TITLE: Things Behind the Sun (3/12)

AUTHOR: C. Midori

EMAIL: socksless@hotmail.com

CATEGORY: Drama (JC/AL/SL/LK)

RATING: PG-13

SPOILERS: For Seasons 6, 7, 8 (except "Lockdown"), and for the prequel Through the Door.

ARCHIVE: Do not archive without permission.

DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations owned by Not Me, etc. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Sorry for the wait. The dog ate my fanfic? ;D Thanks to everyone who reviewed Chapter One: JD, Rebecca, Sara, Cat, Christe, Emma Stuart, Duchess, not-so-dumb-blonde, CARBYfan, kate, ceri, em, charlotte, Carolyn, Anna, and Alanna. I adore you all unrestrainedly. Chapter Two is dedicated to JD, em, charlotte, and Nadine, all of whom make the LJ a hugely entertaining place. Y'all are muchly appreciated. Things To Know: (1) Phil is first introduced in TTD Chapter Six (blink and you'll miss her); (2) Please ignore the medical inconsistencies and/or untruths during the trauma scene or any other part of this chapter. I suck at writing medicine (What's a cross-table c-spine? Does Northwestern really have an ER?) but I couldn't get around it this time. My excuse is that I write fiction. Ha. Thanks in advance for your forgiveness. Love is all I need. Please review. :)

SUMMARY: Luka reflects, Carter bleeds, Susan recognizes, and Abby flees.

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

Low Road Descending

as someone sets light to the first fire of autumn
we settle down to cut ourselves apart.
cough and twitch from the news on your face
and some foreign candle burning in your eyes.

held to the past too aware of the pending
chill as the dawn breaks and finds us up for sale.
enter the fog another low road descending
away from the cold lust, you house and summertime.

* * *

Luka knew faces.

Bruised, blood-letting and battered, some days they were all he saw. The faces of neighbors and friends and family. Tragic. Always and properly. Victims and martyrs all, trees in the dead of winter, silent and bleak, ghosts of their former selves. They did to him what the moon did to the tides, were as real as smoke and mirrors, ripped into him like licks of fire on moth wings. He had the burns on his hands to prove it.

To be correct, there were happy times. Birthdays and hammocks and Danijela's infamous rožata beneath sapphire summer skies. The lilt of his mother's voice as she read to him by candlelight; the strong, study hands of his father holding him tight as he hung halfway out of a train cutting a path through the beautiful Croatian countryside.

But happiness was a blur, a rush of color and water and too much time gone by, and in the end it was always the pain he remembered best.

Luka needed no more than a moment to learn this, to learn that each person's pain (including his own) was distinct--a stamp upon their face, a fingerprint in blood. Quiet Marko with his dirt-smeared cheeks and earnest smiles; Jasna, who went around with bare feet and open arms; Danijela--

There was Danijela.

Sweet, strong Danijela, whose brand of beautiful had less to do with the way she looked and more to do with the way she carried herself; who loved and was loved; who looked perfectly in place next to him every Sunday mass, all clasped hands and dreamy smiles. The light that fell through colored glass always lit a ring of gold upon her bent head, a sublime acquiescence to the ethereal, otherwordly Mary-spirit within her.

When that spirit fled her, he had wept. He could not understand why the earth had laid a claim to her body. Marko and Jasna he had made, and so the world could unmake, but Danijela was never his to be stolen in the first place.

Bruised, blood-letting and battered, victims and martyrs all.

It was no wonder he turned to Abby.

Abby was as dark as Danijela had been bright. Abby grew up on latchkeys and microwave dinners. Abby never wore pain on her face--she buried it beneath anger and impatience and silence. Abby told him it was okay to hide the bruises and it was okay to die inside, just as long as you cleaned up the blood.

And Luka believed her. It was easier to just go along, harder to fight, and after awhile he knew all the steps by heart. He never knew the dance. He never really minded. He wasn't looking for another Danijela.

Were things so different now? Abby was not his, but he wasn't stupid--he knew he never really had her. She was not the type to be owned, that she might be bartered and bargained against her will, and not the type to own in return. She would never wish that kind of torture upon another person. It didn't make a difference to him. A long time had passed since he owned anyone and was owned in return, and look where it got him: a one-way ticket to hell and he was still working on the return trip.

