"You'd have every reason to be," he tells her, not arguing that she should have been but aware of the curious ways grief can change you. "Most people medicate sadness somehow. Drugs, chocolate, alcohol. Those terrible Hallmark movies. You just waited to come out the other side?"

It's a genuine curiosity. He's only known her as a bright if try-too-hard fellow Fellow, someone with a history that started when she walked into the diagnostic's office to find him slightly put out at the thought that he couldn't cope with House on his own. The fragments of who she used to be came later, like being handed the symptoms with a diagnosis already on file. He knew what she was, just not how she'd gotten there.

Bright. Try-too-hard. Way too ready to sign herself up for things that are going to hurt.