Disclaimer: Nope, not mine. Because you know I would share ;)!

Authors Note: This is one of two attempts I've done for the OCOH November Challenge. Carter returns from Africa and includes no spoilers after 10:06 I promise.

What is it with this place that makes me feel so much at home? The surgical rotation had been, to put it mildly – challenging. I didn't feel out of my depth so much that the people around me were making things harder. Romano, especially felt like he had to single me out at given moment.

Now it's my first day down in the ER and lucky me, as soon as this night shift is over I'll get the chance of roughly 5 hours sleep before my nursing shift starts.

I get to the admin desk and notice the other 4th years stood around idly, so I figure I should take the initiative and grab a chart. This way I at least get to choose which patients I get to treat. Flicking through the charts I see a nice and easy dispo, which should roughly take half an hour max to deal with. Then I can present my case to Susan, who I'm so glad is doing the graveyard shift with me and find then start the next chart.

"Now that's what I call cunning!"

Susan is currently looking at me and grinning. I also notice she's wearing her coat.

"Where are you going? Tell me you're not leaving me to do the night shift by myself."

She just grins and shrugs apologetically. "What can I say? Weaver got someone else in."

I groan. "Just promise me it's not Romano – I don't think I could take it."

"You're safe, he's just finished a double." Then she pats my hand reassuringly as she grins evilly. "It's probably Chen, and with Pratt and Coop as the R2's tonight, you'll have fun. I promise."

Yeah tons of fun, I can see it now – Chen arguing with Pratt, Pratt doing some unethical procedure and Coop bed ridden through an asthma attack.

Fun, fun, fun!

Rolling my eyes at her I make a move to walk away.

"Abby what's wrong?"

Wrong, nothing's wrong, only my eyes appear to be playing tricks on me. And I guess my skin has turned a paler shade of white, oh yeah and my mouths hanging wide open. But nothings wrong that blinking a few times should fix.

Accept that doesn't help and I guess Susan has worked out 'what's wrong'. Her eyes have followed my direction and she sees him to, I guess the shocked smile on her face means that she didn't know about his return either.

And the smile suggests she's happy to see him – what happened to sister solidarity?

Despite my racing heart I manage to give an outwardly calm appearance. "So he's back then."

Susan turns to look at me, her face sympathetic to what she assumes I'm feeling. "Abby, I promise I didn't know."

"It's okay. I can handle it." My eyes are still trained on him, Carter. It's taken me months to stop thinking about him every other moment of the day and him standing there in front of me has put me right back where I started.

"Do you want me to stay?"

"I'll be fine." I say more for myself than her.

And I should be fine. It's just one shift and I'd have to face him sooner or later, at least this way I get it over and done with. Hopefully it will be either too busy that we wont cross paths, or slow, in which case I can get in some much needed sleep.

As I look at Susan, I realise that she isn't convinced, so I do the only thing I can. "Come on. Let's go say hello."

Seeing her face twist in confusion gives me the strength to go through with this. I push her ahead of me and we walk towards where Carter is.

Not that I have a clue what I intend to say to him, I'll just wing it I think.

"Hey Carter!" That smile she had earlier has reappeared on Susan's face and now she's leaned over to hug him. "So you got roped into covering my graveyard shift."

"Yeah lucky me. Weaver says I have to pay my penance for walking out on the job. Guess I have some trust to earn back, now that I'm home for good."

As he speaks he looks straight at me, but I can't hold his gaze. Not yet, so I look everywhere but at him.

"Well don't worry Abby will keep you company."

I shoot a glare in her direction that wasn't exactly what I had planned for tonight, but I paste a smile on my face as I turn to speak to him.

"Welcome home stranger." So it wasn't exactly profound, the truth never really is.

"Hey." It seems like we we're frozen in time, but it was probably merely a few seconds.

I realise I'm biting my bottom lip again, so I make a conscious effort to stop.

It also seems like Susan's trying to redeem herself.

"Come on Carter I'll show you where they've put the lounge and introduce you to a few new folk. Talk to you later Abby."

She shoots me a reassuring smile and then takes Carter and pulls him off in the other direction. Leaving me standing there utterly confused.

"Abby, you wanna try helping fix some of these patients, instead of standing there like a wet lettuce."

I throw daggers at his back, as Pratt walks off to inspect the other new med students. He can humiliate them all he wants, but if he thinks he's getting piece out of me then he's going to be sorely tested tonight.

Looking at the chart still in my hands I make my way over to curtain area 3.

*

So far so good, the place is dead, it's 3am, I haven't seen Carter in 2 hours and I've just managed to sneak into an empty exam room. If I'm lucky I can catch a few hours before it's time for my shift to end.

I don't even bother switching on the light I can see the outline of the gurney and head there, shedding my lab coat and dropping it on the counter on the way.

"Ouch!"

"Oh God I'm sorry!" I exclaim as I realise the gurney isn't exactly empty. Then his outline becomes a little clearer. I guess I know where he's been hiding all night.

"Carter." I say pensively. Not quite believing I just sat on him.

"Oh, I was just taking a nap."

"I can see that."  As my eyes adjust under the darkness, I notice he's fluffed up hair and manage to curb my urge to flatten it. To be civil to him is one thing to go out of my way to touch him goes past that.

I have to remind myself that this is the guy who broke up with me via a letter, the guy who told me I didn't disappoint him but then wrote to me that actually I did. And he's the same guy who broke…

I cut my own thoughts off at that point. I've been down that road too many times over the last 6 months and it's not something that I care to go into right now. Especially now.

