dr_robchase | (no subject)

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timeloop

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There were some moments when Chase felt like he existed as nothing more than an annotated mark in one of his father's books. The definitive book of rheumatology doesn't even mention that Rowan Chase had a family. There was no hint of the wife he abandoned, nor the son that he thought inconvenient or the too-late daughter who followed in her mother's footsteps. He was hired by House because of a phone call that his father made out of some delayed guilt and didn't even bother to call and congratulate him.

(Is congratulations merited when the job's been secured for you through bribery? He wasn't sure about that)

And then, and then Rowan Chase swooped back into his life for all of a measly few days under the excuse that Chase was suddenly worth seeing, but only for so long and never with the truth. At the time, he'd been grateful deep down beneath the loathing and the anger. Three months later, he forgot how to be anything but lost.

Cancer.

His father had been dying when he'd visited. He'd been dying and he hadn't told Chase. House had figured it out and he hadn't told Chase. He'd come to see him off and he hadn't told Chase and the only thing that he did manage to do was marry a woman who knew well-enough to call her stepson the moment that his estranged father passed away. Chase would never forget that phone call. He didn't think he had it in him to forget, but not just for the numbness that pervaded, but the moment after.

This moment.

"Dr. Chase?"

It was a ghost's voice. It was a ghost and instead of being in his nightmares, she was standing right behind him and there was a phone in his hand and he could swear that he'd gone to bed. Vision blurry with tears over a man who had died so long ago and who had given him nothing, he turned around and stared at Kayla, unable to manage any semblance of the English language.

"Hi," she said, without a single hint of awareness of what was coming -- of what she was about to lose.

And so, here Chase was, on the cusp of making the biggest mistake of his career because of his father.

Or maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe even this wouldn't have made it into one of his father's books. Maybe even this, this last ignorance wouldn't even rate.

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The Doctor had no idea where he was (hospital?), what he was doing (trying to look professional?), or why he was standing by Chase, sporting a white coat. Admittedly, this kind of thing wasn't exactly new (fake it 'til you make it being one of his MOs), but it wasn't a skillset he'd really had to use lately. He was a bit rusty.

Chase, meanwhile, was looking at this woman--a patient, maybe?--like he'd seen a ghost, and he was tempted to step on his husband's foot. The patient would probably notice, though...and hey, what was with Chase's hair?

Dr McCrimmon, he decided, of Glasgow University Medical School. On exchange. He cleared his throat at Chase, nodding at the woman.

He was too busy to actually notice the Doctor, falling into some kind of horrible self-prophesied trap, given that he was so thrown out of the moment that he immediately did exactly what he had done so many years ago -- he rushed through the moment and he watched Kayla take his words with disappointment, leaving just as she had ages back.

Chase had enough time to spin around, exhale, and lean forward as he rested his forehead against the cool counter, in sheer disbelief and sudden panic and regret about what he just did. "Shit," he muttered.

At least Chase seemed to know what he was doing. That was to say, until he turned around, looked like he didn't know at all what was going on, and cursed.

The Doctor leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms, and for once decided not to bother spouting his mouth off. Maybe this Chase wasn't his Chase, was part of whatever construct he'd found himself in. The thought was dizzyingly lonely, and he shivered a little, trying to phrase his words right. "What the fuck?"

Well, that was...apt enough.

The words snapped him out of his reverie and he went from absolutely destroyed to a picture of perfect stunned shock, gaping at the Doctor and the area around them. "What..." he managed. "Why..."

He wanted to ask what the Doctor was doing there and how he could be there, but there was a fine sort of relief that filtered in, because if the Doctor was here, the chance that he'd gone back home for good wasn't highly likely. "That, right there, what I just did," he said, yanking the phone closer to him and trying to recall Kayla's number from memory (he couldn't) before swearing and searching for her chart. "I just sent that woman out the door to die," he said thickly.

"Um," said the Doctor, frowning, edgy now as he saw the look on Chase's face slide and slip, changing in ways he didn't really like from ways he didn't really like. Both disconcerted him. "How do you know that's what will happen? Have you been..."

He paused, then caught a glimpse of the desk calendar behind the counter. "You've been here before," he guessed, from the date he saw there.

He pushed his way behind the counter, rifling through folders in rapid succession as he did his valiant best to look for the one that mattered. Kayla. Kayla McGinley. He was never going to forget that name, so where the hell was her damn chart? He shoved the ones on the desk aside in frustration, ignoring a nurse's frustrated shout after him as he started down the halls in the direction of House's outer office, only pausing for a moment to think that House might be there. "It's May 11th," he said, which is a date like any other day, but it's the day he killed a woman and the day his father died.

