TITLE: Things Behind the Sun (4/12)
AUTHOR: C. Midori
EMAIL: socksless@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: Drama (JC/AL/SL/LK)
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: 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: Eeeeiii. Sorry for the absurd lateness of this chapter--Real Life was kicking my ass for awhile. But better late than never, riiight? :) Next chapter won't be as late in coming, pinky promise. Thanks and various gurgles of affection for everyone who reviewed Chapter Two: charlotte, Maven, CARBYfan, anna, Robbie, bubble girl, Carolyn, Emma Stuart, coffeeandpie, Kate, JD, Ceri, Jane McCartney, mandy, Rebecca Gower, Sandy, and Shayla. *looks at list and faints* PAR-TAY! This chapter is for Christe, who is a darling and rocks allll the socks. Oh, and a double scoop of thanks to everyone who added me to their Favorite Authors list on ff.net. *turns bright red* Head. Big. Can't. Cope. :D Feedback makes the world go 'round. Read? Review!
SUMMARY: Such sweet sorrow, second bests, Susan plays detective, lots of pensive face, some shifty references to Magi (a.k.a. shameless plugging), and Carter sees dead people. Kind of.
* * *
CHAPTER THREE
Hand Me Downs
You in the dark
You with the pain
You on the run
Living a hell
Living your ghost
Living your end
* * *
Carter frowned. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong and it twisted his stomach into large unwieldy knots. But he couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. He couldn't feel anything besides the warm hand that snuck its way into his, couldn't see anything besides the stars he imagined shining behind the rain clouds, cut out of the color of her eyes as they were and almost as bright.
He tore his eyes from a sky he thought he saw and turned his glance to the woman he knew stayed beside him. He smiled, a frank and honest and painless sort of smile, and squeezed her hand back. By the time he heard the rip of tires through water and the frantic blow of a car horn--his car horn--it was too late.
Light. The bright glare of headlights, the froth licking the edges of the rain that swept through the street in waves, the opaque shine of the window underneath a sodium glow. A snapshot of a face twisted in fear--not his own--and her hand wrenched from his. From far away he thought he heard her scream but he couldn't be sure; metal crunched and glass shattered above his head in a shower of stars and he felt himself knocked backwards with a terrible violence…
Then there was nothing but silence, merciful silence, broken only by the pattering of rain against his forehead.
Dizzily, he opened his eyes. He could make out the bright halo of Phil's hair even in his half-unconscious haze. She was slumped against the dashboard; her eyes open and her mouth moving but he couldn't hear what she was saying. Blood trickled from a gash that swiped across her forehead like an angry pen mark.
No. Carter shut his eyes. No no no no no.
He opened them again, but she was still staring at him.
Lucy, he thought dully.
Shaking, he brought his hand up to his own face. He wiped the water from his brow. When he drew his hand back, there was blood on his cuff.
Pain and panic swept over him like the shadow of an enormous wave. Wildly, his eyes darted around but he found nothing to hold on to. Night pressed in all around him like a vice. The wave crested--it rolled over him in a paint of darkness--the world flipped upside down--he tumbled free--
Gasping awake, Carter opened his eyes to blackness.
* * *
"Luka. Luka? …Earth to Luka."
Startled, Luka shook his head and looked up. Susan stood at the window to the drug lockup, her elbows propped up against the ledge and her hands cupped over her mouth, and was staring at him curiously.
"Rough night?" she said, her tone kind.
Luka lifted his head from where it was resting against the lip of a shelf. There was a faint indentation where the shelf used to be and Susan suppressed a grin. "Just tired," he lied.
"It's more convincing if you make eye contact," said Susan, blandly.
His face blank, he looked up at her. "What is?"
"Lying."
Luka had the good grace to look embarrassed. His mouth twisted into an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry."
But Susan shook her head. "It's okay."
"I need to find…Compazine…" explained Luka under his breath, aware that she was still staring at him peculiarly. He tapped his nervous fingers against the steel shelf.
Susan disappeared from the window. He heard her round the corner and step into the drug lockup with him. Expertly, she scanned the shelves before plucking a bottle from the stacks.
She held it out to him. "You want fries with that?"
"Thanks." Luka gave her another awkward smile as they stepped out together.
"No problem," said Susan, her tone conversational. "Are you coming down with something?"
Tired, he rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand as they walked. "I'm fine."
