Need to have seen the first few episodes of season 4, to fully understand this. Spoilers for season five, up to Both Sides Now. First part is House's POV. Second part is another character's.

Detour

House regards his life now as an obstacle course, a matter of simply getting over one hurdle and onto the next. If he can get out of bed, he can make it to breakfast. If he can get through breakfast, he can make it to first group. If he can get through first group, then he can make it to second.

And it’s not that he particularly likes groups, or breakfast, or waking up for that matter. It just means he’ll have made it through and can go on to something else. He answers the facilitator’s questions, takes his medication when he's told and tries to jump through all the hoops they lay out for him. He doesn’t think about things too much, just tells them what they want to hear and allows them draw their own conclusions. He welcomes them to extrapolate whatever they think they can from that limited information. That's their job after all, to figure him out. He's not going to do the work for them, and he nods when it's appropriate.

To some extent, he’s still resigned himself to playing someone else's game. If he follows their path, if he doesn’t stray, if he does exactly what he’s supposed to do, maybe this time he will get somewhere. Maybe he can finally be fixed.

Except that deep down, he really doesn’t believe it, not really and completely. He doesn’t believe that he can be fixed, because he’s not even sure what’s wrong with him to begin with. What frightens him more than the idea of going insane, is that he’s finally reached the point where he’s desperate enough to relinquish his control to absolute strangers. And he’s well aware that he hasn’t always had control. It's very possible that he's never had it. It’s just that there’s a big difference between never having had it, and willingly giving it up.

By week four at Mayfield House has fallen into their routine, the waking up and the walking of paces, and the moving from one station to the next. For once in his life, he’s doing what is expected of him, and not bothering to question it. He's come to the conclusion that, at the age of fifty, being a rebel is simply no longer worth the energy. But while he's succumbed a significant portion of his free will, he's still carefully avoided thinking about the undeniably traumatic series of events that brought him here in the first place. He’s hoping that if he just keeps walking those paces and jumping those hurdles, he can get to the finish line without ever having to face them at all.

He won't admit it, not even to himself. But he likes that no one knows him here. He likes that all they know of him is what he tells them, what's indicated in his chart, what they can see on his face. It makes it all the easier to maintain the illusion that he's clearing those hurdles, that making it from one activity to the next constitutes success. He hasn't approved anyone to visit him yet, and he isn't accepting any phone calls. He thinks that if he avoids dealing with the outside world, then maybe he can isolate this, keep this experience in a box and not allow it to leak out into the rest of his life.

Henry enters the dining hall at a quarter past noon, just as the last of the lunch trays are being cleared away. Under each arm are containers of craft supplies: pipe cleaners, popscicle sticks, and a hodge podge of similar articles.

At the age of sixty-seven, he's lucky enough to have been able to retire. But like most retired people of above average intelligence, he's also bored out of his mind. So he volunteers to pass the time. He travels around with a group from his church, visiting different convalescent homes and mental hospitals. The goal is that by organizing some banal activity, he can distract the patients from their misery for a few hours, simultaneously alleviating his own boredom and giving himself purpose.

He whistles absently to himself, setting the boxes down on one of the large tables and pulling out the appropriate items. Most of the projects are fairly simple, consisting of gluing something to something else. They kind of have to be, since the list of things he's allowed to bring into the hospital is fairly limited. Today he decides, he will give people the option of making something with modeling clay or constructing something from assorted foam shapes.

When their eyes actually meet, his immediate thought is that Dr. House had made some kind of massive career change. It's unlikely sure, but not impossible. Long term residents at Mayfield dress rather plainly, in casual attire. Since that's always been House's signature uniform, seeing him in jeans and a t-shirt now, hardly suggests that he's a patient and not an employee.

But then he looks down at House's shoes, the plain, canvas slip-ons. Patients are forced to wear them, because so many people have successfully hanged themselves with forty-two inches of shoe lace. There are the other subtle clues, no belt, no watch, and the plastic band around his wrist.

He can read the other man's discomfort, being discovered like this. Chances are that few people actually know House is here, and that's probably how he'd like to keep it. Hoping to get the two of them something resembling privacy, Henry waves his hand to catch the attention of the activities director. She's about twenty feet away, at the nurse's station. But she's always been very receptive and helpful and she immediately reads the urgency on his face.

