A/N: Extended version of a drabble (of the same name) that I wrote a while ago. So if you read the drabble, this isn't worth the read as it's similar.
Disclaimer – Don't own, wish I did.
Spoilers – Set just after season 10. I'm not spoiled for season 11, nor have I seen any of it so any similarites are due to.. my psychic abilities and are totally unintentional.
Fathers and Children
> > > > > > >
There were days. And then there were days like this one, when seconds slowly seeped into minutes, which dragged endlessly onwards into hours.
She leaned her head against the black padded chair and cleared her throat. Sometimes it was a waiting game; a doctor – patient standoff, and after asking all the basic questions and receiving no response it was all she could do, just sit and hope that he was fast becoming as frustrated and bored as she was.
The old man flicked a piece of lint off his threadbare jacket and stared defiantly back.
Apparently she was good at this. She'd found her calling, they'd told her. Though if she were honest, she sometimes wondered if they were serious. She didn't believe people would tell her things, or that she'd have the capacity to listen. And sometimes she was afraid, very afraid of looking too deeply and seeing herself in the broken people that came to her.
"Tell me what you think of me," he mumbled all of a sudden.
She frowned, so he sat up straighter and repeated his statement, his voice louder as his confidence grew.
"I said, tell me what you think of me," he demanded.
For a moment she stumbled, caught off guard by his request. Opening her mouth to protest, she caught herself just in time and looked him in the eye.
"This is your session. Tell me what you think of yourself," she replied evenly.
He slumped back into his chair.
So what did she think of him? She barely knew him. He was an alcoholic, of that she was certain. The sweet smell of liquor pierced the rancid odour of his seldom-washed clothes. His hands were worn, his fingernails dirty. He was one of the most abrasive people she'd ever seen, but there was something about him. Maybe it was the way knotted his old walking stick between tired fingers, or the fact that his stubbornness matched her own - she couldn't tell, but it made her want to listen to him, to what he had to say.
"Would you think of me as someone with kids?" he wondered.
"You have kids?" she questioned.
"Two," he replied. With gusto.
"That's … nice," she countered, "What do they do?"
He looked to the ground, as she wondered what it was that she had said to upset him. He sighed.
"I left them," he murmured, "I left them behind years ago."
> > > > > > >
She could feel the tension in the air as soon as she pedalled up the driveway. She wheeled the bike by his red, battered truck and moved to the front door. Then thinking better of it she sat down on the step. The sounds of raised voices and slamming doors penetrated out into the garden, and she knew well enough the consequences of making herself known.
She never was any good at taking sides.
There was a time, when the truck was new and the garden kept and she was happy. She could barely remember it, but still it existed. It did, didn't it? Sometimes she couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what she had imagined to drown out their heated discussions and blazing rows.
It was cold on the step. But the shouting had stopped. It would be colder in the house, she decided.
The door behind her opened and a man exited with a bag. She stood up, curious, as he opened the trunk of the car and dumped it inside. It was then that she recognised the suitcase from under her bed.
"Daddy!" She ran up to him, and tugged his sleeve. "Where are you going?"
He gazed at her for moment, and she saw a look on his face she'd never seen before. A look of openness, tenderness, but ultimately a look so forlorn that she wrapped her little arms around his waist as far as they would go.
Then the look vanished as he pushed her away and headed back into the house with a growled "Not now."
He was leaving, she realised. And torn between the house and the car, she wondered if she lay between the front and back seats maybe he wouldn't see her until they were too far away to go back. She could go with him.
It would be wonderful – her, him and an endless stream of days. No fighting, no screaming, no need to hold her breath when things were quiet because life always seemed like an accident waiting to happen.
Her little face clouded over as she remembered her brother. She knew then that she couldn't go, couldn't leave him behind alone. She wanted to be happy, to leave the house right now and be like all those other children on the road. Those other children who wouldn't play with her, who refused to come within twenty feet of her house because they were afraid of her mother.
This was her chance. In fact, really, it wasn't. She'd already decided not to take it.
She sat back down on the step and watched as he dragged out another suitcase and closed the trunk. She waved at him, but he never looked back, as the car faded into the sunset amid clouds of dust from the dry roads. A red speck on the horizon.
It was night and cold before she moved to go indoors. Eric was long since home. He'll come back, she told herself. He always did come back.
Only this time, she wasn't so sure.
> > > > > > >
"Hey Carter," she calls softly, finding him wandering the corridor. "First day back?"
"Yeah." He looks away.
Undeterred she takes his arm. "You know if you ever need to talk, I'm there, right?"
"Sure." A smile flickers across his face. "I heard you're up in psych now," he adds.
