Fic: Rebuild the Bridges in Your Mind (PG, House/X-Men)

[st_aurafina]

Title: Rebuild the Bridges in Your Mind
Fandom: House MD/X-Men Movieverse (with comicsverse cameos)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Medical drama levels of violence and injury
Word Count: 25,561
Disclaimer: Not written for profit!

Notes:
Set towards the end of Season Six for House, and after X3 in X-Men movieverse. Some reference to the Wolverine movie. Mostly gen, with background reference to Chase/Cameron and Chase/Jason Stryker. (See Author's notes for more details and expansive thank yous to my many betas)

Summary: Chase was a student at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Time and personal differences mean that he's estranged from his former friends, the X-Men. Now he moonlights as a doctor for vigilantes and mutants at a clinic in NYC, but he's juggling so many secrets that his past is sure to catch up with him soon

Alternate Sites:
On the Archive

As a downloadable file: pdf // epub // doc

Art post by chosenfire28 here.





(Thank you to chosenfire28 for the art!)


(Thank you to chosenfire28 for the art!)





This room was filled with noise: a coma patient's room is rarely silent, but Chase paid well to make sure that there was always ambient sound to cover the hiss and click of the ventilator. Today, though, Chase could detect a certain frosty silence over the recorded ocean waves.

He nudged the edge of the expensive orthopaedic mattress with his knee. "I get it. I haven't been here enough. You're pissed, and I'm sorry. Getting back into life as a single man is surprisingly complicated." He paused. "Allison asked me to sign divorce papers."

He swapped the iPod on the dock for the one in his pocket and switched the sound of waves back on. "I bought you some new music. And the audio book for the new Star Trek movie. It's pretty good. Better still, it's really long."

Waves lapped against an invisible shore. Chase sighed. "Okay, fine. Next time I'll give you hours of Dickens. I remember your book review for Great Expectations. I told you Cliff Notes wouldn't fool a telepath."

He picked up the chart at the end of the bed and flicked through angrily. "Okay, that was really bitchy. I know you don't like thinking about things from back then. I'm worried about you and I'm not happy with these blood counts. You've just got through the last infection; I was hoping to gain some ground before the next one came along."

He leaned over the unconscious man in the bed and pressed his lips to the cool, slack forehead. "Be okay, Jason. I'll be back in a couple of days. Maybe we can talk then?"

---

When Chase got back to work, House was exercising his latest strategy in avoiding clinic duty. He sat in the waiting room like a patient, reading an ancient copy of Time Magazine and noisily moving a lollipop around his mouth. The other patients had warily edged away from him, leaving a clear area on either side of his seat. He seemed oblivious to their concern.

Chase eyed him sourly, then leaned across the reception desk to skim the headlines on today's paper. Since he let his apartment go, he never seemed to have time to sit and read the paper. He missed his apartment, even though work commitments meant that he and Allison had spent laughably little time together there. Once Allison had left, there seemed little point to keeping the place. He told himself that it made better financial sense to find a smaller place, closer to work. Unfortunately, working extra shifts at the hospital meant that there was never time for house hunting. In the meantime, he was living like a vagrant – or worse, like a student again – ghosting around the hospital, catching sleep in the intern lounge and eating in the cafeteria. He should be used to virtual homelessness by now: he'd been dragged halfway around the world when his family fractured; then boarding school; then more sleepless hours than he'd care to add up as an intern. It had taken less than a year with Allison to undo the understanding that a home was something for other people.

"Doctor Chase." Carlos the duty nurse caught his eye. "There's a patient asking for you. Wouldn't see anyone else."

The patient lurked by the door with his back to the wall, face hidden in the cowl of a hooded sweatshirt. His chest rose and fell awkwardly as he surveyed the room. The man had automatically found the best and most secure position in the room: clear visibility of both corridors, quick access to two exits, and a solid wall behind him. Outside the comic books, there was no Bat Signal or secret handshake for vigilantes, at least none to which Chase had ever been privy. It was clear that this man knew how to protect himself and that he had come to Chase for help. Chase took a deep breath and nodded at the man. This work was never supposed to follow him back to Princeton-Plainsboro, but he couldn't take the risk of refusing to help him. Not in a waiting room full of civilians.

"Here, please get him out of my waiting room. He's making me nervous," whispered Carlos, waving the admission sheet. "His name is Smith. Of course." He rolled his eyes as he handed the paperwork over.

"This way, Mr Smith." These days, Chase could say the name with complete lack of irony. It was better and safer not to know too much.

The man eased himself away from the wall and limped towards the vacant consulting room. Chase pulled the door closed behind him, but made the fatal error of checking over his shoulder to see if they were being observed. House met his eyes with a look of glee, and Chase felt his stomach dip. He pressed the door closed with both hands, as if that would hold back House's curiosity.

Inside, the room seemed inert and airless. The beige carpet and soft ambient light soaked up sound. These rooms had never seemed claustrophobic until Chase had to consider defending himself in one.

The man leaned heavily against the exam table, the cowl of the hood turned in Chase's direction. "You are Doctor Chase? From the clinic in New York City?" He had a heavy Russian accent.

Chase kept his hands in front of him, relaxed and open. "That's me. I don't usually see patients from New York here. I try to keep that separate." He hoped the man understood the euphemism, and that he didn't take offence at it.

The Russian man shrugged. "Lucky that you get a choice in the matter." He slipped a hand out of his sweater; the skin was chalky white, dripping green. "Myself, I am not so lucky. I would not bring this to your door, but I have no choice. I am a person of interest to certain parties and I cannot protect myself like this."

Injury sealed the deal. This man was a patient now, regardless of the risk. "All right. The same rules apply here as in New York: you don't bring your fight here, ever. I don't report anyone to the police. I don't ask questions and I don't care who you work for or what you've done. I'm here to help you . If you want to tell me anything, I have to keep it confidential or I can lose my job."

"That's the question, then: what is in it for you?" The words were short with pain.

"I get to do my job," said Chase. He shrugged. "If you want to be mercenary about it, there is a benefit for me: the more mutants I treat, the better I am at getting it right the first time."

"Well, then." The man pushed back his hood and waited warily for Chase's reaction. For a moment, Chase thought he must be wearing one of those close-fitting masks. The man's face was disturbingly blank of expression; features minimised, eyes oddly flat and silvery. Then he saw the way the skin moved against the bone – stretched taut over the zygomatic, pinched in the corners of the eye-sockets – and he realised it was organic.

"Okay," said Chase. "That's pretty spectacular, but that's not where you're hurt. I'm sorry if you're expecting recognition. I don't mean to offend, but I'm a little out of touch with codenames."

"No, I understand. Safer that way. But you know, is better to make sure that you do not scream and faint." The man tugged at the sleeve of his sweater, hissing as he tried to pull it over his head.

"If I were the fainting type, I'd never have made it through medical school." Chase moved forward slowly, hands still spread. "Let me help you with that. Let's not aggravate your injuries further."

The undershirt was plastered to the man's left side with emerald green, vivid against the chalk-white of his skin. Chase reminded himself to exclude pallid skin as a symptom, and put on a pair of gloves. He snipped through the undershirt and peeled it away from the skin. Jean had theorised that bright coloured blood – whatever the colour – probably meant good oxygenation. She had sworn she was going to write a paper one day, as soon as there was a journal that would publish her. She had always been the better academic.

"This is your blood? And it's a normal colour for you?"

"Green, yes. For some years now." The man made a soft noise of protest as Chase gently probed the circular wound in his right lower flank.

"Sorry. I'm afraid that's not a typical bullet wound." Chase looked at the spreading stain on the ruined undershirt and the degree to which the wound had oozed since it had been uncovered. There was no exit wound.

"Not bullet: cobra dart."

Chase raised his eyebrows. "Cobra dart? As in venom?" That complicated matters. He'd need to check coagulation rate, tissue damage, signs of paralysis. What else? Dealing with obscure weaponry always made him miss the medical database at Westchester. It was quite the resource now; compiled from Jean's and Chase's clinical experience, Moira MacTaggart's research and the myriad details the Professor's magpie mind collected over time.

The man made sounds of pain as Chase investigated the wound. "Venom, yes. I took the dart out straight away. Would be dead now, if venom were the problem. The wound, it does not close up. And when I shift – " the man flexed his hand and the skin flushed a Caucasian pink and took on the musculature of a woman's hand "– it hurts. The wound opens up more, you know. I can't hold my form for very long. It is problem. Professionally." He let his hand fade back to chalky white.

"If it hurts to shift, don't do it. Shifting all those muscles around each other like that is only going to tear a bigger hole." Chase loaded a syringe with anaesthetic, allowing a little extra for any healing factors or metabolic differences. "I can put a stitch into the muscle layer, but you're going to have to hold those muscles in shape while it heals. I'm more worried about the venom slowing your clotting process, but I think I can give you something for that." He got to work on numbing the site and let the treatment plan spool out in front of him: Vitamin K, prophylactic antibiotics, ideally an ultrasound in a couple of days to check the healing. If Mr Smith was still around by then, which was unlikely.

It was easy to lose himself in this work. He suspected it was wrong to take such self-centred satisfaction from a charitable act, but he was good at this. This was a unique skill, adapting medical knowledge to fit different bodies and different powers. He'd rather think about this than the shambles his life had suddenly become: he missed Allison, Jason's medical bills were piling up, he had nowhere to live and no family to call for help. But he could do his job with innovation and skill, and doing it well helped people.

He sent the Russian man away with a handful of antibiotic sample packs and a list of warning signs. The man thanked him curtly, pulled up the hood on his sweater and slipped quietly into the crowded waiting room. Chase watched him blend into the crowd of people milling at the front desk, then disappear from sight.

He surveyed the exam room. Normally he'd leave the mess for an orderly, but the pile of gauze pads stained with green blood would be difficult to explain. As he pulled the door closed behind him, it jammed with a heavy thud. House's cane was wedged between the door and the jamb and House was using it to lever the door open. Chase paused, debating sourly whether secrecy was worth the indignity of wrestling House out of the room. Then he stepped back, and allowed House access. The best kind of damage control was not to pique the man's curiosity. Chase took a deep breath; this was going to be fun. Scott always said he couldn't bluff for shit.

"So, you're treating Linda Blair?" House pointed at the green-stained swabs. He pulled himself onto the examination bed and swung his legs back and forth."Word to the wise: keep a cervical collar handy. And lock up your crucifix."

Chase hastily swept the pile of green-soaked gauze into the bio-waste bin. "Let's save time: tell me what you want. Or would you rather bandy obscure movie references around? Because I have more patients to see."

"But I haven't even touched on the Roddenberry oeuvre yet! I have Spock jokes to make."

"I'm too busy to play stupid games." Chase filled in the details on the patient's file, lies pouring freely from the end of the pen. Nothing mutant-related would be going into the hospital database.

"I see that," said House, and didn't move an inch. "You practically live in the clinic these days. If you're gunning for a raise, you'll do better if you actually kiss Cuddy's pert ass."

Chase ignored him. He ticked boxes on the form, scrawled his signature at the bottom.

House snatched the clipboard from his hands. "Laceration, sutures, antibiotics, pain killers – don't you think you should tick 'mutant' somewhere on this form?"

Chase kept tidying the room. "If you think it's relevant."

"You don't think it's relevant? Interesting."

Chase crumpled an empty wrapper in his hand. "Don't analyse the situation like that! Don't make it about me. The guy needed some stitches and antibiotics. Should I ignore him just because his blood is green?"

"Okay," said House. "I get it. Now, which one is your mutant power? The deeply caring nature or the enlarged sense of justice?"

Chase's skin went cold."Who said I was a mutant? Just because I want to help people, I'm suddenly a mutant?" He curled his lip in what was hopefully an effective expression of scorn. "Oh, I get it. You think I could only be doing it out of self-interest. Relax, mutants are no different from any other clinic patient you go out of your way to avoid. You'll probably never have to treat one."

"That is basically true," said House. "But I must be going about this clinic thing all wrong. Statistically, I must have seen a mutant patient or two in my time but I've never had one leave money on the pillow when they go." He pointed with his cane at the end of the bed; a small pile of bills lay on the plastic cover. "Now, either you're treating the tooth fairy or you're turning tricks in the treatment rooms. Which should I be telling Cuddy?"

"Don't tell her anything." Chase picked up the wad of cash. "I don't ask for money, but I'm not going to tell that man that his money's no good. It would be like saying he owes me a favour." He thought longingly about putting the lot towards this month's bills, but instead he handed half over to House without argument. It wasn't worth losing the lot by making a fuss.

House thumbed through the cash and tucked it inside his jacket. "I still say you're a mutant. But never mind. I hear you're in the money! You can buy me lunch and I can ask difficult questions." He hooked the door open with his cane and walked out, heading for the cafeteria.

Chase leaned against the door jamb. He was committed to this now. If he didn't find a way to defuse or deflect House's curiosity, he could lose everything.

---
"So, tell me your mutant life story." House cut decisively into his steak as he spoke and the knife squeaked against the plate. The sound was shockingly loud in the half-empty cafeteria. Chase hoped desperately that people jumped and stared because of the noise and not because of what House had just said.

"Stop saying that," Chase said furtively. "I'm not." Liar, whispered a mean little voice in the back of his mind. He quelled the uncanny feeling that his friends knew he was betraying them. There was no way they could know, not now the Professor was dead.

"So, you're not a mutant?" House chewed insolently, mouth open. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, or so I've read in Time Magazine."

"Look, it's not like that. Mutants with visible differences don't get a lot of medical care. It's intimidating for them to approach a clinic. I'm not afraid to help them out if they need it."

"Yeah, I get it. Fish Head Boy and Tentacle Lass can't hold down a job, so they can't get insurance." House swiped one of Chase's fries and folded it into his mouth. "But what I don't get is why they come to you. There's a dozen free clinics between here and NYC. Why come all the way out here?"

"Word gets around, I guess." Chase pushed a slice of tomato around his plate. "Maybe they tell their friends that I don't get freaked out easily." He realised he was fidgeting, so he put his fork down and folded his hands in his lap. Look straight ahead, he told himself. Use body language to put your patient at ease. Don't make steady eye contact; that suggests you have something to hide. His mouth was uncomfortably dry. All the Professor's earnest discussions on ethics and openness, on being unafraid of who you are? They didn't mean a damn thing when you were afraid for your job and your security.

House stared hard at Chase until Chase looked away. "Is that how you lie in Australia? That explains why people are always going on about Aussie honesty and straightforwardness. You're crap liars! The mutant patients come to you because you're one of them. You're a mutant." He stabbed the tomato on Chase's plate and pushed it into his mouth, talking with his mouth full. "I get it. It makes a lot of sense."

"It does?" Chase looked at House dubiously. "What do you mean?"

"I always knew there was something creepy about you. You're just too blond. It's unnatural. And whenever Fox News starts going on about compulsory testing of foreign nationals, you bristle. Not literally, of course. At least, nowhere I can see it. Although that would cool."

"That's bullshit," Chase slurped up a mouthful of coffee. "On the basis of being freaked by Fox News, everyone in the hospital is a mutant."

"But you're not denying it."

"I'm not a mutant." Chase shook his head. "And you should be careful saying that about people. If I were a mutant, I could lose my medical licence. Or be deported. Or both."

House tucked his chin and raised his eyebrows. "Wow. The way you said it, I almost believe you."

"Because it's true?"

"No." House rolled his eyes. "Because it's obviously important that I think you're telling the truth." He leaned forward over the table. "Do you want to know what gave you away?"