Susan almost burst out laughing; it was uncanny, really, how much he reminded her of Abby in that moment. Dark eyes, tired movements, flat replies. "You sure?" she said, absently, her mind still rattled by this mini-epiphany. "It's going around."
"Abby is sick," said Luka, just as absently.
Susan was silent for a moment before answering. "Is she still angry with you?"
"I don't know." Rueful, Luka shook his head. He gave her a hesitant glance out of the corner of his eye. The fluorescent light glinted off of Susan's fair head in gold spikes as they walked down the corridor. "I was hoping you could tell me."
"I…" Susan trailed off as he looked at her hopefully. Without knowing why, she felt a sudden stab of pity, and of loneliness.
Stop it, she told herself.
"I couldn't really say," finished Susan lamely. "Abby doesn't really talk about it."
Inwardly, she sighed. Luka was trying very hard to look like he didn't care much about her answer and he was failing miserably. After a moment, she continued, her words gentle: "You know, I'm sure if you talked to her things would be fine."
Talk to her, his mind echoed. Doggedly, his feet followed Susan. That was easier said than done.
Uncertain, Luka felt his way around his words. "What do you think--"
"Luka," Susan broke in patiently, "This is the ladies' room."
She watched, amused, as he flushed scarlet and mumbled an apology before beating an escape down the hall. For someone whose intelligent and sensitive nature tended to show in everything he did, he could be awfully dense about some things. Like women. Specifically, one woman.
How the hell he and Abby ever made a relationship work was beyond her, Susan decided, and she shook her head as she watched him disappear around the corner.
* * *
Carter drew a long, shuddering gasp.
The bedroom was dark and still, like the bottom of an ocean floor, the current the quiet breathing of the woman sound asleep next to him. Turning his face slightly, he could make out her face in the darkness. She looked peaceful, her eyes shut and her lips slightly parted, the ends of her hair tickling the side of his neck.
He turned away.
Carefully, he began to slip from Phil's embrace. It was difficult. The cast on his broken leg was heavy and even after a week he was unaccustomed to moving around with the extra weight. It was not unlike dragging an anchor with him. A very heavy, very inconvenient, very Magic Marker-ed anchor.
With a start, he remembered the last time he had to wear a cast. He tried hard not to.
Inch by inch, he eased out from the bed. The mattress sagged beneath him, the cast dragging itself along and forming an indentation wherever it rested. It scraped against the sheets like the metal teeth of a zipper grinding together. With a grunt, he pulled himself free, and the cast fell to the rug with an ungraceful thud.
Carter grimaced, but Phil merely rolled over in her sleep--an easy and dreamless sleep. He felt a sudden stab of envy.
Slipping soundlessly from the bedroom, he limped into the hallway. The hallway of her apartment was full of narrow passages and sharp corners. It was difficult to navigate using crutches without knocking into anything so he left them by the bedside. Instead, he took his time and hobbled slowly but painfully in the direction of her kitchen, his palms sliding against her wall to support his weight.
He made it without any major disaster (although he narrowly avoided decapitating a china figurine). His hands groped the wall for a switch, running over the grooves in the wallpaper like Braille, and soon a low light filled the room. It pricked the backs of his eyes. He blinked rapidly until the piercing sensation disappeared.
Moving with great slowness, he poured himself a glass of water and crumpled into a chair, his cast propped up on a seat.
Phil was a product of old money and a Protestant upbringing; as a result, she was obsessively fond of stained glass. Her apartment was cluttered with various lamps all cut in the classic Tiffany's design. They reminded him vaguely of cold Christmas Eves and warm candle-lit halls, the pew hard underneath his fragile child bones and a book heavy in his lap.
The kitchen had not escaped unscathed. An inverted dome hung from a brass fixture on the ceiling and cradled the light in a bowl of primary colors. Light melted through the panes of cut glass like warm butter: the red and yellow glass shone, a sunset splashed against his hands, throwing irregular patterns on his skin. It was a very beautiful sunset--the kind that only came in the first few days of autumn to touch gold upon the leaves that would soon turn--and it winked at him as the bulb flickered.
Restless, Carter drew his hands away from the light and rubbed at his eyes. He was so tired. He had not slept well in a very long time, less so since the accident, and it showed: bruise-blue shadows charcoaled the undersides of his eyes and his face wore a pale, waxy complexion. But he dared not close his eyes.
For when he closed his eyes, he dreamt death.
