Fic - Found
Apr. 20th, 2011 01:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jezziejayWritten for the sick_Wilson Halloween Fic Fest.
Title: Found
Pairing: H/W (established)
Rating: PG13
Warning: I sat down to write a silly, fluffy piece and then this happened. I dunno. Very angsty, mentions of Holocaust and child death (although not graphic). Happy ending.
Notes: Set about 16 months after Amber’s death.
Word Count: 3,600
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, season seven would be going in a totally different direction.
Huge thanks to flywoman, fleurione, cuddyclothes, and yarroway for their fantastic feedback, suggestions and typo catching!
When Wilson regained consciousness it was almost dusk. His face was turned toward the sea; the tide now far out, although puddles of saltwater had thoughtfully remained to form an intimate relationship with his clothing. His right foot was wedged between two rocks and a broken femur rendered his left leg a liability. Wilson swallowed dryly and craned his head around to further inspect the damage. The flesh of the left thigh was skewered on a sharp stone, blood turning the pool below it a murky red. Dr Wilson thought that sounded like a compound fracture. James Wilson agreed that it certainly felt like one.
This wasn’t good.
Blurrily, he looked around the cove, deserted, save for the screechy seagulls who circled eerily close, like vultures.
“Help”, he called pathetically, but even the birds couldn’t hear him.
It took a few seconds to recognise the strangely familiar, but somewhat out of place, ringing of his cell phone, and even more seconds passed before his eyes found it.
Wilson extended his arm as far as it could go but it was at least five foot short.
He cried out as the ringing stopped, heaving himself up onto his elbows and dragging his uncooperative body towards the last hope he probably had. The last thing Wilson was aware of was his phone calling again before falling face down into a pool of fresh vomit.
****************************************
It was dark when Wilson woke again. He waited a few minutes for the figure sitting near him to morph into something more probable than an emaciated man dressed in what was once a fine suit.
As if alerted by the banging of Wilson’s teeth, the figure turned his gaze from the sea towards him. Haunted eyes looked into Wilson’s own as skeletal fingers twisted the band on his arm - a blue Star of David on a pale background.
“You don’t look much like a ghost”, Wilson chattered before falling into darkness again.
****************************************
The phone was ringing. Wilson opened his eyes and stared across the rocks to the illuminated screen until it darkened again. He wondered which would give up first – House or the battery.
“Am I dead?” he asked his still present companion.
“Not yet,” the heavily accented voice answered.
Wilson shifted and groaned, “But I am dying.”
“Yes, my child, you are.”
Wilson didn’t know if it was the pain or the confirmation, or the use of ‘my child’ that brought a warm stinging to his eyes.
“Why are you here?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. To wait with you, maybe.”
“And then what? Where do we go then? Will you bring me to heaven?”
The man shrugged and glanced back out to sea. “I’m hoping you’ll bring me.”
The sea.
“How far out is the tide?” Wilson struggled with every word.
“About three hours yet.”
“I’ve always been afraid of drowning,”
Without taking his eyes from the sea the ghost answered, “I don’t think you need worry about that.”
Wilson dropped his head to rest on frozen forearms. Less than three hours. The Grim Reaper had been handed his own death sentence. House would find that funny.
House.
“You’ll stay with me?”
“I think so.”
“You don’t know?”
The man lifted and dropped his shoulders. “I thought I was finished.”
“Finished what?”
“Waiting.”
The phone sounded. Both men stared at it.
“I don’t suppose you could…” Wilson trailed off.
The man shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
Wilson was sorry too.
****************************************
Wilson heard House’s final attempt to reach him before the battery died. He knew he wasn’t far behind it; shock and hypothermia were settling in, Dr Wilson informed himself, and periods of consciousness were becoming shorter.
“Eventually he’ll just fall into a deep sleep and drift away. His suffering will be over.”
“Were you in Auschwitz?” he asked.
The man smiled slowly. “Auschwitz wasn’t the only hell.”
****************************************
“Is this what you do?” Wilson asked some minutes later.
The man looked confused.
“Wait, I mean. Wait with people while they die. Is this what you do?”
“I think so,” the ghost answered slowly. “I was with someone tonight before I came here. I don’t really remember where else I’ve been.” He looked up at the sky. “But tonight. Tonight is what I’ve been waiting for. I thought I was finished.”
Wilson thought for a minute. “You were waiting for this person to die so that you could move on?”
“Yes.”
“And this person is dead?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re still here?”
The man nodded.
“Who was he?” Wilson asked.
“She”, the ghost corrected. “She was someone I wronged.”
“Did you put it right?”
“I don’t know. I can still hear crying. I thought it would stop.”
