sick_wilson | (no subject)

Title: Unliving
Author: littlewonder2
Notes: Written for the Sick!Wilson Halloween Challenge
Summary: House is coming to terms with Wilson dying, full in the knowledge that he can never die. House is a zombie.

Just like in life, Wilson was also anal about arrangements for his impending death. House rolled his eyes as he limped after Wilson in the graveyard for the third time that day.

"Is this one good enough for you?" he complained.

"I have to look around still, House. Decide where I want to be buried even if I do choose to get buried here..."

"No one else will make it to your funeral," House said. "No one even knows we're out here. They're all left on the east coast."

House missed knocking down Wilson's bucket list. At least that was fun. Now he was bored.

"And we're in Colorado, I know," said Wilson. "I have you," he suggested.

"I'm not calling up everyone you know. I'm supposed to be dead, remember?"

"You said," lectured Wilson, jabbing his finger at House, "that you'd do anything I wanted. You have to."

"If they come, I might just lose control and eat their flesh," House joked. House always joked to hide the truth.

"Yeah, right, House, you're not a zombie."

"You don't know that. The only thing you know is that I haven't eaten your flesh. For all you know, I could just be a high-functioning zombie."

Wilson just rolled his eyes obliviously. "Yeah, right, House. High-functioning..."

In a moment, pinned agonisingly to the ground under a torturous beam, the force of the explosion thrashed House into death. In another instant, the aftershock jolted him awake, shifting the beam far enough to push it off.

House didn't know how had found the strength. He hadn't been able to push the crushing weight off of Hannah at the disaster site he had once been stuck to hover over her.

He grabbed his cane, pulling himself through the suffocating atmosphere. He was crawling from the open door, now blocked from his escape. Pulling himself gradually, he reached the back door through the kitchen.

Bursting through it, he leaned heavily on his cane, staggering away down the street...

When night fell, he broke into a hospital lab, beginning to run tests on himself. But it only took two fingers over his pulse to conclude that he was dead.

He was a zombie. He may not believe in an afterlife, but he hated the fact that he had to live through life forever like this... alive, but miserable. Alive without Wilson.

"I'm dying," said Wilson on his deathbed.

"I know," said House. His usually hard eyes were puffy, struggling not to lose control. "I don't want you to."

"You don't have a choice."

"I'm dead," House repeated the same words he'd told Wilson when he first revealed his survival.

"I know."

"No, you don't," said House. "I'm a zombie. If I bit you now..."

"I could live. As the undead," argued Wilson.

"You'd remain as you are now. But you'd live."

"I have cancer. I don't want to spend the rest of my life like that."

"You're not dead yet. You haven't even reached the worst stages of it yet. This is only the start. For all you know, being a zombie might get rid of the cancer. I don't want to live without you."

"They don't call it a deathbed because you'll live."

"It's not a death bed; it's a hospital bed. And they don't call it the undead because you lay cold in the ground."

"I don't want to live with cancer."

"There is no after, Wilson. This is it. Do you really want to leave me?"

Wilson swallowed, looking hesitant. "If this doesn't work..." Wilson said after a moment, "if my cancer's still there... I want you to kill me. When I ask you to, I want you to kill me. That's my conditions."

House hesitated for a moment. "Okay."