Title:  "Buried Treasures" Description:  Post-ep for "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished."  Sixth chapter in "The Long Way," a series of Season 9 post-eps beginning with "First Snowfall."  Carter's POV. Author: KenzieGal (a/k/a It's Always Something) Disclaimer: Carter and Abby do not belong to me - they are the property of the wise and wealthy minds of TPTB at Warner Brothers.  No copyright infringement intended. Notes:  This is the first in a series of crossover post-eps with SunniSkies' (a/k/a Lanie) "Reflections" series.  Look for her to pick up the story thread in her upcoming post-ep to "No Strings Attached."

Special thanks to Pemberley for her thoughtful input on the carby anthem du juor, "To Make You Feel My Love."

Spoilers: Everything during Season 9 up to and including "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished." Please read and review.  And enjoy.  If you do, let me know.  If you don't, let me know, too.

* * * * * * * * * *

When the rain is blowing in your face

And the whole world is on your case

I could offer you a warm embrace

To make you feel my love

When evening shadows and the stars appear

And there is no one there to dry your tears

I could hold you for a million years

To make you feel my love

* * * * * * * * * *

The steamy water raining down from the showerhead scorched my skin like a thousand tiny pinpricks making perfect contact with their designated pressure points.  A soothing potion for an aching back, a bruised ego, a wounded heart and a ravaged soul.  Unfortunately, some things are more easily cleansed than others.

I toweled off quickly, and after rummaging through an assortment of empty drawers, I donned a pair of boxer shorts and an old DePaul t-shirt that I unearthed from a laundry basket at the bottom of my closet.

Entering the living room, I glanced around my apartment.  It looked neglected and unloved, like the space between two worlds.  It had been weeks since I had spent more than an hour here. 

I collapsed onto the couch, collecting into my lap the stack of mail that had slowly been multiplying on the adjacent coffee table and attempted to make some sense of it all. 

Casually flipping through the latest issue of Psychology Today, I must not have heard the turn of the key in the lock in the door.  The next thing I knew someone was standing behind me.

"Hey."

"Hey yourself."  I casually waved my hand in the air, unsure whether I was ready to talk to her about it.  She had caught me off guard.  I hadn't expected her at all tonight, convinced that she was still busy entertaining Eric, especially since I had never called like I said I would.

"Where've you been?  I've been trying to call you."  Though my back was turned to her, I could sense her removing her coat and scarf and throwing them on the coat rack in the entrance way.

I paused for dramatic effect.

"Yeah, I must have turned off my phone after I called Gamma's lawyer to tell him to stop payment on the check to McNulty."  My voice was flat and even, lacking the intonation of nonchalance I had tried, but failed, to muster.

Slowly she crept up behind me and came around to sit next to me on the couch.  I still had my nose buried in the magazine.

She reached out to touch my thigh and then my shoulder.  "Did something happen to McNulty?" she asked softly.

"You could say that," I replied, still afraid to look up.

She removed the magazine from my hands and leaned her hand in to turn my face towards hers.  I hadn't looked in the mirror, but I can only surmise that the incredible dullness in my eyes was enough to give myself away.

I couldn't hide anymore.

"I was had."

"What?"   Her eyes were bright, her face flushed, as if all had been right with her world until she had walked through the door.  She blinked rapidly in succession as though fearful of what was coming next. 

I filled her in on the sordid details. 

"So moral of the story:  'McNulty played me like a violin.'  'Johnny got scammed.'  'I fell for his ruse hook, line and sinker.'  Pick your sound bite.  A, B, C or all of the above."

She was silent for a moment, seemingly at a loss on what tact to use to take the sting out of my wound.

She managed a tight smile.  "There was something about him that I couldn't quite put my finger on.  Something about the way he kept leering at me and calling me 'beautiful.'  John, I'm so sorry." 

She reached behind me to hand me a pillow, wrapping her fingers around mine to place it in my lap.

"My turn this time."  She swung her body sideways and laid her head in my lap.

I stroked her cheek and took a deep breath.  "Do you mind if we talk about something else for awhile?  Where's Eric?"

"Oh, he sailed high above 'the surly bonds of earth' and into the Chicago sunset, back to Wisconsin.  It was very romantic."

There was no mistaking the lilt in her voice.  I thought back to the previous time she had used that last phrase -- the night she had sat on her front steps after Eric and Maggie had abruptly headed back to Minneapolis.  What a difference a few months – and an unannounced visit – had made.

"I'm sure it was."

"You should have seen the look of pure joy on his face as he revved up the engine and got ready for take-off."

"I'm glad.  See, you should believe more in happy endings."

She gave me a knowing look.  

"It's not over for him, you know."

