So here we go again
Tying up loose ends
And flitting between Susan/Eric and Carter/Abby/Ollie
First I have to say thanks to the following:
DragonflyFaith, carbytothecore, starbright, Carby-Always, maura, striker20, Heaven is Overrated, Mrs. Rhett Butler, Carby6, mandi, Dracula5555, loocy and hyperpiper91.
It was really great of you to review even though I didn't ask this time
And hey!
I'm onto about 200 reviews!
Aren't you proud of me??
Yeah, so anyway
There is an art to being lonely
It just happens to go like this –
Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
Beyond All Of Everything. Chapter Nineteen. The Art Of Being Lonely
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o SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 18: Abby and Ollie stay the night at Carter's house.
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"I want…" Abby mumbles sleepily, not really listening to anything she's saying. "I want to stay here forever."
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Ollie sits up in the oversized bed and stared around him in a curious, apprehensive way. Where exactly is he? He remembers his birthday, the presents and candles. Then…then that fight. And then chaos. The door – the door got smashed and he was scared and Mom was scared because they had to run away. And then he fell asleep. And woke up here. He scans the room again.
"Hey Ollie!" a familiar voice whispers and he turns to see Carter looking very tired. He sits in a chair and, beside the chair, Abby is asleep in another bed. "Sleep okay?" He asks and Ollie nods.
"Is my Mom…?"
"She's alright. Just a bit tired," Carter assures him. "Do you want to get some breakfast?" Ollie nods again and clambers out of the large bed, slightly tangled in the duvet.
"Thanks John," he squeaks as Carter takes his hand and leads him down to the kitchens.
Susan Lewis scrabbles through various drawers in her flat, cursing darkly to herself.
"Lost something?" Eric offers, chirpily. Susan looks up, flustered.
"Have you seen my necklace anywhere?"
Eric pauses before replying: "The one that broke?" And Susan rolls her eyes, cursing some more, remembering.
"What's the problem, anyway?" Eric asks, eventually as she rushes through the flat. "It's just the ER."
"No…" Susan explains vaguely. "Jing-Mei is insisting on setting me up with some guy afterwards so I won't be back until late."
"Oh," Eric says, dully. "Oh – okay then."
"Thanks John," Ollie chirps again, for the sixth time, reaching for his glass of orange juice.
"It's no problem," Carter returns for the sixth time. "Any time."
Ollie digs his spoon into his cereal and sits quietly. John's house was really, really big – it made him feel even smaller than he already was. And John had lots of different cereals to choose from.
"Your Mom should probably be left to sleep a while; you both had a pretty long day yesterday," Carter tells him. "So would you like to play something? There's a pretty big garden outside…"
"I left my baseball stuff at home…we had to…cos my Dad…" Ollie begins, before stopping, wondering if he could talk about home stuff with John. He remembers his bat cracking down the door and how Mom yelled. Could he tell John about home stuff? Wasn't John a friend before but then he wasn't and now they're at his house…it was confusing…
"We can play soccer, instead," Carter offers, seeing the small boy's face wrinkle in the effort to understand. Fair enough, too. Carter barely grasped the hideously complex situation that they were in; the whole tumult of loyalty, lies and love took its toll.
Abby wakes in a room she faintly remembers. Her head aches badly and she takes a while to sit up. When she does, she squints around the empty room, wondering where everyone has gone. Just then a woman scuttles through the room, out from one of the doors that break up the grand, wood panelled walls. The woman wipes her hands on her apron and smiles at Abby.
"Master John thought you might like a bath when you woke up," she informs her, meekly. "Everything is in there." She points through the door where she came through and where steam is steadily rising from.
"…Thanks," Abby smiles eventually, still surprised at the Carters' wealth. The woman nods and disappears out through another door. Abby gets up and peers through the door into an ornate bathroom – everything really is in there and Abby can't help but raise her eyebrows at the incredible contrast this was to how she might have woken – beaten and bloody on her living room floor.
John Carter really went all out for his guests.
Delighted laughter warms the Carter family estate and fills it with something that it had been void of for a very, very long time. The grounds hadn't been played on before, only admired. The people hadn't ever been chatted to, just conversed with. It had only ever been a house – never a home.
"No! How did I let that one through?" Carter kneels in the grass in front of the goal and yells into the sky with a great display of melodrama that he never knew he had in him. "You're too fast for me, Ollie!"
Ollie laughs and runs around the lawn in noisy triumph – he had never made this much noise in his life, he never knew he was capable of it. Carter grins and plucks the ball from the back of the net, rolling it back to the little boy.
"Go on, have another shot – I'll get you this time," Carter challenges him.
