SPOILERS: up to 10.18 – mostly spoiled speculation
DISCLAIMER: well, they're not mine, yet. I'm currently stuck in adoption bureaucracy. But one day...
AUTHOR'S NOTE: yeah, so I'm writing (or trying to) two fics at the same time, it's very confusing, a bit too much for my poor little brain to handle, but I'm doing my best!
SUMMARY: Abby tries to move on...
Abby looked on as they looked at one another, gazed, in fact, into each other's eyes. They had almost everyone convinced. Except, just occasionally...it was probably nothing. She did her best to dismiss her doubts. But sometimes she thought she saw a vague echo of fleeting uncertainty cross his face.
But then Kem would reach up to him, and he would smile down at her, and the expression Abby had thought she'd seen would be gone, so that she did her best to disregard it as a figment of her imagination.
It was not that he looked unhappy; he looked quite the opposite in fact. Ecstatic, lit up by a childish anticipation. But he reminded her of Eric, as he had been last year, and she remembered trying to explain to Carter that there was such a thing as being 'too happy', and he had laughed, doing his best to assuage her doubts. And she knew now as she'd known then that it couldn't last, this happiness.
She saw Carter's impatience for the baby's arrival which was passed off by Kem as appropriate, or perhaps it went unnoticed. She remembered him coming to check the delivery suites weeks early, and remembered how she had thought at the time that he was perhaps relying too much on the birth of his child, but had discarded this thought with the others.
Obviously, he was very much in love with Kem. Why else would he bring back a woman whom he barely knew from Africa to bring up his child? Because he's Carter, the insistent voices at the back of her mind had answered her, a man of his honour, because she's pregnant, and he's a gentleman.
Africa had changed him, she thought. Yes, there were the outward signs; he'd got a beard now, and lost some weight. But there was more to it than that.
Something else, something elusive, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. She caught herself thinking that perhaps the beard signified some craving for a maturity he didn't feel he had, that it was something for him to hide behind, and laughed at the overly analytical wanderings of her mind.
She remembered that fateful evening last year when Carter had asked her whether she thought that people ever really changed, and wondered whether her answer would be the same now as it had been then.
This was what she had wanted, wasn't it? For him to be with a beautiful, emotionally stable woman, who did charity work, someone he deserved, someone he could start a family with, who Gamma might eventually have approved of. Someone without a crazy family, alcohol problems, something that he had called an inferiority complex, but that wasn't actually a complex, it was genuine inferiority.
Maybe she should go with Susan's theory, that he'd brought Kem back partly because of the baby, but partly just to make her jealous. Or perhaps he was just trying to move on, suddenly aware of his departing youth. He was ready to settle down, ready for a relationship which 'stuck'. She knew that.
Whatever it was, she knew that the carter she had dated for over a year was not a Carter who would have settled for the quick fix he'd continually warned her against. Was that what Kem was?
But she looked over again and saw them absorbed in one another, smiling, happy. And who was she to question this happiness, to judge it? She wasn't exactly the most impartial of judges. But that was normal. She told herself now what she had once told Carter, that she had dated the guy for a year; there was bound to be some history. That was all, wasn't it? But she didn't remember it hurting this much.
He caught her eye, and looked away hurriedly as she managed a wan smile. Susan was right; she needed to move on. She looked at her watch. Her date was due to arrive in two hours.
*****
To be continued...
Please review! Constructive criticism much appreciated.
DISCLAIMER: well, they're not mine, yet. I'm currently stuck in adoption bureaucracy. But one day...
AUTHOR'S NOTE: yeah, so I'm writing (or trying to) two fics at the same time, it's very confusing, a bit too much for my poor little brain to handle, but I'm doing my best!
SUMMARY: Abby tries to move on...
Abby looked on as they looked at one another, gazed, in fact, into each other's eyes. They had almost everyone convinced. Except, just occasionally...it was probably nothing. She did her best to dismiss her doubts. But sometimes she thought she saw a vague echo of fleeting uncertainty cross his face.
But then Kem would reach up to him, and he would smile down at her, and the expression Abby had thought she'd seen would be gone, so that she did her best to disregard it as a figment of her imagination.
It was not that he looked unhappy; he looked quite the opposite in fact. Ecstatic, lit up by a childish anticipation. But he reminded her of Eric, as he had been last year, and she remembered trying to explain to Carter that there was such a thing as being 'too happy', and he had laughed, doing his best to assuage her doubts. And she knew now as she'd known then that it couldn't last, this happiness.
She saw Carter's impatience for the baby's arrival which was passed off by Kem as appropriate, or perhaps it went unnoticed. She remembered him coming to check the delivery suites weeks early, and remembered how she had thought at the time that he was perhaps relying too much on the birth of his child, but had discarded this thought with the others.
Obviously, he was very much in love with Kem. Why else would he bring back a woman whom he barely knew from Africa to bring up his child? Because he's Carter, the insistent voices at the back of her mind had answered her, a man of his honour, because she's pregnant, and he's a gentleman.
Africa had changed him, she thought. Yes, there were the outward signs; he'd got a beard now, and lost some weight. But there was more to it than that.
Something else, something elusive, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. She caught herself thinking that perhaps the beard signified some craving for a maturity he didn't feel he had, that it was something for him to hide behind, and laughed at the overly analytical wanderings of her mind.
She remembered that fateful evening last year when Carter had asked her whether she thought that people ever really changed, and wondered whether her answer would be the same now as it had been then.
This was what she had wanted, wasn't it? For him to be with a beautiful, emotionally stable woman, who did charity work, someone he deserved, someone he could start a family with, who Gamma might eventually have approved of. Someone without a crazy family, alcohol problems, something that he had called an inferiority complex, but that wasn't actually a complex, it was genuine inferiority.
Maybe she should go with Susan's theory, that he'd brought Kem back partly because of the baby, but partly just to make her jealous. Or perhaps he was just trying to move on, suddenly aware of his departing youth. He was ready to settle down, ready for a relationship which 'stuck'. She knew that.
Whatever it was, she knew that the carter she had dated for over a year was not a Carter who would have settled for the quick fix he'd continually warned her against. Was that what Kem was?
But she looked over again and saw them absorbed in one another, smiling, happy. And who was she to question this happiness, to judge it? She wasn't exactly the most impartial of judges. But that was normal. She told herself now what she had once told Carter, that she had dated the guy for a year; there was bound to be some history. That was all, wasn't it? But she didn't remember it hurting this much.
He caught her eye, and looked away hurriedly as she managed a wan smile. Susan was right; she needed to move on. She looked at her watch. Her date was due to arrive in two hours.
*****
To be continued...
Please review! Constructive criticism much appreciated.