Death stabbed at his back and slid like a blade between his bones; it pricked him like a hot needle and stamped its mark upon the faces of the very young. Death came to him in bright flashes of memory; death came to him in dreams. Yet, he remained helpless to its power. A lifetime of nightmares had brought him not wisdom but the pain of ignorance and the language of dreams was lost to him. He could not recognize the tongue and so could not decipher whatever meaning he was meant to be taught.
Instead, Carter learned, with great weakness, what it was like to be so young and to have death mark him, as surely as sin must have scarred the faces of those turned away at the gates of Heaven.
Growing up, he tried to hide it. He tried to let the past bury itself, tried to keep separate the texture of dreams from reality. He was damn good at it, too; he graduated from med school and he became a doctor. He tried the erase the long shadows that death cast upon the living, and he did it everyday. He was young, he was ambitious, he was earnest, and he was heartbreakingly determined.
But he wasn't resilient.
So death stayed with him like his shadow. Not because he was a martyr or a savior of a victim--he was none of these things, not one to be honored or pitied, no. He was a witness. Only that, and nothing more, but it was enough.
It was enough. He closed his eyes and saw a face printed upon the insides of his eyelids, a face he had seen again and again since the accident, the face of the driver who hit him: young, and scared, and dying. A face that was not completely unlike Bobby's, whose own face had already begun to show a hint of the man he would never become; or Lucy's, whose hair dyed the color of sunshine and eyes cut out of the bluest summer sky could not save her from a colorless existence.
Carter had watched them die. First Bobby, then Lucy, and now…
His shoulders sagged with the burden of memory. Only once had it become too much for him to bear--it was then that he came to death's threshold, and he came begging. But hands had wrenched him back, hands that were not his own, hands that were strong and capable and stubborn. Hands that belonged first to Peter Benton: his mentor, his teacher, his friend.
And then they belonged to Abby.
* * *
It was definitely flu season. Even in the predawn, there were people waiting in chairs for relief and Susan brandished it in the form of a flu shot.
Service with a smile, she thought blandly to herself, as she pasted one on her face in response to the teen that glared at her now. She didn't bother asking what the teen was doing out at two in the morning on a school night; it wasn't any of her business and she wasn't sure it was a good idea to provoke the patient. Even if Susan was the one holding the needle.
Done. The girl rolled down her sleeve and hopped off the exam table, her bright copper hair swinging behind her. She nodded a thanks to Susan.
Gratitude. Color me touched, Susan thought wryly.
Cleanup was a quick affair and Susan soon returned to the front desk to erase another name from the board. Giving the vastly empty waiting area a quick survey, she assigned the rest of the flu patients to Gallant and resigned herself to a fate of finishing off a stack of charts: hers, and Carter's.
She grabbed a stack and made her way to the lounge. It was dark, empty, and quiet, except for the buzzing of the fluorescent light overhead, and she felt oddly uneasy in the cavernous silence. She made more noise than necessary dropping the stack of files onto the table and starting a new pot of coffee. Plucking the old filter from its plastic encasing, she crumpled it carefully into a neat ball and lobbed it towards the nearest trash can.
She missed.
Groaning, Susan watched sourly as the filter landed with a faint plop onto the carpet before unfolding like a volcano and sending old coffee grounds flying into the air. She sighed and grabbed a handful of paper towels.
She picked listlessly at the filter and dumped it into the trashcan. A folded piece of fluorescent pink paper was stuck to the side of the container. Susan glanced at it briefly while scrubbing the coffee grains out of the carpet: it appeared to be an advertisement for a discounted gym membership. Interested, she peeled the paper from the wastebasket and, out of curiosity, unfolded it.
There was writing on the back of the paper. Susan recognized it instantly as Carter's. God knows she had done enough of his charts while he was recovering in the last week to recognize his hand. Holding the bright rectangle gingerly between her fingers, she glanced at the first few lines. Startled, what was born out of mere curiosity fleshed into stunned disbelief as she skimmed through the entire letter, shock squashing whatever feelings of guilt she might have cultivated in any other case.
She did not have to read past the beginning to realize what kind of letter it was. It was a draft, apparently addressed to the hospital, and full of angry cross-outs and scribbles. She forced herself to double-check the hastily written scrawl to make sure that she was not mistaken--she was not--then crumpled the paper in her hands. She dropped it back in the wastebasket, the first sentence ringing in her head…
I am writing to inform you of my resignation…
* * *
The hands on the clock read two thirty when Phil wandered into the kitchen to find Carter at the table, his cast propped up on a chair and his fingers tapping restlessly against an empty glass.
