House M.D. Gift Exchange Event || @housemdgiftexchange
House and Thirteen Moments, for @dualsouled
The last gifset gets me... These two are a father/daughter match made in hell and they're so perfect for those roles in each other's lives. Neither knows how to give or receive love meaningfully because they each believe themselves to be unworthy. House sees himself as ultimately unlovable, as the force that destroys those who dare to try and eventually causes them to leave him. Thirteen sees herself as the grenade that will eventually explode and wants to minimize the casualties and collateral damage.
The scene where she admits she killed her brother is so often criticized on House's part because of his silence, but we know that House's grief is shocked silence. Any time he is hit with major bad news, it leaves him speechless. It's not comparable to any other scene with his other fellows where he provides (socially acceptable, minimal) comfort. Those scenes all have House at arm's length from the main issue, and he's there because he cares about his fellows and their emotional damage. The scene where Thirteen relays her brother's death, her own decline coming up very quickly, maybe three to five years off if she's lucky, House can't answer that with a there-there shoulder pat. He loves her and has just heard the visceral details of how she is going to die while he is utterly powerless to stop it. With his emotional state at this point in the show... he can't answer in any other way than his own devastation. To House, devastation is quiet distance. It's not social ineptitude that he has nothing to say and doesn't embrace her. It's his own hurt.
And while Thirteen initially lashes out at this reaction, these later scenes prove that she understands, once she has the distance to do so.
In the last gifset, he is struggling because Wilson won't fight cancer to stay with him. And she comes to him and tells him that his offer to help her die was the best way anyone has ever loved her in her entire life. This is quite possibly the only time in the entire show, maybe in House's entire life, that someone tells him his love is good enough.
Again, he is grieving and can't answer. He's muted by hurting.
But it's not surprising he takes this conversation and offers to Wilson the same thing he offered to Thirteen before—to make the end painless, even if it means less time together.
“And she comes to him and tells him that his offer to help her die was the best way anyone has ever loved her in her entire life. This is quite possibly the only time in the entire show, maybe in House's entire life, that someone tells him his love is good enough.”
I am going to sob.
