darkdreamer | Used, chapter 46 :P

Hi, guys :) Got another chapter for you... This one is somewhat special to me, I really hope you like it. Please let me know :P

*hugs*
DoS

Title: Used
Beta:

misanthropicobs
Rating: R
Pairing: House/Wilson/Cuddy friendship, slight Wilson/OFC
Warnings: implied and explicit non-con, violence and non-con of a flashback/memory sort, mild language, general angst and trauma and darkness
Summary: House endures the unimaginable...will his friends be able to deal with it? Will he be able to deal with it? A story about damaged human beings, and ultimately recovery and healing

Chapter 46
Understanding

“Why are you here?”

House’s voice was defensive and suspicious, bordering on hostile, as he stared at the young woman seated on the edge of the examination table, idly swinging her legs over the side. She flinched slightly, stunned by his reaction, looking at him more closely as he took a slow, backward step against the closed exam room door.

“I just… came in for a follow up. Dr. Wilson said it was okay. Hey… are you all right?” There was concern in her voice as her eyes narrowed in scrutiny, her head tilted slightly in confusion.

“What exactly did Wilson tell you?” House demanded, pale fists clenched at his sides as he struggled to control his reaction to the shock of seeing Eve again.

As far as he was concerned, Wilson’s involvement in bringing this particular patient to the hospital at this time could only mean one thing – yet another misguided attempt by his best friend to “help” him, which would unfortunately only result in further humiliation.

Eve frowned, troubled and apparently baffled by House’s suspicion. “Just that you weren’t feeling well yesterday and that’s why you weren’t in, and… to come back today if I wanted to see you for my follow-up.” She rose from the table, biting her lip uncertainly. “I… I can go, if…”

“No, you… don’t have to go,” House sighed a little shakily, relieved that Eve didn’t seem to know anything about the recent events in his life, but already mentally preparing the method by which he was going to murder Wilson when next he saw him, for interfering at all. “But I can’t see you today. I’ll go get someone else for you…”

“No, that’s okay. I can come back,” Eve objected in a quiet, disappointed voice.

“No. I won’t be able to see you then, either.”

House bluntly shut her down, reaching behind him for the door to open it. Unfortunately, his hand was trembling too badly to grasp the handle, and he turned toward it, fumbling in his shaken state.

Eve only meant to help when she stepped forward and reached for the door, but House flinched violently away from her, staggering a step backward against the wall beside the door. He glanced up at her through wide eyes, slightly wild with barely bridled panic – and Eve froze where she stood, drawing in a sharp, stunned breath.

House felt his face flush with shame as he realized – she knew.

A sense of dark irony filled his mind, as he remembered his own instantaneous recognition of what had happened to her, when he’d first met her, and she’d flinched away from his touch.

Eve had the added advantage – if it could be called an advantage – of firsthand knowledge of what sort of trauma might cause such a response.

Something in House’s eyes, in his reaction, called out to the same dark knowledge that had been forcibly placed within her. She clearly recognized the fear, the traumatized reaction to a simple touch, and her expression softened with sympathy, her eyes welling with compassionate tears.

“Oh, no.” she whispered, the words barely over a breath. “What… what happened?”

House’s jaw clenched with stubborn refusal, his voice low, grinding out his words as he lowered his gaze and side-stepped further away from her.

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

A moment’s awkward, tense silence followed, as Eve bit her lip uncertainly, clearly trying to decide which course of action to take. Finally, she made her decision.

“Okay.” Eve shrugged, her voice soft and subdued. “You don’t have to talk to me. But…” She hesitated a moment before continuing. “… can I talk to you?” Met with House’s puzzled look of confusion, she quietly explained with a self-conscious shrug. “It’s just… when you talked to me before… it… it meant so much, and… and I really don’t want to… to talk to anyone else now.” Her voice softened further as she added, “Please?”

House wanted nothing more than to turn and walk out the door, away from the conversation he knew would hit far too close to home for his comfort. Still, the vulnerability and need he saw in Eve’s eyes would not allow him to refuse her such a simple request.

Reluctantly, without a word, he moved across the room to the exam table, pulling himself slowly up onto it and giving her a resigned, expectant look. Eve gave him a relieved, shaky little smile as she came and sat down beside him, leaving about a foot of space between them. She was quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts, before finally speaking again.

