A/N - A small scene has been added at the end of the previous chapter.

Epilogue

Three months later

He makes his way through the front door of Princeton General. His head is kept down and his gaze averted from any eye contact. It's a learned behaviour he hasn't been able to shake off yet. Where before he used to limp confidently through a crowd now he keeps to the edges. Where once he used his very presence to intimidate and to control, now he cannot. It's just another sign of how much of himself he's lost.

The collar is gone but the scars remain. The mark on his cheek where the tattoo was removed, the calloused skin on his neck where metal once sat, the faint lines that shackles have left around his wrists, and the lash marks that cross his back.

The scars inside him hurt the worst. His sleep brings him nightmares; his days a constant reminder of his pain. He works as a consultant at PPTH now - it will be a long struggle to get his license restored. He moves every day amongst those who scorned and abused him when he was a slave. The guards' eyes follow him as he enters and leaves, and his colleagues smirk knowingly in his presence. Whispers follow his every movement around the hospital. That's Greg House, he was a slave.

Wilson, Cuddy and his former fellows are his sole allies. Wilson has allowed him to continue staying with him - House's old apartment is long gone and finding another has no appeal. Cuddy has protected him from those who think he has no place in the hospital, and the fellows continue to willingly do his bidding, even though he has no authority over them now.

He goes to the third floor, still moving quietly. It's shift changeover time, and that gives him a window of opportunity. When no-one is watching he slips into the second room on the left. It's a private room where the man is recovering from a bullet wound.

He disconnects the call button before the man can protest and shuts the door behind him.

"What the hell do you want, slave?" Tritter asks. He's sitting propped up, his face lined with pain.

He hadn't been tracking Tritter since he'd been freed. It was pure chance that he saw a news article about the police officer hero who'd been shot pursuing a suspect. Pure luck that the man was in Princeton General recovering.

"I'm not a slave now," he says, showing Tritter his bare neck. "Got freed."

"Once a slave, always a slave. However you got out of that collar it will only be a matter of time before you get another one. Piece of trash like you, you can't help it. I'll see you again then."

He'll never be a slave again. That he's vowed to himself.

He moves over to the morphine pump which stands by Tritter's bed. It will be a painless death for him - much more than he deserves.

"What... what are you doing? Get the fuck away from that. I need that," Tritter says, his eyes fixed on the pump. He thinks that House is going to disconnect it, to cause him pain. To get revenge - as if anything could even the scales between them.

"What you did to me..." House stops, his mind blanking. The memories come in his dreams and always will, but he doesn't want to think of them now. He doesn't want to dwell on what this man did to him. He doesn't want to live there. Stopping him is enough.

"You were a slave, I used you. Big deal. That's what slaves are for. You weren't even a good fuck. You were a pathetic excuse for a doctor, and a pathetic slave."

He presses the safety override on the pump. A massive dose of morphine. Tritter will seem to be sleeping when anyone walks past the room. Until he's not. He'll never touch House again.

He's going to take this man's life away, just as Tritter took away so much from him.

His fingers linger on the buttons. A few quick presses. That's all it will take. Tritter will be out of his life forever.

Except he won't. Not if he does this.

His hand drops away. If he does this Tritter will have taken even more from him and House has very little more that he can afford to lose.

"No," he says quietly. "You dying won't change anything. Nothing will."

Tritter is staring at him, his eyes wide, fear on his face. He seems to have finally realised the danger he is in. House welcomes that fear.

"Stay away from me," House says and then he leaves, as silently as he came.

He slips back into the corridor outside the room. Nobody has noticed anything. He turns to go and freezes as he catches the eye of a man in a bright orange coverall, pushing a mop.

The slave is younger than him, but his eyes are without hope. There's no Wilson for him. No Harris. No miracle to restore his freedom. House lingers as the slave stares at the ground submissively, willing House to leave him alone.

What can House tell him? That he was a slave once, and now he's free? How would that help? Instead he slips a hand into his pocket and withdraws a candy bar he was keeping there. He's still unused to having food freely available.

"Take this," he says, pressing it into the slave's hand.

The slave stares at it and then slips it inside his coverall. "Thank you, sir," he dares to whisper.

House nods, and there's nothing more to say so he walks off. When he looks behind him the slave is mopping the floor, his head bowed.

When he returns to PPTH he's just in time to see Ayersman walking out the front door - holding a cardboard box with a few personal items in his hands. He freezes - he's managed to avoid the man since he was freed - but Ayersman has seen him.

"One day you won't have those two to look out for you, House," he says with a scowl, dumping the box into his car.

"And one day you might be a decent surgeon, but I'm not holding my breath," House rejoins. His heart is pounding, being so close to the man, but he's also filled with relief. Wilson had said that he was trying to get Ayersman to move on. Whatever strings he pulled, whatever the machinations needed behind the scene Wilson has accomplished it.

He walks on and enters the hospital Ayersman has just left.

It's difficult to pick up the reins of his old life, and things will never be the same. But he has his freedom, and he has his friends and he'll survive.

Just like he always has.

~ End

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