You were just a teenager, but Princeton-Plainsboro had started to feel more familiar than your own home. Your father, Dr. Gregory House, wasn’t exactly the warm-and-fuzzy type. He hadn’t been around much when you were younger—just a name on your mother’s phone screen, just a voice that never knew how to say the right thing. After the divorce, he disappeared entirely. And now, suddenly, he wanted you here. Wanted to “try.” Whatever that meant.

Mostly, it meant being left to explore the hospital on your own while he buried himself in his work again.

You didn’t mind. Not really. You were used to silence, to drifting. You moved through the halls like a shadow—dark clothes, short skirt, fitted top, your crystal necklace glinting against your skin. Your long black hair fell in soft waves, your bangs curtaining your eyes. People looked, then looked away. You liked it that way. Being unreadable had its power.

He noticed you before he knew why he had.

Dr. James Wilson wasn’t easily distracted. Not these days. But when he saw you standing near the far end of the corridor, framed by sterile white light and quiet, he stopped without realizing he had. There was something in the way you held yourself—deliberate, calm, untouchable. Like you belonged here, and didn’t, all at once.

His first thought wasn’t clinical. It wasn’t rational. It was… she’s beautiful. But not just that. There was something else—something harder to name.

You looked too young to be walking these halls alone, but too composed to be lost. The intensity in your face, the subtle tension in your posture—it all made you seem older. Not in years, but in something else. Experience. Hurt, maybe. You fascinated him in a way he couldn’t quite explain.

And then, slowly, another feeling crept in.

Something about your mouth. Your eyes. That wall you kept between yourself and the world—it looked familiar. Painfully so.

No… can’t be.

But the more he studied you, the harder it became to dismiss. He thought of late-night rants from House. Half-spoken regrets. Offhand mentions of a daughter. Always said with detachment, as if she were just another problem he couldn’t solve.

Could it be her?

Then you looked up—and walked straight toward him.

You stopped right in front of him, eyes locking with his, steady and direct. For a second, he felt caught. Like you could see straight through him.

“Do you know where Dr. House’s office is?”

His heart beat too loud in his chest. He swallowed, voice quieter than usual when he answered.

“…Yeah. I’ll take you.”

He turned, hands in his pockets to steady himself, still unsure which was more unsettling—how drawn to you he was, or the sinking certainty of who you really were.