Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I would if I could…

Spoilers: None

Rating: PG I guess, nothing much here to shock anyone.

Summary: "This time I don't know if I want my negativity to win, this means so much to me."

Author's Note: Um, I'm grovelling because of the delay in this. Really I am. Many, many apologies. Here's Chapter 1, from Abby's Point of View, set either before or after the prologue. Any other details about me or the fic as a whole are written above the prologue. Other notes at the end, but I'm just going to say please review if you have *anything* to say about this story.

To Kate, Klip, Kate and Kitty for reviewing. Also to Carrie and Anna for the same, but they have to go in a new sentence because their names spoil the alliteration of all the 'K' names ;-)

**********

amor numquam prior mansit

"Stop thinking," comes the groggy early morning voice from the pillow next to mine. "Your brain activity wakes me up."

I grin into my pillow, burying my face in its depths of softness so he won't see me smirk. Staring at him wakes him up every morning – I know I should stop doing it, we both need as much sleep as possible with our shift work, but I want him to be there with me. I miss him when he was asleep; he is so close but isn't there with me. So near and yet so far, a phrase which covers much of our relationship. It produces a physical ache almost greater than the one I suffered in our first months together when we were truly physically apart. I can't smirk as well as he can, but six months with him and I still wake up smiling. I've never been happy in the mornings, I'm not a morning person. It is as much as I can cope with to sleepwalk to the kitchen and put the kettle on for coffee, but with him I want to be alive every moment to feel it.

I feel his weight move on the mattress as he rolls over to face me. I half move my face off the pillow to look up at him. He is lying on his side, his head propped up on one arm, looking down at me, a gleam in his eye. I know he is going to get me for waking him up, and I grin back at him.

"Watcha going to do 'bout it then?" I murmur.

"Oh, I'm sure I'll think of something," he says, grinning down at me. I close my eyes, and focus on not smiling but I can feel the corners of my mouth lifting without my consent. I can feel the heat of his breath coming closer and I wonder whether I will ever tire of this, of us, of him. I think not – but I've thought that before. Yet, this is different. This is real, this is true, this is 'it'. This time I am sure.

His lips descend upon mine, and the bolt of electricity which has always been there between us hits me as strongly as it ever does. My world suddenly shrinks to encompass only me and him; only our connecting lips and our tongues mingling and battling. There is nothing else. It is at times like this when I remember what true happiness really is; when I remember what it is to forget all my troubles and the outside world and only know what brings me joy.

All of a sudden, without any warning, he lies back on his own pillow and turning my head towards him I see his face smirking, then all of a sudden becoming serious.

"How was yesterday?"

"What?"

"Abby."

"Um. I don't know. Fine, I guess."

"Abby."

Despair and exasperation in equal measures tinge his voice now, but to be honest I can't do this right now. I'm not sure I'll be able to do this later, but the moment has gone and despite my love for him and all he does; now I need to leave him. My joy in the morning light has gone, and I don't want to face this. I need to physically get out of here. I need to escape this.

"I'm going to make coffee. Want some?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The comforter is laid out smoothly on top of the duvet; almost as if this was a show room. The room seems awkwardly lacking in humanity, as if every human emotion and connection with this room had been severed and removed. In a way, that might be a good thing. I want to forget our conversation this morning, or rather the conversation he tried to have and I ran from. I need to forget all that. But I know he won't let me – he wants me to deal with this, to face it. And to achieve this he's left me, I heard the door slam behind him as he walked out. He wants me to sort it out; he wants me to have no distractions. And this time he wants me to do it by myself, but this time I want him to do it for me. How typical. And how I hate it when I think he is right about what I need to do and I am wrong.

I press my face up against the window, squishing my nose into a blob and creating breath marks all across the glass – I know he's leaving, but I want to see him for as long as possible. Walking out the door, the biting cold of a Chicago winter hit him in the chest, he almost felt the blasting change of temperature punch his lungs; I can see him huddle further into his coat. The gate creaked behind him as it always did; he turned to close it as he always did. I back quickly away from the window. It's stupid, but I don't want him to see me gazing after him, I don't want to appear like a moony 13 year old staring after her first love, however much my emotions might mirror hers. I think he saw me though, there's a slight uplift to his lips as he turns back to the road again that wasn't there when he walked out of the apartment.

I can see him walk down the road and I stare after him, seeing nothing else. The rain falls in heavy grey sheets from the sky; 'pathetic fallacy' I think wryly, memories of English Literature classes returning to me. As a literary technique I had thought it rather obvious, not subtle enough to convey emotions powerfully to my heart rather than my brain; yet in reality I find the matching of the weather to my mood is oddly comforting. Perhaps because it makes me feel no-one will be too happy today with the downpour. I can be such a bitch. And with that thought I'm back in the cycle of self-hatred and self-pity that is so normal for me. The cycle Carter wants, needs, me to escape from. The cycle he can't break for me, I have to kill it myself.

My memories are hazy, my recollections and mental imprints of the night, the last night of my world as it was, are without any form of clarity. Even if I verbalised it in words of one syllable, I still don't think he could understand how I feel and why it is so. I don't think he can, but deep down I know he could. For he gets me, and he completes me.

Could I fall any further? Any faster? Any harder? What have I done? To me, but not just to me. To him, to the one I love, to my reason for living. How could I do this? Why have I done this? What self-destructive, insuppressible urge inside me drowns out all my love for him and his for me and forces me to destroy it?

The queue for hell forms behind me.

