TITLE: Things Behind the Sun (7/12)
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: Writer's block sucks but you guys don't. :D Thanks to all the people who reviewed Chapter Five: Mealz, Kate (cake), Ash, CARBYfan, KenzieGal, Lana, Kate, Ceri, dreaming, jakeschick, carolyn, Emma Stuart, Lesbiassparrow, Saintly Sinner, noa4jc, Anna, plmsERaddict, Sandy, SunshinePix, Rebecca Gower, Charli, and JD. You guys never fail to make my day. Also, thanks to jakeschick and Charli for their beta reads. The passage in question ended up getting hacked to death but your comments were appreciated all the same. Lastly, thanks to everybody for being so patient with this chapter. Hopefully, there won't be any more two-month waits from here on out, God willing and the creek don't rise.
SUMMARY: Susan and Luka prepare to break bread, Carter settles for breaking a heart, and Abby hums a few lines of A-ha. Really. Thanksgiving Day, Part 1 of 2.
* * *
CHAPTER SIX
Burning the Bridges
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
* * *
It started, like few things in her life ever did, with a dream.
Dreams were full of symbols and symbols had meanings and meanings were dangerous. She did her best to stay away from them. For some, darkness was a place of infinity, a place without borders or a place that managed to escape the limits of vision, a place ripe for the flowering of dreams. But for her, darkness had to be a place of rest. She sought that darkness that laid beyond the scope of seeing and therefore rested beyond the borders of life. She sought a darkness without dreaming.
Nevertheless, they were there again: night, and water, and the lights of the city mapped out behind them in a cluster of constellations. The way he looked at her, the way he said her name--it was enough. It was enough for her to be sure; not so sure of herself but sure enough of his feelings for her. Sure enough for her to look upon the dark as a place of infinite possibility, where there were no roads, where there were no limits, where they could wander freely.
So she mustered what little courage she had and she said something.
Even so, some part of her knew he would turn away. This was not meant to be an easy thing. Nothing ever was; not in her life and not for her. She thought she was making an important gesture by offering him a part of her. He thought she was making no kind of gesture at all by denying him the whole. He wanted her to give. She thought that meant she had to give up.
But in dreams, things did not always happen the way she expected them to.
He smiled at her--the dangerous smile of a man who had nothing to lose. It was a smile curved in amusement and curiosity, knowing and a little bit of malice. It was a vicious smile. It was the kind of smile she imagined the angels wore when they tumbled from the sky as demons exiled from heaven. It was a smile to match the intent of the man who suddenly and startlingly reached out and grabbed her.
Hands that had healed her, hands that had held her close--now they seized her, pulled her, trapped her against him. She lost her footing. His hand tightened around her wrist. She felt her breath catch. She felt the long fingers that shackled her pulse and the breath on the exposed skin of her neck and, in spite of herself, she began to shiver.
"You're hurting me," she said, tonelessly, but she did not attempt to pull away.
She felt him smile against her skin.
"And here I thought I was loving you," he replied, sounding amused.
"Like I said," she said dully, "You're hurting me."
He leaned over until his mouth was by her ear.
"Don't you wish I would?"
She shut her eyes. "Don't--"
"Don't?" he interrupted, mocking her, his voice like binds of silk cutting into her skin. "Abby, this is what lovers do."
The darkness closed in on her like a living thing and she felt its breath on her cheek. She spoke with some difficulty.
"You think we're lovers?"
"You think we're not?"
She had no reply to that.
"You never were good at figuring out who you were," he said, still so sure, still so amused. "Or what you wanted."
Her eyes flew open. Suddenly, she craved a light, any kind of light, no matter what the cost--even if it was honesty.
"I wanted you."
He laughed again, as if this helpless revelation amused him greatly.
"Me?"
"I don't see what's so funny about it," she heard herself snap.
"Nothing." He shook his head. Then--"Everything."
She hesitated, honesty a new thing for her, and painful in its rawness. "I never meant for it to be too late."
"I wish it were that easy," he said thoughtfully, a fingertip tracing a path from her temple down to her jaw, and she shivered. "Then again, nothing is ever easy; not with us, not ever."
Silence. Suddenly, she was tired, so tired, of trying to decipher this language, the tongue of dreams, as untranslatable as the rules that dictated her own life.
"Let me go," she said, wearily.
Their faces were so close together they were almost touching. And when he spoke it was not the word she heard but the shape of its breath on her skin.
"No," he said. Ruthless, he tightened his grip around her.
"Carter--"
"I can't," he interrupted her. "It's my turn."
Before she could ask him what he meant, he continued.
"Maggie, Richard, Luka," he said, softly, scornfully. "In their own ways they loved you, and so they hurt you."
She shut her eyes. But she could still feel him smile, a smile so sharp she thought she would cut herself on it.