She cleared her throat. "Hey."
Carter looked up. She was leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest and her hands lost in her sleeves. Her hair fell in tousled waves around her face, and her eyes still had that half-glassy look of sleep. She smiled at him.
He looked up at her and, reflexively, smiled back. "Hey," he returned.
She walked over to where he was sitting. Her hair brushed against his cheek as she bent down to press her lips against the side of his face. "What are you doing?" she murmured, looping one arm around him. "It's late."
"Thirsty," said Carter, closing his eyes as her arm rested against his collarbone.
Her breath was warm against his neck. "Do you want me to get you some water?"
"I already had some." For a reason he could not understand, he felt himself shut down to her, as a flower closes up at night. When he spoke, his own voice was strange and remote to his ears. "Go back to sleep," he said, tersely.
Carter felt her stiffen, ever so slightly, against him.
Phil withdrew, her hands still on his shoulders. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," he said automatically. Her hand slipped off as she circled around to take a seat beside him.
"You're lying," said Phil, succinctly.
Carter stared at her, half in offense and half in admiration. Phil was, if anything, distressingly honest. It reminded him exactly why he liked her so much--and exactly why they broke up in med school. She said the things he didn't want to hear, true or not.
Phil reached out and took his hand. "Do you want to talk about it?"
He shrugged, his hand laying limp in hers. "There's nothing to talk about."
Bright spots of color appeared on her cheeks. "There's nothing to talk about or you don't want to talk about it?"
What was there to say? Carter snorted. I see dead people?
Aloud, he wasn't nearly as glib. "I don't want to talk about it--with you."
Phil flinched, but Carter held his ground. This was something she couldn't possibly understand, he was sure of it, her happy childhood untouched by the caress of death. She with the spun-gold hair and eyes the color of wet glass and a smile so bright that his eyes hurt from it--she would never understand, she would only find herself on the other side of a divide that split them apart, and in his kindness he wasn't sure he wanted to subject her to that knowledge.
But Phil only looked at if as if he was cruel, hurt mirrored in her large gray eyes. "John."
Carter mimicked her tone. "Phil."
She stared at him, hard. "Are you trying to make me angry?"
"I don't know." When Carter looked at her, he spoke with measured tones. "Is it working?"
Years of knowing Phil meant he knew how to push her buttons, and he knew he was pushing them right now, quite deliberately.
"You know what?" she said evenly, "You can be a real asshole sometimes."
When he didn't respond, she continued. "This isn't you--"
"Really?" he broke in.
She ignored him. "I know there's something wrong."
Carter lifted an eyebrow and, ever so slightly, shook his head.
"Look," she tried, "You can keep it to yourself and be miserable, or you can talk to me and--"
"Feel better?" Carter sounded bored. "Somehow, I doubt it."
"Stop it," snapped Phil, looking fed up, "Don't make things worse than they already are."
"I didn't think you cared," interrupted Carter, coolly.
Fuck. What had made him say that? Furious at himself, he regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.
Phil stared at him. "You know I care," she said, her voice deadly quiet, "It's not my fault if you don't seem to care back."
Carter blinked. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was surprised to find himself protesting. I do care, he thought. More than you know and more than I think I do.
But he remained mute.
"How can you think that?" she continued, looking pale and unhappy even under the lamplight, which graced her features like the glow from the edge of a flame. "How can you even think for a moment that I don't care?"
"We've only been dating for a couple of months," said Carter, his voice level.
Phil turned to him, her gaze fierce and sad. "I've known you my entire life."
He fell silent.
She fixed her gaze on him. Carefully, "You're not going to tell me what's wrong, are you?"
"No," Carter stared vacantly--not quite at her, but more like through her, "You make me happy."
They stared at each other with identical expressions of shock upon their faces.
Carter was shocked because although he had never really thought about it, he knew what he said to be true; Phil was shocked because very seldom did Carter express any kind of obvious attachment to her. She found it puzzling because this was not the Carter she knew in med school, who was open and direct and earnest with his effortless smiles and easy caresses. This Carter was stubborn, sometimes curt, and when he looked at her his smile very often did not reach his eyes.