“I’m doing a lot better now,” she informed him with a smile. “After I told you about… what happened… I decided to take a couple of weeks off from school. I went home, and I… I told my parents what happened. They made an appointment for me with this therapist, and… and she’s actually really good. She’s… she’s helped me a lot. They caught the guy who…” Eve drew in a deep breath, meeting House’s wary eyes as she continued with deliberate firmness, as if forcing herself to face the dark power of the word, “… who raped me. His trial’s already over; I testified against him, and he was convicted and sentenced to eight years.”

Those words seemed to break through House’s self-imposed state of deliberate non-reaction. He nodded, eyebrows raised to indicate that he was both surprised and impressed.

“That’s… that’s great. For you.” He hesitated before adding softly, “You’re a very brave girl.”

Eve shrugged slightly, looking away, biting her lip again as her eyes darkened with a troubled expression. “Sometimes I am,” she amended quietly. “Sometimes… not so much. Sometimes… I still wake up screaming. When one of my friends – or my father – or even my own mother touches me… there’s almost always a second there when for one panicked moment… I think that it’s him.”

House winced slightly at her words, to which he could relate so much more fully than he could when last they’d met. He knew the feelings she was describing with agonizing intimacy… and he knew that she knew that he knew them.

Eve continued talking about the events of the past couple of months of her life, talking about her family, her recovery – and House found himself gradually relaxing under the influence of her surprisingly calm, strong voice, and the reassuring story it told. Although she admittedly still had some distance to go down the path to recovery, she had clearly come a long way in the brief months since House had seen her.

And if she can survive… get through this… then maybe… maybe…

When Eve was finished telling her story, an awkward moment of silence descended upon them, before she finally ventured to call attention to the obvious elephant in the room.

“When… when did it happen? To you?”

House didn’t bother to lie, knowing that she instinctively knew the truth, and would not be deceived by any weak efforts he might make to conceal it.

“A couple of weeks ago.”

He was quiet for a long moment, swallowing hard before he continued in a low, carefully even voice. “I’m sorry. About before. I… I’ve thought about you, since… since it happened. Thought about… what an idiotic ass I was, and how pitifully I handled your situation. I… didn’t know what to say to you, and consequently, I… said a lot of stupid things. I’m sorry I… I didn’t help you more.”

“But… you did help me.” Eve shook her head in wondering bemusement as she reached out to cautiously take his hand, smiling when he looked up at her in surprise. “You told me… back then… that you didn’t think talking about it really… really helped much.” She paused, then added firmly, “You were wrong. It does. It helped a lot. You don’t know how much it helped me, just for you to stick around and… and listen.”

“Huh.” House looked away, swallowing hard. “Hasn’t helped me. Everyone keeps pushing me to… to talk about it, but… it hasn’t helped. All it does is make me… remember it more vividly. I was just… walking through the parking garage, to my bike… thinking… thinking everything was okay, just another night… and then…” He shook his head, lowering his eyes, lowering his voice as it began to tremble. “I keep thinking… there must have been some kind of… danger sign I missed… some mistake I made that let them… let them catch me…”

Eve winced slightly at the use of the plural pronoun and the horrific reality it implied, but she didn’t allow her reaction to show in her voice, as House continued in a halting voice, recounting more of the details of his story than she ever would have expected. It seemed that, despite his statement about the uselessness of talking about it, once House began to tell his story, a floodgate was opened which he couldn’t seem to close until it had all been told.

Eve waited until he was finished to reply in a slow, gentle voice. “I’m just going to tell you the same thing you told me. It’s not your fault. It doesn’t say anything bad about you because it happened. You didn’t do anything wrong to cause this to happen to you…”

“I know that.”

Eve gave him a knowing nod, squeezing his hand with gentle understanding in her voice. “You do,” she conceded. “And you don’t.”

House let out a weary sigh of defeat as he admitted, “I just… can’t stop wondering if… if maybe I’d moved a little faster… been a little more careful, or… or fought a little harder.” He hesitated, a slight tremble in his lower lip betraying how near he was to the tears he was so valiantly repressing, before concluding in a hoarse whisper.