He didn't think he could make the trip alone. He needed to find someone to come back with him. He wanted that person to be Abby.

Abby wasn't a victim, wasn't a martyr. She would never let herself become that. She moved ahead, left behind, never looked back, shoved all the bitterness and pain deep inside of her until you couldn't even see it reflected in the dark curve of her pupils. He wanted someone like Abby. To help him move on, help him forget the faces. Make him forget the faces. Marko, Jasna, Danijela. Until hers was the only face he knew. Her expressionless face. A face without pain.

It was what he sought but it was not what he found. For under a sky of darkness and of flood, Luka found himself looking for Abby and finding the face of a stranger--a stranger who wore pain upon her face as if she thought no one was looking, a stranger who wore the kind of pain he had worn so many lifetimes ago.

Luka looked at Abby looking at Carter and recognized the expression on her face. It was the same expression he had worn when Danijela had died.

* * *

Everything was happening too slowly, too fucking slowly.

Darkness and flood. The sky sagging under the weight of it all. A lull. Quiet, deadly, insistent.

Abby stood in her drenched scrubs and sopping hair and did nothing.

So much water. So much blood. This was drowning.

Numbed with shock and cold, Abby pushed the wet hair from off her face and did not flinch at the sudden clap of thunder. She was there--she was there with the concrete and the water and the night--but she was somewhere else. She was back with Maggie. Rolling Maggie into the ER. Feeling as if nothing would be worth it, nothing would ever be worth it again, if she didn't walk her mother back out again through those same doors.

But this is different, she told herself. This isn't Maggie. This is Carter.

Carter, she choked.

There. She had managed his name. She didn't think she could manage more.

It seemed minutes, but it was only a matter of seconds before she heard the paramedic hollering in her face, raising his voice above the roar of the storm. "You know this guy?"

Abby couldn't help herself; she snapped back. "You don't?"

"Abby," Luka said, his voice sharp, "Let's get him inside."

"MVA." The paramedic chose--rather wisely, she thought--to pay no attention to either of them as he rolled the gurney out of the truck. "Drunk driver versus Jeep. Male, late twenties or early thirties, no identification found on the scene--"

"His name is Carter," she heard herself say. "John Carter." And then they were in the ER, the light white and hot and pressing against her head.

"--Pulse ox is ninety," he ignored her, "BP's stable, good breath sounds, looks like a couple of minor rib fractures, possible head trauma. We couldn't get to him right away--the roads were closed thanks to the storm. I don't know how much blood he's lost already."

Carter stirred. Abby reached for his hand.

"Carter?" she said, willing him to press back against the pressure of her fingertips. "Do you know where you are?"

She watched him drag the oxygen mask off his face with a shaky hand. "I'm at County," he rasped.

"Put that back on." She gave him a weak smile. "Do you know what happened?"

The doors to the trauma room pushed open. Through bleary coin-sized slits, Carter was looking at her and not at her. It was slightly unnerving. So was the blood trickling from the side of his head.

"Where's Phil?" he managed, before she slipped the mask back over his mouth.

Phil?

"Get me a CBC, Chem 7, cross table c-spine, chest x-ray, CT," Luka hesitated, "and a tox screen."

Abby heard the anger crackle in her voice like a live wire. "Luka."

"What?"

"He wasn't drinking."

"Page Corday," Luka said, after a reed-thin pause, "We'll need a surgical consult."

"You don't need to do a tox screen," Abby repeated, vehement.

Luka ignored her. "Carter, can you hear me?"

Carter's eyes flickered back and forth between the two. "I'm bleeding, not deaf."

The corners of Luka's mouth twitched. "Well, we're going to do something about the bleeding, then. Abby?"

It took Abby a moment to hear what Luka had said. She caught notice of her hands. Blood. All of it, Carter's blood. Blood-red poppies flowered upon the lines of her palms and angry crimson lines slitting the curve of her wrists.

She swallowed hard.

Everything was happening too fucking slowly.

* * *

When Phil awoke, what was most immediately apparent to her was not the eerie still of predawn or the stark whiteness of the room but the massive headache that lashed at her temples. Groggily, she sat up. Firm hands and a kind voice forced her to lie back down. A mild concussion, the voice explained.

