concluded | but if you try sometime, you just mind find

but if you try sometime, you just mind find

He still isn't sure what to think - but on this, House is pretty sure that it's okay to withhold his decision.

It wasn't long at all before he was pointed to the hospital. It was even less long that he couldn't keep himself from wondering. He looked for a department of diagnostics. He found one. This surprised him.

It's run by Dr. Robert Chase, and consists of exactly Dr. Robert Chase, and this surprises him even more.

Almost as much as it does to find what seems to be his office, his chair, his whiteboard, his decoration ... neatly transplanted into the unfamiliar surroundings of Darrow General.

So he does what seems like the only thing that he can do.

He sits his ass in his chair, props his feet up on his desk, and takes his rubber-band ball in hand, rolling it back and forth from one palm to the other, sometimes tapping it against the tip of his chin, or his nose, in consternation, in thought, maybe in conclusion and acceptance at times.

He sits until Dr. Robert Chase, Head of Diagnostics shows up.

House doesn't think he's going to be disappointed. Whatever else, he won't be that.

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As rare as it for the hospital to need Chase on the hour, every hour, he still makes sure to show up on time in order to continue currying favor from the hospital administration. With a danish between his teeth and a cup of coffee in his hand, he slips inside the door, brows raising as soon as he hears the sound of his ball bouncing against the wall.

The doctors at Darrow General don't know Chase well yet.

There's a reason why he doesn't have a team.

But when Chase glances up to catch a familiar pair of eyes on him, he steps forward to rest his coffee on his desk, swallowing his bite of pastry.

"Here to apply for a job?"

"No," House says quickly, trying to cover up the narrowing of his eyes. A moment of suspicion, a moment of doubt. It's Chase, and that tells him something.

But there's a lot he can't know yet. And no way to evenly predict what he doesn't know. It puts him on edge.

He should know. He should know where he stands, with Chase.

The feet on the desk stubbornly refuse to move, but House does put the ball down where he picked it up from. He fills his hands with one of the folders from Chase's desk instead. A patient file. A boring one. And a HIPPA violation, given that House is just some asshole sitting in a doctor's chair, today, here, now. Like House gives a shit sideways.

"Here to ask you what the hell you think you're doing."

The words are harsh, very, and the gravel in House's voice by nature doesn't help to soften them. But they are not judging. If anything, when combined with the expression of reserved curiosity trying too hard to be disinterested, House is being very obviously prying. Interested. Personally interested.

From anyone else, the relative ease of countenance might suggest awareness of one's own death. From House, his even gaze says very little at all about what House knows, aside from the fact that it isn't enough. Chase lets his arms fall to his sides, all the easier for observation. More than ever before, he feels that his suspicions are right, that this city isn't one of the living, although he can't exactly say why it's then taken so long for House to make it there in particular.

His lips thin, suppressing the impulse to step ahead and wrap House in a hug.

He'd only be made fun of.

Instead, Chase leans forward to pluck the case file out of House's hands, as well as the rest of the pile splayed over his desk. "I'm here to do my job," says Chase with a small shrug. "And presently steeling my stomach for how I'm sure the best of my efforts are about to be completely trounced by your arrival."

Hands empty, House replaces the case files with a reach for Chase's breakfast instead.

"Interfere in your serious work healing the sick and the injured for the sake of my own amusement? Would I do a thing like that?" he asks, words dripping sweetly with sarcasm.

Though House is not here for such a reason, right now, the response is more than anything to put the two of them at the status quo; the standoffish, familiar conversation is like life-blood to Chase, and House is more than aware that that is at least in part because of being shaped by too many years in proximity to House.

He finally drops his feet back to the floor with a small knit of discomfort in his brow.

"How long? Long enough to find yourself a job. Your name is on the door and everything. That's a neat trick."

"Not nearly as hard as it should be around here. Feels like a step down from Princeton Plainsboro," Chase replies carefully, watching House's face for a reaction. It's a statement that can be taken a number of ways. Maybe Chase simply means that being on House's team is already a better deal than being the head of diagnostics at Darrow General. But if House is from when Chase assumes he's from, if he remembers everything that brought him to that point, then he should know — Chase was the one to take up the empty office.

Sitting down lightly on the corner of his desk, Chase hooks his heel on the handle of his desk drawer, staring evenly House's way.

It's been a while. That time twists unpleasantly in his stomach.

But his shoulders remain relaxed.

"So how long did it take you to find me?"

"From there to here?" he asks, taking a long sip of Chase's coffee, disguising neatly any reaction he might have had to what Chase said beforehand. What he seems to be suggesting.

House knows who replaced him.

Maybe a part of House always knew who would.