"And it's my turn."
She felt something inside of her snap, like a twig beneath her heel, like a piano string, with great violence, and she tried to pull herself free. Her own voice rang in her ears, unusually high-pitched and frantic. "Let me go," she hissed, "Carter, let me go; let me go, Carter, let me--"
Grinning, he released her.
"Go."
And then she was falling, falling--falling into night and falling into water, blackness flooding her vision and knocking her off her feet in a giant rolling wave. Desperate, she flung her hands out to catch hold of something--anything--to break her fall, but there was nothing--
Abby jerked awake.
* * *
The trees outside the window were stripped bare. Sleet burned their trunks black and formed small pools upon their rust-colored leaves. Overhead, the sky was flat and colorless, a palette of ash and soot and bone, ice and rain raising a frozen net of static from the horizon. There was no way for Phil to know that the sun even rose at all on this gray morning. As she sat by the window with her knees hugged to her chest, she thought that suited her just fine.
Carter lay a few feet away from where she sat. He lay asleep on the bed, his eyes fluttered shut and his eyelashes like strokes of ink against his very pale skin. Phil was both a heavy sleeper and a morning person--which meant, for the past month, that she fell asleep before he did and woke right after he dropped off, without any knowledge of his sleeping habits or, rather, lack thereof.
It also meant that she considered, rather uncharitably, of waking him.
But then she would have to deal with him and she didn't quite feel up to that. So she let him sleep.
It was Thanksgiving Day. In the weeks since the accident they had fought once and made up once. Apologies came between the sheets and in the dark. An uneasy truce was established whereby Carter was obliged to pretend that nothing was wrong and Phil was obliged to pretend that he wasn't lying. Any other agreement and the truce--and their relationship--would come flying undone faster than a roll of toilet paper flung off the roof of County General.
So she pretended. Like she didn't care if he cancelled on a date, like she didn't notice if he didn't return a phone call, like it didn't matter if he spent more time with Abby than he did with her.
Abby. She wondered what the other woman could give him that she couldn't.
Phil liked to think that she was secure in her own skin. So she was surprised when she met Abby because the other woman provoked a reaction in her that could only be described as discomfort.
It wasn't that Abby was especially cold during their brief introduction; she was polite, if a bit distant. But the look on the woman's face was striking: it was the look of a person who never had a childhood. It unsettled Phil because her own growing up had always been so happy.
Now, the discomfort had nothing to do with the way Abby looked--and everything to do with the way Carter looked at her.
Some things were harder to pretend away than others.
Phil believed Carter when he said they never slept together. He wasn't the type to cheat on her--except for the fact that he was cheating on her now in every way that mattered except the one way that supposedly counted. She was angry at him for putting her in this position and angry at herself for putting up with it. She, who loved to look forward, was spending most of her time looking back for the first time in her life. Looking back to find comfort in the past, looking back to see if he was still behind her, looking back to make sure she had not lost him.
It was worth it--wasn't it? He still smiled at her, laughed at her jokes, looked at her in a way no other man did. And she still loved him. In the end, that was all that mattered--wasn't it?
Sighing, Phil turned to the window, her eyes dark and troubled because she wasn't sure she knew the answer to that question.
* * *
There was nothing particularly exciting or enlightening about attending meetings as a seven year veteran of Alcoholics Anonymous. But it was familiar and reassuring in its monotony, which was why Abby found herself spending the morning sitting through her first meeting since the accident.
Not that she had a particular desire to drink. In fact, she could safely admit that she had no desire to drink. She wondered if there was some kind of reward for that. Ten meetings and get your eleventh meeting free. A Dean's List for recovering addicts who could refuse a drink with a straight face. A new car, or maybe an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Bahamas, or--better yet--a large check whose amount began with a one and ended with a handful of zeroes.
She didn't think so but she attended the meeting anyway.
She had time to kill before her half-shift and she didn't like the prospect of free time. Cleaning her apartment sounded like a good idea--at first. She quickly abandoned it when she realized that it actually wasn't. Then, she considered asking if Susan needed any help with dinner preparations--before she remembered that Susan was a demon in the kitchen and best left to herself when surrounded by sharp objects.
Death by cutlery on Thanksgiving Day, thought Abby. Been there, done that.
So, she grabbed a free cup of coffee, settled back in a metal chair, and zoned out at a meeting. Her mind drifted and she let herself be carried by the current of dreams and memories.
Dreams were dangerous. She never could tell whether they were unintelligible truths or intelligible lies. Nevertheless, truths and falsehoods alike, all came to her in the guise of those she trusted, like Carter. The expression on her face flickered as she recalled snatches of her dream from the previous night. She couldn't trust it; she didn't believe the words coming out of his mouth because he would never say those kinds of things, not to her and not like that.
