Thirty Days of Solitary 17/30
Jul. 13th, 2012 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
menolly_auTitle: Thirty Days of Solitary 17/30
Characters: House with small bits of various others
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For everything up to and including Twenty Vicodins
Summary: House was sentenced to thirty days of solitary confinement for his actions in Twenty Vicodins. This is the story of his time in solitary, and what was happening back at PPTH while he was there. Story will mainly focus on House, but there are segments featuring the rest of the cast. Starts just before the end of Twenty Vicodins.
A/N : Many, many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
damigella_314. Without her constant help and encouragement this story would be called 'Five Days of Solitary'.
Click for previous part
Day 17 Sunday 23rd October 2011
Sunday morning used to be church morning. The Lord's Day, his father would inform him, as he inspected young Gregory before church. When they were living on a military base which was most of the time, his father would be in his dress uniform, his mother would put on her 'Sunday best' complete with hat, and Greg would be stuffed into an uncomfortable suit for the service. They would go the base chapel which combined a church service with all the usual pomp of the military. His father's eagle eye would be on him the whole time lest Greg do something to disgrace his father's rank.
When they were living off base, the routine was much the same, but without the military trappings. There was an extended period of times, when Greg was in his mid-teens, that he was recruited to play the church organ for services. His mother had volunteered him, proud of his abilities and John had agreed, not seeming to care much one way or the other. Nobody had asked Greg if he wanted to play the organ of course, or even if he wanted to go to the stupid church in the first place.
Greg had decided, after his twelfth summer, that he was an atheist, that not only didn't he believe in God, he didn't want to believe in God. He told himself that it wasn't because if there was a God the guy obviously didn't love him, but just that the whole idea was stupid. God didn't make the world in seven days, man didn't come from Adam and Eve and there sure as hell was no such thing as eternal life, he hoped.
There was no chance of escaping going to church though, his father would never have allowed it, and his mother would have given him her ‘I am so disappointed in you’ look if he tried, so he went and sulked and fumed silently in the pews. Playing the organ at least gave him a distraction, something else to focus on besides how uncomfortable his clothes were and how much he hated the whole thing. Maybe that's why his mother had volunteered him.
The organ was great, a real old relic, with a fantastic sound that had filled the church hall. He even secretly liked a lot of the hymns, if you ignored the words, the music had a grandeur that appealed to him and he gave it everything he had. He noticed that some of the old people looked at him with surprise as he belted the tunes out, and there were the usual frowns of course, he was used to that, but he also noticed that the singing picked up when he really put all his effort into it. Sometimes playing music gave him this feeling of power, of taking the audience to places they hadn't thought of before. He liked that.
When he was too big for Dad to do much to him physically he stopped going to church, grew his hair to a respectably long level, threw away the old suits and swapped out the church organ for a guitar and a pick-up band in a friend's garage. They never had much commercial success, and what money they did make they drank away, but sometimes he was able to recapture that feeling of power, of leading people and taking them somewhere else with music.
Now it is 'the Lord's Day' and he is in a prison cell, a very small prison cell. There's no organ, no guitar, no music at all. He misses music; it’s always been his one safe haven – the thing he can retreat to when nothing else works. He’d had a small radio and tape player back in the main prison, here he has nothing.
The prison did supply religious services on tape if anyone in solitary cared enough to have them piped into their cell. They would also supply a real live minister of the cloth if the prisoner made enough fuss. Of course the man of God would have to do his snake oil show from the other side of the cell door. It might be worth trying to do it for the sheer entertainment value but House decides he can't be bothered. Pissing people off for the sake of it is beginning to lose its appeal to him, and he doesn't want to do anything that would jeopardise him getting out of solitary some time before the next presidential election.
He lies on his bunk and finds the old remembered hymns running through his head. His hands are lying on the mattress and he starts to find the notes on an imaginary organ, hearing the familiar tunes in his head. He closes his eyes and lets the music swell over him, taking him away from here.
