darkdreamer | Used, Chapter 64

Hey, guys, here's chapter 64 of Used :) Hope you enjoy it :)

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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: One night leaving the hospital, a violent attack leaves House devastated and broken. In the aftermath, Wilson and Cuddy struggle to find a way to help him heal -- while House fights just to find a way to survive.

Chapter 64
Simple Logic

“I thought I told you to shut up!”

Wilson flexed his jaw slowly with a grimace of pain at the brutal blow Tritter had just dealt him – but the grimace slowly shifted to a bitter, sarcastic smile. He resisted the urge to look past Tritter to House, not wanting to do anything to direct Tritter’s attention toward his friend. He had no idea whether or not he had really gotten through to House and convinced him to go for the gun; but he did know that if House was going to have the opportunity to get the weapon into his hands at all, it would have to be while Tritter’s back was turned.

“Yeah, well,” Wilson remarked with a casually defiant shrug. “I don’t listen all that well. Must be the company I keep.”

Tritter’s response to Wilson’s uncharacteristically smart remark was another fist across his face, before leaning in, his huge, meaty hands resting on the armrests of Wilson’s chair as he leaned in intimidatingly close with a cold sneer of satisfaction.

Well, at least I’ve got his attention…

But with Tritter’s hot, rancid breath on his skin, the cruel menace in his eyes, Wilson had to wonder whether or not that was actually a good thing.

“Enjoy your little jokes while you can, smart ass,” Triter sneered. “In a few minutes, you won’t be able to think of laughing anymore. I already told House what I’d do if he opened his mouth to anyone – and that’s exactly what’s gonna happen now. I’m gonna have my fun with the three of you for the next few hours – make you pay for the last few months I’ve spent in prison – and then… I’m off to Mexico. They don’t extradite for anything. So go ahead and laugh all you like now. I’ll be the one who’s laughing last, before they ever even find your bodies.”

“No!” House objected, and Wilson cringed inwardly as Tritter turned his attention toward House. “No – you don’t have to hurt them. This has nothing to do with them!”

“I don’t have to hurt you, either, House,” Tritter pointed out in a dangerously soft, patient voice as he slowly paced toward the spot where House knelt on the floor.

Tritter crouched down in front of him, and House flinched but did not pull away as Tritter seized his hair and jerked his head back in a gesture intended solely to expose his throat and make him feel vulnerable. House swallowed hard as Tritter trailed his gun slowly down the column of his throat, deliberately intensifying his terror, and savoring every moment of it. Tritter’s low, deceptively gentle voice sent a sick shudder through House’s body when he finally spoke again.

“It’s just that it’s so much fun.”

House opened his mouth to speak, his breath rapid and shallow and shaking as he struggled to maintain his composure. He closed his eyes for a long moment, drawing in a deep breath and replying at last in a soft, timid voice.

“If… if it’s so much fun, then… then why don’t you just… do what you want to me… and let them go?” House paused a moment, his voice growing stronger as he continued. “It doesn’t make any difference as to your… your future, either way. Whatever you do or don’t do, you can still get away and… and start over in Mexico. You don’t have to hurt them. I’ll do… anything you want. I swear it. Just… just let them go.”

Tritter was quiet, an exaggeratedly serious, attentive expression on his face, nodding with false encouragement as House spoke. When House was finished, Tritter’s face slowly broke into a smile of cold, triumphant amusement, and he let out a soft, derisive laugh. House winced as Tritter jerked him closer, his voice low and frighteningly intimate as he spoke slowly and deliberately into his ear.

“See, that’s what you don’t understand, House. You’re right – hurting you is my main objective here. But then, obviously – hurting them is just another way of hurting you. Possibly the best way, judging by how hard you’re trying to make sure that I don’t hurt them.”

House swallowed slowly, his eyes closed, his shoulders falling with defeat at Tritter’s words. He tensed as Tritter slid the muzzle of the gun up under the hem of his shirt, his hand at the back of House’s head gentling to run through his hair in a parody of a caress, as he continued his hushed words of horrific intent.

