Title: Shalott (2/2)
Fandom: House M.D.
Character/Pairing: Cameron, implied House/Cameron, Chase/Cameron
Rating: PG-13/R
Summary: If you want him, go and get him. If you need him, go and claim him.
Spoiler Warning: Theoretically "Airborne."
Notes: I think I said it all before. It's still personal, it's still weird and confusing. I think I'm more afraid of this part than the previous one. And one more time: Emilie Autumn's "Shalott" (where the title came from, obviously); "Love Me If You Dare."

Part 1



But still I've got to get out of this place
'Cause I don't think I can face another night
Where I'm half sick of shadows
And I can't see the sky
Everyone else can watch as the tide comes in
So why can't I



You were born under a bad sign.

You were born under a bad sign, a dark star, on a night with no clouds and no wind.

When you were young you were put under a curse, and that was the curse of need: needing meaning, needing purpose, needing to be and to have without giving.

You learned never to go into the rain without an umbrella, because the acid would ruin your skin. You were taught that you were beautiful without warmth, and that the room had no doors. You were told never to look directly into the basilisk's eyes, because they will turn you to stone.

The chinchilla from your brother's school got sick, it huddled into a ball, eyes little black slits and wouldn't take the treats from your hand, wouldn't play in its dust bath.

You didn't want him to take it back on Monday. There would be too many children and they wouldn't understand how it needed quiet and care, how it needed you, specifically you and the way you cradled it in folded arms. You could make it better.

But he took it back, and you cried.

"You shouldn't take what isn't yours!" you screamed at him, banging the door of your room and promising to never go outside for the rest of your life, not until he brought it back.

He tried to make amends through the wall later that night; he didn't know you liked it so much; maybe you shouldn't have only played with it while he wasn't around, like a dirty secret.

"You should have taken him, then, if you wanted him so bad. You should have talked to my teacher."

What he meant was "you shouldn't have let it go," but you tried, didn't you? You tried to make it stay.

Or maybe you didn't.

And in time, it didn't matter. You forgot everything. You let it go. You went alone.

You forgot comfort. You forgot close-held compassion. You forgot the mournful creak of the wheel in the early morning. You forgot until now.

If you want him, go and get him.

-

One night, she came out of the bathroom, washed and dried and in loose-fitting pajamas, and found him wearing her glasses and peering at her bookshelf.

Chase started as she came up behind him and cleared her throat, yanking the glasses off his face and nearly tossing them to the floor in his haste.

"I...uh...Labyrinth!" he exclaimed in defense, pointing at DVD. "I didn't know you liked fantasy."

"I did when a was a little girl." she turned to hide the accidentally fond expression he'd caused, pulling and straightening their sex-stained sheets to transform the bed from a playground to a hallow. "I think every girl my age wanted to be Jennifer Connolly."

"I thought this movie was terrifying," he said, taking it down and looking at it, "I think David Bowie's lunchbox scarred me for life."

A giggle broke free and she looked back as she climbed under the covers.

"Inadequacy issues, or...?"

"No!" His frowning blush was downright comical as he shoved the film back into place. "It was just...disturbing. It was a kid's movie for god's sake. Just cuz you're evil doesn't mean you have to wear tight pants."

Chase joined her, settling down on his appointed side and folding his hands over his stomach, still holding her glasses.

Normally she'd roll onto her side away from him and go sleep as fast as possible, but tonight she rolled toward him, propped herself up on an elbow and reached for his hands, removing her glasses, flipping them open, and sliding them back onto his face.

He looked a bit surprised, his blue eyes pretty and puzzled and still dizzy from watching her come (and if she looked harder, something more, except she didn'), but he smiled.

"You know, if you ever get trapped in a labyrinth, you put your hand on the right wall and follow it. It's supposed to lead you out."

"Handy information." Cameron smiled back. "I'll be sure to remember that the next time I'm stuck in a fairy tale."

"Did you like fairy tales when you were little?" He reached out and brushed at her bangs; desire plain in his face, not just physical, but pure emotion shot through with longing.

"Of course." she said, and to their mutual surprise cuddled up against his side, head leaning into the depression just below where his shoulder met his clavicle. "I read them all."

"I bet I have one you haven't heard."

"I bet you don't."

"I bet I do." he slid his arm under her body and held her closer than breathing. "And I'll tell you it. It's about a girl in a room full of mirrors."

-

The ball passes back and forth between them, no longer with words but with vehemence, definite unidentified purpose.

She jams it into his coat pocket as they walk down the hall.

He leaves it on top of her locker.

She kicks it to him under the table.

He balances it on the microphone stand in the MRI control room.

She drops it in his empty coffee mug, it gets stained and starts to smell like caffeine.

He sets it next to the one on House's desk.

Their boss is not amused; he hasn't been amused since the patient turned out not to have mad cow, but something much more mundane; she can't remember, but it was diagnosed as "chronic sucking," or something equally as medically eloquent.

Foreman is irritated.

"What the hell is wrong with the two of you? Can't you have any semblance of some kind of normal relationship, or does it always have to be some weird fucked-up thing?"

Chase runs a pencil eraser across his bottom lip and mutters, "Myoclonic jerk."

But she is beginning to wonder.

