Yay for chapter 2! My favorite one yet.

The Wizard of PROZ

Chapter 2: If I Only Had a Brain

Thirteen stood, immobile, for what felt like the longest time. "Why do roads always have to fork? And which fork do I take?"

"Well that all depends on where you're heading," someone said somewhere to her right.

She jumped, but turned and saw a man sitting on the metal railing that made a sort of fence around a field. This man just happened to be Kutner. Thirteen giggled in a most uncharacteristic way at the sight of him. "You're the scarecrow, Kutner?" She made an attempt to control her laughter. "I'm almost surprised you're not the lion, but I suppose you're the least likely to be able to scare off crows, now aren't you?"

Kutner frowned slightly. "I happen to be a very scary scarecrow, miss." Unfortunately, right at that moment, some crows chose to fly by, swirling around Kutner's head and squawking as loud as they could. Kutner swatted at them, curses at them, and yelled at them, but they did not cease in their taunting of him. He finally jumped off the metal railing and ran over to Thirteen, who glared at the birds and sent them off with a few choice words of her own. Kutner looked at the ground, but didn't say anything.

"What was that you were saying, about being scary?" Thirteen asked, an obvious smirk on her face, and in her tone. She flicked the man's forehead with her thumb and forefinger. "You, sir, are obviously in need of a brain."

--

It was now (everyone other than House's idea of) lunchtime, and the boredom felt by all those who sat in Thirteen's room was practically tangible. House and Wilson had started an odd game of word association ("Flower." "Fairy." "Gay." "You." "No, you." "That's not a word, House." "Your face is not a word." "Nope, it's a face."), Cuddy was rolling her eyes and muttering things about her two highly immature department heads ("5-year-olds."), and Kutner was laying on the floor, counting the ceiling tiles ("32...33...32 again...").

The door of the room opened, and Kutner and Cuddy looked up to see who it was. House and Wilson were still going at it.

"Lamp."

"Shade."

"Tree."

"Wood."

"Penis."

"Well, now I see why you forgot about our lunch date, Wilson, that game of yours sounds quite riveting."

Wilson and House finally stopped talking and looked over to the door, where Amber was standing, hands on her hips, and an amused expression on her face. Wilson attempted to form some sort of apology, but only succeeded in sputtering, causing House to burst into laughter. Amber grinned and, upon seeing there were no available chairs, placed herself on Wilson's lap.

House stopped laughing, mostly just so he could say,"I hardly think this is the time for a lap dance, Cutthroat Bitch. Then again, it might be, who knows. Is that what you do when I'm unconscious, Wilson, get lap dances?'

"Aw, House, there's no need to be jealous, you can have one too." Amber got off of Wilson, much to his confusion, and straddled House's lap this time, placing her weight on his left leg as best she could. She grinned at him in a most lecherous way, and House grinned back.

"I know you want me, but please, have some decency, your boyfriend is seated right next to us."

Amber gave House a peck on the cheek before returning to Wilson's lap and giving him one as well, just for good measure.

Kutner watched the whole exchange and continued to bemoan his lack of chair.

--

Kutner frowned. "Kind of. So where are you going?" he asked.

"Princeton-Plainsboro, do you know how to get there?" she replied, looking at either turn of the road.

"So you're going to go see House then?"

"Uh-huh."

Kutner scratched his head. "I think it's the left fork, actually, should I go with you?"

"I think that would be great," Thirteen said.

"What's your name? I feel like I should know it...have you already told me it?"

She smiled a little. "I haven't told you, just call me Thirteen."

Kutner raised an eyebrow, attempting to look suspicious of her, Thirteen thought, but he mostly just looked confused. "Your name is Thirteen? Like the number?"

"It's a nickname of sorts. Come, let's go." She grabbed his hand, dragging him along with her down the left side of the fork. Faintly, in the back of her mind, mostly likely, she could here the intro of a song starting up. She glanced at Kutner, who didn't appear to hear it just yet, and then glared up at the sky (because, clearly, that was where the music was coming from), and mumbled something about stupid songs and pesky movies under her breath. If Kutner noticed, he said nothing.

"What kind of nickname is Thirteen?" he asked after a few minutes of travelling down the White Linoleum Hall. "You a klutz or something?"

"No," Thirteen answered quickly. "That's the number House gave me."

"House didn't give me a number!" Kutner said, sounding vaguely offended. "He called me Can't-Scare-a-Crow," he added. "Then left me in that field." He shrugged. "So what's your real name?"

"I can't tell you that," she teased. "It would ruin the fun."

Sighing, Kutner stared at the sky. "Is it just me or did the lighting just get a little dimmer?"

"It's not you, I noticed that too," she said. "But I doubt it's anything to worry about."

Kutner was momentarily distracted from this problem when he looked down. "Why are you holding my hand?"

--

The door opened once again, and Taub poked his head in, but disappeared momentarily, returning (followed by Foreman) with a chair.

Kutner saw a glimmer of hope when he noticed Taub was carrying two chairs, but Taub set it down beside Wilson's chair and Amber slid out of Wilson's lap into the chair. He groaned audibly.

"No chairs for boys who bang concussed girls," House told him.

"Unfortunately, yes," he said, sounding a little peeved. He had gone over this a million and three times.

Amber laughed, but her amusement was cut short by Thirteen's newest string of incoherent mumbling, which definitely included the word "Kutner".

"She's obviously not having the dream I have every night. More like a nightmare now."