It's Sunday but, like most Sundays, Foreman is working. He may be at home and in casual clothes but the phone is virtually glued to his ear, his laptop is up and running and displaying spreadsheets rather than dolphin porn. He checks his emails and discovers one from the legal department.
The hospital lawyer has been investigating what was happening with House and has discovered he is due in court tomorrow for a hearing on the further charges against him. The lawyer has somehow acquired the information that House is going to plead guilty and receive a further eight months in jail, on top of the four he still has to serve. Foreman winces at that, another year in jail, and there will be no offer of parole this time. He is becoming interested in getting House out of jail, not just for the hospital's sake but also for House's sake. Jail cannot be a good place for him; he wasn't in good shape the last time Foreman saw him, and he doubts jail has improved things much.
Foreman thinks of all the times House had made off-hand references to Foreman's criminal past (a slight brush with the law which led to a short stint in juvie). He had been very interested in Foreman's brother, Marcus, when he'd been released from jail. He's still not sure exactly what game House had been playing with Marcus but Foreman has to grudgingly admit that House had brought them together in the end. It's a leap of faith to think that House meant for any positive effects to come from his interfering but there had been some.
Foreman checks his schedule and moves some things around. He can't do anything to help House with his legal problems, not at this late stage, but he will go to the court tomorrow and see for himself what happens.
Characters: House with small bits of various others
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For everything up to and including Twenty Vicodins
Summary: House was sentenced to thirty days of solitary confinement for his actions in Twenty Vicodins. This is the story of his time in solitary, and what was happening back at PPTH while he was there. Story will mainly focus on House, but there are segments featuring the rest of the cast. Starts just before the end of Twenty Vicodins.
A/N : Many, many thanks to
damigella_314. Without her constant help and encouragement this story would be called 'Five Days of Solitary'. Click for previous part
Day 17 Sunday 23rd October 2011
Sunday morning used to be church morning. The Lord's Day, his father would inform him, as he inspected young Gregory before church. When they were living on a military base which was most of the time, his father would be in his dress uniform, his mother would put on her 'Sunday best' complete with hat, and Greg would be stuffed into an uncomfortable suit for the service. They would go the base chapel which combined a church service with all the usual pomp of the military. His father's eagle eye would be on him the whole time lest Greg do something to disgrace his father's rank.
When they were living off base, the routine was much the same, but without the military trappings. There was an extended period of times, when Greg was in his mid-teens, that he was recruited to play the church organ for services. His mother had volunteered him, proud of his abilities and John had agreed, not seeming to care much one way or the other. Nobody had asked Greg if he wanted to play the organ of course, or even if he wanted to go to the stupid church in the first place.
Greg had decided, after his twelfth summer, that he was an atheist, that not only didn't he believe in God, he didn't want to believe in God. He told himself that it wasn't because if there was a God the guy obviously didn't love him, but just that the whole idea was stupid. God didn't make the world in seven days, man didn't come from Adam and Eve and there sure as hell was no such thing as eternal life, he hoped.
There was no chance of escaping going to church though, his father would never have allowed it, and his mother would have given him her ‘I am so disappointed in you’ look if he tried, so he went and sulked and fumed silently in the pews. Playing the organ at least gave him a distraction, something else to focus on besides how uncomfortable his clothes were and how much he hated the whole thing. Maybe that's why his mother had volunteered him.
The organ was great, a real old relic, with a fantastic sound that had filled the church hall. He even secretly liked a lot of the hymns, if you ignored the words, the music had a grandeur that appealed to him and he gave it everything he had. He noticed that some of the old people looked at him with surprise as he belted the tunes out, and there were the usual frowns of course, he was used to that, but he also noticed that the singing picked up when he really put all his effort into it. Sometimes playing music gave him this feeling of power, of taking the audience to places they hadn't thought of before. He liked that.
When he was too big for Dad to do much to him physically he stopped going to church, grew his hair to a respectably long level, threw away the old suits and swapped out the church organ for a guitar and a pick-up band in a friend's garage. They never had much commercial success, and what money they did make they drank away, but sometimes he was able to recapture that feeling of power, of leading people and taking them somewhere else with music.
