime... ." Wilson narrowed his eyes. "Hang on, are you saying you tried it out?"

"Yep."

Wilson wavered between horror and incredulity. "You got tumours from a cancer drug?"

House rolled his eyes and said slowly, as though explaining the art of lying to Masters, "If you want to test a cancer drug, you need to have cancer. I took CS 804 to induce tumours, which I then combatted with Tenogrin."

"You nearly killed yourself proving that the FDA is right to refuse clinical tests. Oh, well done, House!" Wilson slammed the journal down on the bed and paced the room.

"She's dying, damn you! Someone has to do something!"

"You playing Romeo to her Juliet is not going to help her! Grow up, House! She isn't one of your zebras. She's got booooring cancer, sooner or later she'll die, and your theatrics aren't helping her one bit!"

"They are. Tenogrin works," House said with utter sincerity.

"As is proven by the tumours that you had to excise," Wilson couldn't help pointing out.

"They were double the size when I started taking Tenogrin. They shrank."

Wilson folded his arms over his chest. "Right. And the chainsaw massacre in your bathroom was supplementary treatment."

House scratched an eyebrow with his thumb, avoiding Wilson's eyes. "I was kinda in a hurry - didn't want Cuddy dying before I bag the Nobel Prize for Medicine and shame her for all her nagging - so I may have been a bit generous when calculating my CS 804 dosage. I ended up with vicious bastards of tumours." Exuding optimism he continued, "Now Cuddy's tumours, they're your classic mobbing victim type - they'll hang around in their corner just begging to be clobbered on the nose by big bad chemo bully. This stuff will work on her."

"Let the oncologist judge that. There's no way Cuddy will try an untested drug just because you only lost one of your nine lives instead of all of them." The way House left this uncommented and returned to his packing got Wilson's attention. "Oh, no, no! You're not repeating the experiment! House!" he yelled after him as House disappeared into his bathroom.

"Don't get your thongs all in a twist," House called from the bathroom. "The Indian government has just announced that it is sponsoring a large-scale clinical trial in Pune."

"I repeat: she won't try it at this stage, and even if she would, they won't take her. Clinical trials take stage III patients at the best. Her tumour has metastasized; she's stage IV."

House reappeared with a few sanitary items. "And if the trial proves that the stuff works? She'd owe it to Rachel to try it."

"It'll take years until they have results. She'll be dead by then."

"There'll be preliminary results in less than six months."

"Which won't be worth the paper of the journal they're published in. The people in charge of such trials will publish anything they like as long as their case numbers are so small that they are of no statistical value."

"Why do you have to negate everything?" House asked, trying to look aggrieved.

"This is exactly what Cuddy will say when you propose your plan to her," Wilson pointed out patiently.

"There's a fool-proof way of finding out whether the preliminary results are kosher or not: analysing all the data on which they are based."

"That's why you're going to India," Wilson said resignedly.

"Pune's not that far from Goa. I can drop in on the way."

"House, if you're caught breaking and entering over there, I won't come and bail you out. Do you have any idea what Indian jails are like?"

House made a kicked puppy-dog face at Wilson. "Are you accusing me of criminal intentions? I'm hurt."

Wilson sought refuge in heavy sarcasm. "You'll walk in there and say, 'Hi, I'm Greg House. I'd like to see all your lab and patient data,' and of course they'll hand everything over to you."

Tipping his head, House pretended to think about this for a moment. "Actually, yes. Though I might be more specific. Like, 'I'm Greg House, the Government of India's official liaison with Sharma Pharmaceuticals for the Tenogrin clinical trial the government is financing for you, and this is Dr James Wilson, world-renowned oncologist and specialist for cryotherapy, who will supervise the clinical trial for you.' See, the Indian government is only sponsoring the trials because our names will give the results the necessary weight on the world market."

"The Indian government will never ... shit, you've already got the contracts, haven't you?"

"I signed mine a week ago." House took a manila envelope that he'd slid into the suitcase's zip pocket just moments earlier out again and withdrew a document from inside it. He slid it over to Wilson. "Sign here!"