"Oh shut up House," Cuddy said, taking a fingernail file out of her purse and touching up her nails. "She could be dreaming about pink elephants, it doesn't really matter."

"Well it's more entertaining to guess at what she's dreaming about than it is to sit here and watch her sleep."

--

Thirteen looked down at their hands and noticed that, yes, they were in fact interlocked. She thought she had let go of his hand after dragging him with her, but it seemed she had not. With the faintest of blushes she responded with a defensive, "Is there a problem with that?" and let go of his hand. She sped up her pace, just enough so that she was walking about a foot in front of Kutner.

"Well, no," Kutner replied. "It was just weird, is all, seeing as we've just met."

Thirteen gave herself an internal smack on the head. Of course, this wasn't actually Kutner. This was Dream Kutner, Scarecrow Kutner, a version of Kutner that she hadn't met before now, one that didn't actually know her.

She really, really, really wanted to wake up.

"You're going the wrong way, Thirteen." Kutner grabbed her hand again, leading her in the correct direction, and Thirteen blinked, having not realised what she was even doing. She mumbled a thank you, and the two continued on their way, not mentioning the hand holding again.

"So how long should this little journey take?"

"No more than half a day, unless we run into problems," he said vaguely.

"What kind of problems could we run into?" she said, looking along the hall. She knew the answers, the witches would be wanting their lingerie back any time now.

"The witches, you know. And you never know what you could encounter in the PNS Forest," he told her.

She chuckled a little. "Lions and tigers and bears?" she asked.

"Oh, no," Kutner replied. "Those are extinct in PROZ or something."

Thirteen chuckling became full on laughter. "Extinct? That certainly is odd."

Kutner shrugged. "House probably just got sick of all the 'lions and tigers and bears, oh my!' chanting and had them sent somewhere else."

Thirteen couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but knowing House, any sort of House, for that matter, made her think it probably wasn't that far from the truth. In any case, she didn't particularly enjoy the chanting either, and just saw that was one less thing she had to try and avoid. "So, what's the PNS Forest?"

"Princeton's Northern Scenic Forest. There isn't a southern forest, and it isn't really any more scenic than the eastern forest, so nobody really knows why House named it that." Kutner paused for a minute. "Well, I mean, we can take a guess."

Thirteen ran the name over in her mind. "Oh, because it's like the part of the brain?" She didn't quite know why House would name a forest after the Peripheral Nervous System, but hey, the man was odd.

"Did she just say penis?" Amber asked, leaning in towards Thirteen in an attempt to better hear what the other woman was saying. "I think she's having your dream again, House."

"Which one?" House asked

"Oh, you know, that one that involves penis."

House grinned, looking over at Wilson. "Oh yeah. That one."

"I think she just said 'bears'," Kutner said loudly. 'Penis' wasn't his favorite topic of conversation.

"Like lions and tigers and bears? Or like bare?" House asked.

"I'm thinking the former," Kutner said. He actually didn't know either way but House's sex jokes just didn't amuse him that much after three hours.

House raised an eyebrow. "What did you two do last night?"

"I've already told you this story."

"Before you did the concussing and the doing."

"Watched a movie and had a couple beers."

"What did you watch?"

Kutner looked a little exasperated. "I don't know- the Wizard of Oz was on TV," he said, shrugging. "Is this relevant?"

House grinned from ear to ear, a sight that most in the room found to be quite disturbing. "She is very clearly not having one of my dreams," he said. "She is totally having a lame ass Wizard of Oz style dream."

"Then why is she mumbling about Cuddy, and me?" Kutner thought it would make sense, her having a dream about that, since they had just watched the movie last night, but he still found it a bit odd.

"You're clearly the scarecrow, and Cuddy is obviously one of the wicked witches." House paused for a moment. "Doesn't explain the penis thing, but hey, maybe she isn't having a PG-rated Wizard of Oz dream."

"Maybe Kutner doesn't have a brain because he's too busy thinking with something else," Amber suggested.

House looked like he might be considering that idea, then nodded. "You know, you might be onto something, mister. Good job."

"I am not the scarecrow!" Kutner said. This was getting ridiculous. Not to mention totally unfair. "I do have a brain!"

"It obviously goes unused," House retorted.

He didn't bother arguing. "Fine. But maybe she didn't say penis. Maybe she said something that just sounded like penis. I think she said forest after it too." This was Kutner's lame attempt at distracting House and Amber from abusing him anymore.

"A penis forest?" Taub interjected, looking very skeptical.

"Oh yes, I think that is every girl's dream. A forest full penises." Amber said it so straight faced, without any hint of a joke, that if what she was saying hadn't been so ridiculous every man in the room might have believed her.

"Of course," Cuddy agreed. "Secret's out."

Kutner threw his hands up in surrender. "I give up!"

"Don't give up yet Kutner, we've still got a few hours to go," Foreman said sarcastically behind his newspaper, uncrossing his legs and stretching them out in front of him.

--

Kutner didn't seem to know quite what she was talking about, as he just looked at her as if she had two heads. "No, because... um. Never mind."

"No really...what?" she said, looking around as if the answer to the joke would pop up in flashing lights and confetti.

"PNS forest."

"Yeah, Peripheral Nervous System."

"Sure. But say it slowly." He wondered if she was the brainless one of the two.

"...Oh." She scowled. "Of course, it's a man joke."

Kutner shrugged a little. "I think it's funny."

"You would."