Or maybe she didn't want to believe.
Memories were different. She could not deny the hold that the past had on her even as it was losing its relevance. Never in her life could she remember another time like this: when she wasn't getting divorced, getting an abortion, getting drunk, getting kicked out of med school, or getting over a messy relationship. Strangely, her life had developed a pleasant sort of monotony since she buried her mother. It was bewildering: she didn't know where she was going but she knew that she was going somewhere, at last and at her own steady pace.
She never told anybody but she was terrified. Life had thrown her so many curves that she always thought that living was tantamount to running in circles in which there was no destination and direction hardly mattered. Now, she was amazed and a little bit annoyed to find something of a non-circular path in front of her. Not quite the two roads diverged her undergraduate studies had prepared her to see, but something reasonably similar to it if she wanted to get metaphorical about things. As a practicing pessimist, she objected to this kind of rapid turnaround. Life was a lot of responsibility for someone who had always treated it as an afterthought. Too much responsibility if she really thought about it.
There was something to be said about the ties that anchored her to her mother. They were the ones that held her back, that excused her from life, and that she had grown complacent in wearing; but they were also the ones that gave her direction and purpose. She may have felt lighter without them but she also felt strangely adrift. The weight of responsibility was one weight she was used to bearing and the sudden lightness was unbearable.
She supposed that was why she looked to Carter. She needed someone to hold on to and he had always been there for her. Strange, that she was beginning to lose her way without him just as he was beginning to find his way without her. She took it for granted that he would always be there for her.
And, remembering the way he had looked at Phil under a wintry light, Abby was beginning to realize that she had taken a lot more than his friendship for granted.
* * *
Groggily, Susan awoke. As she yawned, she felt the remnants of a dream slipping through her fingers like sand. She caught at a few of the images: night, and a mob, and she was running. Puzzled, Susan thought harder. The images revealed themselves like a deck of upturned cards fluttering to the ground. A tunnel. Her only means of escape. She slid down it. When she emerged, she looked down at herself to find that she had become--
A peanut M&M?
Yellow, too. Did it have to be yellow? That definitely clashed with her blonde hair. Susan groaned as she stared at the ceiling, and one hand reached out to crumple the innocuous looking chocolate wrapper by her bed. No more snacking before bedtime. She shut her eyes and the rest of her dream revealed itself: a pagoda strung with Christmas lights, a microwave burrito, and Rocket Romano wearing nothing but a turquoise koala bear strapped to his chest.
Susan didn't want to know why she was dreaming about Romano and what it said about her subconscious. Bad things, she was willing to bet. Very bad things.
Startled, she sat up in bed. The buzzer to her apartment was buzzing and a voice was coming out of the intercom. She checked the time. Noon.
Wrapping her bathrobe around her, she yawned and stumbled to the intercom. "I'm awake," she yelled into it. "What do you want?"
The voice from the intercom paused. "Susan?"
Surprised, Susan stared at the intercom. "Luka?"
"I came by to see if you needed any help."
English garnished with a Croatian accent. No doubt--the voice was definitely Luka's. She punched the appropriate button. "Come on in."
Susan left the front door ajar and started a pot of coffee by the time Luka made his way to her apartment. Nevertheless, he knocked.
"Come in," she called over her shoulder.
"Hey," said Luka. "Did I wake you?"
"No." Susan squinted at his figure. Despite the fact that they had both worked the night shift and she looked like a rough approximation of hell, he looked as fresh as a daisy in a detergent commercial.
Bastard.
"I'm sorry," said Luka, repentantly. "I wanted to see if you needed help with dinner."
"Oh." With a flip, loathing became gratitude and she did her best to smile at him in spite of her sleep deprivation. "Don't you need to sleep?"
"Don't you?" he countered, and he put down a platter in his hands she didn't notice he was holding.
"I laugh in the face of sleep." Susan yawned. "Ha."
"I didn't know what to bring," admitted Luka, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the platter.
"Yourself," said Susan.
Blankly, Luka looked at her. "What?"
Susan opened a cabinet and took out the sugar and cream. "All you had to bring was yourself."
"I brought vegetables," said Luka.
"Vegetables are good," said Susan.
Unsure, Luka leaned back against a counter. He watched as Susan opened and closed cabinet and refrigerator doors, pulled out dishes and put back others, with the confidence and efficiency she showed in the trauma room--in spite of the fact that she was wearing a ratty bathrobe and her face was stamped with creases from the bed sheets.
He grinned.
"Do you want me to go?"
"No," said Susan, unexpectedly, as she placed the vegetables in the refrigerator. "Stay. I could use the help."
"Thank you for inviting me," said Luka, who had planned to spend the day doing his laundry and working on the half-finished portrait of Abby. Susan had found out about his plans when they clocked out of their night shift together and insisted that he eat dinner with her and Abby.
