Current location:	a dark room
Current mood:	disappointed
Current music:	RENT - Today 4 U
Entry tags:	fic:[50 darkfics], fic:[house]

ficlet: "Enough" Cuddy/Stacy
Title: Enough
Author: fallen_arazil, aka Djinn
Fandom: House, M.D.
Characters: Stacy/Cuddy
Prompt: 007. Awakening
Word Count: ~650
Rating: All
Author's Notes: I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm not sure if it's up to my usual standard, but in the interest of filling my 50_darkfics claim, I'm posting it anyway. =/

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"What happened in Baltimore?" She asked, as if she was only idly curious, and Stacy accepted her disinterest easily.

"Technically, most of the something happened after Baltimore." She told her, and that cut even deeper--she'd had the opportunity to act on her attraction, her obsession, somewhere far away, where Lisa would never have had to know, but she hadn't--she'd done it right here, in Lisa's town, in Lisa's own backyard.

She knew it was egotistical to think of that as a personal attack, but Lisa had a hard time feeling any other way. It was always feeling with her and Stacy, as if she defied logic, and that was alien enough to Lisa that she craved it.

It wasn't enough for Stacy to betray Mark, she had to betray Lisa as well, and the surety Lisa had once had that she was different, that she was more important than Stacy's husband, was gone. She'd left House and married Mark, she had betrayed Mark and slept with Lisa, and now she betrayed Lisa, and Mark a second time over, and slept with House.

Lisa wondered what love and commitment meant to Stacy Warner, if they meant anything at all.

It was hard for Lisa to say anything significant, anything with any real meaning, in her hospital, where she was the hard, sexless administrator, and so when she confronted Stacy, it was outside, all but ambushing Stacy on the way to her car.

"I'm not enough for you to leave Mark for, but House is?" She asked, finding the anger much less exposing than hurt would be.

Stacy froze, and Lisa would have liked to believe that the sudden hunching of her shoulders was from shame, not embarrassment. "It's different, Lisa. Greg is--"

"Greg is a mistake you already made once." Lisa snapped. "If you want to leave Mark--"

"I don't want to leave Mark but ..." She turned to face Lisa. "It changes someone, that sort of thing. It's like Greg all over again. He's not the man I married."

Suddenly, Lisa was sincerely furious. "House isn't the man you got involved with, either. He hasn't changed since you left him, Stacy! If anything, he's become worse. If he seems different, it's because he wants what he remembers having with you. Once he knows he can't have it anymore, it'll be exactly the same."

"He told me to leave." Stacy snapped back, as if this proved something about House, as if this made him essentially different in the ways that Lisa was telling her he wasn't.

Lisa threw her hands up. "Then he already knows that it's over, and he'd rather you leave now than later." Lisa stepped closer, close enough to grab the cuff of Stacy's jacket. "I'm telling you to stay. With or without Mark, I don't care. I want you here." It was difficult, very difficult, for her to expose herself that way--it was never about what she wanted, never had been. It was about what Stacy needed, and as long as the two had been in accord, things had been wonderful, almost perfect.

As long as Stacy had hated House as much as she loved him, Lisa had been able to ignore that Stacy loved him at all.

She pulled the other woman to her, wrapped her arms determinedly around Stacy's stiff form. "This means something to you, I know it does. I mean something to you."

Stacy allowed the embrace for a few moments, before she pulled away, and when she looked at Lisa, her eyes were filled with pity. It made Lisa sick to her stomach. "It means something," Stacy said, "just ... not enough."

She stood, frozen, while Stacy walked straight out of her life, and she hoped desperately that this time, she would stay out, except ...

Except, really, that wasn't what she hoped for at all.