But then again, she did not know about the long stretch of time between then and now, about his long line of failed relationships, about Abby. How could she know what time did to him when, to be fair, he hardly knew himself?
Carter watched as her eyes searched his, grey meeting brown like a rain-colored sky veined with bare branches. He recovered first. "Is that what you want to hear?"
The chair scraped against the floor as Phil stood up, her voice muffled by the darkness that now hid her face like a veil.
"Only if you mean it."
But that was the problem, Carter thought as he listened to her retreat down the hallway. I do mean it. I do.
* * *
Wide awake, Phil stood outside the door to her bedroom and leaned quietly against the wall. Her shoulders slumped and she drew deep, even breaths--the kind of breaths people drew in order to keep themselves from crying, only Phyllis Weston did not cry.
When she heard him rise from his seat in the kitchen, she held her breath. She wasn't sure if she was waiting for him, or waiting for him to leave. It wasn't long before she got her answer.
She listened as he limped away from the direction of her bedroom and towards the front door. She heard him grab his wallet and his set of keys to her apartment from off the coffee table in the foyer and she imagined him shrugging into his coat. She shut his eyes when she heard the door close behind him and the locks slide into place.
When she was sure he was gone, she let herself sink to the ground and she buried her face in her hands.
* * *
The phone was ringing. An awful, high-pitched, jangling sound that sliced right through her delirious cloud of unconsciousness to stab mercilessly at her eyes. Groggily, Abby rolled over in her sleep and, suppressing a cough, swiped wildly at the receiver. She managed to grab it on her third try. Her lips barely moved as she pressed the phone against her ear and mumbled into the mouthpiece, her voice thick with sleep and sickness. "Hello?"
Though the night was cold and Carter stood huddled in nothing but an overcoat over his thin pajamas, he couldn't help but smile at the sound of her voice. "It's me."
Abby's eyes shot open. Disbelievingly, she sat up in bed. Carter?
"Abby?" Uncertainly, he paused. "It's me. Carter."
"I know." Impatiently, she pushed the hair from her face, the phone clutched to her ear. "What time is it?"
Outside her apartment, Carter glanced at his watch then up at her window. The sky sparkled overhead, sprigged with stars like tiny chips of ice, and he expelled his breath in little puffs of smoke. The night was crisp and clear--it had not yet begun to snow, but it was cold enough, and frost covered her window like lacework.
He shivered and tried to keep his teeth from chattering as he spoke. "It's half past three. Did I wake you?"
He couldn't see her, but he could swear he heard her roll her eyes. Crabbily, she replied. "What do you think, Einstein?"
Amused, Carter paced to keep warm. He heard her flop back down onto her bed and cough several times. "It's just John now, thanks."
"Whatever," said Abby, who felt sleep leaving with each passing moment and was becoming all the crankier for it.
"Cheer up. It could be worse."
She glared into the darkness. "How?"
"You could be working," said Carter, reasonably.
"I called in sick." Sniffling, she sat up again. "Carter, where are you?"
"Outside your apartment." He paused and she heard a car drive by. "It's really cold."
Silence. "Are you asking if you can come in?"
Carter glanced upwards again, but it was still dark in her apartment. Tentatively, he shaped his mouth around the words. "Can I?"
Clumsily, he crossed his fingers. Please, please let her say yes.
On the other end of the line, Abby sighed, a headache beginning to lance at her eyes.
As if I could say no.
"Abby?" he ventured.
"I'll buzz you in," she said at last.
* * *
Abby was waiting for him by the time he reached the top of the stairs. Her door was partially open, casting a bright wedge of light into the darkness of the hallway and giving him just enough of a guide to make his way down the corridor.
He was cold and tired from by the time his knuckles rapped against her door. Suddenly shy, he waited behind the threshold. Cold night air caught in the folds of his coat and his cast was a bright white glare against the dark spill of shadows. "Avon calling."
The door swung open and Abby appeared. "Not at this hour."
Raising his hand to his face, Carter took a moment to accustom his eyes to the brightness. When he was finished blinking, he saw that she was warm and rumpled. Her cheeks were flushed a wild rose, but whether it was from sleep or a fever or something else, he couldn't tell.
She stepped back to let him through. His bones still felt painfully frozen from standing outside in the November night. He dragged himself with bone-aching slowness across her threshold.
Eyeing him as he hobbled through the door, Abby finally spoke up. "You do realize that it's almost four a.m.," she said, unsympathetically.