Susan loved to cook. It was one of the few things besides medicine she was really good at. (The others included Scrabble, pet-napping, and drinking cocktails festooned with drink umbrellas--preferably on a beach, preferably next to Antonio Banderas, preferably sans clothing.) Abby, on the other hand, loved the microwave. She could throw together a decent meal if she wanted to (and Carter could testify to that fact) but mostly she didn't want to.
Susan declared that she would cook and Abby would clean.
Apparently, Luka was going to help out.
"Thanks for helping with dinner," said Susan aloud, echoing her thoughts. "Besides, the more the merrier."
Luka smiled. Privately, Susan thought that he had a very nice smile. Rare, but nicer for it.
"What do you want me to do first?"
"Coffee," said Susan, promptly, and she held up the pot. "Sugar and cream?"
* * *
Nobody but Millicent Carter actually had a driver but everybody had a fondness for expensive cars so the grounds outside the family mansion looked not completely unlike a Mercedes Benz dealership on Thanksgiving Day.
The family was in various stages of arrival. All of them were late, though mostly fashionably. All of them were immaculately dressed. To Carter, all of them were variations on the same theme--and that theme was money.
A martini glass rested in one hand and he used the other to shake hands while his eyes observed the dynamics of his family at work. The adults were chatting in small clusters between the foyer and the wet bar while everyone under the drinking age--and most of his favorite relatives fell in this category--formed a rough semicircle around the television. Meanwhile, Gamma was overseeing dinner preparations in the kitchen. In spite of her advantaged age, or perhaps because of it, she refused to let anyone else run the hired help and nobody really objected.
Glumly, Carter leaned back against the wall. He didn't mind his family--but that's as far as the sentiment went. Frankly, he couldn't identify with most of them although they were nice enough. Maybe he just wanted to tell himself that he couldn't identify with them when he really could if he put in the effort. Even after all this time, he was still uncomfortable with the fact that he was a Carter--and most of his relatives were perfectly comfortable with the trappings of their legacy.
Neither his father nor his mother had arrived yet. His mother had called yesterday to say that she probably wouldn't be able to make it and Carter didn't blame her. Gamma was intimidating enough and he couldn't imagine what it was like to have to face the entirety of Clan Carter as the divorced wife of the most favorite son. Might as well run with scissors or play in traffic. Still, he expected and hoped to see his dad.
Phil hovered at his elbow. She looked stunning as usual. Today she was wearing cashmere with a string of pearls around her neck but she still managed to avoid looking like a card-carrying member of the AARP. He couldn't figure out what was bothering her, though. She barely spoke to him all morning. He had a feeling it was something he did but he was concentrating so hard on trying to function on a perennial lack of sleep that he didn't have the faintest idea what he was doing wrong. His mind was preoccupied with other matters--like the strange phone calls he had been receiving in the middle of the night. It was always the same phone call: the harsh jangle, silence when he picked it up, the barely audible breathing of a woman on the other end before she hung up. At least, he thought it was a woman. No way to be sure.
He was supposed to be making conversation with a great aunt, a Carter by marriage whose first name was Gertrude or Beatrice or something to that effect, but Phil was doing most of the heavy lifting for them both. He felt bad but his glass was empty and he needed another drink if he was going to make it to dinner. So he ducked away just in time to miss a murderous glare from his girlfriend.
He spied his favorite cousin among the crowd gathered in front of the television. She was sitting atop a stool at the wet bar. Most convenient. Although she was only sixteen, she held a glass filled with something that looked possibly alcoholic.
"Jacqueline," he said, ruffling her hair as he passed by.
Her smile turned into a mock scowl as she smoothed her hair back in place. "I hate it when you call me that."
"Your mother hates it when I call you 'Jake'," Carter pointed out.
Swinging her legs, Jake grinned broadly. "I know."
"It's a little early to be drinking," he kidded, noting her glass. "Delinquent."
In reply, she reached over the bar to poke him in the shoulder. "Pots and kettles."
Carter picked a bottle at random from the liquor cabinet. "Sticks and stones," he said, returning her poke. "You're a long way to twenty-one."
"Twenty-one?" Jake rolled her eyes. "I thought you graduated from med school, not the police academy."
Shrugging, Carter reached for the ice bucket and dropped a couple of cubes into a glass. "Can I get you anything?"
"Now we're talking," said Jake, gleeful, as she swung her legs around so that she was facing him. "I'll have another of the same, bartender. Coke--straight, no chaser."
"Too fast to live," said Carter, reaching for the glass she slid to him, "Too young to die."
"Can't be helped," said Jake, airily.
Carter poured her soda and poured himself a scotch. He walked out from behind the bar to join her on a stool. "I thought your parents were going to skip dinner in favor of Maui."