Wilson started reading through the contract, his hand already going to the pens in his shirt pocket, but after half-a-page he shook his head. "I can't do this. This could be a total scam. I'll ruin my professional reputation if that stuff turns out to be some Ayurvedic herbal remedy." He pinched the bridge of his nose nervously.

House said very deliberately, "It'll also ruin your professional reputation if we don't get the hell out of Dodge before Sanford Wells discovers that I'm not a board-licensed physician." Wilson's features went rigid with shock. House gave him a curt nod "You owe me." Wilson flushed, and then broke eye contact. Using the wall as a prop, he signed on the last page without reading through the remaining pages. House took it from him and threw it carelessly on top of his packed suitcase "Right," he said, slamming the suitcase shut.

Wilson said tentatively, "You ... wanna talk about it?"

House turned to Wilson, looming over him. "What shall we talk about? That two people who call themselves my friends colluded to keep some very basic facts about my life from me? That my bestest buddy, who always talks about trust, leaps of faith and openness, has been lying to me ever since I got out of Mayfield? That my boss is using my medical abilities under false pretences?"

"House, that's not how ... we were worried... it was for your own good," Wilson stuttered, backing away.

"Don't. Ever. Dare. To decide what's good for me!"

"We wanted to help ..." Wilson's voice faded in the face of House's wilting stare. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

House shut his eyes. When he opened them a moment later, the anger had burned away. "I'm aware that neither of you intended to incapacitate or defraud me, which is why I'm helping both of you to get out of that tight corner that you've painted yourselves into." He picked up the suitcase and went back into the living room, where he unhooked his laptop from the power supply and slid it into his backpack. He took a wad of cash from a drawer and his passport from another. Then he opened the closet and stared at the pairs of trainers lined up inside.

After observing him silently for some minutes Wilson asked, "Umm, if you aren't delusional, why exactly are we in this tight corner? Why don't you try to get your licence back?"

House said rather theatrically, "Who says I'm not delusional? I don't do delusions on demand, that's all." He picked a pair of light canvas trainers right from the back of the closet and limped over to the couch with them. Wilson followed him, tight-lipped. House looked up, sighing when he saw Wilson's determined mien. He spoke as though talking about a third person, "Mild schizophrenia, onset in early adulthood, major psychotic break two years ago due to substance abuse, responds well to medication, no psychotic breaks in the past nine months. I'm fine. Another three months, and Nolan will advocate reinstating my licence."

"Nine months," Wilson echoed hollowly.

"Give or take."

"And before that?"

"Slight problems adjusting my medication at the beginning, and a bit of a rough patch when I tried reducing my medication a year ago," House said with studied casualness, "but other than that ..."

"So you've basically been messing with our heads for two years," Wilson summarized.

House pretended to consider this. "Basically - yes."

"You knew you weren't head of diagnostics any longer," Wilson stated as much as surmised.

"Since I had no licence - yes."

"That you weren't dating Cuddy."

"Ye-es."

Wilson instantly latched onto the hesitation in House's voice. "'Ye-es' as in 'Definitely' or as in 'Well, not really'?"

House grimaced slightly. "Told you: slight medication slip-up around that time, so maybe I was confused for a moment when she turned up at my apartment in the middle of the night. But when I woke up in the morning and couldn't even remember hallucinated sex, let alone the real stuff, had a fuzzy taste in my mouth, a poop machine in my living-room and an oncologist stuck in my kitchen window, I figured that I wasn't getting no satisfaction."

"What about Sam and me?" Wilson asked with growing trepidation.

Now House grinned evilly. "When you friended her on Facebook, I friended her too. She was very interested in hearing how you proposed to me, and wished both of us well. She said she'd always sensed a 'feminine' side in you."

Wilson shook his head in frustration. "No wonder she called off our dinner date. Why couldn't you leave well alone?"

House stood up with his hand on his heart and the falsest look of devotion on his face. "How could I give you up when you'd only just declared your undying love for me - in front of Nora?"

"You vindictive bastard," Wilson said without much heat.