Carter tried hard to look nonchalant but his cast was making things difficult. "Yeah."
"And I'm sick," she said, sniffling particularly loudly to make her point.
"Yeah," he grimaced. "I'm really sorry about that."
She reached behind him to lock the door. He took the opportunity to unbutton his coat and shed what felt like an extra layer of frost.
"You're wearing your pajamas," said Abby, obviously surprised.
"So are you," he correctly pointed out.
Exasperated, Abby moved in front of him. Despite the fact that he was a good foot taller, she scrutinized him until he shirked under her gaze. "Where are your crutches?" she demanded.
Irritated at last, Carter scowled at her. "What are you, my mother?"
Abby glared back. "Ouch."
He looked away first. He was cold, he was tired, and his leg hurt like hell. "Can I sit down?"
Looking at his pitiful form, Abby sighed, martyr-like, and helped him out of his coat. She felt her stomach doing funny twisty things as she helped him over to her sofa, his arm slung gingerly around her shoulder and her body tucked neatly by his.
Stop that, she told herself fiercely. What are you, fifteen?
Once she helped him get settled on the sofa, cast propped up on the coffee table and head leaned against a throw pillow, she disappeared into the kitchen and reemerged with two hot cups of tea. She handed him his and held her own carefully as she settled herself opposite him on the sofa. Her nose was red and her eyes were puffy with sleep.
Clutching a box of tissues, she spoke thickly. "Okay, who died?"
"Died?" Carter blinked. "Nobody died."
"Then what are you doing here so late?" said Abby, bluntly.
For a moment, he looked properly ashamed. "I'm sorry. I know you're sick--"
"It's okay," she interrupted, waving him off. Without trying to appear too obvious, she studied his face. He looked as if he had not slept, or shaved, in at least a couple of days. Dark shadows lined the undersides of his eyes and the curve of his jaw, like soot smudged against his pale skin, and his eyes wore a lost, haunted look.
"Do you want me to go?" said Carter, interrupting her thoughts.
Abby looked stubborn. "No." She took a delicate sip from her mug, savoring the feeling of tea slipping down her burning throat. "But you can tell me why you're here."
With great reluctance, Carter pried the words from his lips. "Phil and I had a fight."
"Oh." Dispassionately, she looked at him from over the brim of her mug. "At three in the morning? You guys sound like my ex-neighbors," she cracked.
Carter looked injurious. "She started it."
"Right," agreed Abby, pulling a tissue from its box and blowing her nose loudly, "Because that one really makes you sound like a mature and responsible adult."
"It does too," he said. Was he pouting?
"It's great where I am," she rolled her eyes, her voice heavy with sarcasm, "What's it like in the third grade?"
Carter looked cranky. "You're abusing sarcasm."
"Wouldn't wanna get rusty," said Abby, almost cheerfully, as she took another sip from her mug.
Amused, Carter watched her for a moment, his hands wrapped protectively around his drink. "You're awfully glib for someone who is sick with the flu and up at four in the morning."
"Would you rather I was the demon mistress from hell?" Abby raised an eyebrow. "Because I'm sick and it's late and that can definitely be arranged."
Carter couldn't help it; he smiled.
"Enough about me." Stifling a yawn, Abby tried very hard to ignore the headache lashing at her temples. "What's wrong, Carter?"
He continued smiling at her, his eyes softening to match the smoky darkness. "Nothing."
"Something better be wrong," she pointed out, "Or else I'm going back to bed."
Absently, Carter leaned forward, gazing into the contents of his half-emptied mug as if it held all the secrets to the universe. He found it difficult to speak.
Coughing, Abby drummed her fingers against the side of her mug. "Do you want to talk about it?"
He sighed. "I don't--"
"Because it might help," she interrupted, though without much rancor. She was beginning to feel light-headed. "It's why you're here, isn't it?"
Carter squeezed his eyes shut. It was like she could see all the way straight to the back of his head in a way no one else could. It was a little unnerving and a little comforting at the same time.
"Carter?" she prodded.
Painfully, he shifted his weight, his cast scraping against her coffee table. Abby helped him move it onto the couch. She found herself trapped between his leg and the backside of the sofa. She didn't really mind.
"I remember his face," said Carter, finally.
Abby looked blank. "Whose face?"
"The driver…the guy who hit me."
She blinked. His face was beginning to shake and swarm in front of her, like a blur of dark colors.