"Nothing gave me away, because I'm not lying to you." Chase narrowed his eyes. If he'd made a mistake – even a tiny one – House would be the one to pick it up. It would be helpful for the next time he had to defend himself.

House spread his arms expansively, speaking loud and clear so that nobody could mishear him. "It's all about the sperm!"

The cafeteria fell silent as all eyes turned to their table. Chase hid his face in his hands. "Please shut up about the sperm."

House grinned cheerfully as he squirted more ketchup onto his plate. "I can never shut up about the sperm. We all know Cameron hung onto that snap-frozen goodness from her dead husband. I think it was because she knew you had a little extra business in the chromosome department. She was hedging her bets. Nobody wants a flipper baby. It would be handy to have some spares in the freezer."

Chase crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. "That is really offensive. No matter what disability or physical differences our baby had, we would love and support it."

"Ah, but you won't be having a baby now, will you? Moot point."

"I don't want to talk about that." Chase was really getting angry now. He took a deep breath. If he lost it, House would provoke him into saying something really stupid.

House watched him trying to regain control of his temper and smirked. "If you don't like it, change the subject fast. And it had better be juicy."

Chase thought fast. It should be something salacious, something that had enough scandalous potential to distract House. A touch of leather wouldn't hurt either. "I've met Black Cat."

House's eyebrows shot upward. "Really?" He sounded genuinely impressed. "Can you introduce me?"

---

"So I have to take him with me the next time I run a clinic in NYC. I didn't promise that Black Cat would show up but it all should be interesting enough to hold his attention." Chase sat cross-legged at the end of the bed with Jason's feet cradled in his lap. It wasn't an optimal weight distribution for the high-end mattress, but it was the easiest way to sneak in a little extra massage. Chase pushed his thumbs into the arch of one long, white foot. Jason saw physiotherapists, massage therapists, circulation specialists, and pressure sore prevention nurses. Every bit of extra care to prevent infection counted and Jason liked the physical contact.

The sound of the ventilator faded and a familiar awareness tugged at his consciousness. Chase settled himself comfortably with his back braced and slowly let down his mental shields. Slipping into a psychic landscape was easy; learning to stay upright and look awake was more difficult. This was something he'd shared with Jason often enough that anyone peeking into this room would just see Chase sitting quietly on his friend's bed.

It took longer than usual to let down his shields. It used to be hard work to get those defences up and hold them. Hours of training and endless practice and the damn things would go down at the Professor's smallest challenge. When had it become so easy to shield his mind from people? These days, he woke with a steady barrier against the world comfortably seated in his mind. Chase wasn't sure if that was necessarily a good thing.

The pale peach walls of the hospital room faded away, replaced by a wide blue horizon and a long flat plane of red-brown earth that stretched out for miles. Chase felt gravel under his feet. He looked down at himself, taking in the chaps and the leather boots. "Are we doing the cowboy thing again? I thought you'd had enough of dust and horse sweat."

"The classics never get old." Jason spoke from a long way behind Chase. His shadow was long and lean, a thin column cutting into the sunlight. Chase blinked in the sudden line of darkness. Jason's footsteps drew closer with a crunch and a brassy jingle.

"Is that spurs I hear? You're still pissed off at me." Chase crossed his arms even though he was smiling. "If you're going to skulk in the shadows, I'll go home."

Hands slipped around his waist, and Jason breathed down his neck. "Only if I let you."

Chase loosened Jason's grip and turned to face him. "You berk! No more sulking. That last round of phlebitis was bad: I was worried you'd slipped away. I don't want you stroking out. Not when we've worked so hard to get you well."

Jason's dream-self showed no sign that his physical body lay ravaged in a hospital bed. His hair was long under the fanciful cowboy hat, his body slim but not gaunt. He didn't visualise the scars from the prosthetic hardware Chase and a dozen other surgeons had picked out of his spinal column. He looked very much like the same boy Chase remembered from school: gangly with teenage growth, peering through long messy bangs with mismatched eyes. The chaps and the plaid shirt, though, were ridiculously out of character. Chase laughed and wrapped his arms around his friend. He squeezed hard, with much more vigour than he would ever dare use on Jason's physical body.

Jason spread his hands out over Chase's back. "This is nice. I missed you too." He took a step forward and nudged a leg between Chase's knees, groin pressed against hipbone.

"Hey." Chase shifted slightly, broke the contact between them."We weren't going to do this anymore, remember? The ink's still wet on the divorce papers, I'm not up for messing around with my best friend."

Jason shoved his hands hard against Chase's chest and pushed him backwards with unnatural strength. The sky darkened with clouds. Angry gusts of wind kicked up dust on the dry ground. "She's gone. You said it: you're a single man now."

The psychic landscape trembled and Chase fell on his arse in the dust. Jason leaned over him and spoke through clenched teeth. "You said you missed me." Behind him the clouds swirled and merged, forming into looming thunderheads.

Chase was unimpressed by the meteorological melodrama. "Are you kidding me with all this Spielberg stuff? I'm having major issues with my marriage, I'm not pining over a schoolyard crush. This is serious, Jason. Be my friend here. Tell me everything is going to be okay. Even if it's a lie. That's what mates do; they tell comforting lies in difficult times."

Jason blinked slowly and the clouds curled in on themselves until the sky was clear again. He sat cross-legged in the dust with Chase and took his hand. "Everything's going to be all right." His voice tailed upwards as he spoke, turning the statement into a query.

"I don't believe it, but thanks anyway." Chase wriggled around until his head rested in Jason's lap. They sat together, watching the imaginary sky turn pink and grey.

"Those nurses are mean bitches." Jason's legs trembled and Chase sat up, alarmed.

"Are you okay? Is something going on out there?" He pushed with his mind against the psychic construct. Chase didn't really know what would happen if he were trapped in Jason's mind during a seizure. It probably wouldn't be good.

"It's okay," Jason's voice was flat. "It's stopped now, it was just a twitch. Please don't go yet."

Chase sat down cross-legged, facing Jason. "All right. But you have to let me go the minute anything happens."

Jason gave a one-shouldered shrug.

"Hey, it's okay. I promised I'd look after you." Chase brushed the hair out of Jason's eyes. "I won't let anything happen to you. You're safe here, this is a good place."

"They're saying I'm probably going to die soon, and then you'll have no reason to come around anymore." His chest heaved as he clenched his fists. "I should show them."

Chase grabbed Jason's hands and squeezed them hard. "Don't! Don't mess with them, Jason. You know what will happen if they find out you're a mutant. I don't want you to end up in some secret prison somewhere. You've been through enough."

Jason slowly uncurled his fingers and let his breathing settle. Chase stroked his thumbs over Jason's knuckles. "It makes me happy to know that you're safe here. You know that it's not a burden to me, to come and see you?"

"I don't believe it, but thanks anyway." Jason's mouth moved, but it was Chase's own voice that he heard.

Chase rolled his eyes and pulled Jason into a headlock, wrestling him to the ground. "Don't spit my own words back at me like that!" They tussled on the ground for a few seconds then collapsed, panting in the dust.

Jason stretched out his arms, far above his head. "If I weren't sick, would you date me?"

It was hard to shrug when you were lying on the ground. "I don't know. I guess it would depend. When are we talking about? Before I met Allison?"

The world around him shifted, became dark and close. Chase was sitting at a table for two. The tablecloth was crisp under his fingers and a stubby candle in a votive glass flickered and danced in front of him. There was a heavy scent of roses in the air.

Jason leaned in from the darkness opposite. "Adam – the new nurse – is reading this book, one of those sloppy romances. He thinks about this a lot."

Chase tilted his head; he could hear a violin droning over the low murmurs from the surrounding tables. "Adam needs to get out more."

"He has a sick cat." Jason poked at the silverware. "I never got to go on a date. Not that I met anyone I would have asked out, not after you left the school."

Chase grinned. "Well, if you're talking about school, then yeah, I would definitely have gone on a date with you."

Jason pushed his hair out of his eyes and smiled back, a lopsided twist of the lips. "I wish I'd asked you then. Before you had to go."

"That was a crap time for both of us," said Chase. "A date would have brightened things considerably."

The candle flame sputtered suddenly and flared bright. "You're thinking about my dad," said Jason. His voice was suddenly thin and high. "Stop it! I can't keep him away if you think about him."

The light was thinning. The room was cooling, dimming. The sharp tang of antiseptic caught at Chase's throat. In the darkness, someone was shouting; great whoops of despair and anger. Chase reached for Allison in his mind; tried to picture her face, the feel of his fingers in her hair. Anything to slow the inevitable progression of dangerous thoughts.

"The Professor should never have let him take you." Chase 's voice echoed around the restaurant, though his mouth was closed. He heard himself say "He let you get hurt." And "It's my fault."

Jason gave a strangled cry, and the world closed in. Chase flailed as he fell into the darkness. The sharp impact of his cheek against cold linoleum woke him, face sticky with blood. Jason's room was filled with shrieking alarms and buzzers. Beside Chase's head, the leg of the bed clattered and rocked on its castor. He struggled upright just as the nurses poured into the room; on the bed, Jason's body arched upwards in seizure.

The rest of the night passed quickly and brutally. Jason's seizures eventually stopped but not before he'd ripped the central IV catheter from his chest, tearing the skin and painting the room with red.

---

Chase limped back to Princeton-Plainsboro in the middle of the night with a black eye and his shirt crusted with blood. His head thumped with telepathic backlash. He raided House's secret stash of emergency Vicodin and fell asleep on the sofa.

By the time House got in to work, Chase was feeling almost alive enough to face the working day. House took in the icepack and the haggard expression and rubbed his hands with glee. "Tonight is going to be awesome!"

Chase sighed, and gingerly pressed the ice to his bruised eyebrow. He would make it through the day without killing a patient. He would make it through the night without killing House.

The drive to New York City was long and full of traffic. They set out at sunset and by the time the last light was gone they were moving at a crawl. Not unexpectedly, House was a lousy passenger.

"I wish I could say I was surprised that you drive a Hybrid." House shifted around in his seat to look into the back. "Could you be any more smug? What were you and Cameron going to do with this thing? Hatch a brace of three-headed babies and drive them to soccer on Saturdays?"

"Not a mutant." Chase concentrated on keeping an eye out for the Holland Tunnel exit.

"Of course you're not a mutant." House rolled his eyes. "So, did you have that adolescent manifestation problem? Nocturnal emissions could be problematic if you're a teenage Toxic Avenger."

Chase remembered waking with stinging skin and eyes, breaking through the shell that formed over his skin in the night. "I suppose it would be, but I'm not a mutant." God, Henry would be so ashamed of him right now. Chase was ashamed of himself, too.

House fiddled with the controls on the radio. "I hear they drive on the left in that sun-bronzed country you call home. How's it working out for you on the right?"

"I've lived here since I was fifteen. I've driven more on the right than I have on the left." Chase blinked in surprise at the sudden pang of homesickness. He hadn't been back to Australia since before his father died. He had been going to go with Allison at the end of the year. They had it all planned: skip out on winter, do some surfing at Bells Beach, drive along the Great Ocean Road.

"Well, that's going to be a problem when they find out you're a mutant and ship you back home. Maybe they have a remedial course you can take: 'Driving on the Left, More Right Than You Know!'" House settled back into his seat and pulled a bundle of envelopes from his pocket. He sorted through them and selected one to open.

Chase let the insult slide past, thankful for the silence. He concentrated on threading through traffic while House read. He was attempting to merge into the EZPass lane at the toll when House spoke up again.

"You know what I think is great?" House squinted at a brochure, holding it up in the reflected glare of the overhead lights.

Chase slipped easily in front of a semi and settled in for the slow crawl through the tollbooths. "I'm sure you're going to tell me all about it."

"I think those new integrated bed systems are great. You know, those spiffy expensive beds with the fluidised air flowing through the little strings of beads? You'd know more about it than me, since this letter thanks you for representing their company at the last trade fair."

If House found out about Jason, he'd visit the respite home. If Jason caught a stray thought and realised he was discovered... Chase didn't realise he'd stamped on the brake until the bellowing protest of an air-horn shuddered through his bones. Headlights flooded the car as the semi rolled implacably towards them, showing no intention of stopping. Even House looked startled. Chase shoved hard on the accelerator and the car shot through the tollbooth like a seed from an orange. The electronic tag clunked in recognition and traffic flowed on smoothly again.

"Wow," said House. "I guess that hit a nerve."

"Why are you reading my mail?" Chase was so angry, he could barely spit the words out.

"Well, that depends. Why was your mail redirected to my office? Did Cameron get custody of the mailbox?"

Chase took a deep breath and concentrated on keeping the car between the white lines. "It's just easier to keep our mail separate. Is it a problem? It's not like you check your own mail. Ever." Except when I don't want you to, he added viciously.

"So, you're a spokesmodel for the medical supply industry? Seems a little below your qualifications. Or is this another mutant thing that we're not allowed to talk about?"

"Look, it's nothing sinister," said Chase. "They got hold of a bed for a patient and I promised I'd speak about their product at a few events. It's not a big deal. It's a good product."

"You do a lot for a patient, considering you're not a mutant." House's voice was soft, dangerously gentle.

"I'm not a mutant," said Chase.

"Then why hang around with them, if the idea horrifies you? All those things you said could happen: lose your job, lose your citizenship. You don't have to take those risks. There are plenty of charities willing to stroke your ego."

Chase pressed his lips together. He didn't know why he couldn't make a clean break from his old life, but he wasn't sure he wanted the answers from House.

House kept talking as the lights of the city crept up upon them. "There's only two reasons to put yourself in a life-threatening situation when you don't have to. There's love and there's guilt. I've seen you in love; this isn't it. I have to say, guilt suits you better."

"What am I supposed to be guilty of?" Chase wasn't sure he knew himself.

House frowned. "I don't know, exactly." He folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. "I'll tell you when I do."

---

The first time Chase had visited the Night Nurse's clinic, it had been with Jean. Both of them were interns, and both of them were thoroughly green. Chase owed a lot to what he'd learned here; not the least of which was how to keep a cool head in an emergency.

House was so completely dumbstruck by the Night Nurse that he didn't even question the stolen hospital supplies Chase had stowed in the trunk. Chase grinned as House stared. The Night Nurse dressed like a throwback to nursing in the fifties. Her crisp, folded cap perched neatly on her head and her white stockings gleamed in the darkness of the alley outside the clinic. House balanced a box of dressings carefully as he walked, never taking his eyes off the impeccable white uniform ahead of him. She left them alone in the supply room to unpack.

House sidled up to Chase and whispered in his ear. "If I'd known this was a fetish club, I'd have worn my leather."

Chase grinned, pleased that House was finally distracted. House's bewilderment and fascination reminded him that he'd been struck dumb by the Night Nurse the first time, too.
"Remember, everything here is over the top. Just assume everyone has a touch of histrionic personality disorder; it works for me. The Night Nurse it pretty easy to work with; don't patronise her or talk down to her. She's probably as qualified as you are. Maybe more. And don't hit on her; I think she has a thing going with Doctor Strange. I don't want to explain to Cuddy why her Head of Diagnostic Medicine is now a newt."

"Doctor Strange?" House narrowed his eyes. "Wait, do you mean Stephen Strange? Kind of a flake, always going on about his precious hands? I went to college with him. Jerk."

Chase had long ago figured out that 'jerk' was House's code for 'he didn't let me cheat off him.' He opened a carton of pre-filled syringes and checked the labels. "Don't say you heard it from me. I don't want to piss him off, either."