"Says the meddlesome ass. Let's go." Giving Wilson a calculating look, he disappeared into the bathroom, then reappeared with a hairbrush. Wilson frowned, looking from the hairbrush to House's sparse, neglected hair. "Gotta return this to Cuddy," House explained, tossing the hairbrush into his backpack. He picked it up and gestured to Wilson to take the suitcase.

Wilson obediently grabbed the suitcase and followed House out of the apartment. When he caught up with him at the curb, he asked with an air of grievance, "Is there anything these past two years that you did hallucinate?"

"Well, that's kinda tricky," House said, pursing his lips. "If I could tell the difference between hallucinations and reality, I wouldn't be classified as a nutter." He held out his free hand. "Give me your car keys."

"You're not driving my car."

"Not now. Later. I'll need your car to get to the airport."

"Why can't you take yours?" Wilson asked reasonably.

"We're leaving that at Cuddy's place," House said, as though that explained everything. "I'll take a cab back here. Stop asking questions already!" Wilson reluctantly placed his keys in House's palm. House opened the boot, took the suitcase from Wilson and flung it inside. Slamming the boot shut, he locked the car and pocketed the keys. Then he limped over to his car and got in. Wilson sighed and followed.

At the first red light Wilson, who had been uncharacteristically silent, turned to House. "Chase and Cameron?"

House didn't pretend not to understand. "Divorced," he stated.

Wilson's tone screamed 'gotcha!' as he said, "They were never married."

"Oh." House frowned and bit his lip. Then he said cheerily, "Sensible girl. Why throw herself away on Chase while I'm around needing fixing?"

"Sensible guy," Wilson corrected. "Cameron would have been happy to have him, but he decided that he preferred indulging his sex addiction to being fixed by Cameron and living chastely ever after." As the traffic light turned green Wilson said, "Then you were hallucinating when you got out of Mayfield."

"That's what I said," House said tersely, closing the topic.

Two traffic lights on, Wilson started off again, "Cuddy and Lucas?"

"Cuddy'd never date that."

"God, she'll be pissed to hear that you knew all along," Wilson said, sounding not at all sorry for Cuddy. "She was dead embarrassed to have to pretend to be dating him in front of the whole hospital."

House's cheek muscle twitched in a reluctant grimace of admission. "Thought they were dating - till I broke into Lucas's place at Thanksgiving. My memories of him were a lot more flattering than the banal reality that he's probably the worst PI in New Jersey and a complete turn-off."

"Believe you me, she'll trim your testicles for putting her through that." There was an unmistakeable hint of schadenfreude in Wilson's mien.

"You'd like that, huh? You can always donate one of yours to me - you enjoy giving bits of yourself to needy friends."

It took Wilson a few moments to decipher that, but then he flushed guiltily. "My liver is intact," he admitted. With a side glance at House he added, "And yours would be fine if you'd stop bombarding it with rat poison and experimental drugs."

"Why did I hope that you'd stop lecturing me once I explained my excellent reasons for acting as I did?"

But Wilson was firmly ensconced in worrying mode. "We don't know anything about the long-term effects of CS 804. You realize that you can get new tumours any time."

"Or grow new leg muscle. I'm fine!" House reiterated.

"Yeah. If you were that optimistic, you wouldn't have married Dominika. You wanted a trained nurse around in case anything went wrong." House was silent, staring straight ahead at the road. "You couldn't just have hired her?" Wilson asked wearily.

House drew up at the curb in front of Cuddy's house, but remained seated. "And with what would I have paid her, if the deal with the Indian government hadn't worked out? The hospital can't keep me once Cuddy is gone and it is revealed that I don't have a licence, not even as a consultant, or whatever it is that Cuddy has disguised me as. I'm sure that what I've been doing - pretending to be a board-licenced physician - is a criminal offence." He leaned over Wilson to open the glove compartment. "Here - plane tickets to India for Cuddy, the squirt and you. You should both resign as soon as possible and head out there."

Wilson eyed the tickets without taking them, then he looked at House. "Cuddy will never come out there. Not with Rachel."