Mild, my ass, Phil grumped. She felt as if a manatee had launched itself at her forehead--repeatedly. But she didn't say anything to the woman who stood by her bed, fair head bent as her pen scratched across a chart. Susan Lewis.

Phil knew the woman. Met her and liked her. Phil remembered meeting her for the first time nearly a decade ago, when Susan was a Resident and Phil was a med student who left County to pursue a stint at Northwestern. If she wasn't mistaken (and she rarely was), Susan had almost been her resident, until a last-minute opportunity presented itself.

(Thank God for small miracles.)

Susan was blonder than Phil remembered. But that didn't keep Phil from remembering a name. Phil never forgot a name. Or a sense of humor. Thankfully, Susan had both.

Susan was still talking, her voice a pleasant and easy dream to the ear, like music or spring wind. Absently, Phil pried her eyes open. She realized, with a sudden and intense shock of dismay, that they had had to cut her favorite evening gown apart.

Son of a bitch, she swore violently to herself. Half a month's salary.

And in a heartbeat, she remembered why she was wearing the dress in the first place.

"Susan, Susan," she interrupted, "Where's John?"

"John?" Susan looked up, her brow furrowed. "Who's John?"

"Carter," Phil sputtered, the pitch in her voice rising to hysteria, "Where's Carter?"

A dreadful silence followed, broken only by the sound of the chart clattering to the floor.

* * *

Susan muttered a half-apology before backing out of the room and turning on her heel, her head throbbing as she made her way blindly to the admit desk. Yanking down the board, her eyes scanned the glass surface for the familiar name. Her breath caught when her eyes clapped upon it.

Distantly, she heard the clack of her own heels against linoleum as she made her way to the trauma room, her mind compressed with past and present realities that refused to meld without the passage of time, like strata of rock.

But time was one thing that Susan didn't have. She had already wasted five years of it, and she didn't think she wanted to waste any more.

When Susan left County, she left not only for Chloe and Suzie, but for herself. She had no real reason to stay in Chicago. She had never been terribly close to either Carol or Doug--they were always more wrapped up in each other than anything else--and when push came to shove, she admitted that she and Mark were moving in different directions. She loved her work, but it didn't have to be County, and it didn't have to be Chicago.

Besides, it was all about distance: how much and how fast and how far. The more miles she stamped on her Frequent Flyers card, the more she was convinced that she had to be getting somewhere, either on airplanes or in life. And she needed to be getting somewhere in life.

She flew across country looking for--what? Certainly not what she found: a new life in Phoenix more or less identical to the one she had left in Chicago, with minor variations on a theme. Not Carol, but Julie; not Doug, but David; not Mark…

Well, there was no one for Mark. But Susan had already known that before she left.

So she flew again. A thousand more miles to her name and a few less people in her life. Chloe and Suzie had their own lives and Susan couldn't keep pretending like theirs were also hers. With nowhere to go, she came back to the only city that had ever attempted to claim ownership of her, but failed the first time around. Hello, Windy City. It owed her.

Outside an exam room, she slowed to a stop, as did her thoughts. She folded her arms across her chest and stared into the room and realized that for all her years of emptiness she was getting paid back in full, in a way she never knew existed since Mark and the circle of her family, all of whom were so gone from her life now: the pain of loving the people around her.

Inside the room there were two people, one dark and beautiful and bent like a dead flower, the other as sure and steadfast and unmovable as granite, and Susan couldn't help thinking that nothing good could come out of this, that flowers never grew out from under rocks, and that she had to be there for the inevitable fallout when it happened. And it would happen, if such things could be predicted from the look upon a face; Susan was sure that such things could be predicted from the look upon this particular face, so obviously smitten in a defensive and reluctant and vulnerable sort of way.

Susan was looking for a reason to stay. Looking at Abby's face, she knew she found it.

* * *

In hindsight, the danger of what was happening to Abby was abundantly clear. If she had stopped to reflect upon her life, she might've seen something there she didn't like, and maybe she would've fought it. Actually, knowing her, she definitely would've fought it. It was in her nature to fight against anything that meant filling the holes, fixing the tears, healing the wounds in her life. Holes, tears, wounds--hell, whatever--it didn't matter what she called it. The fact remained that she was used to them, wasn't sure if she knew how to live without them, and wasn't sure if she wanted to find out.