"I should let you sleep." I make a move to leave him, but he puts his hand on my arm to stop me.

"I think we need to talk."

"You need your sleep." I avoid his question and his pleading eyes.

"I've had enough." He counters me.

"Well I need my sleep." I say defiantly, this isn't exactly pretty.

"You're a med student you're not supposed to sleep." He sits up, probably to make room for me to join him.

"Yeah I'm a med student, who's on duty. I should go before Pratt sends out a search party."

"And I'm your attending and I need you to help me in here."

"You need help alright, but I'm not sure it's something I can help you out with."

We stand there glaring at each other, but he has a point. I just don't want to deal with it right now.

"John it's late. Can we do this another time?" I say this quietly, the earlier irritation in my voice has gone.

"If we do that things will just get worse."

"They couldn't get any worse." I mutter under my breath but I know he hears me.

"Please. I didn't leave things the best possible way, the least you can do is hear me out."

I think about it for a moment. If I listen to him I can prove to myself that I have changed that these last few months getting on with my life have been worth it. But if I turn and run on my heel we'll have to face each other at some point and I will disappoint him yet again. Despite everything that happened between us, I still don't want to disappoint him.

I walk over to the door and I know he thinks it's to leave, but I turn on the light and flick the lock. I don't want anyone disturbing us.

I look up and notice the thankful smile on his face.

"So, you're back in med school."

"Yeah." I smile at that.

"Well I'm proud of you."

I look into his eyes and I know he genuinely means it. I feel I should explain more, but doing so opens up the whole can of worms that accompanies the letter, but if I don't bring it up he's sure to and if he doesn't, then it will hang over us.

"I wanted to do something for myself for once. Everything I've done has been for other people, either to help them or because it's what they expect it of me. But being in med school was the one thing that is rightfully mine. My decision and affects only me. And I have you to thank for that."

"What did I do?" He says curiously

"That letter you wrote…"

"I want to explain about that." He cuts me off, but I put my hand up to quieten him and then place it slowly but deliberately over his own. He looks in so much pain right now, that I want to comfort him in some way; because what happened what ever the future holds for us, we started off as friends and that's one thing about this whole turn of events that I regret most.

"It's okay. It was a good thing. I mean sure I wanted to hate you and hate myself and… But the more I thought about what you wrote the more I understood that most of what you wrote was right."

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to say, but I don't want him to explain. He already broke my heart once I couldn't bear for him to do it again.

"Like you said, I disappointed you, and at the time we only seemed to be hurting each other. I'm sorry I hurt you." And that's the one thing I was always honest about. "When I asked for my keys back and…" I stutter over the next thing. "and gave you all your stuff. I meant to hurt you; I just wanted you to feel half the pain that I felt when you left me."

"Oh Abby I'm sorry." I realise that the tears I've held in for so long are falling down my cheeks, so I quickly brush them away. This isn't the time for crying.

But it's hard to disguise the tears in my voice as I speak.

"No it's good, you made me realise some things. They say you always hurt the ones you love, well I guess we got that covered good and proper; and secondly everyone I care for always leaves me." I feel his hand turn round under my own and he squeezes it tightly. I want to snatch it back, he doesn't have the right to comfort me over this; but the part of me that still cares about him and wants to be held by him wins and I squeeze his hand back.

"You know, I'm okay. It's what made me realise I had to suck it up and get on with things." I look into his eyes now and see his mirror mine with tears. "I screwed everything up because of my life being on hold, and I lost us. I lost our friendship."

We sit there for a few minutes both lost in our thoughts, our hands still interlinked and that's where my focus lies.

"I never meant for us to lose our friendship." His voice is barely a whisper but it's enough to break my trance on our hands and forces me to look at him. His eye's searching mine for something. I'm not quite sure at the moment what. "I just, we just."

"Stopped communicating." I finish for him and he just nods. "We had a screwed up year and important things got lost along the way."

"I figured it would be easy, that everything would fall into place."

"I know." I'd felt exactly the same. "But things change."

"We've both changed Abby. I know you think that people don't change but you've proved over these last six months that you have. And I know Africa has made me see things differently."

I nod before speaking, I always thought people stayed the same at least on the inside; but he's right. People can change, but only if you allow them to. So I tell him this I figure he deserves the truth. Then I ask. "So why did you come back, why now?"

I'm not sure why this is important to me.

"It was the right time. I'd learnt everything I could from the Congo, the Foundation was getting concerned with things; and… I missed you."

I feel myself blushing under his warm gaze.

"Over there you have plenty of time, mostly at night, to think. You relive your mistakes and joys, happy and bad times. What I remembered most, was us; what we had in the beginning was friendship. A solid base for any relationship. So I came back to see if I had any chance at finding that friendship again."

"So what happens now?" I ask, curious as to where he wants this relationship to go. I asked the same thing to Luka to, but this time around I'm hoping for a chance to go back to the beginning.

I watch as he jumps off the gurney and then he pulls to my feet, before stepping away.

"John Carter." He offers out his hand, as grin on his face.

"Abby Lockhart." I accept his hand and return the smile.

I get my wish after all.

"Abby? Someone once told me it was Abigail."

I laugh and swat him good-humouredly on his arm.

2nd Authors note: There will be quite a few fics with the same title and voting over at OCOH starts on Sunday, so go choose your favourite one.