Down Among the Dead: Epilogue

[nightdog_barks]

Epilogue


He left the little room because of the scent, an unusual and seemingly long-forgotten aroma. Roast beef, rosemary -- it didn't (oddly enough, although of course he had no body, so perhaps it wasn't odd at all) make him hungry. It simply made him wistful, and more than that, curious.

Wilson stretched himself upward, downward, outward until he could see through House's eyes, slip his fingers into House's hands as if he were putting on gloves, and his feet into House's sneakers as if they were Wilson's own. Not that Wilson would ever be caught, even dead, in those awful garish things.

He found himself in the kitchen, standing above the range. The fragrance was coming from the oven.

You're cooking? Has Hell just had an ice storm?

"Nope," said House, "it's been sunny all day. With a fifty percent chance of psychosis, apparently, since I'm now talking to myself."

Pretend you're not.

"I don't play pretend anymore, Jimmy."

Then play 'What If?' Humor me. Anything, anything at all to just get House to talk to him. Wilson had believed that his chest would never ache again, but it did, quite suddenly.

"You don't deserve it. You left me."

I never wanted to, and I didn't. I didn't. You won't believe me, but I'm here. I've been here the whole damn time.

"You're a sorry son of a bitch, you left me, and I hate you." His voice -- and it was suddenly hard to remember whether it was House's voice or Wilson's -- began to crack like the ice on a pond. "You left me. You fucking left me, you God damn fucking bastard son of a bitch."

The complaints and curses were the sweetest things Wilson had heard in all the time -- however long it had been -- since It Happened. The first words, as far as he knew, that anyone had really said to him. His hands -- House's hands -- went to his face, and his face was wet.

"I was supposed to be the loser who up and fucking died. Not you."

Yeah. Life's kind of a bitch like that, isn't it? House? You're not going to do anything monumentally stupid, are you?

"You mean more stupid than talking to a figment of my damn imagination?"

You know what I mean.

"No. I'm not going to off myself just because my best friend was an asshole who got out of buying my lunches by buying the farm."

I love you too, House.

"Oh God." The break, the real break, was such a thing that he could feel it. "Wilson."

And then they were sitting on the floor, the two of them, one inside the other, holding on as best they could with only one set of arms.


~ fin.


By blackmare_9, 4/7/08.

Comments

[blackmare-9.livejournal.com]

Oh, I cried like an idiot when I wrote this, so I hope you don't feel too alone.

Thanks for the reply. :-)