She stares back horrified. "That's not what I meant – "
"Relax, just kidding," he grins back at her, his eyes glinting mischievously. And for a moment he has her convinced that he really is okay. Then, it's as though he realises that he's laughing and abruptly his face hardens and his eyes become hollow once more. He's not okay.
"How are you?" she asks.
"Fine. Really."
"How's Kem?"
"Kem," he repeats, "Now there's a question.. "
"Have you talked to her?" she wonders.
"What do you think?" his voice raises a tone.
She almost apologises and walks away, but he's not letting her. He catches her eye, awaiting an explanation or a revelation, neither of which she can give him. She sighs.
"I think," she says, "You should tell her how you feel."
He snorts and raises his eyes to heaven. "I don't think I even know how I feel."
He's trying to make her feel small, and she knows it, but she also knows he doesn't mean it, that he's not really angry at all, just broken, grief-stricken.. lost.
"Did you tell her that?" she counters. "Maybe she feels the same way."
"I.. don't know how to," he whispers, "She just sits there, for hours, staring out the window as if it will bring him back. I hear her crying and I don't know what to do. I try to go to her, I do, but I get as far as the door and then.. I can't.."
"You're afraid she'll push you away."
"I won't know what to say. How can I tell her it will be okay? Sometimes I think it will never be okay."
She takes his hand, gently, and squeezes it.
"The words will come, Carter, they always do. Sometimes it's just about you being there for each other, even if it means not talking yet. Just hold her, let her hold you. When it's time for talking you won't have to think about what to say."
She's never spoken to him like this before; pretending to be wise when she knows she's not. Trivial conversation is a safer bet, she prefers to run from serious emotions.
Yet he considers her words during a delicate pause, and lifts his eyes to hers. They are large and swollen, brimming with unshed tears, shining in the neon glow of the lights. He squeezes her hand in return.
"Thank you." His voice is low. And they stare for just a minute longer before he pulls his hand away. The moment is broken.
"Where did you learn to be so clever?" He pushes her playfully.
"Well, you know," she replies as he makes his way to an exam room, "They don't let me sit on those black padded chairs for nothing."
He winks at her.
She winks back. 'Take care' she almost adds. Almost.
> > > > > > >
"Sometimes I wish I'd never met her." His voice lilted out from between fragile puffs of smoke, as hands shaking, he withdrew the cigarette from his old wizened lips.
He was different today, Abby thought. Dressed casually in a red checked shirt, cotton, his hair was grey except for a few dark patches at the side. He spoke with purpose; his calm, cool tones often disguising the underlying harshness of his words, authoritative but not overbearing.
"Your wife?" Abby guessed.
"My partner," he corrected.
"She was an extraordinary woman, you know," he muttered sadly. "She brought out the best in me, but in the end all that was left was nothing.. emptiness, bitterness."
He coughed, taking another long pull from the cigarette.
"How is it that we ended up destroying one another? That I felt it would be easier to live without her than look her in the eye after I'd hurt her?"
Abby nodded, urging him to continue.
"I'd take it back if I could. I'd change, but now I'm too old. I'm still the same – you can't teach an old man anything different. I should have gone back a changed man long ago."
"Did you ever contact them?" she asked.
He nodded. "Once. I wrote them a letter. Even got as far as the mailbox. But I threw it in a trash can beside it."
He shrugged. "They were probably better off without me anyway."
> > > > > > >
There is a day she can always recall. It's forever there stuck in her mind, caught up in that dark corner labelled 'past', a space of events she refuses to remember yet is unable to forget.
It was so long ago.
She stumbled down the hallway, frantically searching beneath the piles of newspapers and magazines that littered the floor as the ringing seemed to crescendo in her ears and echo unmercifully about the house.
"Hello," she mumbled into the phone. It was always so. She had to be careful not to wake her mother who after a fitful day had finally drifted asleep.
"Abby.." a voice slurred down the phone. "Abby.."
Her heart caught in her throat, her lungs expanded so fast she thought she would choke.
"Dad?" she whispered, pressing the receiver against her ear so as to hear him better. "Daddy, where are you?"
There was a long silence, and she wondered if he'd gone, but then she heard a cough.
"Abby.." he muttered, "Happy.. happy thirteen."
And then the phone went dead. She clung to it, silently willing him to talk some more, but he didn't.
In the living room Maggie stirred long enough to ask her who it was.
"Wrong number," she'd responded. And Maggie had rolled over and started to snore.
He hadn't called once in five years; and at that time she didn't know that he was never to call again.
But somewhere in his alcohol-induced haze he had remembered her birthday. And she couldn't work out why.
> > > > > > >
The knocking at the door grows more insistent as she tumbles around the apartment trying desperately to dress herself. Who on earth would call at this hour?
"I'm coming," she yells, then promptly swears as she stubs her toe on the coffee table.