There was a soft tap at the door and it opened gently. The Night Nurse stood perfectly backlit in the corridor. "Doctor Chase. Doctor House. There's a patient for you; I have them in the room on the right."

Chase nodded. "Thank you, Nurse."

As they left the storeroom, House's cane squeaked on the spotless linoleum, and the Night Nurse frowned. House watched, hypnotised, as she raised one finger to her red lips.

"Shhhhh."

Fortunately, House couldn't make his mouth form words to argue.

The waiting room was a lot like the free clinic back at Princeton-Plainsboro with plastic bucket chairs, a low table and a neat pile of outdated magazines. The patients, though, were not like those House was used to seeing. People with scales and brightly coloured skin; fewer than the requisite number of eyes; more limbs than usual. A toddler bobbed above her mother on tiny feathered wings, tethered on a leash.

Chase waved to a few familiar faces and paused to say hello to the baby. As House rounded the corridor, the friendly atmosphere cooled. Chase watched the row of patients assess this stranger, weighing the risk of exposure against the benefits of medical care. He felt an uncomfortable twinge of guilt; he had brought House here to relieve his own fear of discovery. Compared to these patients, his own risk was minimal.

House paused in the doorway, aware that he was the subject of sudden scrutiny. He looked along the row of faces, then met Chase's gaze with narrowed eyes. Undeterred, he rocked forward on his good leg, taking careful steps across the linoleum. When he reached the seats, he paused. With a dramatic flourish, he produced a lollipop from his pocket. The baby beat her wings frantically as she grabbed for the brightly coloured candy, but House held her at bay with an outstretched finger until her mother nodded. He handed over the lollipop and the row of waiting patients relaxed.

"Piece of cake," said House as they walked to the consulting room. "I use similar management strategies on you sometimes. Maybe it's a mutant thing?"

He waited for Chase to deny it. Chase hated himself for checking whether the patients were within hearing range. He kept his mouth closed.

House smirked cruelly. "See what I mean?" Pleased with his own smug deduction, he reached for the door.

Chase put his hand over House's on the handle. This was it, the point where House crossed into Chase's world. "Are you sure you want to do this? We could just head home. There's another world on the other side of this door. Once you step in, it's really hard to find your way back."

House rolled his eyes. "That's supposed to make me not look behind Door Number One? Seriously? That's a mystical sales pitch, not a dissuasive argument. What can possibly be so terrifying on the other side of this door?" He pushed past Chase and into the consulting room.

The patient was a teenage girl with a shock of pink hair and a truculent expression. From her scalp and skin grew long shards of bone.

"Cool," said House.

Chase relaxed a little. This was a repeat customer, and a particularly resilient one. The girl scratched nervously at the junction between bone and skin on her elbow as she glared up at them.

"How's it going, Marrow?" After the incident at Alcatraz, there were more and more mutant teenagers living on the streets of New York; giving themselves codenames and tattoos, forming and reforming assorted gangs. Someone was looking out for them, because they tramped into the clinic for things like minor injuries and infections. Chase often wanted to ask if it was anyone from Westchester – Ororo had an easy rapport with street kids – but asking for names was the fastest way to alienate runaways. "You still taking those multivitamins I gave you guys?"

"Yeah, we're all chowing down on Fred Flintstone." Marrow scratched at a bony protrusion on her scalp and pointed at House. "Who's the old man? That your date for tonight, pretty boy? Hope he tips good, 'cause he's no oil painting."

"He's here to learn the ropes." Chase allowed himself the luxury of a patronising remark. "What can I help you with today?"

"It's no big deal. I wasn't going to come, but whatever. It's free." Marrow shrugged and shook her hands vigorously. "Been getting the tingles. Like my hands have gone to sleep. And my feet, too."

Chase took her hands in his. "Squeeze my fingers."

Marrow did, with somewhat malicious pleasure. Chase raised his eyebrows. "Okay, no problems with your grip."

"No way," said Marrow.

Chase turned her hands over and examined them, checking for colour and temperature at the extremities. "Do they tingle all the time, or just sometimes? Is it worse at night?"

"What?" said House. "You think she has carpal tunnel? She's been staying up too late working on her laptop? With all that bone growth, she's got to be hypocalaemic."

Chase shook his head. "Don't jump to conclusions. We did a blood test the first time I met Marrow. Her serum calcium is stable, as long as she gets enough calcium in her diet. Hence the multivitamins."

House leaned across from his seat on the examination bench and flicked his finger against Marrow's cheek.

"Ow! Fuck you, man." Marrow flinched away and pulled a bone from her shoulder blade as smoothly as a thug draws a knife. She held it capably and defensively in front of her; it dripped blood onto the spotless linoleum floor. The wound in her shoulder closed quickly.

Chase raised both his hands and glared at House. "Are you crazy? You don't just assault a street kid."

Marrow turned the bone knife on Chase. "Hey, I'm not a kid!"

"Did you see her twitch?" House was perfectly calm, as though an edgy homeless teenager wasn't threatening him with a knife."Were you even looking?"

Chase frowned. "Chvostek's sign? Was it there?"

"What? What the hell is wrong with me? Who's this Chvostek? Is he Russian mob?" Marrow's voice was panicked, and she turned from one doctor to the other, switching her bone knife back and forth between her hands.

"František Chvostek was a Czech doctor," said House. "He made an amazing discovery; when your blood doesn't have enough calcium or magnesium or other tasty minerals, the muscles are kind of twitchy." His eyes focused on the knife. "That does suddenly seem relevant."

"Marrow, it's okay. If he's right, we can help you out." Chase pulled open a drawer and took out a mirror. "Here, if you let me do that again, I'll show you what he means. You can tell me if you see it too."

Marrow held the mirror in one hand while Chase repeated the test, tapping the muscle in her jaw. She watched in fascination as her cheek muscle twitched and rippled. "Whoa, that's weird." She put her bone knife down on the desk and flicked her own cheek again. "Freaky."

"What's even cooler is that if you keep flicking it, eventually you'll get an awesome bruise." House reached out for the bone knife. "Can I borrow that?"

"Whatever," said Marrow. "I've got plenty more."

"We'll have to draw some more blood." Chase made plans. "We'll probably have to double up the calcium, maybe check other trace minerals."

"Or, we could just supplement everything," said House. With surprising delicacy he shoved the knife into the wall and used it to prise off a big chunk of plaster. He held it out to Marrow. "Here. Calcium, magnesium, even a little bit of phosphorous. Everything you need to make good bone – and look! There's a whole city full of it. Doesn't that look delicious?"

Marrow looked at the crumbling drywall hungrily. "I guess I've eaten worse." She took the piece of wall in her hand and turned it over and over, looking for a good place to start gnawing.

"Wait," said Chase. "You can't just eat wall. It could have all sorts of crap in it."

"Nah," said House. "I can tell just by looking: this is a quality place."

Chase eyed House dubiously; there was a disturbing exhilaration to his demeanour. He didn't know what reaction he had expected from his boss, but enthusiasm was not on his list. He held the door open and Marrow left, clutching her chunk of plaster defensively.

House rocked back on his heels, prodding the gaping plaster with his cane. "That was fun! Can we do it again?"

Chase sighed. He should be glad that House was excited and engaged, but he felt as if he had unleashed a monster. He called for the next patient, and the night moved on.

---

"You're supposed to be mollifying me." House reached for another steel suture. "There's no point sulking because I'm better at this than you."

Chase teased another fragment of glass from between two scales and dropped it into a kidney dish. "Don't congratulate yourself too soon. This is basic stuff. And I'm not sulking; I'm concentrating."

The man with crocodile skin lay face down on the examination bed so that the doctors could pick out the glass and sew up the lacerations. "No, man, he's right." His voice was muffled by the pillow. "There's a lot of angry energy in this room. I have, like, keen senses."

"See? Even the Prada bag thinks you're sulking." House carefully placed stitches through the thickened layers of skin. Chase was both disturbed and impressed at the speed with which House adapted to treating scaled skin and leathery hide.

"Hey, watch it!" The man turned his head and gaped a toothy grin at House. "My good sense of humour only goes so far. Blood loss makes me kind of hungry, if you know what I mean."

House buttoned his lip obediently. Chase knew it wouldn't last long.

"Gotta say, though, I like him better than that red head you used to work with." The reptile man spoke to Chase, oblivious to the way this tidbit caught House's attention. "He's got a smart mouth, but his hands are real gentle."

Chase teased out another splinter of glass. "Jean was ready to be gentle, but you couldn't keep your hands to yourself." Smile, he told himself. Those were good times, and you laughed then. Smile, or House will never let this go. He curled his mouth up at the edges and hoped for the best.

The crocodile man gave a nostalgic sigh. "Yeah, she was full of sass."

"Sounds like someone I'd like to meet," said House. His voice dripped sarcasm, but he couldn't hide his curiosity.

Chase considered Jean Grey taking on Greg House. Suddenly the smile came easily. "I'd pay good money to see the outcome of that altercation." He reached for the tissue glue and began to seal the wounds and broken scales.

"Heh," said the crocodile man on the treatment bed. "Me too. Get me in as much trouble all over again, but it'd be worth it."

The last patient for the night was eleven feet tall. Too big for the exam room, she sat cross-legged outside the clinic. Even sitting, her head was as high as the doorway to the alley. Chase's heart sank when he saw that she and her teammate wore bright, easily identifiable costumes. They were vigilantes proper, not gangsters or street kids. The girl hunched uncomfortably, holding the remains of her costume, torn in places that left little to the imagination. She cradled her elbow gently in one enormous hand.

"Oh, I could get used to this job." House regarded the acres of skin and spandex with a beatific smile. "If I'd known there were giant women, I'd have volunteered years ago. You guy should put out recruitment posters."

"Come on, House. She's just a kid. Don't you think she's in enough danger just going out on the street trying to help people?" Chase's voice was too sharp and he knew it.

House turned away from the semi-naked giant girl to look at him with interest."Whoa, that's some over-reaction. Something you want to get off your chest before we move onto the attack of the fifty foot woman?"

Chase shook his head. He'd given enough away to House tonight; instead he curled his nervousness into himself. The vigilante kids got to Chase: young kids putting themselves in danger for other people's causes... It made him edgy because he'd nearly been one of them himself. He'd wanted to be one. Every letter from Scott or Jean was a fabulous escape from a world where his mother was drinking herself to death. With adult perspective, he knew that he'd been lucky: after all, he was still alive. Scott, Jean and the Professor were dead, and the fallout from their vigilante exploits continued to hurt Jason. And now, it seemed like there were new kids every week: Spider-Man, Lightspeed, Komodo, Cloud Nine. Someone had to stitch these kids up and tuck them back into Kevlar and spandex, but Chase hated being complicit in something that was going to get them killed.

House cupped his hands around his mouth as an improvised loudspeaker. "Hello up there! I'm Doctor House! What can I do for you today?"

"Hey!" A young man wrapped in a red cape stepped in front of House. "We were told to see Doctor Chase. Back off, dude." He stood between House and his giant teammate with his arms crossed.

House scowled. "What's your fabulous code name, dude? Glambert?"

The boy gave a wide grin. "No. But I can dream!"

"Wiccan! Chill," said the giant girl. "I just want someone to look at my arm."

Chase stepped forward. "I'm Doctor Chase. What happened to your arm? Can I take a look?"

"We were chasing down some muggers and I got caught in a cable. My shoulder kind of popped out of joint. It really hurts." The girl gingerly released her elbow. Chase could see that the shoulder joint was swollen and distended. "The rest of the team is still on the muggers." She seemed desperately keen to reassure Chase.

"We didn't think that she should shrink back to normal size like that, not with the joint all popped out and stuff." Wiccan stood a respectful distance from his team mate to give her some privacy but he kept a watchful eye on House. Poor kid, thought Chase as he slipped on a pair of gloves. Do you know what that wariness will cost you, yet?

"Good thinking." He reached up to probe her shoulder, orienting himself with the enlarged anatomy. "What's your name? I mean, what should I call you?"

"Um," said the girl. "I'm Stature."

"Stature? Sounds like a plus-size clothing brand. I guess that's appropriate." House stood to one side with a sour expression as he examined Chase with narrowed eyes. The girl blushed. Chase could almost hear the blood racing to her cheeks.

Wiccan took Stature's other hand. "Say the word, I'll turn him into whatever you want." He looked House up and down. "Maybe a goat."

House ignored the boy and turned to Chase. "We were having a great time until these kids showed up. Then you got all pissy. What's up with that?"

Chase gently extended Stature's arm, balancing the weight of it on his shoulder. "Be careful, House. These kids know what they're doing. If Wiccan says he can turn you into a goat, I would be inclined to believe him."

"You were fine with the mutant street kid," said House. "You were fine with the flying baby and the guy with one eyeball." He leaned against the clinic door. "You were totally cool with the gangster alligator man, and now that he's gone I can be honest - that guy scared the crap out of me. But the well mannered white kids in uniforms? They're freaking you out, and you really don't want me to notice that. Of all the things you've tried to hide from me, this one freaks you out the most. That's pretty interesting. Don't you think?" He pointed at Wiccan with his cane. The boy flinched and raised his hands as if to sketch out some sigil.

"Stop harassing the kid and get over here. I think this is going to pop back in easily but I'm going to need some help." Chase stepped back to make a second assessment of the girl's height and weight. "Stature, I'm really sorry; this is going to suck. If I give you something for the pain now, I'll have to give you such a massive dose that it could kill you when you return to normal size. So we're going to do this without drugs"

Stature sighed; a great gust of air. "I can take it. How bad?"

Chase pulled a couple of mattresses off gurneys and lay them on the ground to improvise a head rest. "Honestly? It won't be great, but it will be quick." He helped her down on her back, supporting her injured arm as she settled her head on the foam bedding. Wiccan crouched down beside her, nursing her hand in his lap like a cat.

"So, what we're going to do is gently pull your arm away from your body so that the ball at the top can slide back into the socket. Then your tendons and ligaments will take over and pull it into position" Chase lifted her arm up over her head; it towered above them like a sign-post. He looked dubiously up the length of her arm. Even lying on her back, her fingertips nearly brushed the roof above them.

House tipped his head back to look. "My professional recommendation would be a ladder."

The Night Nurse was completely untroubled by the request. She presented them with a sturdy aluminium ladder as calmly as if Chase had asked for a scalpel or swabs. Chase propped the ladder open and climbed as high as he dared. He took Stature's arm and tucked the elbow against his hip, testing his balance and the degree of leverage he would require.

"That's a better height. House, can you hold the ladder? I don't want it to topple."

House hooked his cane over the door handle and limped across. He threw his shoulder against the ladder, bracing himself with his good leg. "Hey, Wiccity Wack! Get over here and help a cripple out."

Wiccan gently put Stature's hand down and leaned against the metal struts of the ladder. Chase took up the tension on Stature's arm. He had to angle his body away from the ladder to guide the limb. He hoped he could rely on House to hold the ladder steady beneath him.

Stature tensed in anticipation, prepared for the quick pull and snap that Hollywood had popularised.

"It's okay," Chase said. "It's not like in the movies; we don't just yank it back into place. It's a slow process. We just keep moving your arm like this, really slowly. Eventually the ligaments will just pull it into place. It takes a bit of time, that's all."

"In fact, this would be a good time for a chat," said House.

"No, it really wouldn't." Chase concentrated on the movement of Stature's arm. He pictured the ball of the humerus being levered into the socket of the shoulder. Anything to distract from House's barbs.

House eased away from the ladder, leaving more and more of the counterweight to Wiccan. He leaned an elbow against a metal rung with a conversational smile. "So, Wiccan. How come you're all so happy to see Doctor Chase? Why him, of all people?"

