but if you try sometime, you just mind find

[concluded]

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.

Comments

[theorized]

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."

[concluded]

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.

[theorized]

"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?"

[concluded]

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."

[theorized]

"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."

[concluded]

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."