"Me too," said Jake, with a delicate shrug of her shoulders. "Not that I'm complaining. I'd rather be here than"--she made a face--"Maui."
"Huh," mused Carter. As always, his favorite cousin was a bit out of place in her family, who used holidays as an excuse to globetrot when Jake preferred to stay at home. Maybe that's why he liked her so much. "Misfit."
"Pariah," Jake shot back.
"You think you're so smart, don't you?" he teased her.
"I don't think, I know," said Jake, matter-of-factly, but the smile took the conceit out of her words. "You've got a new flavor of the month," she changed the subject, with a jerk of her chin.
Absently, Carter looked up, his eyes immediately finding Phil across the crowded room. She was talking to one of his cousin's wives. Her bright head of hair made her stick out in every crowd--in a good way. "More old than new if you really want to know about it."
"She's pretty," observed Jake, leaning back with her elbows on the bar. "You have a thing for blondes."
"I do not have a thing for blondes," Carter rolled his eyes, tugging on a curl of his cousin's hair as he did so, which was a very pretty shade of brown. "I like your hair plenty."
"Is it true?" said Jake, ignoring the compliment.
"Is what true?" said Carter, watching Phil across the room as she laughed.
"Blondes have more fun."
Carter turned his attention back to his cousin, who was glancing at him with wide eyes over the rim of her glass.
"Only when they're with me," he winked, and he took a sip of his drink.
* * *
Dinner was scheduled to start in a couple of hours when Carter slipped away from his cousin and wandered through the less densely populated halls of the mansion. A headache had started some time between his second and third drink; it was as if a giant needle had decided that the fastest path between two ears was a straight line through his head.
He slipped into the library. The door shut behind him and he paused for a moment with his forehead pressed against it. Jake--with her youth, her energy, her boundless optimism--had exhausted him. Yet, he couldn't shake the niggling feeling that it wasn't so much exhaustion he was feeling as an unhappiness that shook him to the very marrow of his bones. When he looked at Jake, he was reminded of someone he had lost: himself.
When did it happen? All at once, it seemed, in the crunch of metal and the shattering of glass and the rip of tires through the rain. Suddenly, he wasn't happy with anything--not his job, not his girlfriend, not his life. He began to feel guilty for everything in his life that made him happy when he was a witness to those around him who had nothing. He couldn't help but feel that this was partly his fault. Bobby, Lucy, the man who hit him in the rain; Carter couldn't shake off the feeling that there was something he could have done--should have done--to save his parents, a mother, a pregnant wife, from that kind of grief, a black and rolling wave that swept everything away and left nothing in its wake.
Maybe it didn't happen all at once. Maybe it began a long time ago and he had spent the duration of his young life trying to move on: he became a doctor, beat his addiction…learned to let go of Abby. He had to move; forward, always forward, as far as he could from a past that held nothing for him.
"Hello, John."
Startled, Carter whirled around. "Dad?" He was surprised to see that his father had arrived but managed to escape his radar. "What are you doing here?"
Rising, his father stepped out of the shadowy alcove of an armchair to stand before the window. Carter could make out the silhouette of a glass--scotch?--in his father's hand.
"I could ask the same about you," he said, humorlessly, although he smiled at his son.
Cautiously, Carter made his way over to the window. By this time he was surprisingly mobile on his crutches so he made his way without much difficulty to stand across from his father. With their thin faces, patrician features, and erect bearings, a stranger who glanced into the room would have known them for father and son. A passing glance would have mistaken them for two of the same person.
"Happy Thanksgiving," said Carter, and he shook his father's hand.
Jack Carter nodded. "Where's your mother?"
"She's not coming."
"Pity."
Mildly, Carter raised an eyebrow. "That's not very nice."
"Neither is your mother." Jack took a sip of his scotch. "How are you?"
Carter glanced outside. It had begun to snow when he wasn't looking and a fine dusting covered the dead grass. "I'm fine. You?"
His father ignored the question. "You look different."
"Different?" Self-conscious, Carter shifted in place. "How?"
"Older." Thoughtfully, Jack studied his son's face. "You look like you've aged six years since I saw you last."
"It's been a long time," Carter pointed out.
"It hasn't been six years." Jack scrutinized his son who, in the gray light, looked even paler than he already was. "Having trouble sleeping?"
Balancing himself on his crutches, Carter ran a hand through his short hair and shrugged. "Is it that obvious?"
"If it wasn't, I could hardly call myself your father."
Carter nodded.
Then, as an afterthought--"How's your mother?"
"Mom?" Absently, Carter fingered the pack of cigarettes in his pocket and felt the sudden craving for a smoke. "She's good."
This time, his father nodded and gestured for them to sit down. "How'd you break your leg?"