Wilson listened carefully. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Lucky you. I’ve been hearing it for nearly seventy years now.”
It was so quiet.
“Some things should never be parted,” lamented the ghost.
“What did you do?” but Wilson had faded to black before an answer.
****************************************
Everything was just so difficult. Talking. Staying conscious. Breathing. Falling.
“What’s your name?” Wilson whispered.
“Saul,” the man replied.
“Tell me something, Saul. Anything,” Wilson’s tongue was so damn tired.
Long moments passed before he was answered.
“My Auschwitz was a village just south of Budapest. There was a barracks there and they took those of us who were useful to them. The finest cooks, tailors, musicians, artists, jewellers. They brought what remained of our families. So that we would have more to lose. By that time, all I had was my daughter and I loved her with all that was left of my heart.”
He sighed heavily, allowing Wilson to hear the hell he had lived and the hell he was in now.
“I knew a woman there. Julia Laszlo.”
The name snapped Wilson back from the brink of an almost comforting darkness.
“My grandmother,” and words were becoming a real struggle.
Surprise flickered momentarily across Saul’s face before being replaced with a look of epiphany that was so heartbreakingly familiar to Wilson.
“James. James. James,” Saul breathed again and again with enough wonder and love to make Wilson cry.
“You know me?”
“Oh, my child, how could I have not?”
Saul held a hand out to Wilson and just as it reached him, Wilson closed his eyes.
****************************************
It was taking longer and longer for the world to come into focus.
“What did my grandmother do?”
“She was seamstress. She could turn rags into pieces of art.” Saul turned to him. “She had a daughter. A beautiful little girl, with a nature as golden as her hair. The most beautiful hazel eyes I’ve ever seen.”
Wilson’s mother. His mother has brown eyes. He opened his mouth to correct him but nothing came out.
“Our children were inseparable. Oh, the joy their laughter brought to a world of despair and ruin. When we thought our God had forsaken us, he answered us through their laughter, their joy, their voices. Ah, what we would not have given so that they might be spared this hell they were living. What we would not have done”, Saul broke off, tears beginning to flow down his wrinkled cheeks.
****************************************
Saul was still crying when Wilson opened his eyes again.
“They sent for me one morning. A general’s son was ill. Appendicitis.”
“You were a doctor?” Wilson chattered.
“No. A watchmaker. A gifted one. Wonderful hands,” and Saul stretched out his traitorous fingers. “There were no doctors left by then. They were desperate and I was all they had.” He looked up to Wilson. “The child died less than five minutes after I cut into him.”
Wilson fought the fog. “What did they do to you?”
“They told me to get my daughter and they killed us both.”
And Wilson, who was saturated with pain, was surprised to find that he still had room for a little more.
****************************************
“What are you waiting for?” Saul asked Wilson a few minutes later.
House.
“I’m in love with a man,” he answered.
Why he thought that a man who had seen the most unspeakable of atrocities might be shocked by sexual preference, Wilson didn’t know.
“He loves me too. We came here once,” he whispered between pants, “After my girlfriend had died. I was still so mad at him. He’d have done anything for me then. We were walking in the sand further up the beach. He has a cane. It hit off something buried in the sand and I bent to pick it up.”
****************************************
Wilson shook the sand from the compass before closing his fingers around it and rising slowly. He looked down at his fist and up to House.
“I forgive you.”
House stared at him. “Why?” he asked and nodded at the hand that held the answer.
Slowly Wilson turned his wrist and unfurled his fingers, smiling softly at the compass.
“I can’t escape. You’ll just keep finding me.”
House took the piece from Wilson’s hand, gently caressing the rusty face. When he finally looked back at Wilson, he just sighed and nodded.
Later that evening both had sat on the sofa. Wilson never knew what had possessed him to lay his head against House’s shoulder and he never knew what had possessed House to let him. All he did know was that warmth was flooding him and everything that should have been rightly weird somehow felt weirdly right. When House had moved, it was to tilt Wilson’s chin towards him and study his face as if it were all that mattered. He stroked Wilson’s jaw gently before moving his mouth closer.
“Found you,” he had whispered before finding Wilson’s lips.
****************************************
“Why did you come here today?”
Wilson thought. “To remember the good times.”
“They’re gone?”
“No.” They were just hiding under a mountain of vicodin, selfishness and moral ambiguity. Both professional and personal. “We had an argument. I wanted to go to Paris. He didn’t, so that was the end of that. I sulked and he eventually apologised by stealing my prescription pad and helping himself to another script for drugs.”
“We all do terrible things,” shrugged the man.
“Yeah,” Wilson agreed. “What did you do?” he repeated.