But tonight, some part of her didn't want to fight anymore, was tired of fighting, so instead she let herself worry and fear and want. She did it not because she wanted to, but because she had no other choice.

He had that kind of effect on her.

"How's he doing?"

Wearily, Abby lifted her head from her vigil, her face white and drawn from exhaustion. "Broken leg and head trauma. He'll be fine," she said, before returning her gaze back to Carter.

"I didn't know he was involved." Susan let the door fall shut behind her. "Phil mentioned his name and--"

Susan watched as Abby blinked in acknowledgement. "Phil?"

"The other patient," Susan clarified. "We rolled her in first."

Something like a spark flared briefly in Abby's eyes before fading and dying. "Phyllis Weston?"

Leaning against the door, Susan rubbed tiredly at her eyes. "Yeah. Bruising along the seatbelt and a mild concussion. Nothing too serious."

"From Northwestern?"

"Yeah," Susan looked surprise. "Did you meet her this summer?"

"What's she like?" Abby asked, her face neutral.

"I don't know." Susan stifled a yawn. "I only met her briefly."

Abby leaned her head against the wall, her eyes dark and unflinching as everything fell into place. Things more immediate, like the charity event and the black tie splattered with blood; and things less so, like the strange and subtle shift in their friendship over the last month. She couldn't quite explain it because she didn't know if he had changed or if she had. Probably both.

"She seemed friendly," Susan yawned again, interrupting Abby's thoughts. "Really funny, and--"

"She's dating Carter."

"--a bitch. She seemed like a real bitch," Susan blurted, her face frozen in a half-yawn. "I hate her already." She clamped her mouth shut.

The corners of Abby's mouth turned upward, although she didn't smile. "Don't do it on my account."

Susan pushed herself away from the door and walked toward Abby until only Carter's bed separated them. "I didn't know he was seeing anyone."

"Me neither," Abby said. Tiredly, she pushed her hair away from her face.

Susan looked into Abby's face. For the first time in their friendship, she watched Abby visibly struggle to maintain her composure.

"Oh my god," Susan whispered, her face half-constricted in realization and her hands balling themselves into fists inside her white jacket. "You're--"

The door to the exam room opened. "Abby?" Luka stuck his head in. "We've got another trauma coming in."

* * *

From time to time, Luka stole uneasy glances at Abby as they finished up the death kit. Ever since they rolled Carter in, she had hardly spoken a word to him all night. That wasn't what was bothering him. (He was used to that. He knew her well enough by now to know that her silence meant that she was angry about something--possibly him--but didn't want to talk about it.) No, what was really bothering him was the fact that she looked so weary. Her body moved with a bone-fragile tiredness, her eyes unusually dark and luminous in her peaked face, and every movement seemed an enormous effort.

Luka remembered only one other time when he saw that look upon her face--when she and Carter brought Maggie into the ER.

"You know, you could at least try to be a little less obvious about the staring."

Startled, Luka stared at her. "It's been a long night," he said. "You should go home."

"No longer for me than for you," Abby gave him a hard shrug in return. "I'm fine."

"You look tired."

A sharp laugh. "You sure know how to make a girl feel beautiful."

"Did I do something wrong?" Luka blurted, before he could stop himself.

Her mouth pressed in a seamless line, Abby gave her head a curt shake.

He gave her a measured stare. "Is this about Carter?"

Not everything is about Carter, Abby laughed bitterly to herself.

But this time it was.

"The tox screen came back negative," she said.

Luka's hands stilled over the cadaver. "I never said Carter was drinking--"

"Yeah, well, you didn't have to," Abby interrupted, "The tox screen said it all."

"There was a drunk driver," he defended himself. "I was just following standard procedure."

"And it was the other guy." Her voice was deadly cold. "Carter would never--"

"It wasn't personal!" Luka interrupted her. He willed her to look him in the face. "It wasn't personal."

But it's always personal, Abby thought, her shoulders slumping. Carter, Luka, her--it was always personal.