"Car accident," said Carter, shortly.
"Are you still driving that Jeep?"
Briefly, Carter thought about all the damage done to the front and driver's side of the Jeep. "Not anymore."
"I'm glad to see you're okay." Jack drummed his fingers against the side of his glass and stared outside the window. Carter followed his gaze. A flurry of snow cast a white cloud over everything; it was like trying to look through a glass fogged up by the warm breath of a child. "How is Phyllis?"
"Phil's great," said Carter, and he felt himself grow slightly annoyed at the endless stream of questions. Pointedly, he asked again, "How are you, Dad?"
Jack paused long enough to finish off the rest of his drink. The ice tinkled against the sides of the glass. That, the ticking of a grandfather clock, and the faraway drone of voices were the only sounds in a room otherwise governed by silence.
"We need to talk, John."
The window rattled.
"About?"
Jack didn't waste any words as he poured himself another drink. "I'm resigning from my position as Treasurer of the Foundation."
"Are you asking me to take your position?" said Carter, neutrally. "I already have a day job."
"No." Jack put down the drink. "Your grandmother is resigning from her position as President. I'm asking you to take hers."
Stunned, Carter blinked. His vision seemed cloudy, his father's face as pale as the frost that had begun to cling to the windowpanes. "Why?"
Jack put the glass down and gave his son a severe look. "Your grandmother is old, John. She no longer feels she has the energy to run the Foundation."
"No." Angry, Carter sat forward, his head full of questions. "Why are you resigning? Why aren't you taking her place? Why am I being asked to run the Foundation? You know I love my work at County."
Outside, the wind picked up and beat against the window. The voices in the other room grew louder and the clock in the room chimed. However, Carter didn't hear a thing. The snow fell and time passed but there was nothing for him except his father and a half-finished glass of scotch. Later, he would think about that glass and wonder if his father ever finished it.
His father leaned forward in his chair. He looked faded and tired.
"John," he said, "I have cancer."
* * *
Luka squinted at the specimen in his hands. He poked at the squashy center with a tentative finger. It had the consistency of an internal organ in spite of its rich color. Mistrustful, he looked up at Susan. "What's this?"
"Pumpkin pie," said Susan, with authority, and she took it out of his hands and put it back atop the kitchen counter. His fingertip had left a slight dimple on the surface but it wasn't anything a little whipped cream couldn't fix. Meanwhile, the look on Luka's face was priceless. It was the look of a person vaguely boggled by the existence of pumpkin pie.
"Huh," said Luka, and he turned his attention to more familiar territory.
"That's a potato," said Susan, helpfully.
"Very funny," said Luka, cutting his eyes sideways at her as he began to wash and peel the potato in question.
"My mother always said I was the laughingstock of the family," said Susan, her tone solemn.
"Really?"
"Nah," shrugged Susan. "She said I was a lot of things but 'funny' wasn't one of them."
She watched the corners of Luka's mouth quirk.
"Funny looking," continued Susan, breezily, "On the other hand, is an entirely different matter."
Before Luka could answer, the buzzer to her apartment sounded. Susan rinsed her hands in the sink and trotted over to the intercom.
"Little pig," said a tinny voice from the outside.
"Very funny," said Susan, dryly, and she made a face as she pressed the appropriate button.
"Who's that?" called Luka from the kitchen.
"The big bad wolf," said Susan. She walked back to the kitchen and set to work at peeling the last potato with surprising efficiency. She had just finished washing the newly bald potato and setting a pot of water to boil when there was a knock at the door.
"I'll get it," volunteered Luka. He jogged over to the door and undid the locks. When he opened the door, he grinned. "Happy Thanksgiving."
Surprised, Abby looked up from the brown bag she was holding gingerly between her hands. "What are you doing here?"
"Hey." Susan brushed by Luka and held the door open wider. "Come in."
"Thanks." Abby brushed a few flakes of snow off her coat and stepped inside. The two of them scurried into the kitchen.
"I hope you don't mind," said Susan, dropping her voice. "He didn't have any plans."
"Mind?" Abby glanced backwards and watched as Luka hung up her coat, which she had carelessly slung over the back of a couch. "Not at all."
"You brought pie," said Susan, returning her voice to normal. "I've got pumpkin."
"Well, this one's apple," Abby replied. "Homemade."
"You bake?" said Luka, coming up behind them, his tone incredulous. "I didn't know you baked."
Grinning, Abby took out a carton of ice cream from the same brown bag that held the pie. "You never asked."
Luka made a sort of harrumphing sound. "How was your shift?"