"Around twenty-six hours. I went to explore my apartment for a while first. And sleep off the motorcycle wreck. That didn't take very long - someone was kind enough to give me enough cash to start with that I could just call a cab and read the address off to him. My only disappointment was the lack of fuzzy dice. Your turn, now. You never actually answered my question."

Frowning at the mention of a motorcycle wreck, Chase gives House a cursory glance, checking for any bruising or scrapes in concerning areas. But House sounds as sharp as ever, as unconcerned as ever, and as often as House does put his own health to the wayside, doing so without any leads to interesting cases wouldn't quite be him. He doesn't have anything else yet, and he might as well keep himself healthy until he does.

Chase relinquishes both coffee and pastry without much complaint.

He might as well.

"I've been here for over half a year now. At least, it feels like it's been over half a year. The sun's risen often enough. But my take on exactly what this place is probably doesn't match your hypothesis, so I wasn't sure how detailed you wanted me to be," Chase points out, reaching out for the overlarge tennis ball and bouncing it off the wall.

"It wasn't a very exciting wreck," House dismisses, keeping it unsaid that even an unexciting wreck can be taxing, when your body's already been through the wringer as many times as the one reclining in Chase's office.

May as well call it what it is. Pass the torch personally.

House sets to work on the pastry. "This is the part where I say, but Chase, I saw you only yesterday! and you tell me that it works like that here. I've already gotten myself involved in that conversation." He chews quietly, before speaking again, the subject changed.

"I don't have a hypotheses, I've got a few. What is half-useless. Which means I don't have anything. All the sanest choices are the boring ones."

"I assumed that you already figured out the supposed rift in space and time," Chase says with a simple shrug, licking a slight dollop of sugar off of his thumb before kicking his legs out as they hang a few inches off of the ground. "Wreck or otherwise. The fact that this clearly isn't Kansas is the first thing that smacks you in the face around here."

In spite of himself, Chase finds his lips quirking in a slight smile, wry and tempered. As conflicted as he feels about the city itself, the company is familiar. Constant.

For now.

"So I guess now the question is, how much do you care that you're trapped here? You've a lot of things in this city that you can focus on, if you'd rather not dwell on the question of where we are in the first place."

Of course House figured it out. He had banked on it early, does not find it as ludicrous as a lot of other things. Only because it could theoretically be possible, according to modern understanding of physics.

Theoretically possible, according to theoretical physics.

One irritation on top of another.

House blinks the irritation away, trying to wipe the tightness away from his face. He imagines he doesn't succeed well. Chase is good at reading people because Chase gives a shit. Chase is good at reading House because Chase gives a shit, and because he has more experience than all of but three people on the planet.

More than anyone, here.

"What I'm dwelling on right now is why you don't seem surprised to see me."

He sees the aggravation weaving through every part of House's countenance, but feels little need to engage with it. Darrow is what Darrow is, and if there's anyone who might be able to figure out more about the place, it's House. But whether or not that matters enough, whether or not he thinks it's worth the effort, that's up to House to decide, and up to Chase to let slide down his back, only a problem if House decides to make it one.

Frankly, Chase just doesn't have the energy to care overly much.

Not when his belief system easily accounts for this anyway.

(House might hate that.)

"Honestly, when I'm from, you'd passed away, as far as any of us knew. If you hadn't, then you didn't want to be found, but I'm operating under the assumption that you passed away. And it's not implausible that I might have as well, and in a state where this perception I have of myself is the closest to my personal truth," Chase says, patting himself briefly. "I believe that this is what comes after. And it doesn't surprise me that you'd eventually make your way along. If I had to bank on any single person from home finding me, it'd be you."

House sits up abruptly, eyes narrowing as he studies Chase with them, and eventually moves to stand up out of the familiar seat of the office chair and limp across the room to the equally familiar whiteboard. It's devoid of print, even devoid of leftover residue from dry erase markers. Not much interesting, lately.

Which is maybe interesting in itself, considering everything else.

"Five words," he says, counting off on the fingers of one hand. "I'm. Not. Dead. You. Idiot. Two words probably would have been just as efficient."

There's little heat behind the insult, however. The exit wasn't long-planned, barely pre-meditated, but it was executed with a distinct lack of desperation, and without a moment's regret. It was believable. It was believable because at any moment, it might really have gone the other way.

Cameron's kind voice had been proof of that.

"Idiot," he repeats. Chase will know what it's for. Not for believing House's final bluff as Dr. Greg House. For believing that something comes after.

The words, coming from House, aren't surprise.