She closed her eyes against the weight of her exhaustion and rubbed at her eyelids. Feeling utterly drained, she opened her eyes, pulled the sheet over the dead body, and looked him steady in the face.

"I'm done." She snapped off her latex gloves and walked out of the room.

* * *

It was morning, but the light that threatened to spill through the windows of the exam room was not warm and butter-soft but cold and the color of chalk. It made Abby even more aware of her terrible exhaustion. Allowing herself a small sigh, she settled into her chair and leaned back against the wall.

"It's that bad, huh?"

"Carter." Abby felt as if she had been suddenly splashed by ice water. She sat upright in her chair and scooted forward until she was eye level with him. "No. I mean--yes. I mean--you're okay." She gave him a weak smile. "Welcome back."

"I hardly feel like I ever left," Carter joked, his voice thick and muddy with sleep. "This place really has a way of sucking you back in."

"It's the Bermuda Triangle of meaningful existences outside the workplace," said Abby, relieved laughter escaping her lips. Impulsively, she released her grip on the hard plastic chair underneath her and reached forward to gently touch the top of his hand. "I'm…so glad you're okay."

Carter blinked, thrown for a moment at the raw vulnerability in her voice. "A little car accident never hurt anyone," he found himself saying. The words had barely left his lips before he winced, his hand slipping out from underneath hers and automatically going to his bandaged head. "Ow."

"Yeah," Abby cringed, disentangling her hands from his and rising from her seat. "Head trauma. Don't touch that."

Still reeling from her bold overture, Carter let her pull his hand back down, her fingers kneading with his, or perhaps his with hers. They stayed that way as she sat down again.

"Do you remember what happened?" she asked him.

"Yes." Carter hesitated, his head swimming. "And no. The other car…it came out of nowhere…" His hand jerked under hers. "The other car--"

"He was drunk." Abby tightened her grip. "He was dead when the paramedics got there."

She watched the shock ripple across his face like a stone across water. Her throat hitched. She knew that with any other person the right thing to say was that it was okay, that it wasn't his fault, that he couldn't do anything to stop it from happening. But that was any other person. This was Carter. And Carter would blame himself no matter what she said, because that was the kind of person he was. He cared about others, took responsibility for their welfare, even when that meant giving the blame to himself when there was no fault to be assigned.

She owed him more than cheap words.

It was for this reason that the next words came from her mouth.

"Phil's okay."

Abby watched as the gloom lifted, even if momentarily, from his face before being replaced by a thin sort of flush. She did her best to ignore it and continued.

"Susan's with her right now. She's discharging her." Her chest clenched. "I'll get her for you."

"No." Carter clung to her hand, pulling on her with as much strength as he could muster. "Don't."

Numb and tired, too tired, Abby simply stared at him. She didn't have the energy to do anything else.

"Abby." He was saying her name. Once, twice, a thousand times--the sound was always the same. "Please don't go."

The room around them brightened to a colorless sort of glow. Abby stared at the sound of her name from his lips. She held it and in holding it she sat back down.

"I'm sorry." It was the first thing that came to Carter's mind. It felt right so he went with it. "I'm sorry I never told you. I should have." He paused. "I never meant for you to find out like this."

"So you didn't hire the drunk driver," Abby kidded weakly, her voice dull and heavy.

"No," Carter smiled, feeling as if he was allowed to smile, as if she had given him permission. "That wasn't part of The Plan."

Abby stared at him. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware that the fingers of their hands were still wound together like twine. His fingers were long and lithe, fine-boned and glass-fragile, the hands of a musician or a surgeon, and his pulse beat steady against the pressure of her fingertips.

Without meaning to, she swiped discreetly at her eyes with the back of her free hand.

"I'm sorry," he said again, his voice the drawn-out note of bow upon strings, soft and full and sweet, "I'm sorry I lied about…about Phil."

Not trusting herself to speak, Abby merely looked at him.

What about Phil?

The answer was on Carter's face.

So it's true, Abby thought dizzily, her heart slowing to a near-perfect still. You and Phil.

Slowly, Carter nodded.

Why did you lie to me?

"I don't know," he answered aloud. "I think I'm still figuring things out."

Abby drew a shaky breath. She thought for a moment before speaking. "At least she's not nineteen."