****************************************Wilson was remembering the good times.
Setting his alarm twenty minutes early every day so that when he tried to leave the bed, House’s arm would tighten around him and a scratchy face would burrow between his shoulders.
The worst work day ever. Death standing outside every patient’s room. House bursting into his office with Cuddy’s birthday cake and insisting that both of them hide from her under Wilson’s table to eat it. Half a mud pie and a clumsy hand job later, Wilson is wondering what to buy Cuddy for her birthday. “It’s not her birthday”, confesses House as he crawls from under the desk, before Wilson can reciprocate with his own hand. “Just thought you could do with some sugar”, holding up a cake stained palm, “and some sugar”, holding up a semen stained hand. Laughing when Wilson answers “Sweet”. Winking at Wilson and leaving.
Other times. Eating dinner on the sofa, House’s legs stretched across Wilson’s lap. Having a beer at a bar, knees touching discretely. Snickering and gossiping in one or other’s office. Tussling over the remote control. Lying in bed, talking about everything and nothing. House waiting in a New York hospital while Wilson visited Danny. House making him coffee and toast after a long hospital shift. House allowing him to rub some of the pain from his mangled thigh. House listening, always listening, for some non-verbal subtext. House. House. House. Always House.
The past becoming the present because there was no future.
****************************************
When Wilson opened his eyes, Saul was gone. He closed them again because there was nothing but the pain to stay awake for.
****************************************
“You left me” Wilson accused when Saul returned.
The man smiled at him. “I realised what had to be done. Why I was still waiting” he answered.
“It’s done?”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid you’d forgotten me.”
How could I forget you when you are carved in the palm of my hand forever.
Wilson didn’t know if Saul spoke these words because he can’t see him. He was now in his grandmother’s living room where on the mantle rests a carving of a hand with these words chiselled into its centre. The fingers cradle a lock of golden hair.
Wilson looked up at the black sky. “I know what you did.”
Hell on earth. The stench of death. The smell of evil. A man sick with grief dragging Saul behind him. “Get your daughter,” he demands. Saul, with no choice but a terrible one, entering the compound. Kissing his daughter solemnly on the forehead and promising her everything would be okay. Taking another child by the hand, telling her to come with him. Leading her outside to a certain death. “This is my child,” he lies and watching as the golden curls are brushed cruelly from her temple before a bullet is pressed dispassionately into it. Hazel eyes closing forever. Crying as the child falls to the ground. “May God forgive me.” And as the same gun is pressed to his own head, they misunderstand. They think that his crime is bringing his own child to her death. They do not know that the bloody corpse on the ground does not belong to him. They do not know that this is Julia’s child.
And now Wilson truly understands that some things should never be parted.
“James. Child of my child.”
He opens his eyes and looks at his grandfather.
*************************
“It’s so quiet,” Saul says.
“Has the baby stopped crying?” Wilson says or thinks.
“The baby?” and Saul laughs softly at the misunderstanding, “No, James, it is not the child who had cried all these years. It is her mother. I can’t hear it anymore; she has found her child.”
Wilson is happy for her. This woman who protected her traitor’s child, who raised her as her own, who loved her as her own. The child for whom her own had been sacrificed, the little girl who should have died in the dusty outskirts of Budapest, but instead was brought to America, where one day she would give birth to a son who was soon to die on the rocks of the Jersey coast.
Saul is ready and Wilson is ready, too.
****************************************
Lights sparked and became closer, and it grew louder and louder. Passing over, Wilson thought, was a noisy business.
It was time to go.
Saul’s face swam into focus. “James,” he shook Wilson’s arm. “James, it’s time.”
I know, Wilson tried to answer.
And then came an awareness and more pain. He could hear Cuddy, hear her voice calling for him. Did Cuddy die too? Her baby will cry.
“Is Cuddy coming with us?”
“James, some things should never be parted.” His grandfather was smiling at him. Really smiling at him. He leaned so close that Wilson could read the numbers below the star on his armband. 15703. Saul’s hand stretched out to him and Wilson reached for it.
****************************************
Heaven smelled like hospital. It even had a running montage of House sitting by his bedside, surfing on a laptop and making Wilson feel guilty by rubbing his leg. Weird.
****************************************
When Wilson woke again he was alive. In the hospital. House was asleep on a chair beside him. He was woozy. Drugs. Good drugs. His leg was in a cast up to his hip, a window cut from it to allow the surgeon to do his work. Wilson reached for him but fell back asleep.
****************************************
It was morning and the drugs were wearing off. He was in pain and the foil blanket rustled when he moved. Awareness came slowly and Wilson felt oddly disconnected from the world.
He turned his head to meet House’s glare. “You found me.”