"You mean out of the many doctors who volunteer here at the clinic?" Wiccan curled one arm around the strut to brace it. "Because there's not a lot of choice. But they say Doctor Chase is okay. He's one of us."

"Amusing," said House. "He's spent the last week denying he's a mutant. If I were you, that would piss me off just a smidge. Don't you think he should just come out and say it?"

"House, will you shut up? This isn't the time." Despite the cold air, Chase was sweating. And it wasn't from the exertion. House always found somewhere new and tender to jab. Chase didn't like to think about how much he craved the approval of the patients he treated here.

Down at ground level, Stature hissed. "Keep talking, please. It's distracting."

"Whatever," said Wiccan with a casual shrug. The boy looked over his shoulder at House."You seem like a massive douche - I wouldn't tell you anything either."

"Douche or not, don't you feel a little betrayed?" House was barely touching the ladder now, but Wiccan had taken up the slack. "He sure looks guilty to me."

Chase could feel the ball of the humerus slipping over the lip of the socket. Any second now.
"Almost there, Stature."

"Guilty of what?" Wiccan closed his eyes as he held the ladder still. He looked as though he wished he could be somewhere else, a place where he didn't have to listen to Stature's little noises of pain.

"Collaboration," said House. "He's siding with the non-mutants. You're out here risking your lives while he's playing it safe. Denying his involvement. Refusing to stand by you."

"His choice, dude." Wiccan leaned his weight into the ladder. "Up to him how he decides to live."

The angle of the joint reached critical; gravity and ligaments took over. With a jerk, Stature's shoulder snapped into position. She shrieked, then instantly relaxed. "Oh, shit! I mean, damn. Ow!"

Wiccan crouched down beside her and stroked her hair. He looked up at Chase, and Chase braced himself for harsh teenage judgement. "Thanks," said Wiccan. His face showed nothing but relief.

"Can I go back to regular size now?" Stature's voice was wan but steady. "It kind of hurts but less than before."

Chase nodded, stepping down from the ladder with care. "Definitely. Once you can get inside the door we'll take an x-ray, make sure there's no fractures." He crouched down beside her and pressed his hands against her shoulder, holding it steady as her body shrunk slowly in size. Her costume adjusted to the size change with her, despite the shredded fabric. These kids had a professional set up. Chase wondered who was mentoring them, and hoped that they were safe.

"Go, Cass." Wiccan held her other hand as they helped her upright. "You're doing awesome."

Chase grinned. "I'll pretend I didn't hear a civilian name just then, shall I?"

"You really trust him," said House. "He's a liar and a coward, and yet you trust him more than me."

Wiccan stood up to face House. "It's pretty basic: he's one of us. You're not. You don't get to make decisions about what's right and what's wrong in our society. So shut up, because you're making yourself look even stupider." He frowned. "More stupid. Whatever."

Unexpectedly, House snorted in approval. "You've got guts, kid. Chase would never look me in the eye and call me stupid."

"To be fair, you are my boss," said Chase as he helped Stature to her feet. "If I called you stupid, the paychecks would probably stop." He carefully hid his smile; House didn't need to know how much Wiccan's words meant.

They helped Stature into the x-ray room and onto the table. House followed, ignoring everyone until Chase and the Night Nurse were discussing pain relief.

"Let's get her some Percocet. Six tablets should be plenty," said Chase. At the mention of narcotics, House's eyes lit up. The Night Nurse nodded and moved silently out of the room, with House on her tail like a bloodhound. Maliciously, Chase let him go after her. The Night Nurse was a match for anything House chose to pull.

Once Chase had Stature in position for the x-ray, he pulled Wiccan behind the protective shield.

"So," said Wiccan and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "It's just you and me now."

Chase laughed. It was a relief – a tension breaker. Chase hadn't realised how much he'd bunched his shoulders until he let them relax. "Kid, you're jail-bait. Stop making me feel like a dirty old man."

"Gross!" said Stature, with her injured arm held still against the table. "And get on with it, this isn't exactly a comfortable position."

"Were you on a team?" Wiccan looked Chase up and down. "In the nineties or something? Or in Scotland? Do they have vigilante teams in Scotland?"

"Australia," said Chase. "Yes, they do. And no, I wasn't. I was a good kid, I studied hard and I went to medical school. You should consider it." He pressed the button and took the first film, then helped Stature reposition herself.

"Ugh, no." Wiccan rolled his eyes as he flopped his back against the wall. "My dad's a cardiologist and my mom's a shrink. I'm almost guaranteed to be a criminal dropout."

Chase raised his eyebrows. "My dad was a doctor. It didn't mess me up that much." It was almost true.

"Liar. I'm sorry, that's just not possible. So, you weren't ever with a team?" Back behind the screen again, Wiccan was hitting Google on his phone. "Maybe you were with the X-Men?"

"No, I never wore a cape. Sorry. I do know the X-Men, but I wasn't ever on their team."

"Oh." Wiccan seemed disappointed. "We haven't met very many people, you know. In the scene."

Stature snorted. "It's so not a scene, Wiccan."

Chase helped her stand upright for the last film. "You know, you're both really young. Have you got someone looking out for you?"

"We do okay," said Stature. "There's enough of us that we can all look out for each other."

"So, got any advice for the newbies?" Wiccan hadn't given up on the outrageous flirtation. He leaned against the bench as if he were at a bar, looking at Chase through his eyelashes.

"I do, actually," said Chase. He loaded the next film and paused before he took the exposure. "Don't let other people convince you to take stupid risks. It can get a bit cultish, the vigilante world."

"We just want to fight crime," said Wiccan. "I don't plan on signing up with Magneto any time soon." Wiccan's eyes widened at Chase's startled expression. "It was a joke! Don't worry. We heard about his recruiting drive before Alcatraz went down. We'd never fall for that kind of garbage."

"It isn't always garbage," said Chase. "It always starts off making perfect sense; remember that." It wasn't a very nice thought, what Erik Lehnsherr could do – had done – with kids this idealistic. "Look, you're going to find out that you can't save everyone. It's disappointing to realise this, but it might save your life one day. You don't have to save everyone to make a difference." He wished he sounded more convincing. He hadn't managed to save anyone. Not when they really needed saving.

"Maybe you can save everyone." Stature's expression was solemn but hopeful. "You never know until you try."

Chase shrugged. Maybe she was right. He bundled the films together. "I'll go develop these. Stature, you're fine to sit up now." At the door, he paused. "Look, if you're ever in trouble, there's a place you can go for help. It's a school in Westchester." Before he could change his mind, he grabbed a notepad and pen and scrawled down the address. While he wrote, he heard a scuffle in the hallway, followed by an electric sizzle and a waft of burnt hair. Wiccan and Stature slipped into defensive postures beside the door.

"Relax – that's just Doctor House investigating the security system on the drug room," said Chase, handing over the slip of paper. "I'll check in with him while these are developing." He headed down the corridor before he could snatch the note back out of Stature's hands.



---
Chase snickered to himself all the way home.

House kept his hands in his pockets and scowled. "Yeah, it's hilarious. Stephen Strange is a real card."

"I warned you. I told not to mess with things but you had to go poking around." Chase looked across at House's wrists; a band of soft brown fur was visible where the cuffs of his jacket ended and his hands disappeared into his pockets.

"You warned me not to hit on the incredibly hot nurse. You failed to mention the Curse of the Monkey Hands on the drug room door. For God's sake, I feel like a Muppet."

Chase stole another glance and snorted quietly to himself.

House caught him peeping and thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. "Keep your eyes on the road! I don't want to get pulled over like this. What am I going to tell the traffic cop? 'Sorry Officer, I spent the whole day masturbating. Trust me on this, the nuns were telling the truth all along!'" He flopped back in the seat with a despondent sigh. "Am I going to have to spend the rest of my life waxing my hands?"

"Who knows? I have no idea how Doctor Strange does what he does. He claims not to be a mutant. He says he's a magician." Personally, Chase wanted to call Doctor Strange and congratulate him. He certainly had a knack for ironic punishments.

House slouched further down, watching the road with a morose expression. "He's a jerk, is what he is."

Chase took pity on him. "Look, it'll probably wear off. Doctor Strange is quirky, but he's not a sadist. Or, you could call him and apologise."

House shoved a furry brown finger in Chase's face. "I'm not giving that egomaniac the satisfaction of a phone call." He looked at his hand and sighed, then shoved it back in his pocket. "Not unless it doesn't wear off. I don't want anyone seeing me like this."

Chase kept his mouth closed, but it took a lot of effort. House watched him drive for a little while, then pulled his hat down over his eyes. "Thanks for avoiding the moral statement. Wake me when we're home."

It wasn't long before they were pulled up outside Wilson's place.

"Okay, then. It's been an experience. Let's never speak of it again." House hoisted himself out of the car and reached for his phone. In the soft yellow light of the street lamp, his be-furred hands looked like particularly warm fur gloves.

"If you say so," said Chase. House had needled and harassed him all night, but suddenly the car seemed very empty.

House stabbed nimbly at the phone with furry fingers. "Famous Dave's Village Pizza, please!" He covered the receiver and leaned back into the car. "Stephen Strange – he still lives in that big old brownstone in the Village, right?"

Chase shrugged. "I think so. That's where they have him on the superhero tour map, anyway."

"Great!" House put the phone to his ear and affected a mincing English accent. "Hello, this is Doctor Stephen Strange. I'd like to place an order for seventy-nine extra large pies with the lot. Seventy-nine, do you understand? It's a prime number, very mystical. Extra anchovies, also. There's a good chap."

Chase shook his head and pulled away from the curb. This was not going to end well. It was best to get far, far away. Still, he had survived the night and maybe House would visit the clinic again some time. He turned the car towards Princeton-Plainsboro with a light heart.

---

The hospital was a different place at three in the morning, half-light in the corridors and staff with shadowed faces walking on soft soles. Chase found himself drawn to the vivid brightness and frantic activity of the ER. He caught himself walking in that direction, stopped outside the double doors and realised he was going to check on Allison. Habits take time to change. He took a few deep breaths and hoped nobody had seen him standing there, then turned and walked with deliberate calm to the locker rooms.

It was shift change, so the locker room bustled. Chase nodded to a few hollow-eyed interns finally finishing a three day cycle of work. He grabbed a change of clothes, rolled his eyes at the pile of laundry he was collecting at the bottom of his locker, and slipped into the shower. He'd be able to steal some sleep on a cot in the intern's lounge.

Why had he given those two kids contact details for the school? Chase blamed House, harping on and on about passing for human. Chase had been comfortably suppressing that kind of thinking for a while, even after Jason had come back into his life. Now he leaned against the tiled wall and let the endless scalding water – one of the few benefits of living at the hospital – scour his skin while he thought.

There had been good times at the school. He'd made real friends there. Maybe he had been too young to see his friends as anything other than perfect, which is why it was so baffling that they would abandon Jason. Wiccan and Stature were older and more level-headed. They already had field experience. Perhaps they could benefit from the protections the school had to offer without buying the party line.

He pushed away from the wall and sluiced water from his hair, turned off the water and grabbed his towel. He'd feel less morose after some sleep. Then, when there was a spare moment in the day, he'd have another look at his finances. There had to be some margin there for a deposit on a smaller place; if Jason stayed well, if he could bamboozle his way out of some of those bills. He could haul his life back into some order again. He'd weathered much worse and triumphed. First priority, though, was sleep.

---

The operating theatre is eerily silent; no monitors or clatter of instruments. A patient lies on the table, anonymous except for the window of skin visible through the surgical draping. Chase wonders why his hands are bare. Has he forgotten to scrub? He steps backwards; the tiles are tacky and cold beneath his feet. There is something he is trying to remember.

The intercom clicks on with an ancient hiss of static. House's voice floats down from the observation window, dry and distant. "Did you think friendship comes for free? You're more of an idiot than I gave you credit for."

The draping over the patient slips away from the table, pooling like lake water on the white tiles. The patient's back gleams white under the surgical lights. Chase runs a finger along the spine from the sacral curve to where the atlas fit neatly under the skull. Every vertebra stands out in sharp relief, throwing shadows across the skin.

"It's not what you think." Jean speaks from the shadows gathering in the corner of the theatre."Remember? NoaH told MariaH To Try Cervical Counting." The student mnemonic falls from her lips as easily as it had years ago in Henry's apartment. Jean has always been the better student.

Soft noises come from the operating table. Cables and tubing slither over the man's back, ease themselves gently under the skin and into the spinal column. Chase knows this patient.

"They left me there to die. Do you remember?" A small girl crouches under the operating table, knees tenting her white linen nightgown. Her eyes are mismatched, one blue and one green, looking through unkempt dirty blonde hair.

"Yes," says Chase. Now he recognises the room. This is some tiny rural hospital in MacKenzie, British Columbia. The doctors and nurses are speechless with horror at what has washed up on the shores of the lake. They are so grateful to Chase. He knows what to do, he will take it off their hands.

Allison made this journey with him; Chase wonders where she is. Beside the operating table, a respirator leaps into life with a hiss. Chase blinks at it. His mind is moving slowly in the cold. There is something he is trying to remember

"Robert!" The girl stands before him with an imperious posture, hands clenched by her side."You're dreaming. Concentrate! I'm tired. I don't want to fight your demons."

It had been so long since Jason had walked through his dreams. Chase found it hard to claw his mind back to lucidity. Jean loomed from the corner of the room, hair drifting to and fro in an invisible current. There was a delicacy to lucid dreaming: the knack was to ignore the phantoms dredged up by his subconscious. Chase was out of practice; reality was slippery and fluid. Chase turned his back on Jean deliberately.

"Back then, I thought it was her calling me." He spoke carefully, aware now that it was within his own dream. "I thought it must be her inside my mind. I thought I would walk through that door and find Jean. I'd take her home, I'd be the hero." He remembered the shock of seeing a man's body face down on that inadequate bed. Jason's body had been shredded and bruised by rocks but not enough to hide the surgical scars and implants.

"Disappointed?" The girl's voice was clear and sharp; Chase's mind helpfully supplied the sound of ice cracking underfoot. The floor beneath his bare feet became unpleasantly slick.

Chase bent down to look the girl in the face. "Only in myself. I never asked the questions that would have kept you safe." He ignored the icy water welling up between the tiles, even though his feet were turning blue. He wondered if they were poking out from his blanket in the intern's lounge. Dream imagery had been easier to evade when he and Jason were at school, when they could practice every night.

The girl crept forward from under the operating table. "I thought they were coming to save me but they left me to die under the rocks and the water. And now they've all forgotten me."

"I will never forget about you," said Chase. "Didn't I promise? Never again." He scooped her up and she wrapped her arms around him. Jason only ever took this form when he was very, very frightened. A horrible fear curled around Chase's heart: stories of people seeing loved ones, miles away from where they were dying.

The girl pressed her hand against Chase's forehead and they were suddenly both warm and dry. "Silly. I'm not dying."

Chase leaned his head against her small hand. "Then don't scare me like this! What are you doing here? You can't afford to burn energy like this, not after the last round of seizures. "

"You're going to hear bad things about me." Mismatched eyes regarded him solemnly. "Whatever they say, don't leave me alone." She stole a sideways glance at the monitors; they lit up, beeping and buzzing frantically. "You're going to wake up now."

Chase blinked awake with a gasp. In the darkened lounge, every pager and every cell phone was ringing. All around him interns struggled upright, reaching for their devices and rubbing their eyes. Chase pushed his way out into the hallway. Doctors and nurses were stopping mid-stride, checking their pagers and changing direction at a run. He swallowed; his mouth was dry and tasted metallic.