As soon as she approaches, he gestures to himself and House.

"Is there somewhere we could maybe talk..?"

She isn't familiar with House specifically, because she doesn't deal with patients on an individual basis. But the color of his ID bracelet indicates both his GAF score and the breadth of his hospital privileges. He can be trusted not to rip his clothes off and start screaming or take anyone hostage with a plastic spoon. She points down the hallway.

"Second room on the left. Keep the door propped open. Code is on the wall."

"Thank you."

Henry isn't sure at first, whether or not House will even follow. But he actually does, glancing up only briefly to take note of his surroundings. His movements are practically robotic. The room they end up in is plain, dingy carpeting, round table and four chairs. No therapeutic setting is complete without the signature box of Kleenex. He seats himself and waits for House to do the same.

"So," he asks, hoping he can break the ice with some humor. "Is this some kind of undercover operation?"

"Elvis is alive," House replies, dryly. His voice sounds broken and unused. He clears his throat twice before continuing. "They're hiding him here...I'm sure of it."

"Any good leads?"

"The janitor found some empty buckets from KFC in the garbage. I bagged them for DNA. Still waiting on the results."

Henry regards the joke with a bob of his head. They didn't really get to know each other that well, at least not in more than a professional sense. But based on their limited interaction, he suspects that Dr. House connected with him more easily than he does most people. Although he's curious as to why he might be here now, he has no idea how to extract that particular information. Unfortunately, he doesn't have to.

"I killed someone," House offers.

Henry waits a beat to gauge the seriousness of the confession. House's mannerisms are impassive enough, that it's difficult to know whether or not the statement was made in jest.

"A patient?"

House grimaces slightly, scraping his thumbnail against the surface of the table.

"Cut Throat Bitch."

He nods again. He remembers her, and not fondly. She cheated by keeping patient information on her PDA, wanted to be on the men's team, showed up late to the cemetery to avoid having to do any digging, interrogated House's old fellows in search of inside information. She was a great physician, technically speaking. But she definitely lived up to her title.

"Dr. Volakis?"

"She was...Wilson's girlfriend," House explains.

Henry honestly has a hard time picturing Dr. Volakis and House's mild mannered, dark haired friend together in a romantic capacity. But his deductive reasoning skills are intact, and he slowly puts it together. While the man in front of him is eccentric, perhaps blatantly unorthodox, he's not malicious or grossly negligent. Whatever happened was clearly circumstantial and has a plausible explanation. Amber was sick or injured perhaps, and due to Dr. Wilson's personal investment, House ended up being responsible for her care.

"If it was intentional," he points out, "I think you'd be in prison...even if you plead temporary insanity, the doctors here would have you under lock and key. So I'm assuming it was...an accident."

House mumbles. "There's no such thing."

Henry gets it, and he's admittedly intrigued. One of the first things that he noticed about House was his obsessive need for objectivity, to distance himself from the human elements of practicing medicine. Someone who feels the need to do that is someone who is already shouldering a lifetime worth of emotional burdens, who knows too well the pain of loss and is simply trying to protect themselves, to minimize further suffering. Whatever happened to Dr. Volakis may or may not have been House's fault. But he clearly holds himself responsible. His friend apparently holds him responsible as well, and the weight of that responsibility is related in some way to him being here now.

Henry shifts in a bit, leans forward and waits for the other man to look at him.

"Let me tell you something...it’s going to be okay."

He's not an idiot, and he knows House isn't either. He's well aware of how ridiculous that sounds. Just the fact that House is here, in his stupid canvas slip-ons and plastic, ID bracelet is sort of proof that everything is definitely not okay. Most people would probably assume that you could never bounce back from something like this. But Henry isn't most people.

"When I was a kid," he begins. "Well...when I was twenty-two...that's a kid compared to now anyway, I was driving home from my brother's high school graduation. My brother and his best friend were in the back and my older sister was in the front with me. In those days, cars were still made of metal...not this fiberglass nonsense like they have now...and they didn't all have seatbelts either. This one did, fortunately. But it was one of those ones that goes across your lap, and not your chest. It was the stupidest thing ever. A deer ran into the road, and I didn’t want to risk hitting it. So I swerved. The asphalt was wet, because it had just started to rain. I went into the embankment and crashed into a tree. No one was hurt really, just...whiplash. Even the car sustained little damage. Due to the angle of the collision, the safety belt crushed my sister’s abdomen. She was about five months pregnant, I think. The trauma induced labor. Took a while for the ambulance to come. So the doctors couldn't stop it, and they had to deliver. Nineteen sixty-five...neonatal care was still in the dark ages."