Her wet hair clings to her head in a ball of tangles, her towel lies discarded on the back of the couch.
She flings open the door.
"Carter?"
She raises a hand to her face, temporarily blinded by the bright light of the hall. It is him. And he's soaked through.
"Come in," she says softly, and he does, except he stands inside the door while she shuts it and doesn't seem to know where to move.
She reaches up a hand and rubs his cheek. "God you're like ice," she whispers, "Give me your coat."
Still he stares blankly ahead so she reaches up and pulls it off his shoulders. He doesn't help, just watches her as she removes first one sleeve and then the other, gently trying to warm his frozen hands as she does so.
He's shaking, she notices, so with a whispered "Wait here" she realises she has to find something for him to wear. He doesn't reply, just focuses on his coat hanging on the back of her door, so long that its belt trails along the ground, so wide that it completely covers her coat hanging underneath.
In her room there's an oversized t-shirt and a pair of cotton pyjama bottoms. They don't belong to her; they belong to him. She clutches them for a moment, because she doesn't want him to read too much into it. She doesn't even know why she kept them, why she couldn't bring herself to throw them out.
She thinks that she's being stupid. He needs them, they fit him. She should just bring them out and give them to him. Chewing her lips she pushes open the bedroom door, grabbing a towel on her way out to him.
She wonders why he has yet to speak, why he stares ahead so vacantly. Handing him the clothes is a pointless exercise, he doesn't respond enough to take them from her. She's scared, so very scared as to where this is leading. The doctor in her knows she has to get him into dry clothes, but she can't help but feel her heart thump against her ribs as she reaches for his tie and removes it.
"It's gonna be okay," she whispers, though really she's not sure whether she's trying to comfort him or reassure herself. Her fingers tremble slightly as she pops the first button on his shirt.
All too soon his wet shirt is hanging to dry and the t-shirt warms his back. She sits him on the couch and removes his socks. It's only the ends of his trousers that are wet, so she decides to leave them on him for the time being.
She's confused, mixed up and uncomfortably off-balance. She doesn't normally have visitors, let alone him. Why now? Why her? Why –
"She's gone." He speaks. "Only a note on the table to say sorry."
The silence is disconcerting, and trying with the weight of her heart pounding in her chest, she can't think of anything to say.
"I was ready, ready to talk to her. I'd worked out that all I had to say was that I would be there for her. I just never thought that she wouldn't be there for me."
He knows too much about loss. They both do, about swimming, trying to breathe with their heads under water, holding on, only to eventually let go and lose everything.
Once upon a time he held the world in his hands and had the future he had only ever dared dream about; now he has watched it turn to dust and slip smoothly through his clenched fists.
She sits beside him and though she barely moves to speak, he knows she understands. He knows her, he realises. He knows her better than he knows the mother of his child.
And he sleeps a restless sleep of what was and what never is to come, as she holds his hand and wonders how it all went wrong. Not just for him, or her, but for them both.
> > > > > > >
"Last day," she smiles brightly at him, as he settles himself down in the chair before her.
"Indeed," comes the reply, along with a lop-sided grin. "I want to thank you. I don't think I've ever been in such good company before."
She chuckles and he smiles back. They've become used to each other.
"What do you plan on doing now?" she wonders. Now that your life is back on track.
He freezes, and she cringes as the comfortable atmosphere dissipates. But when he looks up his expression is not pained, merely thoughtful, as though his future is something he has considered greatly during the past few months.
He clears his throat. "I've been wondering about my children," he whispers. "I think about them all the time now, what they are doing, the people they've become."
She nods.
"I'm thinking about getting in touch with them. I don't know if I should, if it's better to leave things the way they are. It's just after all this time I don't feel as though I have a place in their lives. I don't know if I'll mean anything to them, if they'll even remember me."
He stands and reaches for his coat.
There is no goodbye, just a forlorn exchange of smiles and she knows their paths will never cross again.
> > > > > > >
"I remember, Dad," she whispers softly, to no one in particular, as his weary footsteps fade down the narrow corridor.
> > > > > > >
Later on she finds Carter, biding his time in the ambulance bay. They go for coffee, and nightfall sees their shadow cast in glistening moonlight, hand in hand.
Fading twilight pinkens the water, as slowly the dead-cool hand of darkness beckons and silence the lake in its stillness enfolds. They do not sigh. They do not speak. Sitting close they dare not move to touch; for in this place touch can move a man to cry, and words her world can crumble into dust.
No, they are made of stone, or so they think; time hardened faces to dull the ache of emptiness inside. Better end up battered, bruised, torn than dare to whisper; they cry no tears to break the quietness of the moment –
The grown-up girl who misses still her Daddy.
The father whose dreams are only of his son.
Thank you for reading. As always reviews and constructive criticism are appreciated.