Categories > TV > House
A Lifetime Too Long
1 reviewHouse is right about the last thing in his life. WARNING: Major character death; this is a very dark fic. Grateful acknowledgment to my beta, Silverjackal, who stuck with it.
1Moving
A Lifetime Too Long
No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
The day James Wilson didn't die was like yesterday, when he hadn't died.
Tomorrow he wouldn't die. At least, he didn't think so.
In fact, considering his age and general health, he probably wouldn't die for another forty years or so.
Wilson had been quite drunk but he remembered saying, very clearly, "You know, Greg, I'd die if anything happened to you."
House had stopped in mid-sip and looked at him, and replied, "No. You wouldn't."
Much later, the police told Wilson that the 16-year-old behind the wheel had sobbed, swearing he hadn't seen the bright red motorcycle. The point was debatable; the results were not. Bits of glass and machine parts were scattered across the pavement. A pool of oil gleamed in the evening light. A cane was impaled in the truck's grille -- the obscene end to one of life's very bad jokes.
Wilson had cried unashamedly, and mourned, and his life had gone on, just as House had predicted. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, work, medicine, caseload -- the blank and rote cycle of a working life with the spark gone out of it. Sometimes he felt that some small pilot light in his soul had flickered out in a strong wind, and there weren't enough matches in the world to relight it.
House had been right, he thought. He hadn't died.
But more and more often, he found himself wishing House had been wrong.
~fin
No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
The day James Wilson didn't die was like yesterday, when he hadn't died.
Tomorrow he wouldn't die. At least, he didn't think so.
In fact, considering his age and general health, he probably wouldn't die for another forty years or so.
Wilson had been quite drunk but he remembered saying, very clearly, "You know, Greg, I'd die if anything happened to you."
House had stopped in mid-sip and looked at him, and replied, "No. You wouldn't."
Much later, the police told Wilson that the 16-year-old behind the wheel had sobbed, swearing he hadn't seen the bright red motorcycle. The point was debatable; the results were not. Bits of glass and machine parts were scattered across the pavement. A pool of oil gleamed in the evening light. A cane was impaled in the truck's grille -- the obscene end to one of life's very bad jokes.
Wilson had cried unashamedly, and mourned, and his life had gone on, just as House had predicted. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, work, medicine, caseload -- the blank and rote cycle of a working life with the spark gone out of it. Sometimes he felt that some small pilot light in his soul had flickered out in a strong wind, and there weren't enough matches in the world to relight it.
House had been right, he thought. He hadn't died.
But more and more often, he found himself wishing House had been wrong.
~fin
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