'Sleep of the Dead'
Rating: A for Angst.
Archive: Go for it!
Spoilers: References to Be Still My Heart and All In The Family.
Disclaimers: Not mine, so sue me. I double dare you.
Author's Notes: Months after the rest of the world has had a stab at
Carter angst regarding the above episodes, I decide to have a go. Just
pretend this is the first one you've ever read...
And I promise no ghosts, romantic liaisons with Kerry Weaver or
unsuccessful suicide attempts. Just Carter and his thoughts. . . in all
their sleazy glory. . .hehe, well, maybe not.
I don't usually play with angst, or sleep deprived Carters' for that
matter, so be kind, and all thoughts, and comments can be sent right to
angelpixiedust@bolt.com
And the song used is 'Evaporated' by the Ben Folds Five.
-----------------------------------
Here I stand,
Sad & free
I can't cry and I can't see
What I've done
God...What have I done
-------------------------------------
Carter's body felt heavy and unused as he left the comfort of his bed.
The kind of feeling you get when you've had one drink too many the
night before. The kind of feeling you get when you find yourself
twisting and turning underneath the covers, searching for that spot,
that one spot that'll send you right off to sleep. The feeling you get
when you can't find it.
So he'd surrendered. Meekly, he added. Given in to his body's desire to
remain conscious. Telling himself that you can't die of insomnia, that
insomnia's only a state of mind, that insomnia is untreatable, unless
you want to subject yourself to sedatives, which'll just leave you
walking around like the living dead for the next few days after.
The dragging sound of his feet against the carpet was almost soothing,
reminding him of being seventeen, and unable to sleep because of
college entrance exams, and girls, and family, and that one episode of
Space Invaders From Mars that he hadn't seen.
Making a pit stop at the little boys room, he managed to catch a
glimpse of his reflection. His normally well-groomed hair, stuck out in
awkward shapes around his head. He smiled, realizing that after two
hours worth of sleep on an exam bed he had probably woken up to the
same hair, told patients about cancer with that hair, given running
medical commentary to Weaver or Benton with that hair, and everybody
too polite to get him a comb.
Quietly refusing to meet his eyes, and quietly refusing to ask himself
why, he made a pool of water in his hands, enjoying the coolness as he
showered it over his face.
A few minutes later, he found himself rummaging around in his medical
cabinet, in search of a cure for chronic nocturnulness, a cure for all
the imaginary diseases that staying awake until four am in the morning
were the symptoms of. Advil. Paracetamol. Stuff that made you throw up.
Stuff that eased muscle pains. Stuff that shouldn't be used whilst
operating heavy machinery.
Bored with being bored, he resumed his passage back out into the
kitchen, the vast emptiness of the kitchen, with its questionable
number of large knives hanging from metal girders. Plodding along
softly to the TV remote, so as not to disturb the maid or the cook, or
Gamma, he sat back on one of the kitchen surfaces, and pressed the 'on'
button.
Click. CNN, stock market looking blah, blah, blah, blah. Click. Cartoon
Network doing a Tom and Jerry marathon. Click. Soft porn. Click. Soft
rock. Click. Friends in German. Click. Ten percent discounts on all
chintz ware, only tonight, for just tonight.
He sighed, resigning himself to watching a documentary on the formation
of rocks, the many fascinating kinds of rock. Should do the trick.
Attempting to bore himself into a vegetative sleep, he became engrossed
in the moving images, and the gentle hum of the narrators voice.
Ten minutes later he was still awake. And able to recite every
different combination of rock possible. He was sure that someday he
would be thankful. Someday when he fulfilled his lifelong dream of
being a contestant on Double Jeopardy.
He wasn't sure why, today, tonight, of all nights he found himself
unable to sleep. He told himself that it was because his body had
merely given up the battle against all the caffeine circulating in his
blood stream. He told himself that four hours sleep was perfectly
normal. That maybe that extra cookie had been a bad idea...and that
cheese sandwich he'd had *just* after nine... he shouldn't have picked
up that Stephen King novel.
It wasn't anything else.
Nothing blonde, or young, or big blue-eyed, or haunting, or dead.
It was coffee.
Realizing that his thoughts were getting the better of him, he stood
up, stretched his arms a little, yawned a little, and then physically
shaking his head, as if to remove all wandering thoughts through any
openings, proceeded to fill the kettle with water.
Tea. Tea was good. Calming, soothing.
Tea would erase all bad thoughts.
He opened up one of the cabinets and frowned. Since when were there a
hundred or so different varieties of tea?
Cursing at them all, he stuck a hand in and began sifting through them.
Black tea. Decaffeinated tea. Herbal tea. Jasmine tea. Round tea.
Triangular tea. Greek tea. Chinese tea. English tea.
No *tea*, tea, he mused.
Green tea cleansed the body right? Therefore maybe it could cleanse the
mind. And chamomile tea claimed to ease stress, and induce a state of
calmness. Placing both of them into the cup, and not caring about what
they would taste like together, poured the steaming water over them.
It wasn't his fault. It could have happened to anybody. But it didn't.
She was his responsibility. *His* student.
He killed her.
His eyes hurt. And this time it wasn't from a lack of sleep.
Drinking as much of the strange tasting liquid as possible, the burning
heat against his mouth and his throat ending his thoughts.
They were talking about rocks from volcanoes now, about igneous and
sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. The narrator's voice rumbled gently
into his consciousness and when he would awake the next day, he would
forget how he had gotten there, and tell Gamma that he was OK when she
gave him that look as she walked in to discover him, his hair in
awkward shapes around his head.
He was OK.
He was the one who was OK.
She would never be.
And she'd never know the peace of rocks.
---------------------
I've faith that there's a soul
Whose leading me around
I wonder if she knows
Which way is down...
--------------------------
FINITE
All comments, thoughts, and uh, news on the rock front can be sent to...
angelpixiedust@bolt.com
I'm also gonna thank my beta Samantha Caldwell, for doing some mean
beta reading...
And don't forget to turn the lights off on your way out. Sweet dreams.