AN

This is a plot bunny I came across after watching the first episode of the new series. I had to get it out before we were bombarded once more with the Connor/Abby bits.

Just thought it would be an interesting possibility.

Oh and it hasn't been beta'd, so any mistakes are purely mine and feel free to point them out.

Saving Abby

Everyone had changed once Stephen had died. Cutter, Conner, even herself. Nobody was quite the same anymore.

Abby supposed that no one had fully understood the implications when they had first got involved, sure there had been risks, dangers, Stephen it seemed had taken the brunt of them even from the beginning. Abby remembers the attack of the giant centipede with a wistful smile. He had asked her to dinner the day. She really had liked him. But none of them had fully understood…understood that one of them could actually die that things had changed.

Mostly she tries to remember Stephen with a smile. But she has regrets. Most of them do she supposes. She regrets how she acted towards him when she learned about he and Helen. Thinks maybe things would have been different if she had been more forgiving.

She really really doesn't want to regret Connor. But she's not sure she can wholly manage it. She sees the pain in his eyes too, and wonders if he too knows why. She had turned to him when Stephen had hurt her, it was wrong she knew that, but Connor had always been there. He had been sweet and made her laugh, and she didn't see why things couldn't work out between them. Underneath it all though, she knows she only really started flirting with Connor to begin with because of Stephen, because she wanted him to see what he was missing. It was stupid and petty and that was probably why she didn't admit it for so long.

She likes Connor. She really does. She's not sure if she likes him the way she liked Stephen, but she thinks she could probably be happy if he ever stepped up to the plate and asked her out. Except she knows he won't. Since Stephen died, Connor isn't the same as he used to be. He tells her Stephen was the brother he never had, and Abby feels even worse about the way she treated them both.

Ever since it happened Connor has seemed to draw away from her. He's less bubbly, a little less cheerful, a little more haunted; it's finally hit home that Stephen is gone and he's not coming back. She tries her hardest, but she misses him too, and doesn't see why it should be her to make all the effort.

Eventually she stops trying. When Connor eventually moves out she's not surprised. They're still friends, but the possibility of more is gone somehow. She thinks that even Nick has noticed, he gives her a sad smile when Connor tells the news of his new girlfriend, just before the anomaly detector goes off again.

She's not as sad as she expected herself to be about Connor. It's like her and Stephen but less, another what might have been that hadn't been. Stephen had been too enigmatic, too mysterious, too ultimately jaded to open his heart, although she thinks if things had been different they could have been happy, that she could have loved him. As for Connor, she guesses ultimately he was never the man she needed, she thinks they too could have been happy together, but she's not sure she would have ever loved him the way she thinks she could have loved Stephen – the way he would have deserved.

So when Captain James Becker asks her to dinner she's not only surprised, but highly confused. Over the months he's been with the ARC they'd become friends she guessed, they'd laugh and have a quick conversation now and again, but she's never really thought that he looked at her as anything more than a colleague.

To begin with she hadn't really noticed him either, too caught up in Stephen's death and Connor's absence, but slowly she'd noticed that yes he was handsome, and funny, and clever. But none of it had mattered, because she had promised herself she wasn't going to do it again.

So when he casually asks her out, she forgets to breathe for just a moment. Because it's too much like the time with Stephen. Except she looks up into his dark chocolate eyes nothing like Stephen's and surprisingly even less like Connor's, and she knows he's not in pain or desperate, she knows he's waited until a time when she's not mourning and Connor has moved on, and she knows that this is a genuine invite.

In fact as she stares up at his features, she can't help but feel those little butterflies of nerves, she sees the same reflected in his own eyes. In the moment she sees, he's not just a colleague, he's not Stephen, or Connor, or anything other than a genuinely good man who is interested and as afraid of rejection as anyone else, despite his appearance of utter confidence.

"Yes. I'd love to." She tells him with a smile. She almost feels a weight lifted inside as she says those words, she wasn't aware quite how long she'd been holding onto Stephen, and in some regards to Connor, until something finally forced her to let go.

As he tells her he'll pick up that very night, she can't help but feel nervous and very very happy.

It's a few months before they declare themselves official. A few months before they get a lecture from Lester about professional conduct in the work place. A few months before she receives a smile and a hug from Nick and an apology from Connor. It's just a few months, but she hardly remembers a time when she was happier. She still missed Stephen, she knows they all do. But she's found someone to help fill the hole in her heart, both he and Connor had made.

She takes Captain James Becker's hand as they leave work.

"Thank you." She tells him resting her head against his arm.

"What for?" he asks chuckling

"Saving me." She replies.

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