“You know what I’m going to do, House?” he murmured, too low for anyone but House to hear. “I’m going to untie them from those chairs – one at a time – and handcuff their wrists behind their backs. Then, I’m going to throw them down on this floor and take them in every possible way you can think of – every way I took you. Every… way, House. And a few ways I couldn’t take you, when it comes to Cuddy. By the time I’m finished tearing them up inside, they’re going to be crying, screaming, begging me just to kill them. But I won’t listen, House. No – I’ll wait until you can’t take any more – until you beg me – in front of them – to kill them. The last thing they’ll hear is you… ordering their deaths. And you’ll watch them die, suffering and tortured and in agony with their last breaths.”

Tritter released House abruptly, rising to his feet, leaving House in a trembling, sick, wretched heap on the floor at his feet. Tritter’s smile was savagely bright as he stared down at House, waiting until he tentatively raised his gaze to meet Tritter’s before speaking again.

“Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

House shook his head slowly, his eyes downcast as he whispered, “No… no, don’t…”

Tritter gleefully ignored his plea, turning toward Wilson again, this time apparently with no intention of stopping short of the heinous promise he had just given House. He pressed his gun to Wilson’s head as he sneered a cold, calm threat.

“Now, you’re gonna cooperate – gonna be nice and quiet and well-behaved – and things might go a little quicker for you.”

He reached for the handcuffs that held Wilson to the chair, the gun still tightly held in his right hand. Wilson’s heart was pounding with the horrifying knowledge of what Tritter intended to do to him. He stole a brief glance toward House, wondering how his friend was reacting to what was happening, hoping that House would not respond with recklessly noble intentions and end up making things worse for himself.

Naturally… that seemed to be precisely what House had decided to do.

“I’ll go with you to Mexico.”

Tritter was stunned enough by the strange offer that he stopped what he was doing, turning slowly to face House with a confused frown. Wilson stared at House in horror, shaking his head slowly, trying to comprehend what House was talking about – what it was he thought he was trying to do.

“Excuse me?” Tritter’s voice was dubious, disbelieving, but there was a hint of a marveling smile on his lips, a delighted gleam in his eyes.

“You enjoy hurting me so much?” House continued, his voice trembling but strong as he bravely held Tritter’s piercing gaze, even from his kneeling position on the floor. “You think it’s so much fun having me at your mercy, under your total control? How’d you like that set-up to be permanent?”

Tritter’s smile faded slightly into pensive thought, as he turned slowly to fully face House, the gun lowering slowly to his side. His voice was guarded but interested as he replied.

“I’m listening.”

“I won’t struggle – won’t fight. I’ll go with you across the border – do whatever you want me to do, obey your every command. I’ll be your own personal… toy, to do with whatever you want,” House explained, his eyes glittering with desperate, unshed tears, but his gaze intense and unwavering. “Absolute power, Tritter. That’s what you get off on, right?” He paused, holding the other man’s gaze. “That’s what I’m offering you – if you’ll leave them alone. Leave them alive, and… and untouched.”

Tritter’s lips twisted slowly into a derisive sneer as he moved at an even, measured pace toward House, a knowing, skeptical note in his voice.

“Right. And the moment we leave the apartment, they manage to work their way free and call the authorities – who promptly pick me up a few miles from the border – leaving you conveniently free of holding up your end of this little deal you’re proposing.”

“I have plenty of morphine, here in the apartment.”

Tritter blinked in surprise at that – as did Wilson – waiting for House to continue.

“I know how much to give them to keep them knocked out for long enough for us to get to the border, without doing them any permanent harm. You can leave them tied and gagged and drugged, and they won’t be able to alert anyone until it’s too late.”

Tritter’s eyes narrowed in menace, as he took a slow step closer to House, towering over him as he asked a soft, threatening question.

“And what’s to stop me from simply doing what I want to your friends, then going ahead and taking you up on your sweet little offer, anyway?”

House boldly held his gaze, as he answered in a voice that was taut with apprehension, yet certain and firm.

“The fact that once they’re dead, I no longer have any reason to want to go along with you. If you kill them, I’ll kick and scream and fight until I’m dead, too.” House was quiet, unflinching, even as Tritter’s eyes widened in obvious outrage. House’s next words, accompanied by a ridiculously casual shrug, halted Tritter’s anger, however, replacing it with amazement.