---

Despite the shower, Chase felt rumpled and uneasy. People gathered in little clusters along the corridors but the majority of the staff stood expectantly in the lobby, waiting for an official announcement. Rumour rolled like quicksilver through the crowd. Chase's skin crawled as he heard whispers of buildings demolished or massive city-wide fires. The switchboard – normally a prime source of gossip – was closed to public access. Chase heard the sound of ceaseless ringing from inside

Is this what Jason was talking about? A telepath who could cast illusions left a lot of scope for disaster. It wouldn't take much to convince a pilot to point the nose of his plane downwards, for example. Jason would never deliberately cause harm. He knew that.

Staff flocked in through the main doors, unwrapping scarves and slipping out of coats as they chatted nervously about the emergency. On the other side of the glass, Chase saw Taub shaking the rain from his umbrella. Taub waved as he came through the doors.

"Hey! How'd you get here so fast? You pulled an extra shift, again?" Taub looked over his shoulder at the staff congregating in the lobby, distracted from difficult questions by the crowd. "This is huge. What happened?"

Chase shook his head. "They've closed the switchboard. There's going to be a briefing." He watched Taub slip his gloves into his pocket and had a sudden, horrible thought. "Do you think they'll call House in?"

Taub raised his eyebrows. "It will make our lives easier if they don't."

"You don't know the half of it," said Chase, wondering how soft, brown fur would look under latex gloves.

Foreman and Thirteen were already in the lobby; Thirteen had commandeered a row of chairs. She sat with her legs propped up, tapping on her phone with intense concentration. Foreman leaned back with his arms spread along the back of the seats, watching the bustle of people in the lobby.

He beckoned Chase over; for once Chase didn't mind the imperious gesture. "Have you seen House yet?"

Chase shook his head. His expression must have betrayed something of the squirming in his belly because Thirteen frowned and looked closer. "Are you okay?"

Chase nodded, standing up a little straighter. "Didn't sleep well. Any word on what's going on?"

Thirteen held up her phone; Chase could see Twitter streaming past. "Something big, something in Trenton. Choppers in the air, fire trucks. It started about half an hour ago."

Chase flopped into the chair beside her, suddenly weak at the knees. Jason wouldn't deliberately hurt someone, but lying in that bed meant he had a lousy sense of perspective.

Cuddy gave the briefing from the balcony above the gathered staff. "There has been an incident at the Trenton Transit Center. Details are still thin on the ground, but we are activating our major incident plan. We're a priority receiving point; that means emergency services will bring the majority of the injured to our doors."

Admin staff moved through the crowd, handing out coloured vests and response kits. Chase took his – orange, as a supervisor for the urgent care group – and slipped it over his head. Taub and Thirteen were in his group. Foreman's vest was red. Chase tried to remember where Allison would have been assigned; probably emergency care with Foreman.

Cuddy leaned against the banister. "It's going to be a long night. We don't have numbers, but expect upwards of a hundred patients over the next few hours. We've all done the training for this kind of emergency: stick to your assigned roles, treat your patients as swiftly as possible. And take rest breaks when you're told." Cuddy looked right over Chase's head as she spoke. "Remember: lives are depending on how we all work together."

Chase turned to follow her gaze; House leaned on the wall by the front doors, unwrapping his scarf with hands encased in leather gloves. Chase shoved through to the back of the crowd.

"What are you doing here?" He hissed at House through clenched teeth. "People will see you..." There would be questions by suspicious people. It would be too easy for them to find a path to Jason's bedside.

House smirked and tugged at one finger of his glove suggestively. Chase watched in horror as the glove slid away from House's hand – to reveal smooth pink skin. He blinked while House removed the other glove with his teeth, waggling his eyebrows at Chase. "That's it for the show, unless you've got a mighty tip."

"What the hell did you tell Stephen Strange to get him to lift the curse?"

House spread his hands like a minister giving a sermon, admiring his pink digits. "After my pager went off, we spoke, man to man, about the lives at stake. I guess he decided the karmic burden would be too great." He turned his hands over and examined the nails as though he'd just had a manicure. "Now would be an opportune moment for a joke about Rosie Palmer, but perhaps that would be in bad taste."

A woman from Admin gave House an evil look as she handed him a green vest.

"Green means you're assigned to the delayed care unit," said Chase. He pointed to the correct area. A wave of sirens was slowly growing louder; they'd be kerbside in minutes." Delayed care is by the cafeteria, you'd better go and check in." House shrugged nonchalantly and walked slowly away, still wearing his coat and hat.

Chase set his jaw and turned to walk back to Urgent Care. Goosebumps crept over him. He looked back over his shoulder – House was watching him with narrowed eyes.

Taub reappeared at Chase's elbow and leaned in close to whisper in his ear. "In the last drill, Cameron was supposed to watch out for House."

Chase looked at him in surprise. "Why?" Right now, he really didn't want to be thinking about Allison working side by side with House. Or why she'd never told him about it.

"Because he never went to any of the drills," said Taub. "And because, honestly, he's only going to roam around and do his own thing anyway. Cuddy had Cameron assigned to keep an eye on him and push him in the right directions."

The sirens were getting closer. Chase looked across at House, who was holding his green vest out at arm's length, looking at it dubiously. He sighed, pulled off his orange vest and handed it to Taub. "I'll take care of him. Let Cuddy know I'm looking after House, okay?" He slipped away from the Urgent Care section and stationed himself next to House.

House handed the green vest over on the end of his stick. "Here, you wear it. It'll really make your eyes pop!" He leaned down to add in a conspiratorial whisper, "But not in a freaky mutant way."

"Thanks," Chase slipped it over his head. The first wave of ambulances roared up to the intake bay. Over the clatter of gurneys came the shouting voices of paramedics. Chase did one last check that he had everything: gloves, stethoscope, penlight. He took a deep breath and tried to banish thoughts of Jason and mutants and anything else that would distract him.

House unwrapped a piece of gum and chewed it with a bored expression. "So we're what? The bandaid and suture team?"

"We'll be getting the first wave of patients. In a disaster, the least injured patients are the easiest to move so they arrive first. The more serious the injury, the longer it takes to get them stabilised." Chase looked back at House, who was the only person in the lobby still wearing a hat. House caught him staring and gave him an equally defensive glare. Confused, Chase looked away.

The patients came on gurneys or hobbling on foot, piling out of ambulances which then wheeled away with sirens blaring. The injured were pale with dust which the rain had quickly turned to mud. It dripped from their clothes as they were shepherded to the appropriate areas.

Chase's first patient was walking and held a dressing against his forehead. Chase sat the man down on a chair. He peeled the dressing away to examine the laceration, then started his primary assessment.

House waved his first patient on to the doctor waiting behind him. "So, what do you think happened?"

Chase ignored him, carefully cleaning and taping the wound in his patient's forehead. The patient, a tall man in a blue coverall, helpfully answered the question. "Whatever it was, it hit a central support. Three floors stacked together like cards. Had to be terrorists, is all I'm saying."

"Wow," said House and looked pointedly at Chase for a reaction. Chase did a final series of checks for head injury, then sent the man to the recovery area. He gestured for another patient, and turned angrily to House. "Why are you doing this? Terrorist doesn't mean mutant. And anyway, I thought we were done with the mutant thing."

"I can't help it," said House. "After all this time, I'm starting to like it when you flinch."

Chase shook his head and turned to greet his next patient, a woman with a bloodstained jacket wadded against her shoulder.

"So," said House conversationally to the woman while Chase cut the sleeve of her blouse. "I heard it was mutant terrorists."

The woman paled. "Oh. My. God. Is it contagious?" She clutched at her collar with her uninjured arm. "Do I need a shot or something?"

Chase reached out backwards with his foot and pressed hard on House's toe. "Mess with your own patients, will you?"

House edged out of range. He summoned the next man in line, and got to work. The ambulances arrived with another wave of injured. House kept blissfully quiet, and for some hours Chase was able to lose himself in the endless flow of patients. It didn't take long, however, for House's rumour to come full circle.

"I heard it was mutant terrorists!" The businessman in the tattered suit ignored the pain of his broken wrist to impart this tender morsel of gossip. "They're saying it was Magneto or some whack-job like that. Maybe that Spider-Man; he's a shady character if I ever met one."

"I'm guessing you're a Daily Bugle kind of guy." Chase filled out the paperwork for an x-ray and handed it over.

The man snorted. "That's for sure! J. Jonah isn't afraid to tell it like it is. Without men like him, we'd be overrun with genetic freaks." He clutched the slip Chase had given him and looked around. "So, where do I go now?"

Chase pressed his lips together for a moment as he debated with his conscience. "Radiology is on the fourth floor. Just head up in the elevator and take a seat outside the blue doors." The man nodded and walked away with purpose, ignoring several signs that pointed him towards Radiology on this floor. Chase watched him disappear. A broken wrist wasn't going to kill the man. If he was stupid enough to believe what he was told instead of reading the signs around him, then he deserved to sit for hours outside the fourth floor storeroom.

Carlos tapped him on the shoulder. "Things are calming down in this section, so I'm sending half of you off for a rest break. There's breakfast in the cafeteria; be back here in an hour." He made a face. "And take Doctor House with you, if you can."

Chase nodded without looking up, initialled the rest of the paperwork and added it to the stack of processed files. It was suspiciously quiet in his area. He looked around the Delayed Care section; House was nowhere to be seen.

"Excuse me," Chase pushed gently through the press of people milling around the doors. He worked his way across the lobby to the Urgent Care section where Taub, Thirteen and Foreman were assigned.

Thirteen was working on a woman with an open fracture of the tibia. Chase caught her eye, and she leaned away from the patient. "What?"

"Have you seen House? He nicked off."

"I saw him heading towards his office." Thirteen gestured with one gloved hand, then went back to work.

Chase rolled his eyes and worked his way back through the crowds towards the corridors. He strode into House's office. House was caught in the arms of another man, grappling frantically.

"Uh, sorry!" Chase spun on his heel and walked out swiftly. He would evaluate what he had just seen later, over a stiff drink. House had never really grasped the fact that the walls of his office were transparent.

"Come back," House called in a strangled voice. "Get back here... oof!"

Chase took a hesitant step backwards and peeked into the office. The man House was struggling with was... House. He was wearing the same coat, the same flat cap and the same expression of outrage.

"He's a shapeshifter, you idiot!" House on the left sneered.

"Well, of course he'd say that," said the other House. "If he wanted you to think he was me."

"Okay," said Chase. "Two Houses. That's two too many for the world to bear." He looked to see which one held the cane, but it lay discarded on the ground in front of them.

"Very funny," said House on the right. "Remind me to dock your pay."

"You're very good," said the other House to him. "You must be a quick study, to pick up my delicate turn of phrase so quickly."

"That's exactly what I'd say," said House on the right. "If I were the imposter, of course." He kicked out at the bookcase, toppling a pile of books down onto the other House. There was another brief struggle. House on the left pinned House on the right against the wall, arm across his throat.

He looked back over his shoulder. "Are you going to help me? Or do I have to fight him with one leg tied behind my back, figuratively speaking?"

"What if you're the shapeshifter?" said Chase. "If I come near you, you'll clock me over the head."

"Don't be a moron!" This was House on the right, his face turning livid. "Do something! Use your mutant power, whatever the hell that is!"

"I don't have to do anything. If this is the shapeshifter I saw the other day, I know it's painful for you to change shape." Chase crossed his arms. "And the reason is in the right lower quadrant on the lateral line."

Chase had to commend House's reflexes. The House on the right shoved his knee with medical precision and pugilistic speed into the abdomen of the other man. The House on the left fell to the ground with a strangely high-pitched scream. His face slipped with eerie fluid movement back to that of the chalk-white Mr Smith.

House fell back into his chair with a grunt, rubbing his leg. "That was less fun than Hollywood has led me to believe."

"I warned you," said Chase. "This stuff, it follows you home." He checked that nobody was coming down the corridor, then gently pressed his foot against Mr Smith's abdomen."I have pretty good balance – it comes from being a surfer – but I can't stand on one leg forever. I told you the rule. I made it pretty clear: you don't bring the fight to my door. So, are we good? Are we done with the hostage taking?"

The man writhed under his shoe. "Stop! I needed a face! I needed someone official, so I could get away from here!"

House leaned forward in the chair, looking down on the man. "Why come back, if you need to get away?" He looked back up at Chase. "Is it common for mutants to make no sense? I mean, I see it in you a lot but I don't like to rely on anecdotal evidence."

Chase crouched down to ground level. "You were at the Transit Center, weren't you? Was it you? Did you cause the collapse?" Hope surged; maybe it had nothing to do with Jason after all.

Mr Smith shook his head, and let his facsimile of House's clothes slip back to an unremarkable t-shirt and jeans. He pressed his hand to his stomach, where green blood seeped from the re-opened puncture wound. "Not me, no. A man following me; he shot some kind of ray. A laser, maybe? I ran, and I made it to the foyer before the building came down. But if the police catch me, what will they believe? They will not look past my face. You know how it is for us."

"Well, Chase doesn't," said House. "He's busy fitting in with us humans. But I get your point."

Chase shook his head. "What was he like, this guy who was following you? Was he police? FBI? Is he coming here?"

The man gave a bitter snort. "If he is alive, I think he will be coming here. Because the building fell on him."

Chase stood up. "I'll help you out, but don't be an idiot. House is probably the worst person to impersonate. Here," He reached into his pocket and issued the man a visitor's pass. "This will get you into the waiting area for family. Sit there for a while, then just walk out the door. Nobody is monitoring family members, just those who were injured. "

The shapeshifter eased his way upright and took the pass with a grateful nod. "Thank you." As he walked out the door and headed for the lobby, he slipped into the form of a chubby teenage boy with mousy hair and acne scarred cheeks.

House rubbed his chin. "I think I've figured it out. You're Get Out of Jail Free Man. Your superpower is to rescue people."

Chase thought about that desperate drive to MacKenzie two years ago. "You know, I think you might be right." Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing after all. He checked the corridor again.

"What are you looking for now?" House leaned back in his armchair. "I'm exhausted."

"I have to go and find this guy who brought the building down," said Chase."When it gets out that mutants are involved, people are going to be angry. They'll tear him and any other mutants apart." He eyed House, who still hadn't taken off his flat cap or coat. "And that means anyone who looks at all different from what they call human."

House shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Need a hand?"

By mid-morning the Urgent Care section was frantic and crowded. Nurses and orderlies tried to keep track of patients and doctors, but order crumbled under the frenzied determination to save lives. Every new siren brought another wave of badly injured patients to the doors. The police presence grew as the day progressed.

House peered at the chart of a man on a respirator. "How will we know when we've found this guy? Is there some kind of identifying mark for you-know-what?" He held up a hand. "Don't show me. I'm still feeling a little shaky after the encounter with the other you-know-what."

Chase flicked through the admissions sheet; it was filled with John and Jane Does, patients unconscious on admission. He shrugged. "Look for anything that sticks out. You're the master diagnostician. What catches your eye?"

House frowned and shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat as he surveyed the room. Chase looked too. None of the patients he could see were visibly mutants. That didn't mean that the man who used a laser weapon wasn't here, just that his power wasn't obvious.

"How about those guys there?" House pointed with his chin towards the front doors: a sleek black sedan parked kerbside. Around the car, a group of men and women in blue law-enforcement windbreakers stood in a huddle. At a signal from a mild-looking man with a receding hairline, they quietly dispersed through the crowds. The backs of their jackets read SHIELD.