House dropped the tickets in Wilson's lap. "I'm also pretty sure that aiding and abetting me in my criminal deeds - one might even say 'instigating' them - is a criminal offence too. We don't have an extradition agreement with India, so unless Cuddy is convinced that she can figure out a scheme to cover up her criminal activities, she had better think about this. Cuddy can hang out on the beach in Goa, or come along with us to Pune and play watchdog over the trials, as she pleases. You'll keep her alive and Dominika will look after her while she decides whether she'll risk Tenogrin or not."

"And after that? I mean, if we can't come back here because the police is looking for us ..."

"You've avoided Louisiana for half your life. You'll just have to avoid the other 49 states for the rest of it."

Fingering the tickets, Wilson said rather desperately, "Aren't you going to explain all this to Cuddy?"

"And have her bite my head off when she finds out that I knew she wasn't dating Lucas? The guy blackmailed her - she'll be really pissed at me, and she's no fun when she's pissed."

"That won't be the only reason she'll be pissed," Wilson predicted darkly.

"See? My point. Besides," House glanced at his watch and leaned back to his backpack to withdraw Cuddy's hairbrush from it, "I have a flight to catch. Wait here!" He got out of the car and slammed the door.

"House!"

But House ignored him. He walked up to the house, but instead of ringing the door bell, he moved over to peer into the dining room window. What he saw must have displeased him, for he came back and slid into the car frowning in thought. "She's at home," he remarked.

"Well, yes. Didn't you come here to return the brush?"

"Would I drive all the way here because of a brush that she replaced months ago?" House tossed the brush over his shoulder onto the back seat, saying, "I took the brush along so you wouldn't pester me the whole way asking why we were coming here when Cuddy isn't at home. Except that she is at home. Doesn't she normally meet with Finances on the third Monday of the month?"

"She cancelled it. She's meeting up with her banker and her sister."

Deep in thought, House tapped a tattoo on the steering wheel. Then he said tensely, "Get out."

"What?"

"You heard me - get out!" When Wilson still didn't move House turned to him and unfastened his seat belt for him. "Look, I don't mind hanging out in India smoking weed for the rest of my life, but let's assume that either of you ever wants to return here. That will only work if Cuddy manages to glue my personnel file shut so tight that no one will be able to pry it open again. Which means that I need to give her a reason for firing me that won't allow the board to touch me with a ten-foot pole afterwards: domestic violence. I'm going to drive the car into her house. Bit of a bummer that she's at home, but they just left the front room."

Wilson's jaw went slack. "That's - insane!"

"I worked it all out - you saw it. Cars are constructed in such a way that in the case of a frontal crash, the hood absorbs the momentum. At twenty-five mph the hood of the car will fold and some of her windows might break, but that's about it."

Wilson slammed his hands onto the dashboard. "House, I'm not letting you commit suicide."

"Don't you trust me?"

"No."

"Then all the more reason to get out. The driver is protected by the steering wheel, the person in the passenger's seat isn't. Besides, they've just left the dining room in the direction of the kitchen. I need you to give me a signal in case they come back." Wilson stared straight ahead, his mouth set in a straight line. House's mouth twitched provocatively. "Or do you want to risk me crashing into a populated dining-room? No?" He reached over to open Wilson's door and gave Wilson a little push. "Then go!"

Ten minutes, one shattered house wall and one broken wrist later:

Wilson picked himself up in time to see House emerge from the new entrance to Cuddy's dining room. When House came to a halt next to him, he spluttered, " 'No one will get hurt.' Why did I believe you? Why didn't I ring the doorbell and warn them?"

"No one got hurt, okay?" House snapped. When Wilson mutely held out his wrist, House probed it somewhat more roughly than was necessary. "It's sprained - don't whine." He turned away and limped along the sidewalk.

Wilson stared in disbelief, and then he skipped awkwardly after him, his face contorted with pain and fury. " 'I worked it all out: The hood will fold and some of the windows might break.' You - you think you're always right! You'll spend the rest of your life in jail!"