"I remember his face," repeated Carter, more faintly, "Right before he hit me. He was young. Really young. Gallant's age, maybe."
"Carter," Abby said, quietly.
But he continued as if he didn't hear her. "Young," he continued, in the same remote tone, "But not that young. Old enough to be married. Old enough to be--to be a father."
Startled, she nearly dropped her mug.
"She's pregnant," he chuckled to himself. "The guy's wife is pregnant."
Abby was quiet for a moment as she let the gravity of his words sink in. They needled at her eyes like a bright light, and she turned away, seeking relief.
Mirthlessly, Carter grinned at her, the corners of his mouth curling upwards like paper burning. "His wife called me today. She wanted to meet, wanted to apologize, wanted to see the face that her son or daughter would never see, I bet."
Uneasily, Abby glanced over at his hands, which were clutching the mug so tightly that they were turning white.
"I told her I was busy."
Without a word, Abby reached over and pried the mug gently from his hands, placing it with a soft clink onto the table. She felt shaky, and dizzy, and terribly weak, but nevertheless scooted forward until she could see herself reflected in his eyes.
"Carter," she tried, keeping her voice steady, "Look at me. Look. He hit you. He hit you," she repeated for emphasis. "He was drinking, and he was stupid enough to drive in the middle of a storm while drunk. It's not your fault."
"Really." Carter laughed--an awful, hollow sort of laugh--and she realized that she had never heard him laugh that way before. "Is that what I'm supposed to tell his wife?"
Mouth dry, Abby licked her lips. Faintly, she kept her eyes fixed on him, glassy as they were with fever and tiredness. "You don't owe her anything."
He laughed again, the same mirthless laugh, and leaned forward until she could feel his breath on her face.
"He's dead. I'm alive. You do the math. It seems pretty simple to me."
Abby felt her breath hitch. They were sitting much closer to each other than she had previously realized. She could see how very large and dark his pupils were, making his eyes look not brown but black, and how the laughter that came from his lips did not touch his eyes. She could see how pale he was underneath all the shadows that graced his face, which was the color of chalk and bone and cloud, and she could see something else, too. There was something dark and restless about the way he looked at her, the way he moved his hands--like veins that ran beneath paper-white skin, their color sharp against her eyes but their shape not altogether apparent.
Startled, she realized that she didn't recognize this person. Carter, who wore every emotion on his face, whose face she knew almost better than her own, was a complete stranger to her.
Suddenly, he reached out and caught at a stray wisp of hair falling in front of her eyes.
"Do you know what it's like to watch someone die?" he said, softly.
Carter realized that he was trembling all over. So was Abby. But where he shook with guilt and anger and fear, she shook with fever, her dark eyes unusually bright and her cheeks burned with color. There was a shallowness to her breathing that he knew had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the flu, or did it?
"I thought so," said Carter, his voice still soft and full of--malice?--Abby thought dizzily.
No, bitterness.
Leaning forward, he let the wisp fall from his fingertips. But he left his hand by the side of her face. He left it long enough for him to mean it and long enough for her to notice.
He left it long enough for her to lean into his touch if she wanted to.
A violent ache hammered behind her eyes. Abby felt as if heat was falling over her like a suffocating blanket. "It's not your fault," she repeated, weary, and she felt herself sway ever so slightly out of drowsiness.
She brushed against his hand.
"Abby…" said Carter, so close by.
"Yes?" she murmured. She could almost feel the whorls and swirls of his fingerprints printing themselves upon her skin, as dark and defined as ink or blood.
"You're really sick," he said, alarmed.
With difficulty, she dragged her eyes open, though she could not remember when she had closed them. He was looking at her, concern and worry etched in every line of his face; he was Carter as she knew him once more, and she felt an indefinable tension leave her body.
"You're really sick," he repeated, for her benefit.
"I don't have a witty remark for that one," said Abby, who was beginning to feel like her head was going to explode.
Anxious, Carter pressed his hand against her forehead, all thoughts of guilt and private grief momentarily on hold. "You made a joke in the middle of your feverish state," he cracked. "That's very positive."
"Is it?" Abby shook her head, hard. "I just need to get some sleep."
He dropped his hand. Instantly, she missed its presence. "I should go."
"No," Abby blinked rapidly, the fever making her do something she normally wouldn't do, "You can stay."
Surprised, Carter opened his mouth to object, but found that he did not want to.