"I know."

"He asked about you."

"And what did you tell him?"

"That you were leaving me to go off and play jungle doctor."

"Abby."

"I didn't get a whole lot of sympathy from him.  After all, he's all set to be a bush pilot, running hunting and fishing charters in Wisconsin.  The two of you are kindred spirits."

I tenderly massaged her collarbone, sending a shiver up her spine.  Make that both our spines.  "This medical mission stuff really has you spooked, doesn't it?"

She shrugged her shoulders.  "I just think there's so much good that you can do right here rather than traipsing off trying to be the twenty-first century reincarnation of Dr. Tom Dooley."

"Who?"

"Never mind.  Before your time.  I guess that's why I was hoping this thing with McNulty had worked out.  At least you can get your money back."

"It's about more than just the money, Abby."

"I know."  She sat up in one fell swoop and grabbed my hand to pull me up off the couch and into a warm embrace.  Crossing her arms behind my neck, she reached up and whispered in my ear.  "The Carter Family Clinic had a nice ring to it.  But you know, it's not too late."

I thought about it for a moment as I wrapped my arm across her waist and steered her toward the bedroom.

I sighed and drew my arms closer around her.   "You always know just the right thing to say, don't you?

"Sometimes I just get lucky."

* * * * * * * * * *

I know you haven't made your mind up yet

But I would never do you wrong

I've known it from the moment that we met

No doubt in my mind where you belong

I lay flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, my fingers rhythmically strumming my chest to the strains of her gentle breathing.  Chalk another one up on a long list of nights in which, despite my intentions, the sandman simply would not come.

I turned onto my side to look at the source of the steady cadence that filled my ears like music.  I squinted in the darkness, my eyes mesmerized by the look of moon-kissed sweetness that fell across her face.

Her face.

I pictured myself on my deathbed, my life flashing before my eyes.  Moments I'd reach across a hundred thousand heartbeats to caress one last time.  I closed my eyes and imagined a montage of her stilled expressions at various pivotal points in time. 

I rewound the mental image back to the beginning, to my earliest recollection of her in the ER.  And then fast-forwarded a little to my own private ground zero, the Book of Genesis, where it all had begun.

"When did it happen for you, Carter?"  I still recalled not giving her a clear answer when she asked me that night before she left for Nebraska. 

Up on the roof.  Three years ago, this Valentine's Day.  The look on her face the night I brought her a cup of coffee after Mrs. Connelly's heart was stilled.  When she waxed so eloquently about the differences between life and death in labor and delivery and the ER.  The stone cold night she mused that she'd like to see me trying to get warm in an incubator in the NICU.

The night I first fell in mad, never-ending love. 

Only I didn't know it then.

Fast-forwarding again, I paused my cinematic cornucopia on more images that were vintage Abby.

Sharing cigarettes and hot fudge sundaes and she reluctantly agreed to walk the steps with me in Doc Magoo's.

Dancing to the orchestra at the museum gala.

Pulling up to her apartment and discussing junior high school perms after our road trip to Oklahoma.

Giggling on Gamma's lawn after my grandfather's funeral.

Walking her to her door after our aquatic mischief caper with Luka's fish tank.

Exchanging stilted sideways glances the day she caught me kissing Susan in the lounge.  The day she couldn't keep Sobriki from me.

Lamenting the loss of Mark Greene on the Lava Lounge loading dock.

Moving in for an unexpected first kiss in the unlikeliest of places, the ER during lock down.

Each moment was etched forever in the deep reservoir of memory, each one more special than the last.

But something was missing.

There were no words, no soundtrack playing softly in the background to compliment the lovely scenes.  It was as though someone had unintentionally hit the mute button. 

What thoughts had gone through her mind during these defining moments?  How had they weathered posterity?

Unfortunately, I didn't know. 

She had never told me.

For a long time, a part of me had feared that these moments could not have possibly meant as much to her as they had to me.  And so I patiently waited for her feelings to catch up.

But then, as we had grown closer over the past few months, another thought had occurred to me.

What if the genie simply needed a gentle nudge to be unleashed from its bottle?

What if beneath the steely veneer a wellspring of words were waiting to be tapped?

Maybe I was onto something.

An idea was beginning to form in my head.

* * * * * * * * * *

I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blue

I'd go crawling down the avenue

There's nothing that I wouldn't do

To make you feel my love

I stood patiently in line as it snaked around a display of discounted wall calendars at the Borders on North Michigan Avenue, juggling two sets of identical items in my hands.

As I strode up and placed them on the counter, I was greeted by a perky sales clerk, with a blond ponytail, an upturned nose and a coquettish grin who could have passed for a younger version of Katie Couric. 