But they do rankle, twisting underneath Chase's skin enough to irritate him to the point of a sharper tongue. Becaues, really. It's not surprising that House would pull a stunt of that nature. Everyone knows that House loved Wilson, more so than anyone cared to admit, and the final act of giving everything up to presumably see the world with Wilson is one that Chase should be happy to see from House.

Still, it doesn't drown out that small voice inside that can't help but resent being left behind. By someone who was more of a father to Chase than his own ever was.

"You realize that your chastising me doesn't change my opinion of this place, right?" asks Chase, raising a brow.

"Just as much as you realize that bitching to me about being called an idiot doesn't change the fact that I think you're using your religion as a crutch and that makes you an idiot," House says, but doesn't bite back as much as he wants to. The words, instead, have the sigh of inevitability to them. They've had this conversation. Now, they've been given the blessing or curse to have it again. And they will.

At least one more time. At least.

He jabs the rubber tip of his cane into the office carpeting. "I left Foreman the piece of proof he needed. If he didn't tell the rest of you, I can't tell you why that was the decision he made."

It's still not the quabble about religion that digs furthest under Chase's skin. He doesn't care if House calls him an idiot. Wouldn't have stayed around for longer than a decade if he did. Sometimes, it's as much a term of endearment as anything else. Instead, Chase picks up his stack of cases and glances through them, tossing them into two piles, one that sparks his interest, and the other that simply requires a second opinion from a specialist.

"Foreman was always going to do whatever he thought would best preserve his hospital," says Chase, voice tight and shoulders squared. "Clearly, he must have thought that I was only loyal to the hospital in your name. It's not like anything else there has remained constant over the past decade."

House's shoulders slowly fall, his body slowly becomes less edged, less ready to escalate an argument, more ready to move on. There's no win or lose in this. This isn't about dichotomies. This is about Chase.

And conversations House had been confident he would never need to have.

"Foreman's an idiot, too," he says, moving back across the room and leaning his weight on his palms on the desk.

"He's been running the hospital more efficiently than Lisa ever did," Chase mutters quietly, thumbing through patient files before then adding a third pile — cases he suspects might raise House's interest. Maybe because Chase still wants House around. Maybe because he's chasing after some form of normalcy that he didn't think he'd ever have the right to again. Either way, he leaves it there for House to decide upon, because the decisions between them have always, always fallen to House.

With one key exception.

"So tell me, are you or aren't you here for a job? Because I still need to get to work at some point, and I need to figure out exactly how much favor I'm supposed to curry with the staff here now that you've arrived," Chase says, lips held thin and even. "Mind giving me a hint?"

The mention of Lisa Cuddy, by first name or otherwise, moves over House less like water off a duck's back, more like a gust of cold wind through an open doorway. The lack of reaction is not because there is no reaction, but because there is no resistance to the chill for the short seconds that it lasts.

"And he's still an idiot. Especially if he thought that I have anything to do with who signs your paychecks anymore."

He frowns before taking the bait, reaching forward to the third pile and plucking up a female, african descent, thirty years old.

"I came here to see you." He admits to it, and moves quickly on. "I wasn't looking for a job. I'm not looking for a job. I'm not working for you."

"No, but maybe you had more to do than you realized with whether or not I decided to stay at Princeton Plainsboro," Chase says in turn, voice held carefully even. He suspects that House gets it. Understands on some level that he may not care to admit to, because it implies that something House did was perhaps miscalculated, not entirely thought through.

Or maybe Chase is giving his own importance too much credit.

Then again, House is here to see him.

"Anyway, I would make a fantastic boss if you ever change your mind," he adds, returning to his pile. "If you have something to say, now would be a good time to say it. Otherwise, you'll have to catch me whenever I have lunch."

House shuts up, halfway shuts down at what Chase says, confronted as he is with a reminder. Stealing another few months with Wilson had meant so much to House that he had not ignored, but had not even stopped to consider that what he had done might leave others without.

Not the hospital without a doctor - that would have been Foreman's concern.

He had left others without House, had given them little more than the meaningless closure of an abrupt funeral. He had miscalculated his own worth. He'd never thought he'd been worth much, truly. Had never given his own importance any credit outside of professional leverage. He doesn't want to be proved differently now any more than Chase might want to hear that his own religion is idiotic and false.

House swats the case file in his hand down on top the others and turns to face toward the doorway, eyes off Chase.

"I'd make your life hell and you would never get anything important done. You don't need a team. And I don't need your job. Have a good lunch. Think I'll go find the local YMCA equivalent and enjoy my newly-found gainful unemployment by soaking in a whirlpool bath and watching girls too young for me wearing yoga pants run on treadmills. Because I have nothing better to do yet."

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but if you try sometime, you just mind find

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