Chase dragged House away from the lobby to the cafeteria where he felt safely anonymous in the bustling crowd of staff and civilians. He flopped into a plastic chair. "SHIELD. We are so screwed. SHIELD will send us all to Gitmo."

House grabbed a plate of sandwiches and shoved one into Chase's hand. "Eat this and shut up. We're not going anywhere."

"They're looking for this guy Mr Smith told us about," said Chase. He looked at the sandwich: egg salad. He took a tentative nibble; he hadn't eaten for hours. "They are going to round us up and carry us away."

"Chin up, Skippy! We could find the guy first and hand him over. Ask for a pardon." House crammed half a sandwich into his mouth.

Chase snorted. "Like they'd listen to you. Whatever you're hiding under that hat means that to all intents and purposes, you're a mutant too. Today, you're one of us."

"I'd rather not be," said House.

Somewhere, Chase found the energy to smirk at him. "Pity you don't get a choice then."

House looked at Chase thoughtfully. "They can't tell you're a mutant."

Chase shrugged. "Who knows what technology they have with them?"

"If SHIELD could tell you were a mutant – and don't think I haven't noticed that you've stopped denying it – they'd have dragged you off already. Therefore they can't tell you're a mutant. Therefore our mystery man is still out there somewhere. All we have to do is find him, get him healed and get him out of here. Then I'll go and punch Stephen Strange in the face." House headed out of the cafeteria.

"Is that all we have to do?" Chase asked nobody in particular. He wasn't used to having House on his side.

Chase and House watched the ebb and flow of patients being admitted and assessed. The SHIELD agents were ever-present, standing quietly in corners observing but doing nothing to interfere with the doctors. House gave a sudden grunt of interest. "What makes a neurologist frown?" He took off at a rapid clip, swinging his cane with purpose.

"Uh, is this a riddle?" asked Chase as he followed. He could see Foreman just ahead of them, head down and scans clutched in his hand as he walked towards the acute care rooms. "I don't think I get it."

"Neither does Foreman," said House. "Foreman's natural state of existence is to assume that he knows exactly what's going on. As much as I like to mock that, I only hire the best. If he doesn't know what's going on, that's got to be pretty interesting." He swept into the patient's room with Chase in his wake.

Taub stood by the end of the bed holding a chart while Foreman leaned over the patient with a penlight in hand. Chase looked at the patient, and for a moment thought he had slipped back into Jason's dreamscape. On the bed lay Scott Summers, unconscious and hooked up to monitors that chirped out merry facts about his heart rate and brain activity.

Chase blinked while his mind did the automatic reality check that becomes a reflex when you've lived with telepaths. This was not a dream. Scott was lying right there in front of him and Foreman was peeling back one eyelid to check his response.

"Wait! Stop!"

He was too slow; Foreman held Scott's eye open. Chase made a split second decision before the ceiling fell in, and chose to protect the person nearest to him. With speed that would have made Scott proud, he shoved Taub to the ground and threw himself over the top of the man's body.

Nothing happened. After a moment, Taub shifted uncomfortably. "Doctor Chase, do you mind if I get up now?"

Chase released Taub and stood, heart pounding with unneeded adrenaline. The ceiling was intact. In the bed Scott lay untroubled, eyes closed. The monitors continued to chirrup happily while Taub and Foreman stared at Chase.

"Cool." House leaned in the corner with his arms crossed.

"What the hell was that about?" Foreman looked suspiciously from Chase to House.

"Um, sorry." Chase made a self-deprecating face. "I haven't been sleeping well." He shrugged. It was the first time he'd traded on being newly single, and he kind of hated it.

"This is some kind of joke, isn't it? I knew it! This really isn't the day for childish behaviour. Dressing up one of House's coma patient TV buddies and pretending he's a victim of the collapse is in really poor taste." Foreman was really angry; he punctuated each sentence with a finger jabbing the air.

"He's in a coma?" Chase snatched the chart out of Taub's hands and scanned it.

"More importantly, what makes you think this is a joke?" House leaned over Chase's shoulder and read.

"This guy wasn't at the Transit Center," said Foreman. "Look at his MRI: he has huge pre-existing trauma around the optic chiasm. If it were from the collapse, he'd be in crisis now. His ICP would be through the roof. It's old damage. This man wouldn't be able to walk, let alone catch a bus. He's a vegetable. Dressing him up like a victim is kind of sick."

"But the EEG is good," said Taub with a dogged expression. "He's in perfectly normal alpha wave sleep. If you ignore the MRI, he's just a patient with a concussion."

"If you ignore the MRI? Oh, sure. The man's brain is a boiled egg. Why not ignore that, too?" Foreman and Taub had clearly been at this argument for some time now.

Chase looked at the scans on the lightbox. He and Jean had pored over Scott's scans in the past, trying to figure out why his mutant power was fixed in the on position. He was disturbingly familiar with the inside of Scott Summers' head, and he knew this damage was old and functional. When he'd last seen Scott Summers, he was not a vegetable. Then again, Scott was supposed to be dead. Chase had parted company with the school before that, so the details of Scott's death were a little hazy. He looked at Scott: unconscious, in a hospital gown. He looked malnourished. He needed a haircut and a shave; somehow it was even more disturbing to see Scott unkempt.

"Yes, " said House, pushing Foreman towards the door. "You've got me; this was an incredibly complicated ploy to upgrade my cable. And I'd have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for you pesky kids!" He snatched the chart out of Chase's hands, shoved Taub out into the corridor and slammed the door shut. Taub and Foreman stood gaping in the hallway, but House flung the blinds closed. The room was suddenly dark, lit only by the blue light from the monitors.

Chase looked at House warily. "What was that all about?"

"You know this guy? He one of your cape friends?" House poked Scott in the neck. "He's got to be the one we're after. We need to wake him up and get him out of here." He reached across to the storage cabinet and took out a syringe.

"What are you going to give him?"

"Nothing." House uncapped the needle with his teeth. He grabbed Scott's ankle and cradled it in his palm, then jammed the needle into the ball of the foot. Scott woke and moved in a blur. In one swift movement he leapt from the bed and curled an arm around House's neck, dragging him to the ground in a chokehold. His eyes were closed the whole time, even as he crouched on the ground holding House still.

"Wait, Scott! Stop!" Chase held out his hands, even though Scott couldn't see them. "It's okay, you're safe. You're in the hospital."

Scott tilted his head in Chase's direction. "Robert?" His voice was husky, as if he didn't speak often.

Chase nodded, then realised Scott couldn't see. "Yes, it's me. You're in Princeton-Plainsboro." He tried to defuse the situation. "And your ass is hanging out of your gown."

Scott stood up and dragged House with him, still in a chokehold. The flat cap had flown off during the struggle and Chase could what House was hiding under there; little furry ears sat neatly on the top of his head. The ears were pert and round and they poked up through his salt and pepper hair like a cartoon monkey.

Scott ran his hands over the soft brown fur and House squirmed unhappily in his grip. "Nice company you're keeping. Who's your friend, Hello Kitty?"

Chase picked up the cap and jammed it back on House's head. "That's my boss you're molesting. Now, lie down and pretend to be harmless. This place is crawling with SHIELD agents."

House patted his head and ran his hands down his coat as if smoothing ruffled feathers. "Give me one good reason why we shouldn't just hand him over."

Chase tapped the cap that covered up House's magical ears. "Because if one goes down, we all go down."

Once the neurological issue was resolved, Chase found that Scott's injuries were not severe: a low-grade concussion and a fractured rib. House watched while he carried out the examination but when Scott failed to do anything more spectacular, he skulked off to see if Foreman had gone to snitch on them.

Chase taped Scott's ribs with ruthless efficiency; Scott hissed as the tape pulled tight around his chest. "That will hold them if you need to run." Chase didn't know what to say. How do you start a conversation with a person you barely know anymore? So, have you been well? I heard you died. By the way, why did you leave my best friend to die at Alkali Lake?

"It's been a while," said Scott. "I heard you got married."

"Yeah, for a little while. You never met Allison. We worked together here." Okay, thought Chase. We'll keep it bland.

"It sounds like it didn't work out. I'm sorry."

Chase shrugged, though he knew Scott couldn't see it. "It's early days." He rested his fingertips on Scott's eyelids; there was no heat, no buzz of energy. "What's up with your power? While you were unconscious you went through four or five pupillary checks with no ill effects." He picked a fragment of plaster out of Scott's hair. "But I assume something happened at the Transit Center."

Scott nodded. "It was gone. I thought it was gone forever until today." He straightened his back. "How bad was it, at the Transit Center? I tried to pull it back, but I know I hit a wall."

"It isn't great." Movement at the door caught Chase's eye. A SHIELD agent was peering through the observation window, curiosity piqued by the closed blinds. Chase opened the door briefly." Can I help you?"

The man's mild smile failed to give an impression of harmlessness. "Everything all right in here?"

Chase nodded, professional demeanour carefully in place. "My patient is experiencing photophobia; it's common in concussion. We also need to keep the room quiet, if you don't mind. We don't want to cause a seizure."

The agent looked at Scott sitting on the bed: head bowed, eyes closed, spotted with dust and bruises. He was the very picture of a victim. There's nothing here to see, Chase chanted inside his head. We are unremarkable and irrelevant.

It worked. The agent nodded and closed the door softly behind him. Chase waited another moment, watching the agent walk away down the corridor. "We have to get you out of here. You need some clothes. And a visor, if you can't trust your power."

Scott shook his head. "Haven't got one. Haven't needed one since I went back to Alkali Lake. Don't really need one now, I guess. I've done without before, I can learn to do it again." His jaw was set with familiar stubbornness. It was around this time in most arguments that Jean would give Scott a good slap. Chase's resolve to keep himself cool and distant weakened just a little.

He sat on the bed beside Scott. "They don't know you're alive, do they? Back at the school."

"They don't need me. I don't need them."

"That seems a little harsh," said Chase. "I have my differences with them, but they actually think you're dead. You could call them. You could pick up a visor, then go your own way."

"It doesn't work that way, and you know it." Scott folded his hands in his lap. "If I go back there, I'll be there forever. Let them think Jean killed me. She may as well have."

"But they've been mourning you." Despite his issues with the X-Men and the way the school had treated Jason, Chase was appalled. This was Scott Summers. The team leader doesn't run away from his responsibilities. House's face appeared suddenly at the window in the door, and Chase jumped. Not real team leaders, anyway.

"Let them think I'm dead. I'm not that man anymore. Look what happened at the Transit Center. How many people are dead today because of me?"

Chase took a deep breath. It was no use telling Scott it was an accident, not when he was in this mood. "Okay, I respect that decision. But you can't go out in the world too scared to open your eyes. That's insane. I'll go to the school and dig up some lenses for you. It wouldn't hurt to check out your old scans, anyway. Maybe I can figure out what happened to your power."

Scott seemed to be turning the idea over in his mind. "You'd go back there?"

"If it means you'll be safer, yeah. I can face a bit of personal discomfort for one of my patients." Personal discomfort was an understatement, but Chase thought he could get away without Scott knowing how he much dreaded going back. Scott did have his eyes closed, after all.

Scott smiled to himself. "We should have had you on the team from the start."

Chase shrugged. "I found my own team in the end."

---

House caught up with him in the parking garage. There, his coat and hat didn't stand out at all. "Where're you going, buddy?"

"Nowhere you're invited," said Chase. He locked the doors before House could climb into the car. Negotiating the personal minefield of the Xavier School with House in tow was unimaginable. He rolled the window down a little way. "Keep an eye out for Scott. Remember: if SHIELD gets hold of him, you'll be next." And then me, he added silently. And then Jason.

House put his hand over his heart. "His safety is my own."

"You better believe it," said Chase, and started the car.

---

The clouds eased back as he swung the car into Greymalkin Lane. Sun touched the rain-slicked ivy and turned it brilliant green. The gates to the school had been thrown wide open. As Chase drove through the entrance, he could see that grass had tufted up around the wrought iron, a sign that they had been sitting open for some time. The grounds were not deserted or ramshackle in any way – he could see the lawns were well kept and velvety green – but the open gate was a new and welcoming gesture.

By the time he reached the garage, a small crowd of students had gathered to gawk. Chase stood a little awkwardly in front of them. It suddenly seemed like very little time had passed since he was one of those kids. He remembered how he'd felt at meeting others of his kind, what a relief it had been to finally talk about that terrible secret he had kept.

He grinned at the kids; they obviously relished the safety of the school. One boy hovered a foot off the ground to peer with interest at the new arrival; another let his hair play out with prehensile grace as he chatted to his friends. Chase liked the open expressions on their faces. He hoped they could be this happy once they'd left the haven of the school. One thing that Professor Xavier hadn't covered in his syllabus was how to deal with the real world.

"Hi," he said. "Is Ororo around? Or Henry?" He kept his tone affable around the students, though he wasn't entirely certain that either of his friends would be pleased to see him. The last few times he and Ororo had spoken, the conversation had been cordial but cool. Chase had very carefully excised himself from their world after Jason had appeared in MacKenzie. He had been angry, and at the time he had little concern for how his absence might hurt the school.

Now, he was troubled by the odd elation he felt at returning to Westchester. This was not his home, he reminded himself. These were not his friends. They had left Jason behind to die. He schooled his expression into one of calm reserve.

He was not prepared for Ororo's wide smile and open arms as she cut through the crowd of students. "Robert!" She didn't quite hug him, but squeezed his shoulders tight.

"Hey, Ororo." Chase didn't have to pretend to smile back. It was easy to be glad that Ororo was well and happy. "The place looks amazing." And it did; the rebuilding after the attack on the school was complete. The new brickwork might be obvious, but the walls were strong and solid again.

"We've been working hard," said Ororo. "Come inside, I'll give you a tour." She didn't say anything about how long it had been since he last visited. She didn't mention that last, unfriendly conversation.

"Thanks." Chase took a deep breath and stepped through the doors. The wood panelling made the hallway dark after the bright sun on the wet grass. He blinked, transported back to the first time he had stepped through those doors with the Professor at his shoulder. That was the day he'd met them all: Scott, Jean and Ororo; Henry with his nose in a book; Jason always lurking in doorways, never certain of his own welcome. Now, of these five, just Ororo and Henry remained at the school.

"How have you been? How is Allison?" Ororo showed him the kitchen and the dining room lined with long tables. "I suppose I should show you the infirmary."

Chase pressed his hands flat on the marble slab; it was cool against his sweaty palms. "I'm well, work is busy. Allison and I separated a couple of weeks ago."

Ororo made the appropriate noises of consolation. "I'm so sorry. I wish we'd had a chance to meet her." Or been told anything about her, perhaps seen a photo of the wedding. The implication was clear, despite Ororo's bland expression. You were ashamed of us. We were your unacceptable relatives.

"She knew I was a mutant," said Chase. "I didn't hide anything from her." He restrained the urge to sigh. The polite façade hadn't lasted long. He shouldn't have been surprised; he knew Ororo's temper well.

"You didn't bring her here," said Ororo. "There's a difference between telling her you're a mutant and bringing her to meet your mutant friends." Her voice was crisp and chill; Chase imagined the air outside cooling, the sun slipping behind the clouds.

"This place is dangerous." Chase kept his voice low, tried to inject into it a sense of calm that he did not feel. "Why would I bring her here? People who come here get killed." Or they're left behind to die. Ororo hadn’t come with him to the tiny hospital on the edge of the lake. Cameron had seen what it meant to be a mutant that day and she hadn't abandoned him.

