readingrat | fic: The Kelpie

Here comes a new fic:

Title: The Kelpie
Author: readingrat
Length: about 129,000 words
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst
Rating: teen
Summary: House's efforts to banish what happened at the end of Season 7 from his mind are radical, but things don't work out the way he planned them. AU from the last minutes of S7, different spin on the crash, some Huddy, H/W-friendship.
Characters: House, Cuddy, Wilson, Rachel, Nolan, OCs.
Pairings: some House/Cuddy, hint of House/OC
Disclaimer: The characters, other than the OCs, belong to Fox TV, David Shore, or whoever. The chapter headings are 'borrowed' from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, because when all's said and done, one journey is much like another and dragons abound everywhere.

I am deeply indebted to a number of fanfiction authors for inspiration. I'd like to name a few here:

flywoman's Regarding House showed me that amnesia fics can be done convincingly. (I had my doubts about that before I read her opus.)
lieueitak's rendering of Rachel in her recent fics, especially A Gift of Screws, and stenveny's portrayal of the same encouraged me to try for a real child, not a cardboard cut-out.

A major thanks to my beta, brighidsfire, who put up with being swamped by 130,000 words of fic (and all the attendant insecurities) with her usual grace and aplomb. Her constant encouragement and invaluable character insights are the reason why this fic got written at all.

Author's Note:
Because of the length of this fic, I'm posting a chapter index below to facilitate navigation.

Index

Prologue (Story starts here)