Now it is 'the Lord's Day' and he is in a prison cell, a very small prison cell. There's no organ, no guitar, no music at all. He misses music; it’s always been his one safe haven – the thing he can retreat to when nothing else works. He’d had a small radio and tape player back in the main prison, here he has nothing.
The prison did supply religious services on tape if anyone in solitary cared enough to have them piped into their cell. They would also supply a real live minister of the cloth if the prisoner made enough fuss. Of course the man of God would have to do his snake oil show from the other side of the cell door. It might be worth trying to do it for the sheer entertainment value but House decides he can't be bothered. Pissing people off for the sake of it is beginning to lose its appeal to him, and he doesn't want to do anything that would jeopardise him getting out of solitary some time before the next presidential election.
He lies on his bunk and finds the old remembered hymns running through his head. His hands are lying on the mattress and he starts to find the notes on an imaginary organ, hearing the familiar tunes in his head. He closes his eyes and lets the music swell over him, taking him away from here.
It's Sunday but, like most Sundays, Foreman is working. He may be at home and in casual clothes but the phone is virtually glued to his ear, his laptop is up and running and displaying spreadsheets rather than dolphin porn. He checks his emails and discovers one from the legal department.
The hospital lawyer has been investigating what was happening with House and has discovered he is due in court tomorrow for a hearing on the further charges against him. The lawyer has somehow acquired the information that House is going to plead guilty and receive a further eight months in jail, on top of the four he still has to serve. Foreman winces at that, another year in jail, and there will be no offer of parole this time. He is becoming interested in getting House out of jail, not just for the hospital's sake but also for House's sake. Jail cannot be a good place for him; he wasn't in good shape the last time Foreman saw him, and he doubts jail has improved things much.
Foreman thinks of all the times House had made off-hand references to Foreman's criminal past (a slight brush with the law which led to a short stint in juvie). He had been very interested in Foreman's brother, Marcus, when he'd been released from jail. He's still not sure exactly what game House had been playing with Marcus but Foreman has to grudgingly admit that House had brought them together in the end. It's a leap of faith to think that House meant for any positive effects to come from his interfering but there had been some.
Foreman checks his schedule and moves some things around. He can't do anything to help House with his legal problems, not at this late stage, but he will go to the court tomorrow and see for himself what happens.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 10:48 pm (UTC)Wonder what House will think when he sees Foreman at the hearing? This series is so fascinating!
no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 11:55 am (UTC)Thank you, I'm glad you are still enjoying it :) Thanks for reading :)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 06:16 am (UTC)and there sure as hell was no such thing as eternal life, he hoped.
I chuckled at the 'he hoped' part at the end there. :)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 11:57 am (UTC)Thanks for reading !
no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 05:36 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure Foreman also attended church regularly as a kid - his father, if I remember correctly, is religious - but like House, he seems to have dropped the habit. Like House, I think he wants to distance himself from his family, but unlike House, he has no good reason to do so.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 10:59 pm (UTC)House does seem familiar with hymns and churches/religion in general so I figure he was dragged to chruch services when he was a child (it seems like a very John & Blythe thing to do).
I seem to remember Foreman being resentful that God was given credit for his success by his father. Foreman and his family was always a bit of a puzzle, his dad seemed quite reasonable, his Mom was sick yet he hadn't visited her for a long time (yes, I know it would be painful with her having Alzheimers but come on Foreman, your brother is in jail, make an effort). Maybe there is a reason there we just never knew about (besides, 'I want to escape where I came from').
no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 08:49 pm (UTC)I like your thoughts about House and music. We know he can play the organ, too, and you provide the perfect reason he'd have learned.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 11:02 pm (UTC)Ah, the poor lamented organ, one appearance, never to be seen again :(
Thanks for reading :)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-23 05:27 pm (UTC)Not logged in but it's cuddyclothes, catching up.