"No, you won't!" Ollie teases. "You'll never get me" He runs up and takes a shot. Carter dives theatrically and falls to his knees once more as the ball tumbles, unopposed, into the goal. Ollie hoots with laughter as Carter picks him up and flings him over his shoulder.
"See, I've got you now, haven't I?" Carter jokes, tickling him as he hangs over Carter's broad shoulder.
"It's Mom!" Ollie looks up to see his mother laughing and waving from where she stands watching them through the patio doors. Carter puts the boy back onto the ground and strolls back up the house while the six year old dashes to Abby who greets him with open arms.
"Hi honey, did you have fun playing with John?" Abby smiles and ruffles his hair.
"Yeah!" Ollie enthuses before adding uncertainly: "He's a friend, right?"
"Yes, he definitely is," Abby confirms and gingerly lifts her son onto her hip before turning to Carter. "Thank you John; you really have been the best." She smoothes back Ollie's hair and kisses his forehead. "Have you got your stuff?" she asks him. "We gotta go now."
"Already?" Carter blurts out. Abby shrugs.
"I'm sorry – it's almost 4 o'clock. You probably have lots of other things to do," she reasons.
"There's nothing I want to do without you," he replies.
"Yeah, Mom – can't we stay?" Ollie begs.
"Ollie, sorry, we need to go before Daddy gets home," she says, firmly. Both he and Carter wear the same dejected faces and stare at her with the same puppy dog eyes.
"Please?"
"I'm sorry," Abby repeats. "But thank you very much, John."
"Thank you John," Ollie agrees.
"That's okay," but his voice falls heavily. "You could stay here with me forever." Abby looks pained.
"You know I can't."
"But you said you wanted to," Carter argues.
"Carter, I really don't think that I'm up for another fight right now," Abby answers sharply.
"And it's what I want, more than anything else." He breezes past her last comment.
"Please don't make this harder than it is," she bites her bottom lip and doesn't look at him, though he stares earnestly at her.
"You could both stay here with me," Carter urges and Ollie looks hopefully at his Mom without saying anything. "I promise you, you'd both be safe. Nothing bad would happen…"
"Don't promise things that are beyond you," Abby cuts him off. He falls silent and just looks at her. Abby sighs and leans up to kiss him on the cheek before going out through the vast front door. "I'll see you tomorrow, John."
There is nothing in Dr. Lewis' flat that can occupy Eric, who stalks the apartment, restless and indecisive. It is nothing without her in it, throwing random comments around and having heated arguments with inanimate objects. He shudders to think that right now she could be sitting with someone who might go on to forever watch her burst angrily through the front door every afternoon and drip her sarcastic remarks into every conversation. Eric bets that they'd never appreciate those things as much as he does. He gets up – he's got to keep busy; it makes him too angry to just sit and think about it. It's infuriating and yet shocking to find himself feeling all of this over his sister's friend. This must somehow be very wrong.
Eric stamps around the condo and mutters grumpily at every object in his way – now he sees why Susan does it – it is, in a way, quite fun. It is 5 o'clock in the afternoon and she won't be home for ages. He sinks onto the sofa and sits, fuming.
John Carter holds his head in his hands as the late afternoon light slinks across the cold, polished floors. He sighs for the millionth time, groans for the millionth time and still he sits on the third step of the winding mahogany staircase, staring blankly at that vast front door like he has done for the past hour. This situation – it was so complicated that it actually hurt. Or maybe he just hurt anyway.
He sighs, groans and punches the banister – he hates this house now, for all of its vacant solitude and lifeless hostility. He is back to feeling what he always felt towards it: like it wasn't really his. How is the envied bank balance of Dr. Carter going to help him with this? This was something his parent's never taught him and led him to always believe that money could, to some extent, solve all problems. This is was a harsh lesson his parent's failed to teach him; but maybe they never learnt it themselves.
No matter how many dollars he could throw at this dilemma, nothing would change. Abby would still stand quietly by her husband's side and pose as the happy family whilst behind closed doors she would take countless, vicious beatings just to let her six year old son reach seven. And all the while she would smile happily and beg Carter to let this carry on.
The Carter mansion was big enough for several families yet it never really felt like a family home until today. Now, as he finally gets up from where he sat on the third step on the staircase, it was back to normal once more – distant and unfriendly. Only now he knew what it was to have the corridors come alive with people – real people – walking through them and hearing a whirl of familiar voices buzz through the once-adverse walls. You never miss what you never had but now the whole place seems to ache and groan on its foundations, finally realising its emptiness and Carter can't help but feel the same.
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