Rating: FRT (Fan Rated suitable for Teens and over)
Disclaimer: ER and its characters are the property of Michael Crichton, John Wells, Amblin Entertainment and Constant C Productions. No infringement intended, please don't sue, yadda yadda yadda.
Content Warning: Character death, language, adult themes
Spoilers: Entire Ames arc of S13, so from 13.5 - 13.14
Unbeta-ed, so any and all mistakes are mine. Dubenko/Abby? WHAT?! I know, I know. But you can blame dubenkojunkie for this one. :P Remember that idea from the other night? Um, yeah. Happy early/late whatever. :D
Identity Crisis
© 2007, By: Ash Carroll (a.k.a. ShadowDiva)
She hears the shot and watches him fall in slow motion. The sidewalk greets him with open arms, and her life shatters when he does. She thinks of her son - the one she now has to raise alone - and realizes there isn't enough glue in the world for all the pieces.
His family orders the body shipped home to Croatia for burial, so there's just a small service at Ike Ryan's. She thinks about how expensive babies are and how tight money is and how many hours of her residency she still has to go, and tries to decide if it makes her a bad person to cry for herself instead of him.
She wonders if it's a bad sign that she doesn't care if it does.
Hope arranges for a priest to come and say a few words. He talks about Luka's family, his friends, his dead wife and his children. All of three of them. When he gets to her, though, he doesn't know what to say because he doesn't know what she is to him - and she can't help him because she's been asking herself the same question.
She's not his widow. He asked her twice, but she didn't like the way he did it. Besides, she tried marriage once and she doesn't intend to go down that road again. The drive made her carsick.
She's not the love of his life. That title belongs to a dead woman half a world away, she knows, because if it had belonged to her, he would have told her that there was a crazy man threatening their family. Her son. The only child she'll ever have, the one Curtis Ames nearly took from her. The one who's going to grow up one day and ask where his father is. The one she won't know how to answer.
The priest finally decides on 'mother of his child'. It makes her sound more important than she feels, so she'll take it. But it's not much of a distinction. The same dead woman half a world away that's the love of his life? She was the mother of his child - children - too.
First.
The service ends with the standard blessing and an announcement that there will be food and drink, and everyone is invited to partake and toast his memory. They do, and after three hours of accepting condolences from people she doesn't know and doesn't want to, she can't stand it anymore.
Morris is entertaining Joe and doesn't mind keeping him for a while, so she excuses herself and flees out into the cool Chicago night. She sucks in lungfuls of frigid air and tries to figure out what the hell she's supposed to do now.
"Abigail?"
She turns, startled, and nearly twists her ankle in the heels she's wearing. She doesn't realize she has company. He steadies her, but he's not exactly all that steady himself. He's looking down at her with an expression she remembers too well, and she can almost feel the rain from that night pelting her skin as she wonders how different things would've been if she'd said yes that night. But she didn't and she can't take it back.
He's leaning in to kiss her and she knows she should stop him, but doesn't. Her lips part for his tongue and she tastes alcohol. Vodka; the good stuff, not the cheap shit. And God, she wants it. Needs it. She might even need him, but she won't ever admit that.
She tells herself she's only kissing him back because it's not really drinking if the alcohol is in someone else's mouth. And she tells herself it doesn't matter if one of the mourners comes out and sees her sucking another man's tongue out of his mouth in the middle of the sidewalk; she's not his widow, she's not the love of his life Hell, he never even said he loved her.
But she is his whore, she remembers.
He told her so.