Disclaimer: They're not mine
Rating: K+ or PG
Summary: A New Year. An Old Friend. "We will always think of reasons why we can't finish this." Luby standalone.
So in between endless CSI fics, I've been writing random ER standalones... Carby, Marsan. But this one is a Luby, especially for Faith who convinced me to do it. It's really quite long actually, so prizes go to anyone who actually finishes it. I'll also be writing a chaptered Luby fic called "Kisangani Dreams" so check that out if you liked this, or just pity me.
Happy New Year everybody! I hope everyone has a great 2006. Read, enjoy and please review if you have the time. Also, I live over here in London where we don't yet have Season 12 so please hold back on the spoilers! Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
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A Thousand Words
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The countdown into the New Year had been one of her least eventful yet but, considering the year they'd just left behind, perhaps uneventful might be nice for a change. Abby had been somehow roped into opening up her apartment to the ER doctors, interns and nurses with nowhere better to go on New Year's Eve and was actually heading back from the kitchen with some more wine when the live television countdown had caught her by surprise.
It also caught her by surprise when a somewhat inebriated Dr. Susan Lewis had swooped round and planted a kiss on her cheek with a grin.
"Hey," Susan shrugged. "You gotta have someone to kiss on New Year's – and trust my judgement to marry a guy who goes to the bathroom during the countdown."
Abby laughed slightly. "I don't think there's much romance in this room anyway," she'd commented, glancing around at the odd coupling of Luka politely kissing Kerry Weaver and Ray Barnet trying to keep an air of masculinity as he hugged Greg Pratt.
Susan had smirked as Chuck emerged from the bathroom and mock-flinched at the punch landed on his arm from Susan. "And that's for deciding to go to the bathroom at one minute to midnight."
Chuck held up his hands in surrender. "Hey," he defended himself. "When nature calls..."
"Yeah? Well next year, stick nature on hold for a minute or two," Susan chided him with a smile before turning back to Abby. "Thanks for the party, Abby – but we've kinda gotta go; our sitter already hates us enough and I really want to get out of here before Morris makes his toast."
"Makes his what?" Abby had repeated, but was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a slightly drunk Chief Resident tapping a teaspoon against his wineglass and clearing his throat.
"Bye Abby!" Susan called, grabbing hers and Chuck's coats from Abby's room and disappearing out the front door as Morris got up onto a chair for better projection.
The last thing Abby remembered before her memory chose to suppress the cringe-worthiness that was Morris' New Year toast, was Morris on the table, loosening his tie with a suaveness he didn't possess and smiling broadly about the room to a collection of stunned and dread-filled faces.
She stands now in the middle of her living room at 1 o'clock in the morning and muses over the fact that she'd never seen a room be cleared so quickly than during Morris' speech. When Abby had found herself left alone in her living room with Morris and a disappearing hospital porter making his hasty exit through the front door, she'd quickly thanked him and ushered him out of the door, too.
"Trust Susan," she thinks. "To beat everyone else in the dash to the door." And begins picking up dirty paper plates to throw in the trash.
-
It had been one helluva year for everyone, what with all of Deb, Elizabeth and Carter leaving them after so long, Susan and Chuck having Cosmo, and Luka and Sam breaking up. Sam hadn't turned up to Abby's New Year's party, choosing instead to spend Christmas and New Year with her sister in Seattle. She'd said it was so that Alex would get to see his cousins and spend Christmas with kids his own age, but everyone knew it to avoid the awkwardness between her and Luka over New Year.
Sam had been the one to end it three months ago, getting finally fed up with Luka's unresponsiveness, and, though they got on amicably at work, nurses had once gossiped about a flickering yearning still held by the Croatian attending. They didn't talk about it anymore. Like Sandy or Carter and Kem, the subject became a kind of taboo of things too painful to voice in front of others.
Hopefully, Abby thinks, as she ties up a black bin bag, hopefully this year things will be brighter.