"The baby died?" House asks, although his tone doesn't imply any actual interest.

"Survived for a few hours, I was told. I never went to the funeral. I packed up my stuff that night, got in my car and...just took off."

"I’m sorry." It sounds less like an actual apology and more like a conditioned response.

"I was too, eventually. But I was also angry...because it wasn’t fair, not to anyone. I would never have done anything to hurt my sister..or anyone I loved, on purpose. I felt like after that...my parents and the rest of my family would look at me and only see the person who had taken my sister’s child away."

"Did you ever go back?"

"Took me three and a half years. I hadn't seen my parents since before...they all lived in the same township, Otter Creek. I thought...my sister and her husband would tell me to get lost. They...welcomed me with open arms, invited me to stay for dinner, to spend the night. The next day I saw my folks, my brother, some friends from school. I visited her grave...Emogene. That was my niece's name. I didn't even know they'd named her. But when I finally saw the headstone, I was ashamed...not because it was my fault she'd died, but because I'd run away. I didn't realize that everyone had just been waiting for me to come home."

House doesn't say anything, but his reaction is visible on his face. All of that is great in theory, but it's fairly useless to him right now, and he has no one to go home to anyway.

Henry says, plainly. "I know it seems like nothing will ever change, like you can never go back. But it will and you can."

"You don't even know what happened."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does matter," House argues. "If you knew...you wouldn't be saying that."

"Did you mean for it to happen?"

"Of course not."

"Would you intentionally cause Dr. Volakis permanent and irreparable harm?"

The softness of his response is sad.

"No."

"Then it doesn't matter."

House is quiet, and Henry can tell that he's still unconvinced.

"When you stuck that knife in the light socket...those of us who weren't busy...followed you down to the ER to see what would happen. Wilson was already there...trying to tell the attending what to do. She ended up yelling at him and threatening to call security. It was kind of funny, now that I think about it. Profanity doesn't really suit him. But the way he was...hovering, reminded me of the way a concerned parent acts when their child is sick."

His lips quiver, but don't quite break into a smile.

"That was before I killed his girlfriend."

Henry sighs, wishing he could give the other man the benefit of the big picture. Maybe it would be better if he could see himself, and his relationship with Dr. Wilson, from the point of view of an unbiased party. When two people are that connected, nothing can separate them, not even death.

"I know this may be hard for you to believe...but he's waiting for you to come home."

"Can't do that, at the moment."

"I was being metaphorical."

House replies, sharply. "So was I."

"Ask me where I was," Henry prompts.

"What?"

"I took off for three and a half years. Where do I think I was?"

"Clown college?"

"NYSPI."

House's eyebrows knit with uncertainty.

"As...a patient?"

Henry chuckles softly, oddly flattered that the idea of him needing psychological help is difficult for someone to fathom. NYSPI is located at the Columbia Univerity Medical Center. It's one of the oldest mental health facilities in the country.

"How do you think I got the job in the admissions office?"

"Gives new meaning to hiring from within," House muses.

"I drove my car off the road...on purpose. I don't know if I wanted to die. But I guess I didn't care that much if I lived. Broke my clavicle, ended up at CUMC. I was inpatient for about nine months, day-patient for another year after that."

"That at least explains your affinity for arts and crafts."

Henry reaches across the table, and quickly squeezes the other man's hand. The way House recoils confirms that he's not used to the physical contact. They exchange an awkward glance.

"What happened to my sister, I was angry...for a long time. But I eventually realized...I couldn’t really be sorry until I was done being angry. I couldn't really be forgiven until I was ready to be sorry, and I couldn't forgive myself until I'd been forgiven. Your life...isn't over. You're just taking a detour."

"Yeah," House mumbles. "This is just a vacation."

"You know...it sort of is."

House looks around the room, like he's deliberating about something. He clears his throat again, a little more loudly, and his voice bears the most feeling it's had since their conversation began.

"Wanna know what happened?"

"Yes," Henry says with a hopeful expression. "I would like that very much."