Chase didn't particularly like May 11th anymore. "I need her chart so I can find her phone number before it's too late."

The Doctor trailed after him, not entirely following until Chase explained exactly what he was doing or why. "Rob," he pointed out, when he caught up with him, sotto voce, "are you trying to change history? What exactly are you doing? Why are we even here?"

Oh god, what if they were both dead and Chase had been right about Catholicism, and this was purgatory? The thought made him shudder.

"Because I can," he said, fraught with the panic of the moment and how critical it was to get to the information he needed before it was too late. "If I stop her, if I call Kayla back right now and have her come back, I'll find the ulcers and I'll stop them from rupturing and she won't need a liver and she won't get Hep C or cancer or..." He took in a sharp breath, staring at the Doctor hopelessly. "I have to try."

The Doctor gave Chase a long slow look. "Can I officially register my protestation about the idea of changing things from how they happened, life saving or not? Also from apparently having ended up with you in New Jersey under the Bush administration?" he asked, taking long strides to catch up with him. "What the hell is going on?"

"I have no idea," he confessed, but he knew that he was back in the hospital and he couldn't just sit back and let Kayla die. It was his fault that Dory and Nicky lost their mother the first time, that Sam nearly lost the house and he couldn't do that again. He couldn't live with himself if he did that again. "Nothing changes if I do this," he insisted. "Except maybe two little girls get their mother and House doesn't ride my arse about my fuck-up to the point that I nearly break."

The Doctor watched Chase for a moment, hands stuffed in the pockets of his lab coat. He knew full well that when Chase was like this, trying to talk him out of anything was far more trouble than it was worth.

"Fine," he said simply, not adding and when the demons that live in the cracks of spacetime show up, don't say I didn't try.

Hell, he wasn't sure if this would even work like Chase wanted it to.

Chase took a deep breath and hesitated in his steps. "If I keep going around that corner, I'm going to reach House's outer office," he said, all the dread and fear echoed in his expression. "And I don't know if he's going to remember me and if he doesn't, I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with that. Advice?"

"I don't know if he will," said the Doctor, sotto voce, "and if he does remember the island, he'll be just as fucked up as we are about this. Just act like you would have at this point in time. Blend in."

Chase took in a deep breath and shot the Doctor a wary look. "You do realize that acting like I would at this point in time involves reacting to House's jokes about grabbing mine, Cameron, and Foreman's arses, right?" he asked dubiously, but he soldiered forward to find the phone number, taking a deep breath as he pushed open the door to the office.

...but ended up in the clinic again.

Chase stared around him with boggled awe, shaking his head as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. He didn't have to wait long. By the time the nurse informed him that he had a phone call, he had a fairly good idea of where he was.

Shit.

"Yes," said the Doctor, who hadn't really thought of that, but wasn't exactly lying, more just covering for not really getting it. He was about to say something else, when--

He blinked, looked at Chase, looked where they were. "Now that's interesting," he murmured. Someone passing gave him a faintly confused look, which he shrugged off, mulling over the possibilities of what could be happening.

He almost felt a bit jet-lagged, even if he'd only travelled the space of a single floor in the strange hop, skip, and jump back in time. He stared at the nurse, who was getting more insistent by the second, and the door that Kayla was going to come through at any moment. So, true to his form, he did what he had always done in these situations.

"I'm not available right now," he said, and bolted for the changeroom as quickly as his feet would take him, unable to believe the solace he took in the sight of the ugly green tiles in front of him, even if he was staring at them while unable to catch a single breath.

The Doctor, despite feeling dizzy, steeled himself, watched the nurse come up to Chase and watched Chase...do his unable to cope thing and run off to a different room like a bat out of hell.

He sighed, then jogged after him, because that was what the Doctor did. "What's going on?" he asked, bursting into the changing room.

Chase stared at his reflection in the mirror, not sure whether this was real or whether there was something that he could pick out that made it a dream (more of a nightmare). He splashed water on his face, pushing the wet strands of hair away from his forehead and taking in ragged breaths.

He hated this. He hated staring at himself and seeing someone that he was a long, long time ago. "I can't do this again," he said, voice trembling.