She jumps suddenly as she hears a door shut in her apartment; she'd thought she was alone.
"Hello?" she calls uncertainly and a confused-looking Luka Kovac emerges from down the hall. Abby smiles. "Jesus, Luka – you scared me."
Luka grins apologetically. "I'm sorry," he looks around the empty room. "Where is everybody? I go off to the bathroom to escape Morris' speech and, when I come back, everyone's gone."
Abby shrugs her shoulders. "I guess that's the effect Dr. Morris has on people," she says wryly. Luka laughs slightly before nodding at the bag in her hand.
"Do you need any help?" he offers. "You know – clearing up?"
"Oh no, no it's fine," she shakes her head. "Thank you."
Luka pauses, looking at her and then nods again. "Okay, well – I guess I'll just get my coat." he says. "Your bedroom, right?"
"Huh?" Abby looks blank for a moment before shaking herself. "Oh, you're coat – yeah, my room. Second door on the –"
"Left." Luka finishes for her with a small smile. "I still remember."
And Abby just looks at him curiously in the soft light as he turns and head towards her room.
Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the New Year's atmosphere, but Abby could have sworn she'd felt something that hadn't been there for a very long time. She shivers. This is stupid, she tells herself sternly, it was nothing. And she carries out the trash bag to the garbage chute on her floor, with a confused frown on her face.
"Hey Luka?" she calls into the apartment when she returns. He hadn't been out with his coat yet and she wonders what's taking him so long. "You okay?"
She straightens out the cushions on her couch and, when she gets no response, wanders down towards her bedroom.
"You know it's pretty tragic that on New Years Day there's a guy in my bedroom but I'm out here cleaning up..." she begins as she opens up the door. But instead of getting any kind of response out of Luka, she finds him standing at the end of her bed and staring intently at the painting that hangs over it.
"Luka?" she repeats quietly and Luka jolts out of his daze. "Seriously – are you alright?"
"I – uh – that..." he pauses and frowns, getting his words in order before turning to her. "Where did you get that picture from?"
Abby raises an eyebrow, looking between him and the painting that hung above her bed; an idyllic scene of a sunrise-lit cobbled street in Europe, the view from a window of an early morning – two girls, one older, one maybe just six years old, both in school uniforms and immortalised in the painting: holding hands and walking with direction down the pavement as a shop on the corner opens up for morning business.
"A market stall, down by the river in November," Abby tells him, slowly. "I guess I was just so sick of looking at grey skies and snow all day," she adds with a small smile.
"Who did you buy it from?" Luka asks, not taking his eyes off the painting. Abby moves closer to him cautiously.
"Just some woman," Abby answers uncertainly. "She had a whole bunch of paintings that she said she'd collected when travelling around Europe over the last ten years... Luka, what's going –"
"Why did you pick this one?" he cuts her off. Abby stares at him – now he really was starting to freak her out.
"Jesus Christ, Luka – I don't know," she snaps, exasperatedly. "It just caught my eye, that's all. What the hell's wrong with you?"
Luka turns around at the angry tone in her voice and, to her surprise, his face breaks into a broad grin.
"Look," he says excitedly, and climbs onto her bed, moving over to the painting. "Look at this!"
But Abby stays standing at the end of the bed and just look at him. He's lost it, she thinks, holy crap – he's finally lost it. It must have been pulling three double shifts in four days last week; she'd always known it wasn't healthy to work that hard.
"Abby – come and look at this," he beckons to her with a smile.
"No thanks, Luka," Abby tells him. "I think I'll stay right here."
Luka rolls his eyes and laughs. "You think I'm crazy, right?" he says and takes her hand gently, leading her onto the bed to kneel beside him in front of the painting. "Look."
His finger points to the bottom right hand corner. A tiny signature in black oil paint hides in the corner between the picture frame and the oak-detail on the window ledge in the painting.
"Do you see that?" he asks her and Abby leans closer to it, squinting in the semi-dark. And then her mind unscrambles the scribble in the corner into words – one word – a name.