Ororo crossed her arms. "Why did you come back, Chase? This obviously isn't a social visit."

"I want to look through the medical database. I have a patient with a head injury, and I think I've seen something similar here." Never lie to Ororo. This was a lesson learned early at the school: Ororo knows when you're lying. Perhaps it was a good thing that she was angry, he thought. It might distract her from asking difficult questions.

Ororo's expression was sharp. "I've heard you were seeing patients at the clinic in New York. I suppose faceless charity is easier to deal with than people who know you and need you. Is this for a mutant patient?"

"I can't tell you that," Chase snapped back. "There are rules to protect patient confidentiality. I'm not going to break them just because you think you have proprietary rights to all mutants."

Ororo opened her mouth to snap back an angry retort then closed it with a sheepish expression. "Oh, Robert. Look at us, arguing over who is boss of who. That's just stupid."

Chase wanted so much to be able to relax and smile like Ororo, but he couldn't banish the image of Jason, waiting to die alone at Alkali Lake He shrugged his shoulders and struggled for something to say. "I guess it's childish to say 'You started it?'"

"Well, I'm finishing it. Come on," said Ororo. "I'll take you to the infirmary. You're welcome to look through the files."

Chase hated himself for playing along. Beside the elevator, a window opened into the memorial garden. Chase had only been present at the laying of the first headstone. Scott's and Professor Xavier's followed soon after. Now Scott was lying in a bed at Princeton-Plainsboro and Chase was very glad there was no longer a telepath at the school.

He paused at the window. "There's not many of us left, is there? It's an odd feeling, coming back here. We were all going to live forever, be heroes."

Ororo pressed a hand on his arm."That's easy to believe when you're young. We grew up."

"Did you ever hear from Jason after he left the school?" Chase had to say something; Ororo's vision of the past glowed with nostalgia and Jason was completely absent from it.

"No." She took a breath and stood a little straighter. "I guess it's for the best. Jason never really fit in."

On the one hand, Chase was astounded. Nobody, not even Scott, had ever caught Ororo in a lie. Chase was actually surprised to see that she had a tell. He processed this amazing discovery absently while his anger bubbled up and over. "That's a bloody lie, 'Ro!" He'd shake her by the shoulders but he'd trained with her. Years later, he still knew better.

"What?" Ororo's expression was gratifyingly shocked.

"He was at Alkali Lake. You left him behind to die!" Chase was shouting now. Students slowed in the passage to gawk.

"Everything is fine – go to your classes!" Ororo grabbed Chase by the elbow, dragged him into the Professor's office and closed the door firmly behind her. "How do you know that? How can you possibly know?"

Chase set his jaw. He wasn't giving Jason up to the people who had abandoned him. "You're not denying it."

"There was nothing we could do. There wasn't time; he was making the Professor hurt people. The headaches. First us, then the humans." Ororo's words tumbled out desperately fast.

Chase remembered. It was bedlam. First he had collapsed in House's office; the others had obviously dragged him to the ER, because he woke there to chaos. Doctors, nurses and patients writhed on the ground, hands pressed to their temples. Everywhere he looked, there was disarray. Only one other person was struggling upright: Carlos the admissions nurse looked at him with growing recognition.

"Operating rooms," he said with sudden urgency. Chase visualised patients bleeding out while the surgeons flailed in pain on the floor and the two of them bolted towards the theatres.

When the paroxysms eased, everyone else began to blink and stir. Carlos took Chase by the elbow and dragged him to the ground beside a cluster of scrub nurses. They seamlessly fitted in next to everyone else as the others struggled back to wakefulness. Neither of them had never really spoken about that moment, but there had been a certain camaraderie between them from that day.

He looked at Ororo dubiously. "That was Jason? He couldn't do something like that. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn't have the power. Nobody does."

"Cerebro does." Ororo crossed her arms. "Jason controlled the Professor; the Professor controlled Cerebro."

Chase shook his head; it made no sense. "Why would Jason do that? You knew him, Ororo. How could you leave him behind?" Would Jason do something like that? Chase couldn't say that it was impossible.

"There wasn't time! People were dying. Stryker had the children, he had Scott and the Professor." Ororo ran her hands through her hair. "I saw the roof falling in, I saw it fall on Jason. Nobody could have survived that." She looked aghast at the memory. Chase had always imagined this moment; how sorry they'd be when they realised what they'd done. Now that it was here, it seemed like a hollow victory.

He gave a wry smile. "Jason is an illusionist. He wanted you to see him dead." This must be what Jason warned him about. Poor Jason; displaced guilt made you do stupid things. It was painful and confusing, especially to someone as isolated as Jason. "I guess he decided he didn't want to die after all; somehow he got himself out into the water. He ended up near MacKenzie, washed up on the shore. Rangers brought him into the hospital, and they contacted me." He left out the specifics; the weird telephone calls, the vague messages left by people Jason had influenced with his illusions. How good it felt to have Allison by his side as he worked to save Jason's life.

"Jason is alive." Ororo wrapped her arms around herself.

Chase nodded. "Do you start to wonder how long any of them will stay dead?"

---

The infirmary hadn't changed. He and Jean had studied here through those terrible sleepless years of interning, even though they'd been at different medical schools. Westchester was a place to regroup and do laundry and hurl test questions at each other. He tapped his old login into the computer; he didn't expect it to respond. When it flashed up a welcoming message, he smiled. While Scott's old scans copied onto a thumb drive, Chase rummaged through the storage lockers. Scott said he kept a pair of shades down here somewhere. He used to stash them everywhere; they'd all joked that he kept a spare in the bathroom in case of emergency.

"You didn't tell her." The voice was gruff and low and it came from the doorway.

Chase bumped his head on a locker door as he wheeled around; he hadn't heard the door open. He rubbed the back of his head as he looked suspiciously at Logan.

"Well, that's graceful. I can see why you weren't on the team." Logan stalked forward, looking Chase up and down. They'd met a few times after Liberty Island, but otherwise Chase didn't know much about Logan beyond what Jean had told him. Jean had left out a lot. Chase suspected that was deliberate.

"Is there something you need? I'm just downloading some files." Chase's eyes widened as Logan leaned forward and sniffed him. It was an oddly delicate gesture from someone as burly as the Wolverine.

"You didn't tell 'Ro that Summers is still alive."

Chase made the mistake of flinching. Logan caught him by the tie and pulled Chase's head to one side so that his bared teeth were close to Chase's neck.

He inhaled again, deeply this time. "You reek of Summers. You've been all over him, and he ain't dead. What the hell's going on?"

Chase stayed very still and spoke quickly. "He showed up at the hospital last night. He's fine. He's not ready to come back to the school yet, but he needs a visor." He didn't know Logan well, but lying seemed idiotic under the circumstances.

Logan pushed him a way with a muffled snarl, a little like laughter. "Don't piss yourself, kid. I'm not mad. We've all got to find our own way home, don't we?" He stepped over to a padlocked cabinet.

"Do you have a key for that? I couldn't find one." Somewhat dazed, Chase busied himself with straightening his shirt and retying his tie. There was an unpleasantly slick noise and a broad metal blade slid from Logan's knuckle. Chase stared in horror; had that come from under Logan's skin? The hygiene issues alone made him shudder.

With a lascivious smile in Chase's direction, Logan thrust the blade into the lock and gave it a sharp twist. The padlock fell away and the door swung open; the blade retracted slowly and silently back into Logan's arm. He reached into the locker and hooked a pair of glasses with one finger, then threw it in Chase's direction.

Caught unawares, Chase scrambled to catch them without marking the ruby lenses. "Thanks," he said a little nervously.

Logan clapped him on the shoulder. "You take care of him. Bring him home when he's ready; I'll keep it quiet until then." He walked towards the door, then turned back. "And get back here sometime for training. Your reflexes are shit. Aren't you supposed to be a surgeon or something?" He reached in his pocket for his cigar and chomped on it, shaking his head as he walked away.

Chase held the frames in his hands as if the lenses could explode. Anything seemed possible right now. He folded them carefully in his pocket, then went to make his goodbyes.

---

The first helicopter to zoom past Chase's car was not unexpected; there were news choppers and police choppers all vying for space above Trenton. When a small flotilla of sleek black helicopters moved in to land on the roof of the hospital, though, Chase realised something was up. The entrance to the parking garage was guarded by men in Kevlar armour cradling guns, and more patrolled each floor. The guard at the entrance summoned Chase with a crisp, two fingered gesture. Chase pulled up beside him and rolled down the window. As they ran checks on his ID and his registration, he concentrated on keeping his hands visible at all times. He was grateful that Scott's ruby lenses looked innocuous.

It took a lot of arguing, wheedling and eventually an angry call from Doctor Cuddy for Chase to make his way back into the hospital. By the time he made it to the lobby, he was covered in a cold sweat. The constant stream of patients from the crash site had thinned now. Orderlies and admin staff were getting on with clean up and putting the lobby back in order. SHIELD staff permeated the hospital: techs worked on laptops connected via snaking cables to the CCTV cameras, guards checked ID badges at every exit and entrance. Doctor Cuddy stood in the middle of the lobby with her hands on her hips. Beside her, the man with the mild expression and the excellent suit hunched his shoulders apologetically as she shouted at him.

"Our primary purpose is to preserve life, Agent Coulson. My doctors can't do that if they're being supervised, interrupted and inspected at every turn. This is a hospital, not a prison!"

Agent Coulson nodded agreeably as she spoke. "We understand, Doctor Cuddy. We don't want to get in the way. As soon as we have the security network functioning, we can monitor for mutant presence from a distance. We'll have the monitoring field in place in an hour." He looked over at a cluster of techs looking at a display and shaking their heads sadly. "No more than two hours, I assure you. We've had multiple reports that the explosion may have been caused by mutant activity. I don't want to think about what might happen if that kind of destructive power were to hit, say, a hospital. SHIELD considers it very likely that you have the perpetrator here."

Cuddy crossed her arms. "Do what you have to do, then get out of my hospital."

Chase concentrated on his shoes as he walked swiftly to the acute care ward. He stopped at the clinic waiting room where Carlos was working his way through a mountain of paperwork. He peered through the stacks at Chase with a weary smile.

"Hey, you're back. If you can take a few patients, that would be great. Do you know people have the audacity to keep getting sick, even when there's an emergency going on? And here I thought Trenton was the centre of the civilised world."

Chase leaned against the counter. "You really need to get home and check on that thing, Carlos."

Carlos looked confused. "What thing? I have a thing? Look, I don't know what you've heard, but I'm seeing someone. " He grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. Don't take it personally."

"Carlos," Chase leaned further over so he could whisper in the nurse's ear. "You know that way that we're alike? That way we don't talk about, ever? You need to get out of the hospital before that becomes an issue."

The smile dropped away from Carlos' face and he shot a glance towards the SHIELD guard checking the names of the patients in the waiting area. His face paled.

"Yeah, you understand me now," said Chase. "I have to go check on some patients now, so good luck with that thing."

Carlos nodded and picked up the phone. Chase listened to him spinning a story about a family emergency. It was time to collect Scott and get them both out of the hospital.

Scott's room was empty. Chase stared at the bed, crisp and ready for a new patient. He turned to ask at the nurse's station and stopped. He was being watched by a blonde woman in the blue and white SHIELD uniform, standing quietly behind the counter. Chase smiled blankly at her and leaned over the bench to rifle through a pile of patient files. He grabbed a form at random and pretended to be engrossed in the details as he walked calmly away. The woman said nothing, but watched him all the way to the end of the corridor.

Should he call Ororo or Logan? Maybe he should confess all to Cuddy? Chase wandered the corridors with his head down until he found himself at House's office. House had promised he'd look after Scott. He'd better have a good explanation or be on a plane to Camp X-Ray.

House sat at his desk in conference with an unfamiliar doctor in a crisp white coat. House still wore his hat and coat and he twirled his cane in slow spirals as they spoke.

"House!" If House was fine, then Scott was fine. Everything would be fine. Suffused with relief, Chase rushed into the office. The other doctor moved like lightning; dragged Chase away from the door and pressed him to the wall. The man's eyes were closed; it was Scott, clean and shaved, wearing a suit and a white coat.

Chase threw his arms around his friend and gave him a shake."It's me, you berk! I go and brave the lion's den, and all I get is grief!" They were so nearly safe. Hope was making Chase exuberant.

Scott flopped back into his chair with a groan, pressing a hand against his broken ribs. "You could have knocked. I'm a little on edge."

"He is," said House. "It's like watching a Rambo movie. SHIELD was getting nosy, so we vacated the room. This is my newest intern, by the way." He waved an ID badge. "I made him a wicked fake ID out of Cameron's old badge. It still has Chase listed as spouse, hope that's not a problem for you two? Personally, I think you'll make a lovely couple."

"You didn't tell me that Doctor Cameron was Chase's wife!" Scott's head swung in House's direction. "You said it was junk left over from the last doctor that quit on you."

House shrugged. "There's nothing there that isn't the truth. Though I have to admit, it's a little creepy that you didn't recognise the name. From the way you two are all buddy-buddy, I would have thought you'd have met Cameron once or twice." He swivelled in his chair. "So, Chase? You never took the little woman home to meet the family?"

Chase ignored him. "The SHIELD agent is going to walk past in a minute; we should time her circuit."

"Three minutes," said Scott. "Unless she stops to check something. The minimum is three minutes, and that should be long enough for us to make it to the elevator. I don't know the layout any more than that, so it's up to you."

"The SHIELD people are still setting up. We might be able to get out to the parking garage through the freight elevator. Here, these will make it easier." Chase unfolded the frames and pressed them into Scott's hands. "You're going to look suspicious walking with your eyes closed."

Scott wrapped his hands around the shades and slid them over his nose. He scanned the room, stopped with his gaze on House. "Well, you look as much like a dick as you sound."

House looked wounded. "Where do I fit into this escape plan?" He gestured to his head, still covered with the flat cap. "I don't want to have to explain this to a judge."

"Just stay in here and keep your mouth shut," said Chase. "You're well known, it's going to look even more suspicious if you're sneaking around."

"Do you even know me? It's suspicious if I'm not sneaking around!" House was outraged.

"Robert," said Scott. "We have to go now."

"Stay here." Chase pointed a finger at House. "I'll be back soon."

House scowled. "Fine, but you better bring back my white coat." He pulled his hat over his eyes and slouched back in his chair, pretending to be asleep.

"It's your coat, isn't it?" Scott asked, as they walked swiftly for the elevator.

"Nice to know you can still size a person up." Chase pressed the button and they stood side by side as the doors opened. "It's my suit, too. I'm guessing House raided my locker?"

"You need to do some laundry," said Scott. "We couldn't find any clean underwear."

"So nice to know you want to get in my pants." Chase's grin was infantile and manic.

Scott snickered. "Oh, please. Like they'd be big enough." The doors closed just as the SHIELD agent rounded the corner.

---

Between patrols, they took shelter in a storage closet. It wasn't roomy, but it had a bench that Scott could sit on while Chase did another check of his reflexes. While Scott's power was still AWOL, Chase strobed his penlight across his friend's eyes. How strange to finally look directly into Scott's eyes. He switched off the penlight and reached for Scott's wrist, took a radial pulse.

Scott pulled his glasses back down and watched Chase work. "I don't think I've ever seen you do your job before."

"You probably don't remember, but I volunteered at the school for a little while after you got back from Alkali Lake." While he was helping put the school back together and Scott was beginning to mourn, Jason had been dealing with guilt and grief and abandonment in a flooded military complex. It was easier to understand now; Jason's brittle psyche, his swift and brutal temper and his terrible fear of being left alone.