“Or maybe just… not pissed the guy off in the first place.”

“Hey. Look at me.” Eve turned further toward him so that she was almost completely facing him, waiting until he reluctantly met her gaze through tear-filled eyes before stating her words in a clear, unyielding tone. “It wasn’t… your fault. Nothing you could have done gave that creep the right to touch you.”

“I know.”

House and Eve exchanged a knowing look at the repetitive circle their conversation seemed to have made – and then an unexpected laugh at the irony of it. The laughter didn’t last, however, and House looked up to meet her eyes with a solemn, apprehensive gaze.

“Are you… are you still… scared, all the time?” he asked in a hushed, hesitant voice. “Do you still think… sometimes… he’s going to find you, somehow? That it all could happen again, when you least expect it?”

Eve nodded sympathetically. “All the time.”

House looked down again, shaking his head. “I… I’m not sure I’ll ever get over this.”

“You won’t.”

House blinked, considering her blunt words, spoken with such gentleness, before accepting them with a slow nod and a sigh of resignation. He was quiet for a moment before continuing.

“Not completely,” Eve amended her statement with a slight shrug. “I mean… it’ll get better… but… it’s not something you ever forget. It’s always… a part of you… from now on, you know? Some things… some people… help, but…” Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head almost apologetically.

“Everyone’s trying so hard to help,” House sighed. “They’re not helping, though. Not as much as they’d like to be. Not as much as… as I need. They try to… say and do the right things, but… they don’t know how. Half the time they end up making me feel worse instead of better, because… it’s awkward, and I’m a… a burden… and there’s no way in hell they can actually understand.”

“I understand.”

The barest trace of a smile touched House’s lips as he met her eyes. “I know you do,” he said softly. “That’s why I’m… why I’m telling you all this, I guess.” Another quiet moment passed between them, before House told her quietly, “The man who… who instigated… the attack – he was arrested. Yesterday.”

“That’s great!” Eve sounded genuinely happy for him, a smile forming on her full lips. “That was the only way I was able to… to find some… closure, I guess you’d say. It’s so important just to know that he’s gone – put away for good. It was scary, but… testifying against him… knowing that I helped make sure he could never hurt me or anyone else again for a long time… it was the most empowering thing I’ve ever done.”

“I’m… not sure I can do that,” House admitted softly, eyes downcast. “I don’t know if I can… can testify. Face him in open court. Have him… watching me, while I tell that roomful of people what… what he did.” He shook his head, swallowing hard, despair in his voice. “Maybe I should have just… kept my mouth shut. He would have gotten tired of his… his games, eventually. Maybe if I just left it alone…”

“Let me quote another wonderful pearl of wisdom I got from the amazing doctor who saw me last time I was here,” Even interrupted, a gently teasing sparkle in her eyes. “‘Doing things changes things. Not doing things leaves things exactly as they are.’ You can’t do nothing and expect it to go away, because it won’t. Until you stand up against him – you’re always going to be afraid.”

House nodded slowly, taking in her words and accepting their truth, though finding the emotional fortitude to act on them was an entirely different matter, and far more difficult. The only thing he knew to do was to change the subject.

“My friends… want me to… to see a therapist.” He scoffed softly, shaking his head in denial. “Like that’s ever going to happen. Yes, that’s exactly what I want to do – tell a perfect stranger all about the worst, most traumatic experience of my entire life.”

“Isn’t that… pretty much what you just did?”

House couldn’t suppress a quiet laugh as he nodded, conceding her point. “A complete stranger that I know has been there, though. That’s different.”

“Well… maybe one day you’ll feel differently, and… be able to talk to a professional. Trust me, it really does help,” Eve replied. Then, her light tone changed to something more solemn, as she added, “But until then… you can talk to me. Anytime. Really.” She shrugged slightly when he gave her a look of dubious surprise. Her voice was soft when she explained. “I... sort of owe you.”

House nodded, a grateful smile on his lips, though he was quite certain he would never contact Eve again after this conversation.

“You know,” Eve observed thoughtfully, “when we talked before… I was looking for a reason. I was… wondering why this happened to me.” She looked up to meet his eyes for a long moment before concluding, “I think maybe… maybe now… I know."

TBC...