The Doctor sat on one of the benches, settled his chin in his hand and looked up at Chase as he rested elbow on knee. If it was a dream, it was a shite one. "It looks like we're going to have to," he said. "And you're leaving her hanging on the phone, you know."

"I don't care. Maybe if Kayla doesn't find me on the phone, she'll go to another doctor. Cameron or Foreman can deal with her and I can be removed from the equation." He closes his eyes tightly, trying to will this nightmare away. "All because I spilled his damn vicodin," he swears. "All this because of that."

The Doctor cocked his head, not entirely following. He knew about the situation, yeah, but he didn't know every single salient detail. "You spilled House's Vicodin?" he asked, confused and trying to get Chase to talk it out. It was as if the past had brought Old Chase back into the limelight--reticent, overly fretful, self-loathing.

"I spilled his Vicodin. He yanked Foreman off the tests and he put me on." It was such a stupid thing, such a little thing, and Chase had killed a woman because of it. He splashed his face with cool water one more time, but he still felt like he couldn't look at himself in the mirror. "She's going to call again, but this time, Kayla will get the help she needs. She'll have a better doctor if I just stay away."

"How do you know that she's going to get that help? That someone else isn't just going to say the wrong thing as well?" asked the Doctor, because they were just sitting there, now--okay, Chase was standing, whatever--and who could say what was going to happen?

He sighed. "Tell me what I need to know and I'll talk to her, for fuck's sake."

"Because the other doctors on the floor today didn't just get the news that their father has been lying to them for three months!" he shouted, gripping the counter as hard as he could, throttling it in lieu of something else. "She has bloody stool. She has two ulcers that need dealing with. She needs them looked at right now."

The Doctor winced slightly at the shouting, but weathered it anyway with his usual aplomb. "And you're so damn sure another doctor will give her the right diagnosis," he said, eyes narrowing faintly. "From bloody stool and two ulcers."

He stood up and perched on the counter instead. "Rob...what did your father do?"

"You already know what he did," Chase said tiredly, finally turning around to look at the Doctor head-on instead of through the mirror. "Isn't this your thing? Your skillset? You come back to a point in time and you change it for the better, isn't that what you're always talking about?"

"Yes, but that involves being active. It also involves a certain amount of knowledge of what could be affected by my actions, in case it could cause seriously problematic consequences. You know, like shooting Hitler," the Doctor retorted. He was more frustrated than he was letting on.

"You blame yourself, you blame your father, you blame House. Fine. Move the plot along."

He took out a short breath and gave the Doctor a long look, knowing that if he had to move things along, then he had to take that stupid phone call. "She deserves a better doctor," he said, knowing that much. "She didn't deserve me, especially not as she got me."

The Doctor leaned in, reached over to tilt Chase's chin up with a finger. "Then maybe she deserves the future you," he said, firmly. "The one that I know. Not the past you."

Chase took a deep breath and shook his head, unable to shake the idea that he was a complete fuck-up, but more than that, he was because of his father's deceit. "Do you think it'll take?" he asked, his voice small. "If I do the right thing this time, do you think she lives? I mean, in the real world, if this even is some version of it."

"Maybe she lives here, then. In whatever real world this is," the Doctor said. "I don't know, Rob. I have absolutely no idea where we are."

That was more than faintly terrifying, all things considered. Maybe this was some sort of island trick, which would be the least scary thing.

Chase had faith that the Doctor would always know what to do -- if not that, then where they were. "Do you think Nate's okay?" he asked, hiding in the bastion that the changeroom provided so long as no one else came in. It wouldn't last forever, but it was good to breathe and put this in order. "If this were permanent, do you think he would've come with?"

The Doctor tensed, not sure what he thought about Nate with regards to them being here. "I would hope so," he said, because he did, and he hoped Chase wasn't about to freak out. That would be the last thing they needed.

Chase took in a deep breath and turned around, ready to face himself and this situation dead in the eye. It'd been almost seven years since this happened, but it still followed him around like some horrifying spectre that he couldn't exactly shake. "Do you think I'll feel some kind of peace, fixing it?" he asked, because he was going to fix it, he was.

He just didn't know what to expect of what would come from it.

"Do I hope so? Yeah. Do I think? I have no idea, Rob," the Doctor said, but it wasn't unkind, his tone. He slid off the counter and straightened the white coat. "At least you'll know that at some point, somewhere, it's sorted."