"I never told you, but I was always a bit jealous of the medical stuff. You and Jean had more time together than she and I did, when you were interns. It was something I could never share." Scott kept his gaze on his hands as he spoke. Chase knew how he felt: when you started to talk again about the person you'd lost it was best to stick to the small stuff.

"Nothing ever happened between us, mate." That wasn't completely true. Chase tucked his hands into his pockets and hoped that those ruby lenses made it hard to tell if someone was blushing. Once, they'd both crashed at Henry's apartment, both of them half-dead from fatigue and more than half drunk on cheap wine. Jean had pushed the hair off his face, cupped his chin and kissed him. It was a spur of the moment thing; utterly awkward. They'd never repeated the experience.

Scott watched him and smiled. "She did tell me about that, actually."

"I hope she told you how much she laughed afterwards," Chase said with a grimace. "How long has your power been gone?"

Scott looked at him, betrayed.

"We need to talk about this, Scott. It's not just you this puts in danger. You brought down the roof on the Transit Center."

Scott nodded. "Fair enough. It's been gone since I went back to Alkali Lake. Jean came out of the water, she burned the power out of me."

"You went back to the lake? But she was dead." Chase's skin crawled. What had gone on under those waters?

Scott hunched over his knees. "I heard her calling me. She called me up there, she crawled out of the water. What could I do? I know it wasn't Jean. But I couldn't ignore that it looked like her. Sounded like her." Scott pulled the glasses off and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "Is it getting hot in here?"

Chase propped the door ajar to let in some air. A cool breeze rolled around the storeroom and Chase could see that there was a pall of smoke hanging below the ceiling. Confused, he looked around for a source but the smoke curled out of itself like a snake. Scott choked, clutched at his temples and fell to his knees. His glasses skidded across the floor and under a shelf.

Chase crouched down, smoke forgotten. "Tell me where it hurts." Under his hands, Scott's muscles bunched and tensed. Chase wormed his fingers against Scott's clenched jaw; the pulse was racing, his skin dry and papery. "You're burning up!"

Scott screwed his eyes closed with a moan. "My head!" The light bulb above their heads exploded with a dramatic shower of glass. In the darkness, Chase could see a glowing line of red light coming from behind Scott's eyelids.

"Scott! Keep your eyes closed!" The only thing that could repel Scott's power besides the specialised ruby lenses were his own eyelids.

"It's her!" Scott writhed on the floor, pushing his fists into his eye sockets. "She's burning me up!" A red blush of light gathered around his knuckles, swirling and glowing like a nebula. Scott screamed and arched, beating his head against the floor as smoke poured from under his fists. Chase let his hand hover above Scott's forehead; despite the pain, there was no heat, no sound of burning. The smoke was odourless. As if an afterthought, Chase suddenly gagged on the smell of burned flesh. It was ridiculously theatrical and badly timed; Chase had seen it before.

He stood up and crossed his arms. "Stop it, Jason!" Below him, Scott arched upwards as flames crackled along his body. Chase couldn't make himself turn his back on a patient in pain, but he took a step backwards. "Jason, I'm not going to play this game with you. Stop it, or I'm walking away." He hoped that Jason could rein in his temper before the stress of the illusions triggered a stroke or a heart attack.

"He went back for her! He left me, but he went back for her!" Jason blinked into existence inside the storeroom, still a teenager in baggy jeans and a tattered t-shirt. "I'm glad she killed him! I wish I had!"

Scott's screams subsided. Jason lunged at him, and gave him a mighty kick in the ribs. His foot passed right through Scott's body. "I set his power off! I wanted him to know what it was like! To have to hurt people! To feel the rocks crush you! To have nowhere to go!"

Chase caught Jason around the chest, and hauled him away from Scott. "It's okay, it's okay. It doesn't matter now." Scott rolled over onto his side, coughing and spluttering.

Jason flailed and kicked, perfectly corporeal in Chase's arms. "You're just as bad! You promised you'd never have anything to do with them! They left me! They left me to die under the water! Under the rocks!"

"I'll never leave you alone. I promised." Chase wrapped his arms tighter around Jason's illusory body. "You were already safe when he went back, I was already looking after you."

Scott pushed himself up from the floor, and with difficulty, folded his legs underneath himself. "Are you sure this really is Jason? When I saw Jean... I really wanted to believe it was her."

Chase pressed his lips against Jason's head, willing him to calm down. This must be wreaking havoc on his physical body back in the hospital bed. "I know it's Jason. He made it to a hospital in MacKenzie." He couldn't stop himself from adding "After you left him behind." Even with Ororo's explanation, there was bitterness in the retort.

"We had no choice. He was forcing the Professor to hurt people." Scott lay exhausted on the floor, but his voice was certain.

"You had no choice?" Jason had mostly gone limp in Chase's arms, but he gave another threshing twist at that. "It wasn't my fault! He made me do it! He didn't give me a choice, not ever!"

"The Professor?" Scott was confused.

"Colonel Stryker," said Chase. "Show him, Jason. Show him what your father did."

Jason's image wobbled. His body lengthened and lightened in Chase's arms until he stood before them as an adult, too thin for his height, limbs twisting awkwardly as if he didn't know how to use them.

Chase watched Scott's face pale as he looked at the ripple of scars radiating outward from Jason's temples. "That's the good side," he said. "You should see where we had to remove the circuitry and spinal implants. Parts of Jason's spinal column were exposed for months while we tried to figure it out and put it back together. Colonel Stryker was running some kind of experimental facility and Jason was his personal guinea pig."

This was the conversation he'd been practicing for years; the big moment when he revealed just how badly the X-Men had let down one of their own. Of all the things he expected to see in Scott's eyes, understanding wasn't one.

Jason relaxed into his female child form and scrambled up into Chase's arms, clinging like a possum with arms and legs. "He understands. He was there once. I forgot." She rested her head against Chase's shoulder and closed her mismatched eyes. As soon as she was asleep, the illusion blinked out of existence.

Scott took a deep breath. "I really didn't know, Robert. We knew it wasn't good when his father took him out of school, but what could we do? We were just kids. And if the Professor had any idea that Stryker could do something like that to his own son, there's no way he would have let Jason go."

Chase thought of the day he had left the school, when his mother could no longer take care of herself. Professor Xavier had offered to help, but Chase was too proud to let him see the debris of his mother's life. He remembered the shame and awkwardness of that last conversation, how he had told the Professor to leave them alone. Kids shouldn't have to make those kinds of decisions. Scott and the rest of the X-Men weren't responsible for letting Jason get hurt. He sat on the floor next to Scott. "What are you going to do?"

Scott reached for his glasses. He pushed them on and struggled upright to look at Chase. "Honestly? I think it might be time for me to go back to school. You went first. I think I can follow."

Chase stood and held out his hand. "Come on. I need to get you out of this hospital so I can take you home and watch Ororo tear strips off your hide."

Scott winced as he climbed upright again. "It's only fair, I suppose." He peered around the open door. "Okay. Let's get moving."

By the time they got to the parking garage, Scott's expression was almost optimistic. At the security check, the SHIELD guard scanned their ID badges and read the data with a raised eyebrow. Chase followed the man's gaze; he was looking at their ring fingers. Without saying anything, Scott reached across and ruffled Chase's hair. The guard's expression eased, and he waved them through. They were out and on the road home.


---

Tearful reunions over, Chase made his way back to the hospital with a stolen bottle of the Professor's Glenlivet under his arm. Twenty years and nobody had changed the locks on the liquor cabinet. And Ororo, who had taught him to pick that lock when he was fifteen, really should know better.

SHIELD had no luck finding the mutant responsible for the explosion, despite turning the hospital upside down. Agent Coulson of the mild expression and excellent suits now had a little crease between his eyebrows as he packed his team up and moved them out. All that remained was for the hospital to settle back into a routine. Everyone was filling out forms; Chase had to move fast to avoid Cuddy and a pile of paperwork with his name on it. He found House dozing with his head flat on the desk, still wearing his ridiculous flat cap and overcoat. When Chase cracked the seal on the bottle, though, House's eyes snapped open expectantly. He scowled but produced two smudged glasses from a drawer.

Chase sloshed a generous amount into each glass. "I spoke to Stephen Strange." It had been a confusing conversation. Probably in a week or two it would make better sense.

House threw back his glass with a swallow. "I'd file a lawsuit if I could bear to show this to a judge." Behind him, the overcoat twitched as if House had tucked an angry cat in the back of his pants. Chase waited patiently for the glow of the whisky to hit.

House's face relaxed. "How's your friend?"

"We worked some things out." It was an understatement, but House didn't need to know the details. Jason was safe. Scott was home. Chase sipped his stolen liquor, and wondered at how light his shoulders felt.

House nodded meditatively and helped himself to another glass, leaning his elbows against the desk. From behind him, a slender tail uncoiled with sinuous movement. Soft and covered with brown fur, it toyed idly with the brim of his hat. That House didn't try to hide it was an indication of the excellence of the whiskey. Professor Xavier had had exquisite taste. House leaned back in his chair and looked at the tail with a fond but despairing expression.

"You know, there's always cosmetic surgery," Chase said cruelly. "I'm sure there won't be any lasting effects. Personally, I think an extra limb could be useful. I'm sure you can think of a dozen uses for a tail. The first six are probably even legal."

House snatched the bottle out of Chase's reach and screwed the lid on tightly. "This is too good to waste on you." He opened the same drawer and slid the Glenlivet inside. Instead, he took out a half-empty bottle of cheap tequila and a salt shaker. Disturbingly, he also had a couple of shrivelled limes in there. He quartered them neatly with a pocket knife.

The evening progressed with volatile ease. House was soon drunk enough to shrug off his coat and pour the shots with his tail. Chase swayed in his chair, giddy with liquor and fatigue and relief.

"You never told me what your mutant power was." House raised his shot glass to Chase and threw the contents back.

Chase was certain they were recycling lime wedges by now. He really hoped the one in his hand hadn't been in House's mouth. "Told you it's none of your business. S'a very private question."

"Ah, I forgot. There's a whole code I have to learn now, isn't there? Now that I'm one of you."

Chase gave a rude snort. "You're not one of us. You're just wearing the costume."

House thwapped him on the head with the end of his tail. "Says the man who has been passing as human for years."

"Oh, you're so world-weary, aren't you? It's been two days." Chase unscrewed the salt shaker and poured the salt into a little pile on the desk.

House affected a wounded expression. "This is going to hurt my chances in the bedroom." He tilted his head to look at the tail thoughtfully. "Or enhance them significantly."

Chase extended his awareness into the salt, forcing the crystals to rearrange themselves on the desk. It was satisfying to see House lean forward eagerly. The salt formed itself into words, neat capital letters. Times New Roman font. BITE ME, the salt said.

House raised an eyebrow. "You arrange salt? What do they call you? Condiment Man?"

"It's a reasonably useful power, given the right training." Chase rocked back on his chair. "Would you like me to mess with your electrolyte levels? Or how about I walk a couple of grams of potassium chloride into your system? People always underestimate the little powers."

"That's a hell of a school you went to. Maybe I could get a job there." House threw back another shot of tequila. His tail yanked off the cap and twirled it idly. The soft brown ears poked through House's hair as if they were happy to be free.

Chase leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "As I said, I called Stephen Strange. He says it will wear off at midnight. And he said to pass on that you owe him five hundred bucks for the pizzas." He reached for his shot glass and drained it. "I think you should probably pay him. I can take it for you; we're having lunch next week." And hopefully that would be enough incentive for House to never mention mutants again.

House took the bottle by the neck and swigged from it. "Well, aren't you the one with the magical connections."

Chase thought about the faces of his friends, of Jason sleeping peacefully and unafraid. "Yeah," he said. "That's me."

---





Author's Notes:
One of the first fics I ever wrote was a House/X-Men crossover: Of Capes and Cod. There was a throwaway line about Chase volunteering at the Xavier School because they had lost their in-house doctor. I've been thinking about that for a while, and this is what emerged.

Thank you to my village of beta readers:
lilacsigil who held this fic's hand from start to finish
layangabi who got me through the difficult first rewrite
harmonyangel who showed me how to drive from Princeton to New York City
lo_rez who helped me smooth out my Australianisms without flattening Chase's accent
d_generate_girl who was a last minute saviour

You guys! This wouldn't exist without you. There are not enough thank yous in this world.

Superhero Spotter's Guide
(aka Dramatis Personae)

Robert Chase
Jason Stryker
Greg House
Carlos the duty nurse (OC)
Mr Smith (AKA the Chameleon)
The Night Nurse (shhhh!)
Doctor Strange (at least in consequence)
Marrow
Crocodile gangster (OC)
Wiccan
Stature
Jean Grey
Thirteen
Foreman
Taub
Scott Summers
Ororo Munroe
The Wolverine
Lisa Cuddy
Agent Coulson and SHIELD
Mentions of Allison Cameron and Professor Charles Xavier

This is a playlist of Australian and New Zealand music cobbled together, the kind of thing I imagine Chase exchanging with his oldest friends in Australia from time to time.

Comments

[snacky]

Oh, I loved this! What a great background you built for Chase, working him perfectly in the X-verse. And Chase and House! Both were perfect. Great pacing and humor in this - I was chuckling out loud at some parts.

Thanks so much for sharing it!

[st_aurafina]

It was fun to try and work out how Chase as we know him could have come from a background like the Xavier School - it makes him one of the very few who get a chance to work in the real world.

Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

[fenellaevangela]

I really enjoyed this! The crossover was very smoothly done, and the story was interesting.

[st_aurafina]

Thank you so much! One of the things I love about crossovers is weaving the worlds together - I'm glad it worked for you, too.

[lurkingcat]

Despite never having watched House I really enjoyed this :) There was a lot of humour in the dialogue, I liked seeing the X-Men as peripheral characters in the story and repercussions of Dr. Strange's magical trap made me giggle.

[st_aurafina]

Wow, it's a great compliment that the story works with knowledge of only one of the fandoms - thank you so much!

I had so much fun with Doctor Strange - he is very suited to lurking in the wings, wreaking great and mystical justice.

[ellia]

This is a wonderful story, i love how you've woven the two canons together. Your House voice is just perfect, sounds exactly like him. I really hope you're inspired to re-visit this verse someday.

[st_aurafina]

Thank you so much! I really enjoyed making a place for Chase at the Xavier School, and thinking about his mutant power, I'm glad that it worked for you, too.

I might revisit - I wrote oodles of background fic to flesh out the relationships between Chase and the original X-Men, I would like to post that someday.

Thank you so much for commenting!

[layangabi]

Yay your story. \o/ :D I love how you wove the two worlds together and made them work, fixing X-men movieverse canon in the process.

[st_aurafina]

Thank you so much for your help - both technical and emotional support. I couldn't have done it without you.

*massive hugs*

X-Men movieverse canon needed some fixing. Poor Jason.

[rhianona]

Very enjoyable. I like your characterization of Chase and his feelings about being a mutant and his past. I also like that your reasoning for his anti-X-Men feelings are founded on a reasonable explanation, that it's not arbitrary.

[st_aurafina]

Thank you so much! I am glad that you enjoyed the crossover - I think it's important that Chase has had time to work up to the disappointment that he's feeling at the start of the fic. I'm glad it worked for you.

[chalcopyrite]

I really liked how you fit Chase into the X-verse in this -- what a nifty power (and yet, not one of the flashy ones that gets written about). I particularly liked his line about finding his own team -- it really summed up the feeling of the story, to me. Thank you!