As I enter the bedroom again to get dressed before I leave for work I realise what is on the radio. A song about love – but they're all about love really. It's a song about being dependant upon someone, about always being there for someone no matter what, about running after someone when they need you and can't accept that. It's a song about me and Carter. All love songs are now.

"Tonight I'm tangled in my blanket of clouds

Dreaming aloud.

Things just won't do without you, matter of fact

Ohh ohh ohhhhh, I'm on your back

I'm on your back

Ohh ohh ohhhhh, I'm on your back"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The lounge door closes after him; at the click of the latch the air thickens and I can feel my back stiffen. Mentally cursing furiously the way I can feel his presence and his mood with every nerve ending, I force my back muscles to relax. Ignoring the tension of the atmosphere I stare fixatedly at the old, marked wooden side, refusing to acknowledge his appearance in any way. I can feel his eyes boring holes into my shoulder-blades; even without seeing my face I know he can read my every mood, every emotion. My façade is up, and I'm determined to maintain it this time, even in front of him. At home he can see in to my depths, and I let him; but not at work, not where anybody else might see me and notice.

"Abby."

At the sympathy in his voice, his need for him to know how I'm feeling subjected to his concern for me, I can tell this conversation is going to be hard for me. I want to avoid it, but I don't want to run from him anymore. It hurts him, and I hate doing that. But it might hurt me more to stay here. It might hurt him more if I stay here and talk to him, and that I can't do. I physically am not capable of hurting him now, he means too much to me. I don't know whether to run this time or not. Maybe this doubt is a progress for me.

His eyes lock in upon mine; I have to force myself to face him and I immediately feel the connection between us. It is unbreakable, like iron chains binding us to each other. My thoughts are not my own any longer, though really they haven't been for months. He sees them and drags them out to be shared, like everything else, between us. And if he hadn't willingly done the same with his own I would have left him, run away and gone long ago. But he does, and so I can't complain when he reads my mind. I know I need it. I know I need him.

"Will you talk to me now?"

"I don't know."

"I guess I should be grateful you haven't run away yet."

"I'm sorry. Please, John. You know how difficult this all is for me."

"It's difficult for me as well."

"I know. I just…I want you to be here with me, but I want to escape it myself."

"You want me to face it for you so you can run away?"

"That's not what I meant. You know that."

"I do. It's…Abby, you need to resolve this on your own and then talk to me. I can't do this for you, it's killing me."

"I'm sorry."

"You always are. I'll see you later then; I need to get out of this right now."

"Please, John, don't...no. Damnit."

The latch catches again, but the sound it makes this time is of the quick rush of somebody to leave a situation, a place, that they hate. Not the sound of somebody coming in to find something, to resolve something.

The song from this morning is on the radio. The melancholy and the feeling that the love will never be returned, will never work is there, reflecting me and Carter right now. This love is different, it's stronger than ever before, but I don't know if it is enough, and I don't believe it will cope with this. We're throwing too much at it, and my negativity is beginning to defeat it. But this time I don't know if I want my negativity to win, this means so much to me.

"If you walk out on me, I'm walking after you

If you walk out on me, I'm walking after you

(If you walk out on me, I'm walking after you)

Another heart is cracked in two

I'm on your back"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The roof. It's always the roof. The roof or the river. Somewhere in the open, somewhere completely unenclosed, without rules or restrictions. Somewhere we can both be free and ourselves without the need to act for the rest of humanity. Morbidly, I think that both of our places are spots where we could kill ourselves if we wanted to. Why have my thoughts gone in this direction? My self-destructive need controls me more than I realised before I met him, before now when I don't want to be destroyed.

I hear the door close, and I step away from it, looking for him, scanning the view. He's leaning against the railings, staring at something which must be fascinating and utterly absorbing the way he's ignoring me. My fault. Always my fault. I've driven him to this, I've forced him to hurt me and in the process hurt himself.

"I never wanted to know," I whisper, admitting he was right. "I wanted to pretend it never happened. I thought – I hoped that if I didn't say it, it might mean it wasn't true. I knew it wasn't going to change anything, but it was the only way I could deal with it. John – you've changed me, and that's made me more scared than ever before. I'm not sure that I can live life when believing in it."

Without turning round he speaks to me, soothes me.

"We can only ever try."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I love his Jeep. It's so him; so few people can have one and not seem different, set apart, from the rest of the world. But John loves his Jeep and as I love him I love his Jeep. I love everything that comes with him, everything that is a part of him and who he is.

I lean forward to switch the radio on – we don't need to fill the silence, our silences are comforting on their own. But right now I'm worried that he's not sure, and I need to fill the air to escape the obsessive and unending pattern of my thoughts. This song must be following me.

"If you'd accept surrender, I'll give up some more

Weren't you adored?

I cannot be without you, matter of fact

Ohh ohh ohhhhh, I'm on your back"

Fated. In a way it is comforting, in a way terrifying. This love will always be here, but I will never be able to escape from it.

**********

Author's Note: OK, well again, apologies for my delay in getting this up. The title for this chapter, 'amor numquam prior mansit' translates as 'love never lasted before'. The song used throughout, that appears to be following Abby, is the Foo Fighter's 'Walking After You', used in the X-Files movie 'Fight the Future'.

Kitty got the virtual ice cream sundae last time for guessing the prologue was taken from a therapy session, but if anyone can guess who was in therapy, why they were there, and when the prologue was set – and also, what the issue is Abby and Carter are trying to talk about in this chapter, you can get the next one.

Any comments, suggestions or constructive criticism, please hit me with them. Reviews are manna from heaven.

~Charli