Carter laughed. It felt good to laugh. "No. She's thirty."

Abby listened to him talk. Phil was thirty. They grew up together. Dated in med school. He just wanted to be a doctor, it didn't matter where; she wanted something a little more lucrative. He stayed at County; she left for Northwestern. He got stabbed and addicted to painkillers; she became an Attending and pushed for a new Doctor's Exchange program with other hospitals in the Chicago area. He moved on to become Chief Resident; she got her program off the ground and was undeniably pleased to bump into him again. He returned the sentiment; she asked him out.

He accepted. She made him happy.

Carter continued. Abby sat with her arms folded across her chest and her back against the wall, listening but having dropped his hand somewhere around "she made him happy."

"So what was this charity dinner about?" she interrupted him.

"Annual dinner to raise funds for Northwestern's emergency department," said Carter. He wasn't completely oblivious to the fact that Phil had lied to him about the true nature and purpose of the charity event. He had a feeling that Phil knew that he wouldn't have come if she told him that they were raising money for the emergency department and not for pediatrics. He had a feeling that Phil knew he would have declined her invitation, recognizing it as a ploy to get him to transfer to Northwestern, which it was and she admitted as much once they got there.

Carter sighed. He was tired of having to think about all of this without getting to talk about it with his best friend.

"I'm thinking of moving," he blurted, before he could stop himself, "to Northwestern."

Abby kept her face absolutely still. "You're leaving County?"

"I don't know," Carter answered honestly, an arc of light falling across his unshaven face. "But I know I can't be Chief Resident forever…and there are no Attending positions open at County."

In the brightened room, Carter noticed that the shadows that had clung to Abby in the predawn had fled from her in the morning--all except the ones haunting the undersides of her eyes. It was as if the night had left without leaving even a trace of its existence upon her face.

Abby cleared her throat. "It sounds like a great opportunity."

Carter stared speechless at her until her head dropped as she reached up to rub the back of her neck. He tried to say something but she beat him to it.

"I'm hungry," Abby announced, changing the subject. "Are you hungry?"

He nodded.

"It's six." She stood up. "I'll run to Magoo's. What do you feel like?"

A slow smile spread across Carter's face. "Coffee and pie?"

Abby shook her head. But she was smiling as well. "It's a little early for pie. Why don't I get us some pancakes instead?"

"Pancakes sound perfect," Carter replied automatically. Where had he heard those words before? Never mind; he was looking for his wallet and couldn't find it on his person.

"Don't worry," said Abby, as if she was reading his mind, "I think they lost your wallet in the storm."

Don't worry. Her words reverberated in his head as she walked out of the room. Things are okay between us, she seemed to say.

Carter stared after her departing figure. Her back turned to him, she never got a chance to receive his reply.

I won't remind you later that you were crying.

* * *

The witch stapled to the door of Doc Magoo's reminded Abby that today was Halloween. She ignored its smiling face when she walked back out, her hands full of breakfast and coffee and loose change. The morning was wet and foggy and cold, a light drizzle sprigging her coat and chilling the back of her neck, and she shivered as she jogged the last several paces to the ER.

Abby made her way through the early morning crowd, noting the time and waving off requests for help with her usual "I'm off." She felt the color return to her cheeks as she veered around the last corner and didn't feel tired for the first time since she stood in the rain with his name on her lips.

She stopped abruptly outside his room and stared.

The pale pre-winter light cast a milk-white brightness to the room--enough to accentuate the bright glint of the head bent close to Carter, and the large, intensely clear eyes fixed upon him. The woman in the room said something that made Carter laugh. They were holding hands and chatting animatedly, the color in their cheeks seemingly oblivious to the gray world around them.

Wordless, Abby backed away from the door. She was vaguely aware of bumping into Susan, avoiding her stare, handing off the breakfast now gone cold in her arms, ignoring Luka's calls. She retreated. When the first blast of cold air hit her lungs, she did not look back but took off running.

* * *

CREDITS: Chapter title and opening song lyrics taken from "The Past and Pending" by my current musical obsession The Shins. According to , rožata is a type of Croatian pastry; all other cultural inaccuracies are completely the responsibility of the author. "I won't remind you later that you were crying" is paraphrased from a line I remember reading and loving in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.