The Contract is a House fanfic by DIYSheep which can be found on Fanfiction.net
and which is the cornerstone for a shared fan multiverse.
The plot is that House has signed a "contract" in blood which allows the other party to abuse him any time, anyhow, anywhere. This other party is expert at both physical and psychological torture. He did this because the other party would have killed Wilson, and might still kill him and others, otherwise. He isn't allowed to tell anyone that he is under this "contract" or to find out who the other party is... Anyhow, because no one knows what's going on, no one is sympathetic to him; though they can see changes in his behavior, he manages to alienate them enough that they don't want to dig deeper. (The one time Wilson seriously tries, House gets him so mad that Wilson breaks his cane.)
After a period of calm, House is forced to watch the murder of Cameron and is forced to confess to it. Wilson immediately regrets how he had treated House, but it's too late by then. The prison is a new "tough-on-crime" prison, and the personnel have already been corrupted by the party who is torturing House, ensuring that the torture continues and intensifies. House eventually gets to meet his tormentor, but by then he's in a solitary cell in chains and is thoroughly demoralized. House survives by sheer willpower — if he dies, so does everyone named on the kill list — and thinking of Wilson.
Then House's tormentor is murdered in broad daylight. The FBI is on this case, as House's tormentor was very influential, and they quickly discover the "contract" and DVDs of House's torture. House is moved to the prison hospital, and Wilson is at his side ASAP. Eventually, they get the bad guys convicted and House cleared — at which point House regresses majorly. Wilson then has to take care of him in hopes that he comes back...
Such is the original story, told in three Fanfiction.net chapters (all subdivided), of which only the first two were in the original draft. In many ways, it is an improbable cornerstone for a multiverse.
But something about this story struck a chord in readers in the House fandom. If the characters were Out of Character, it was in ways frequently seen in the fandom in House hurt/comfort fics. And this fandom has always enjoyed wrestling with the nature of morality — a subject that this story does deal with. And so others have asked to write in this 'verse and have been allowed to.
There is a LiveJournal community indexing all Contractverse {K-verse] works...
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: John House is in fine form, visiting the prison to tell House in the cruelest way possible that his mother died.
- Alternate Universe: Most of the true sequels are incompatible with each other. And, on learning that one of them ("Exigencies" by Priority) had mentioned a form of torture that was threatened but never carried out, the original author wrote a piece, "Pencils Are Dangerous," in which it does happen. That one also has sequels.
- Break the Haughty: House is tortured and abused enough that it turns into Break the Cutie.
- Deus Angst Machina: Neither House nor the reader get much of a break in the main story.
- Disproportionate Retribution: While the details of what happened differ in the different spin-offs, the main gist is that Thompson's daughter died even after House was the last minute call to save her, and he blames House for her death even though he wasn't directly responsible.
- Downer Ending: The third chapter is essentially an AU where Thompson doesn't die and fakes House's execution so that he can essentially a pet/slave for him and the lawyer, and it ends with House's personality completely voided and none of his friends knowing he's still alive.
- For the Evulz: Thompson gets written with a bit of sympathy even from House for his daughter's death, but the lawyer carries out most of the torture including essentially a rape party (it doesn't go into gorn detail, but House is tied down and has to wait for people to "have fun" with him), and seems to be just doing it for kicks.
- Gorn: Says something where House getting beaten with his cane is one of the least terrible things to happen to him.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Done very slowly In-Universe, but done
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: House angrily asks Thompson if he has a "favorite episode" of the Torture Porn tapes.
- Non-Indicative Title: The "contract" has the form of a contract, complete with sections and clauses, but is not legally enforceable.
- Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: The original author had not got the hang of punctuating dialogue tags — and this work has a lot of dialogue. There is also an occasional misplaced question mark.