“Seems like that’d cut your fun a bit short, wouldn’t it?”

Tritter nodded slowly, non-committal. “And what’s to stop you from lying to me about the morphine? Or under-dosing them? Not to mention just resisting the second we’re in public? Making as much noise and drawing as much attention as you can, to try to save yourself?”

Any trace of bravado or humor left House’s eyes, which immediately became solemn and heavy, to match the soft tone of dread in his voice as he answered without hesitation.

“The knowledge that even if I escaped you for the moment, eventually you’d come back – and that time, there’s no way you’d leave any of us alive.”

Tritter raised a single eyebrow, clearly impressed with House’s reasoning. He had obviously thought this out. The offer was at the very least intriguing – but Tritter was still trying to find the catch.

House’s tone hardened slightly, his eyes glittering with bitter, malicious satisfaction as he drove the final nail into the deal. “Come on. I know these past few months can’t have been fun for you. A rapist cop in prison with hardened criminals he’s probably put away himself – and most likely unfairly? There’s no question as to how you’ve spent your time.” House’s voice lowered, taking on a quality that was both mocking and enticing at once. “Must have been incredibly traumatic for you – not to mention frustrating. Bet you’d like to make me pay. Wouldn’t you like to have the time to really take it out on me?”

Tritter’s features twisted into furious rage, and he struck out once more with the pistol across House’s face, knocking him off his knees and onto his face on the floor. A moment later, a fierce hand seized House’s hair in a searing grip, jerking him painfully back up onto his knees and leaning in very close to his face.

“Oh, you’d better believe I will,” Tritter hissed. “You don’t know what you’ve just agreed to, House. But I believe I’ll accept your offer – and you’re going to spend every day for the rest of your life paying for the things that have happened to me these last few months. By the end of the first week, you’ll wish yourself dead – but you won’t be. Not for a long, long time.”

Tritter released House with a rough shove, standing up straight again and taking aim with his gun at House’s head as he ordered coldly, “Get the morphine.”

House obeyed without a word, and immediately headed toward Cuddy, a filled hypodermic needle in hand. Her eyes were wide with fear as House approached her, though Wilson could not tell whether that fear was for herself, or for House and the horrific situation in which he had just willingly placed himself. House’s expression was calm and compassionate, silently soothing, as he placed a gentle, steadying hand at the back of her head and swiftly injected the medication into the side of her neck.

Within moments, Cuddy was unconscious.

Wilson shook his head slowly as House approached him, his expression solemn and troubled. Tritter watched with a smile of grim amusement, silently taking in the drama unfolding before him.

“House… you don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No,” Wilson insisted, his voice trembling with frustration as he pulled uselessly at his bonds. “Damn it, House – you choose now to go all self-sacrificing on me?”

“It’s not self-sacrifice,” House stated in a soft, even voice that Wilson found thoroughly unconvincing. “It’s simple logic. We can all be raped, tortured, and murdered – or one of us. It’s basic math.”

Wilson flinched at the brutality of the words, technically true, but too horrific for him too fathom. When House finally met his eyes, Wilson froze momentarily, trying to read the intense, wordless message in House’s focused, urgent gaze. House’s voice grew softer as he continued in a subtly pointed tone.

“You said it yourself, Wilson. I’m the only one who can keep this from happening to us. And… if this is the only way I can do that, well…” He shrugged, raising his arm to bring the needle to Wilson’s neck – and allowing Wilson, but not Tritter behind him, a brief glimpse of silver metal tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket. “… then this is what I have to do.”

Wilson showed no sign in his expression of what he had seen, simply kept his urgent, worried eyes focused on House.

“You don’t have to do this,” he repeated, his voice a hoarse, fading whisper as the drug swiftly began to take effect.

Wilson’s last thought was that he really hoped House knew what he was doing – before darkness overtook him, and he was aware of nothing more.

TBC...

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From:

forest-rose.livejournal.com

OMG! House is so very brave here - I knew he had it in him, and I feel so very proud of him - which is crazy, but hey! You write so incredibly well, you've got me on the edge of my seat again - I can't wait to find out what happens next! Great job as always, love xx

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Used, Chapter 64

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