Chapter Text
Cameron wishes she could kill her compassion. Yes, sometimes she looks at the leg, looks at House's pain and his efforts to pretend it doesn't matter, and his other efforts to pretend it's the only thing that matters. She pictures the scar under her fingers, under her tongue... but why? House doesn't need a woman with a scar fetish, not much.
But some of things House thinks aren't true. House doesn't remind her one bit of her dead husband. He isn't bald and vomiting and noble and sweet. And he isn't loving and long-suffering and trying to look at the bright side with only days left. She doesn't want him to be, though House would never believe it.
And it isn't all the leg and the pain. Cameron likes listening to House talk, likes listening to him figure everything out and still be an asshole. She likes seeing him come in the door and say something horrible and grill them like he thinks they should really know something. Sometimes she even likes his lack of compassion, as much as it should repulse her. But he would say that's because she's picturing him with a fluffy marshmallow core, and maybe that's true. Maybe she's making a House in her own mind which has nothing to do with reality. But maybe she isn't.
If Cameron could kill her compassion, maybe she could be like House, and maybe he would believe she sees the real man. But she can't, and she has to face him, and face the fact that while she wants to laugh with him and make love to him and watch monster trucks she also wants to take that leg in her hands and try to soothe him. And she won't waste time trying to be anything else.