"Sucked," said Abby, succinctly. It was the usual Thanksgiving Day fare--people choking on turkey bones, a handful of patients with indigestion, and one father nearly took off his thumb with an electric carver. But there was one patient who didn't seem to fit: a woman with a miscarriage. Abby shook her head, remembering the woman whose face was extraordinary in its very ordinariness. Most of it was hidden by a waterfall of blonde hair except a pair of startling eyes, the very shade of last summer's forget-me-nots or the ocean aged in a forgotten photograph. Abby remembered them not because of their color but because of the terrible expression they seemed to cast: they were windows to an empty room.
Abby pushed the memory to the back of her head. "Potluck was great, though."
Sternly, Susan wagged a wooden spoon at her. "I hope you didn't spoil your appetite."
"The thought never crossed my mind," Abby promised, standing alongside Luka as they watched Susan open the oven door to check on the turkey. "When's dinner?"
"I'd say give it another couple of hours," said Susan, reaching in with a mitten-covered hand to baste the turkey. "Give or take."
Abby peered into the oven. "That doesn't look like Shake and Bake to me."
"No way," said Susan. "The stuffing's homemade."
"Really?" said Luka, joining them for a preview. "Wow."
"I thought you were going to use that box of Shake and Bake," protested Abby. "That's why I dropped it off last week."
"That thing?" Susan burst into laughter. "Abby, that box expired with eighties hair metal and A-ha."
"Who's A-ha?" wondered Luka.
"Take On Me," said Abby, and then she proceeded to hum a couple of bars. "No?"
Luka shook his head.
"I guess you just can't find Norwegian pop in Croatia," said Susan, as she got up and closed the oven door.
"Exactly," grinned Luka, with a thumbs up.
Abby was struck by a bout of déjà vu and had to smile.
The phone rang. Susan picked it up. "Hello?"
"Hey," said Luka, with a poke, and Abby looked up.
"Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Mom," said Susan, and she grabbed the cordless phone to walk out of the kitchen.
"What?" said Abby.
Susan cradled the phone to her ear and motioned at Luka. "Yeah," she said to her mom, "I'm cooking."
"Are you working tonight?" asked Luka, as he followed Susan's pantomime and began to load the potatoes into a boiling pot of water.
"Nope," said Abby. "Paid my dues with my half-shift."
Susan's voice floated into the kitchen. "I invited some friends."
"Me neither," said Luka. "Do you mind sitting for me tonight?"
"No, I'm not cooking for a boyfriend," said Susan.
Abby opened her mouth to answer but was cut off by a loud and undignified squawk.
"Mom," howled Susan. "There's nothing wrong with being single!"
"Sure," said Abby, and she took it upon herself to start setting the table. Grabbing a fistful of forks and knives, she walked towards the kitchen table. "How far are you?"
"Halfway," Luka called from the kitchen. "It should be done by Christmas."
"Can I see it?" asked Abby, even though she knew what his answer would be.
"Not until it's done," they said in unison, and Luka threw a balled-up napkin in her direction. She ducked.
"It's just a painting," teased Abby. "I don't see the big deal."
Luka was ready to retort when Susan walked back into the kitchen. Abby saw the look on Susan's face. "That bad, huh?"
"Argh," said Susan, looking harried, and she jumped as a cell phone went off.
"Mine," Abby said apologetically, and she walked over to her bag. "Hello?"
"Having fun?" said the voice on the other end of the line.
"Actually," said Abby, and she couldn't help herself when she smiled, "I am."
* * *
The light was beginning to fade by the time Carter hung up with Abby and escaped through the back door of the garage. He threw the door open and found himself ankle-deep in snow. The wind slammed the door shut behind him. He groped his way through the rows and rows of cars huddled in the cold. His crutches banged carelessly against the tires dampened by fallen snow as he threaded his way through the snow-covered mounds. There was a faint nausea in his stomach. He didn't feel much like dinner. He felt like running, running away, as far as his one good leg could take him.
"Where are you going?"
The voice rang out clear in the cold and empty air. Carter stiffened.
"Away," he said, and he turned around slowly. Phil stood a few cars away from where he stood, wearing nothing but a cardigan and violently shivering. He softened. "Go back inside," he said. "You're freezing."
"So are you," she said shortly, and she walked towards him. The snow muffled the sound of her heels and Carter realized that was why he had not heard her approaching. She stopped an arm's length in front of him. Unlike with Abby, he did not have to bend his neck to look at her directly in the eye. Phil was tall and had always been so.
"Where do you think you're going?" she said. "Dinner's about to start."
Painfully, Carter shifted the weight of his body so that it was resting on his one good leg and he leaned his crutches against one of the cars. He shrugged out of his overcoat and dropped it awkwardly around Phil's thin shoulders. "I'm not hungry."
"I don't think that matters," said Phil. She ignored the gesture. Even in the rapidly diminishing light, he could still see the pupils of her eyes piercing his, as if she could see all the way to the back of his head. "You can't just leave."
"It's just dinner."