"I calculated the crash for twenty-five mph, not for forty," House tossed over his shoulder.

"Then why the hell were you going forty?"

House slowed down, giving Wilson a chance to catch up. "I wanted it to look authentic in case there were any witnesses, so I went in fast, intending to slow down to twenty-five just before I hit the house. Thing is, you need traction if you want to brake. When the car hit the curb, it jumped into the air. No contact with the ground means no traction. By the time it was on the ground again, it was too late to brake." House shrugged the matter away. "Cuddy doesn't need the house anymore." He pulled out his cell phone. "Hello? I need a cab at the corner of Monroe and Randall. Tell the driver to look out for a cripple with a cane."

"What about me?" Wilson asked forlornly, gazing back at the shambles that was Cuddy's house.

"Buy me some time - my flight only leaves in five hours. And persuade Cuddy not to press charges. I'd like my licence back some day, and a criminal record won't help."

"You'll never get your licence back. Not after this."

"Oh, you'd be surprised. Got the idea for this little bout of domestic violence from a report about a guy who killed his ex by driving his SUV into her house. His lawyer claimed that seeing her with her new boyfriend set his client off, that she'd been lying to him, and that his violence wasn't aimed against her, but against her property. She was just collateral damage. It worked: he got the jury behind him and his client was acquitted. People interviewed outside the courtroom said the woman got what she deserved because she'd driven her ex to it - no pun intended."

"That lawyer sounds like the right guy for you, then," Wilson said, oozing disapproval.

A cab drew up at the curb.

"Hey, there's an idea. Beach, the guy was called. Or Coast? I'll google him." He got into the cab. "Baker Street," he said to the cab driver, then he poked his head out again at Wilson. "Hey, got any cash?" Wilson got his wallet out and opened it awkwardly with one hand. House leaned right out and pulled a few bills out of the wallet. "Shore," he said meditatively, "David Shore. I'll leave your car keys at the United Airlines desk at Newark. If the police ask, tell them I stole the keys. See y'all in Goa." He leaned back, smiling happily, as the cab accelerated down the street.

THE END

---

A/N: In case anyone thinks I'm basely attributing thoughts or opinions to David Shore or to his team that they never had, here come a few quotes to clarify issues of attribution, libel, etc.

David Shore on House in 'Moving On':

I don't think he wanted to kill anybody. But who knows? Probably part of his mind did. It was a lashing out — a very extreme lashing out. I don't think it was a murderous lashing out.

[…] she put his hand on [the new boyfriend's] arm, which was part of the whole thing that set him off. The car was aimed at the house, not at the individuals inside.
[Source: http://www.tvline.com/2011/05/house-finale-post-mortem-season-7-spoilers/]

Peter Blake on House in 'Moving On':

He had asked her, "Are you dating anyone?" She had said, "No." And then it seemed to him—although she wasn't lying—it seemed to him that she had been lying to him about all of it because she seemed to be with this new guy having this romantic dinner with the family. So he felt hurt about that. […] And he lets out his anger. And then in a weird way he feels better.
[Source: http://blogcritics.org/video/article/digging-into-the-house-season-finale1/page-4/#ixzz1U47Lkcwc]

I have also read a number of fan opinions to the effect that Cuddy and Wilson got what they deserved for nagging and pushing House where he didn't want to go, and that by telling him to get angry and let his feelings out they were asking for it. So, I'd say Shore has at least part of the jury behind him.

Comments

[readingrat.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much. My mind froze in shock after the finale, and it took about a month to defrost enough to bend into fantastic shapes again. I also enjoy the thought of the four of them as a big, happy, screwed-up family out on the beach - I need a minimal amount of harmony between my three favourite characters if I'm to enjoy the show.

[tauwja.livejournal.com]

I also enjoy the thought of the four of them as a big, happy, screwed-up family out on the beach - I need a minimal amount of harmony between my three favourite characters if I'm to enjoy the show.

Ooooooh, can you please write a follow-up fic about that? :D

[readingrat.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but no. It's a thought, but not an idea for a fic.