Chase hadn't worn his labcoat in years. Even when he was in the clinic, he had shunned it because it felt like it was an old part of himself that didn't matter any more. Now, it felt heavy on his shoulders even though it was only fabric. "Okay," he breathed out, and he nodded, he nodded and knew that maybe the next chance to fix this was coming. "Okay."

He closed his eyes, but when he opened them, he was still in the changeroom. It wasn't until he took the steps back towards the hall that he found himself suddenly thrust back into a moment, phone in hand.

"...Robert?" called his stepmother from so very far away.

The Doctor had been behind Chase a little, still in the changeroom when he walked out of it, but suddenly they were both back in an entirely different corridor. Chase was standing at the nurses' station, looking stunned at the phone in his hand.

Back further in time, then. This was just getting strange, though not as bad as it might have been, the Doctor thought. At least they didn't have to run for their lives. Yet.

It wasn't as though he had an abundance of experience when it came to this situation, but Chase thought that the trick might be to breathe. In, then out, and then in again, as he listened to his stepmother haltingly explain what happened to Rowan Chase without an ounce of medical terminology within her words.

'Passed away' and 'long battle'; one that Chase hadn't known about until the obituary.

This time, he is ready for it, and so the news rattled him, but when he heard Kayla's voice calling for him, Chase gently hung up the phone, recited her chart again in his mind (he would never forget it, never forget her kids, never forget her) and turned, offering the bedside manner smile that Foreman had always hated. "Kayla," he breathed out, pain lurking in his eyes, but not in his tone. "Hi. Would you like to head into an examination room? We can talk more privately there."

The Doctor watched Chase take the call, but he could see from years of knowing his posture, his body language, that it didn't throw him as much as it might have done, even now. He had been about to step up to him, to say something, when the patient--Kayla--approached him, and he wasn't sure what to say, didn't want to ruin their privacy.

Chase felt like the load on his back was progressively getting lighter with every step he took. He closed the door behind them and discussed treatment options with her, got her to swear that she wouldn't take any aspirin, and booked her for exploratory surgery just in case the ulcers had reached the point where they couldn't be helped with meds.

When she left, she left with a smile on her face, prescriptions and appointments in hand. She left with the possibility that her life was going to be her own. Chase felt good about it at the same time as he felt the crushing fear that none of this was actually real. "If this is a dream," he murmured, aware the Doctor was nearby, close enough to hear, "I don't want to think about it being real. I'd rather delude myself into thinking this was it, that this was reality."

"Who knows what it is," the Doctor said, thoughtfully. He'd seen Chase come out, saw Kayla come out looking remarkably happy, and he could only hope. "Maybe it's neither. Pocket universe--real in some ways. Real to her, at the very least. And honestly, Rob, that's part of what matters."

He thought about giving Chase a hug, but settled for putting an arm around his shoulders. "Let's get some coffee."

"Is that what you usually do after you save the world?" Or, in this case, just a person. "Have coffee?" he drawled, as teasingly as he could given that he still felt exhausted by everything that had happened.

"Seeing as we're here, we might as well," said the Doctor brightly. "Rob, you have to learn to exploit the situation. I mean, maybe some of those nice soft cookies as well, I haven't had any of those in ages, dream or reality or pocket universe or whatever."

"I could make you some nice, soft cookies if you asked," Chase felt like pointing out. "I mean, they might not be like you get at the shop here, but I could try." And if he didn't succeed, he could beg Shari until she helped, which was always a good idea.

"Come onnnn, if we're here, we should get some cookies. Not like I'd mind if you made me some cookies," the Doctor added, feeling that it was a very important point to make. "We might as well get some pleasure out of this...whatever it is."

Chase couldn't help his scoff, dubious and fond and disbelieving all at once, but then, the Doctor had a tendency to prompt that kind of reaction from him. "Okay," he agreed. "But just remember that we're in New Jersey and don't blame me if the cookies aren't what you like."

"They'll be amazing," the Doctor said, having focused on something esoteric once again. "I mean, what are they going to be made out of? Toxic waste? Jimmy Hoffa's burial clothes?"

"Probably mostly lard and fat and all the other things Americans injest too much of," Chase opined, given that he wasn't entirely giddy about the menu options. "You know what I want? I want pizza. I want deliriously delicious pizza, that's what I want."

"Well, let's bloody go. I'm assuming you know a place," the Doctor said, with all the confidence of a man who got what he wanted and got it for others as well. "You've earned it."

He wrapped Chase into a hug. "I mean that," he said, not sure still about the hug because if this was reality somehow, people would totally be weirded out by it. But whatever.

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