If you want him, go and get him.

If you need him, go and claim him.

The coffee down her blouse was more than a week ago now and she hears willow trees rustling at night.

What if he isn't hers?

What if she takes and she's not meant to?

All along she's had this thread of certainty, and it's beginning to fray. The spider-splinters across her mental mirrors, her mind's windshield, they're getting longer.

If you want him.

He's not coming this time.

And he's getting tired of waiting.

-

"It's your turn!" she pushes the ball into his chest and he steps back, shaking his head.

"I don't want to play anymore, it's pissing people off and it's...it's kind of fucking ridiculous, you know? I told you I didn't want anymore games, Cameron, and I'm done with this one before it ends like the other one."

"But...I got it for you!" She feels desperate, but she doesn't want to sound it.

"You got it to say something to yourself about me." he says. "So take what's yours."

He leaves her holding the ball and she is angry again, she is so angry like the first time she talked to him about playing with a ball, she throws it down and it bounces right back up, banging into a ceiling panel and startling some passing nurses. It hits her foot as it comes back and bounces down the hall. She chases it, chasing unintentionally after him, his name is a verb and the pursuit, the backpedaling of the pursuit will be the end of her.

She collides with Wilson, just rounding the corner and immersed in a patient file, and the impact knocks her glasses off; his shoe comes down on them before he's even realized they've hit. They crunch and break.

"Shit!"

"Oh god, Cameron!" He starts back to reality from wherever he was and bends quickly to pick them up. "Crap, I'm so sorry, I didn't even realize. Are you okay? You don't need those to drive, do you?"

"Yes," she hiss-mumbles, but she's not paying attention, she's looking at the refracted image in the shattered lenses.

Wilson frowns, turns his head to see what's more important than her now-limited perception. There's a tennis ball rolling to a halt as elevator doors close on a hint of Australian blond.

"If you want him," he folds the glasses up and holds them out to her, "You should go and get him."

She stares at him.

"What did you say?"

"I said, if you want me to pay for a new pair, I mean, I'm more than happy to, but I think opthamology is closing, so you should get down there."

"Yeah, I..."

And suddenly she is unsteady, adrift, a boat with her name scrawled across the hull heading into tidal waves.

He nods toward the elevator.

"It's your last chance."

If you want him.

Go and get him.

-

It's raining. She wishes it was snowing.

I want a do-over. I want a playback. I want another chance.

Each puddle is a depthless abyss, cold and icy, soaking through her heels and slacks and tearing up through her blood and nerves like black fire. She feels lost and disoriented in a parking lot she's known for years, can only barely see him as he cuts toward his car - the rain makes a door for him, and if she can't get through before it closes she'll be trapped again and this time for good. The tennis ball is clenched in her hand and as a last resort before he disappears, she throws it forward.

It lands behind him with a smacking wet half-splash, and he turns.

Cameron is wearing ruined glasses she doesn't remember grabbing back from Wilson, but she can see through them for the first time. Her hands twitch toward him like her body trying to wake itself up for the first time in years, from the cold place she's kept hidden from his warmth. She can feel phantoms on her ring finger, and wonders if he feels the same, if they clasped hands would it be gone forever?

Chase picks the ball up, looking at it like he's never seen it before. His hair is dripping into his face and he is beautiful. He is so beautiful it hurts.

If you need him.

"Do you remember that story you told me?" she stands in front of him, sick of shadows and sick of waiting for herself. "Have you ever felt like maybe you were under a curse, but you didn't... know that you wanted to break it?"

He furrows his brow and purses his lips slightly; if the question seems odd to him, he doesn't show it.

"I can't say that I've really thought about things like that. More like I've had a lot of bad luck."

"Yeah, um, well." Cameron feels urgent, shaky; it's a bit reminiscent of coming down off drugs, and she worries briefly that he'll think she's high and trying to use him again, again, again. "I think I'm under a curse like that. Maybe since my husband died, maybe before then. I don't know."

They never talked about him before.

"Cameron, are you all right?"

She wants to say no; instead she says yes.

She might never be all right ever after, but that's what forever is for.

"Cameron." he says her name again, gentle like his hands. "What happened to your glasses?"

He takes them off her slowly, and she blinks at the raindrops that immediately cling to her eyelashes. His color is blue, his eyes are blue, she's not sure she's ever really seen them because she's never dared to fall all the way in before and she is becoming ice, becoming a stone, she is paralyzed by poisons unknown and needs and wants. But it's a relief - this is the end of fate, and no one is waiting anymore.

"Car crash." she sputters, knowing that from now on she wants him to see everything. "But it was my fault. I was in a hurry to get you, and Wilson, and... I've..." she sighs finally, resigned to it, wipes her bangs off her forehead. "I've been broken for a long time too."

Go and get him, go and claim him, if you don't, don't, but he has the rest of the missing pieces. He has the reflection and isn't afraid to look.

Chase smiles, and holds out the ball to her, dripping and cold, solid and real, his hand as sure as the small animal that reached for what she once offered. This time she reaches back.

If you want him.

If you need him.

"Take what's yours," Chase says.

He tastes like mirror-shard rainwater, sinking blue flowers, and crimson sugar tea.


end.