"Oh my God," she murmurs. "Does that say...?"
"Kovac?" Luka provides and when she looks up at him, he beams and nods. "My father painted that. I watched him do it, actually." His finger moves from the signature to the two little girls walking down the road. "And those are my sisters. My older sister, Ana, taking my little sister, Katarina, to school."
A smile spreads across Abby's face. "Where were you, then? Skipping school?" she kids.
Luka chuckles. "No, that's the thing," he tells her. "This took my father just one week to paint – and I watched the process. The view is from my bedroom window in the suburbs of Zagreb. I had the chicken pox and my father took a week off to look after me. He sat at the window while I was in bed – and he painted this."
-
Nine-year old Luka Kovac sits up in bed as his father comes into the room, an easel under his arm, a box of oil paints in his other hand and a collection of paintbrushes clamped between his teeth. He sets them down at Luka's bedroom window and turns to his son with a smile.
"Dobro jutro, Luka. How are you feeling?" he asks him quietly as he pulls up a stool to the window.
"Better," Luka says, pulling his knees up to his chest. "When can I go back to school?"
His father laughs. "Is that all you think about?" he teases. "Not until next week, your mother said. She wants you to rest."
Luka sighs and scrambles out of bed to stand at his father's side, peering over his shoulder to watch the progress of the painting. His father selects a paintbrush carefully and mixes touches of colours together on the palette.
"Evo, Luka," he murmurs, glancing out of the window. "There go your sisters – off to school. What do you think we put them in the painting?"
Luka doesn't say anything though, intrigued instead by the huge array of paint tubes in the wooden box balanced on the window ledge and picks through them, laying them out in a rainbow of colour.
"Hey!" Luka's father notices him up and out of bed. "Your mother would be very angry with me if she saw you out of bed so early!" He grins at his son and Luka laughs before diving back under the covers.
"That's more like it," he says, dipping the paintbrush in a glass jar of water. "Spavajte."
-
Luka shakes his head wistfully and smiles at Abby. "What are the chances, huh?" he wonders out loud. "This painting made it all the way from that little house outside Zagreb – to your room here in Chicago."
"Like you." Abby says quietly and Luka looks at her.
"I guess so," he nods. "I guess so."
There is a split-second then, of contemplation and decision, before both lean together and their lips meet in the darkness. Her hands move to his face. His arms encircle her body. It was just as it had always been – as though the last few years had just not happened and it had always been this: just Luka and Abby, knelt together on her bed on New Year's Day.
"Stop..." Abby finds herself saying, pulling back. "Stop, Luka. What are we doing?" She looks at him with a kind of sadness. "We always fought so much... Don't you remember?"
"I remember," he replies, his arms still around her waist. "But for every day we fought, I loved you – even more."
Abby stares. She near-believes him. She really does. And she'd never thought she'd believe those words out of anybody's mouth.
"But what about Sam?" she asks him in a whisper.
Luka smiles dryly. "I think Sam made it clear to me that it was over quite some time ago; we're still friends, it's okay," he tells Abby before remembering, "What about Carter?"
"All the way over in Paris and married?" Abby says. "I think that's a pretty good sign that nothing's going to happen with us..."
Her hands still rest on his face and she strokes his cheek absent-mindedly where her thumb rests. "But what about –"
"Abby – stop." Luka interjects. "We will always think of reasons why we can't finish this. And still I can only think about how much I've missed you."
Her breath catches in her throat just then. She believed that, somehow. Somehow she honestly believed he was speaking the truth. And that she felt the same.
"Then let's not finish it," she murmurs, leaning up to his lips again. "Let's start again."
Luka's eyes close on Abby's lips touching his and he remembers what that was like, remembering how it was to watch her wake up in the morning, how it was to hold her close even as Chicago winds howled outside the window. And Abby thinks to herself that perhaps – perhaps this year, things will be brighter.
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