* * *
Abby insisted on getting Carter some bedding in spite of her fluish state. In reality, it was an excuse for her to catch her breath. She felt decidedly sick--a dull, consumptive ache inside her chest and shooting arrows of pain in her bones--but she knew it wasn't just the flu that was making her react this way.
This was hell, she grimaced as she sifted through the contents of her linen closet for something appropriately warm and non-flowery. Never in her life had she cared about someone more than they cared about her; not since Maggie was she willing to put herself in a position to be hurt so violently by another person. She had only vague memories of her father, who skipped out before she ever even knew what it was to love, and found whatever love she gave to Eric reciprocated in full.
She never really loved anyone until Richard, and even then it was hard to say that she loved him. She supposed she did, but only because she ended up hating him. Love and hate were but two sides of the same coin, weren't they?
She made sure she never loved Luka. Not consciously, not at first. It became a sort of…habit, after awhile. He made it so easy for her; he made it so easy for her to make sure that what had happened with Maggie would never repeat itself.
Except, it did. Rather, it was.
Abby knew that Carter cared about her, the same way Carter cared about people in general. It was in his nature to do so. Where she created a world for herself where people did not love her and she had no one to love, he reacted to one already made for him by his brother's death. Carter gave himself to people in a way she could never understand and in some ways didn't want to.
He gave himself to her, of course, and she knew that now; knew it the night he looked at her in the way only he could look at her, and she let herself look at him in the same way back. But things had changed. As the days shortened and the leaves began to brown, time did much to change the texture of their relationship. Very rarely now did she catch him looking at her. More often did she catch him staring at Phil with the oddest expression on his face: amazement mixed with happiness mixed with…resentment.
Hugging a comforter to herself, she closed her eyes and leaned forward until her head rested against the edge of a shelf. She didn't know if she loved him. She only knew that what she was beginning to feel for him was something entirely terrifying and wonderful and painful but most of all unfamiliar.
But pain was not. Abby was not accustomed to caring for someone so violently, but she was accustomed to the intimate nuances of pain. She knew it because she lived it everyday. Life taught her to want for nothing and expect less, lock the best parts of herself away, laugh less and pray never. She learned well.
So she would deal with this pain just as she dealt with any other pain. She would deal with it until it consumed her, until nothing else remained except that pain, and it was no longer a part of her so much as it was her. It was the way she learned and it was the way she survived. It was how things were and how things were always going to be.
* * *
When Abby returned, arms full of bedding, Carter had apparently fallen asleep. His leg was propped up on the end of her sofa and his head was jammed against one of her throw pillows. He must have been very tired; she could almost make out the map of veins that swam beneath his bruise-blue eyelids.
Still. Abby had to resist the urge to kick his injured leg.
Swallowing, she unfolded the blanket and tucked it around his slumbering form. It was only when her shadow crossed his face did his eyes flutter open to peer up at her.
"I'm awake," said Carter, his voice hazy with sleep.
"Liar," said Abby, automatically.
"Never that," he mumbled, his eyes falling back shut.
"All men are liars," Abby assured him, reaching behind his head to tuck another pillow under it.
"Abby?" murmured Carter. He was speaking so softly that she had to crane her neck to hear him.
She sighed. "What?"
His eyes remained closed but a sleep-heavy hand reached out from under the blanket to bracelet her wrist. Wide-eyed, Abby stared at his face, shut eyes and unshaven jaw and skin the color of moonlight on water, and felt the light pressure of his fingertips on her skin.
He opened his eyes, indistinguishable from the darkness that flowed around them like spilt black ink. There was no way for Abby to know that he once upon a time, in a motel room in Minnesota, he looked upon her in the same way.
Only, he said now what he had no need to say back then, so closely knit they were. "I miss you."
Abby felt her chest clench. She leaned in close, her face inches from his, and spoke deliberately. "I'm right here."
She sat back on her heels and waited until, asleep, his hand slipped from hers. When she rose to turn off the light, she stood in the predawn and waited for darkness to fall over her like water, but night never came. A faint light was dawning in the east.
* * *
CREDITS: Every ER fan worth her salt knows from whence the song lyrics came; Bush and "Letting the Cables Sleep" for those of you not in the know. Carter borrows from The Sixth Sense, Buffy, and Sliding Doors with his "I see dead people", "you're abusing sarcasm", and "you made a joke in your feverish state" comments, respectively. (What, you think he's this funny on his own? ;D)