Title: Better to Burn
Summary: Umm, there's Luka, there's Abby, there's lots of thoughtful introspection, self-reform, and not-so-subtle symbology. Slightly abstract. Set in season 8.
Spoilers: Till mid- season 8… I'm confident you've all gotten that far already. After that it's pretty AU.
Archive: I dunno… ask first.
Disclaimer: I'm not that pretty and I'm not that special, so please don't sue. I'm not that wealthy either (they're not mine.)
Reviews: Please! Flame if you want- I don't care. I'd really appreciate your input though. Feel free to email me… I promise I'll try to respond!
A/N: Wow, I never thought I'd write one of these. I got the title of the story from Kurt Cobain's suicide note (yeah, I know, but it fit) and the title of the chapter from Bush's "Letting the Cables Sleep" (good Luka/ Abby song.) Uhm, I didn't want to post this until I knew I could finish, but patience is not one of my merits, so here it is. And who knows, maybe everyone will hate it anyways. Feel free to email me if you want to discuss anything. Thanks!
P.S. Sorry if the spacing looks odd at places… I kept trying to fix it but something weird is going on…
Ch. 1: You in the Dark
"It's just, I uh…"
She broke in quietly, her forehead wrinkled with concern as she peered up at him through slightly squinted eyes, as if wincing in apology for her words. "Miss your kids?"
The action, though, was smooth and sure, natural. It always was. Luka smiled slightly as she took his hand. "Yeah," he breathed.
"I'm sorry."
He looked down as she said it, down at their hands clasped together. He knew she meant it. "It's sort of worse at Christmas," he admitted as if for the first time; as if to himself.
He savored the warmth of her hand a moment longer and was reminded of how much he used to love the warm smoothness of his children's skin. Of how he used to allow himself just a bit longer beside their beds at night after they had fallen asleep as babies to stroke their soft, almost bald heads. It was a softness that could only exist in ignorance of war.
Abby watched Luka's retreating figure for a moment after he broke contact, his movements purposeful and stoic as he made his way back to his rounds.
His eyes, though… Abby shook her head turned away. She was reminded of the first time she went to his hotel room. He had looked at her that night- dejected, searching, as if he were hanging onto life by a thread, allowing himself one silent plea for help, only to her, before he admitted his defeat and let go.
In the end she hadn't been able to save him, and in his eyes tonight she saw him resigned to defeat.
******
Luka had lost. Everything. He had lost his home, his family, and his illusions in one violent jolt as they were torn from him that day in Vukovar. Arriving in America, starting over, he had hoped to find something: shelter certainly, perhaps even hope that life could once again be something more than an empty, hollow exercise filled with pain, loss, and grief.
He had thought he had nothing left to lose, but what he found was his already tenuous grip on reality fading more and more every day. Meaningful human relationships were a memory to Luka. He could not reconcile himself with the denial that Americans wrapped themselves in, surrounding themselves with beauty, seemingly obsessed with a drive to create a bubble of comforts that would expel anything unpleasant from tainting their ideal vision. It made him ill listening to people discuss inconsequential things and events as if they were of the utmost importance. He could not fathom how people could waste time worrying about trivialities while ignoring the horrors that so many others witness every day: that he had witnessed.
And then he had found her. Not all at once- in fact in such minute degrees that he often wondered if he was indeed gradually gaining an understanding of her or simply a realisation that it was what he did not and probably would never know about her that made her dark beauty so tangible to him that he had finally allowed himself to reach out and claim it. Either way, he knew that that part of her would always be his—the part of her that made him feel as if he were staring at the night sky, trying to understand it, only to come away feeling that he knew less than he would have had he not let himself wonder at all. It was impossibly frustrating, and it was utterly intoxicating.
A/N: This chapter starts, as all good little Lubies will probably know, with "I'll be Home for Christmas." I hope the fact that it's not verbatim doesn't bother people too much.