“Yeah,” House snapped back, “You were minutes away from winning this year’s Darwinian Award for Most Stupid Death. Walking over rocks in French shoes on a deserted beach in October. For fuck’s sake, Wilson.”
And there it was – House’s words like a gravitational pull, dragging Wilson back to where he belonged.
There was more relief than tiredness behind his grin. “How did you find me?”
House didn’t answer as he limped over to the bed. Gripping Wilson’s chin between his thumb and his forefinger, he tilted his face up to meet his own.
“Yesterday we had an argument and you left the hospital.”
Wilson, who thought he was going to be kissed, gave House a comical glare. “I know. I remember. I don’t have a head injury.”
House dismissed him with an impatient shake of his head. “I need to know, Wilson. Did you go back to the apartment afterwards? Before you went to the beach?”
Wilson looked puzzled. “No. No, I went straight to the beach.”
“You didn’t go home? At any time?”
“No,” and Wilson looked at him questioningly. “Why?”
House held his gaze for a moment, and he was doing that thing again. That thing he had done over a year ago, looking right at Wilson, as if he were the only thing that mattered. “It’s not important,” he mumbled. He hopped off the bed just as Wilson was closing his eyes and leaning forward.
Wilson stared in outraged disbelief as House grabbed his jacket from the chair. “You know, House, I could kinda do with a hug here.”
House buzzed for a nurse. “Morphine,” he barked as she came to the door.
“I’m going home for a change of clothes. You have another surgery scheduled for eleven. I’ll be back for that.” And then so quietly that Wilson had to strain to hear, “The next time I hold you, I won’t be letting go for a long time.”
When the nurse came back she made some comment about it being unusual to see patients smile before they had the morphine.
****************************************
House threw his keys on the kitchen table.
It was still there. His fingers shook a little as he picked it up.
Wilson was such a fucking passive-aggressive wimp. Sulking because House didn’t want to go to Paris. Well, he could just fucking get over himself. His phone rang. It was Cuddy. Where the fuck was Wilson? He had phoned Brown to cover the remainder of his morning and afternoon shifts, but he’d promised to be back for a five o’clock appointment. “I’m not Wilson’s keeper,” he snapped back. She called again two hours later. Wilson had missed three more appointments. By now House was worried. This wasn’t Wilson, who by his very nature was incapable of turning away from a responsibility. Wherever the fuck he was, the bastard wasn’t answering his phone.
Cuddy had phoned after seven. Wilson hadn’t shown up for the admission of a six year old child who was due to begin chemotherapy the following morning.
House’s stomach turned. Something was very wrong.
Soon after, he had gone looking for him. Bars, restaurants, strip joints. Places he knew Wilson wouldn’t be. When House had returned, the home phone was ringing.
“Wilson,” he grabbed the receiver. Wilson Senior calling to say that Wilson’s maternal grandmother had died a few hours earlier. When House had hung up, something small and silver caught his eye. He walked over to the table and picked it up, brushing long gone sand from the face.
The compass.
The compass that he had slyly pocketed after Wilson had picked it out of the sand.
The compass that was locked away in a box at the back of the cupboard.
The compass that had led Wilson to him.
The compass that hadn’t been there when he had picked up his keys to go looking for Wilson an hour ago.
House dialled Cuddy’s number. He knew where Wilson was.
A small hinge caught his eye and as he lifted it closer he saw a previously unnoticed catch. House pressed on it and the back of the compass sprung open, revealing a watch. A beautifully crafted time-piece, one that must have required great skill and precision. On the inside cover was an engraving. 15703.
****************************************
When Wilson came around after his surgery, he was in a hospital bed with House wrapped around him.
“Hey,” he croaked.
“Hey, yourself,” House answered into his shoulder.
“Everything okay?”
“Yep. Surgery went well. You’ll be in a wheelchair until the sprain in your right ankle heals and then on crutches for a while until your left femur sets. After that we’ll have matching canes for a few months. They’re going to love us in Paris.”
Wilson craned his head, “We don’t have to…”
“Yes, we do,” House interrupted. “You’ve already paid for it. Although, you’ll have to listen to me bitch and moan up every step of the Eiffel Tower.”
“I think they have elevators.”
“Oh. Oh, well, if I’d have known that before…”
Wilson smiled and poked him with his elbow. “Are you uncomfortable?”
“We’re on a bed for gastric bypass patients. I think there’s enough room.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” House answered. “Fatso.”
“Hey. I’m not fat, that’s just plaster retention.”
When he felt House shake beside him, Wilson thought he was laughing. Then he felt wetness on his skin.
“Found you,” House whispered, tightening his hold.
Wilson’s hand sought House’s and as he laced their fingers together, he thought – “Of course you did. Some things should never be parted.”
Críoch