"It's your family."
They glared at each other.
"Family doesn't even begin to describe what we are," said Carter, shortly. He grabbed his crutches and he turned to leave.
Phil caught at a crutch. "Because you keep running out on it," she said coldly, and she forced him to face her. "What are you running away from?"
"Go back inside," said Carter, shaking her off. "You're freezing."
"John," said Phil, and when she spoke it was not without a little bit of despair, "You can't run out on your family, not on Thanksgiving."
"Family?" Carter laughed, his breath exploding into clouds in the frigid air. "You call this a family? Phil, did you even talk to any of them?"
"I did," she said. "Did you?"
"None of them actually want to be there," snapped Carter, as snatches of his conversation with his father came back to him in pieces. I have cancer. Those terrible words echoed in his head like a pebble dropped into an empty well and he closed his eyes, remembering his father's last words before he went to rejoin the family, leaving Carter alone in the cold room…
If you don't take the position, you don't want to be around when the rest of the family fights over it. It's a responsibility, John--it's your responsibility. But it's an honor. Not a burden.
Carter thought of families like Jake's. No doubt her father would agree with his and no wonder that they skipped Maui in order to make a showing at Thanksgiving. Aloud, Carter said, with a mixture of viciousness and disgust, "They're there because none of them want to get cut out of Gamma's will."
Shocked, Phil recoiled. "How can you say that?"
"Because it's true," said Carter, his voice like ice water. "Nothing but blood and money keep this family together. It's an act," he spat, thinking of men like Jake's father. "That's all it is. I don't want any part of it."
"It's an act as long as people like you leave it," Phil retorted, through chattering teeth.
"I'm hardly the first." Carter gripped his crutches tightly. I have cancer. His voice broke. "I won't be the last."
Phil watched as he turned around and continued to limp forward. But he was too slow on his crutches to escape her and so she caught up with him at the gates that led outside.
"John," she called, breathless from the cold that shook her to the bone. "Wait--what are you talking about?"
Carter paused at the gates and turned around to look at Phil. Her hair had fallen from its neat chignon and swirled around a face as pale as the snow. She looked younger, more vulnerable, more afraid; and his heart ached because anything he did to comfort her would not help but hurt her.
A cab pulled up outside the gates. Swiftly, Carter opened the gates and slipped outside. He closed them behind him before Phil could follow. She tugged on the handle and heard the rattling of the iron bars but, locked, the gates did not open. Dumbfounded, she stood shivering under the weight of his coat still around her shoulders.
"You're really going to leave?" she said quietly.
"I really am," said Carter, his voice equally as quiet.
"You can't." Her hands reached out to grip the icy bars of the gate, as if by gripping them she could keep him here with her--in the cold, in the ever deepening darkness. "Millicent will never forgive you for this."
"She will," he replied, his eyes clouding over. "She has to."
Phil felt her chest tighten with annoyance--annoyance that was sharpening itself into a fine crystalline point that would bleed her if she didn't use it to bleed him first.
"I don't understand you," she said.
"It's not your fault," he said.
Phil seethed. Everything she had worked so hard to conceal over the past month began to escape from its tightly sealed place. She heard the rage spill into her voice as she watched him turn around to walk away. She was tired of pretending.
"If you walk out on me now," Phil shouted into the wind, "Don't even think about coming back."
Carter turned around so that he was facing her. His hands reached out and between the bars to brush at the snowflakes that caught at the edges of her hair. He saw a woman who clung to the bars of a locked gate, who stood shivering in the wind and in the snow, who followed him out into the cold, who refused to let him go. He saw the gate that separated them both and it saddened him. In some ways, they would always be separated by the very things that drew him to her in the first place--her happy life, her uncomplicated beauty, her steadfast loyalty to family and all its blue-blooded trappings.
"I love you," he said. "Now go back inside. You're freezing."
Too stunned to reply, Phil stood and watched as the cab disappeared into the thickening whiteness, taking Carter with it. Eventually, her hands fell from the gate. The snow continued to gather underfoot.
* * *
CREDITS: Opening lines taken from the poem "Leap Before You Look" by W. H. Auden. "Don't you wish I would" is the requisite line from BtVS. Susan's dream is brought to you by my subconscious. I actually had this dream a couple of years ago when I first started watching ER. I wonder what Freud would have to say about it? ^_~ If this was an actual episode instead of fanfic, the scene with the turkey would be shot from inside the oven to look out at Abby, Susan, and Luka--a shoutout to SaL. "Having fun?" is the line that opens the phone conversation between Carter and Abby in TLYS. Last but not least, Carter and Abby may belong to TPTB but Jake Carter owes her creation to me and her namesake to our very own jakeschick--hand over Patrick Fugit nice and slow, and nobody gets hurt. ^_^