"Presents for twins?"  She smiled demurely.

"No, it's a little writing project for my girlfriend and I…" My voice trailed off.

"You two getting married?"

"Huh?"

She pointed to the set of notebooks, their covers each featuring five Adirondack chairs lined up along the water's edge, and the quote beneath it.

"Hello?  See this quote here?  'Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be?'  Immortal words from Robert Browning.  It's used a lot for weddings."  She rolled her eyes as if to ask how I could possibly not get it.

I feigned innocence.  "I just liked the picture," I replied politely, flashing her a mischievous grin and pocketing my change. 

I walked out into the unexpected pleasure of a cloudless February day, bright and sunny with no wind to speak of.  I turned my wrist over and glanced at my watch.  I still had a little over four hours before my shift started at three. 

I turned right and headed south on Michigan Avenue.  About two miles later, I found myself in Grant Park.  I found a bench.  Taking a pen out of my pocket, I pulled out one of the journals and began to write.

February 2, 2003

Abby - -

Right now, more than anything, I'd love to see the look on your face once you've found this.  Then again, I've been privy to so many of your telling looks these past three years, it isn't hard to imagine.

My mind keeps coming back to several conversations we've had the past few months, trying to make some sense of where we've been, where we are and where we're going.

When we walked by the lake that morning after the lockdown, I told you that I didn't want chaos to rule anymore, that I wanted to know where it was taking me.  A little while later, the night I came back to your apartment after leaving you at the el station, I told you that I needed a chance to think about things, to figure out where we were.  And the night the MPs took Eric to Nebraska, I told you that I was the new constant thing in your life, that I wasn't going anywhere.  Ever. 

Each day I realize more and more that life with you is all about the journey, not the destination.  As I've thought back on the long and twisty road we've traveled, though, I've found that I can recall the look on your face during dozens and dozens of pivotal moments we've spent getting from there to here.  But I had no idea what you were thinking or the thoughts that passed through your mind.  Because I had never heard the words.  Words I longed to hear.

Which gave me this idea.  Throughout these pages, I've listed nine of these so-called "pivotal moments" in our relationship.  For each one, I'd like you to first jot down whatever comes to mind when you think back on the thoughts that went through your head at the time.  And second, the memories you carried away with you from that moment  when viewed through the prism of everything that's happened since then.

And now a few ground rules - -

I'll let you in on a little secret – I'm going to answer the same questions.

Let's not discuss this until we've both completed the exercise, at which point we'll exchange notebooks.

Remember, there are no right or wrong answers.  In case you ever get stuck, I've included two items for inspiration.

The first is a book that's a particular favorite of mine.  You'll understand why once you've read it.  Gamma used to read it to Bobby and I on the balcony outside her bedroom under the stars.  Remember how I once told you I wasn't going anywhere?  Because even when we're not together, you're still with me.  Because you have tamed me.  And because of the wheat fields.

The second is a song that perfectly captures where my head and my heart are at right now. 

Until the next place.

Yours,

John

Satisfied, I closed the book and placed the cap on my pen. 

I had no doubt I would find my voice.  And that I would help her find hers.

I stood up and headed toward her apartment.

* * * * * * * * * *

The storms are raging on the rollin' sea

And on the highway of regret

The winds of change are blowing wild and free

You ain't seen nothing like me yet

I slipped into her apartment, closing the door softly behind me, though she had left for her shift hours ago.  The sweet smell of vanilla hung in the air.

I entered her bedroom, and chuckled at the sight of the unmade bed and clothes scattered haphazardly across the floor, the price her housekeeping prowess had paid earlier this morning for her insistence on my hitting the snooze alarm one last time.

Opening the doors of the armoire, I bent down and tugged on the bottom drawer, a twinge of déjà vu washing over me.  As was their custom, the respectable ones were on top.  I gave a silent nod to the ones I recognized that had traveled with me to Nebraska. 

I opened my satchel bag and extracted three items, tucking them along side each other under the swatch of wrapping paper that separated the under garments on top from their poorer relations at the bottom of the drawer.

I glanced at the buried treasures one last time before closing the drawer.

A slim spiral-bound journal.

A copy of Antoine De Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince."

A jewel case containing a cut from a CD I has asked Malik to burn for me.  Joan Osbourne's rendition of "To Make You Feel My Love," a Bob Dylan tune first made famous by Billy Joel and Garth Brooks.

Closing the door with a final thud, I bounded down the steps of her building, the lyrics looping through my head, dreaming of the day I'd hear her sing them to me.

And mean every word of it.

* * * * * * * * * *

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true

Nothing that I wouldn't do

Go to the ends of the earth for you

To make you feel my love

* * * * * * * * * *