"Have you seen Luka?" Carter asked as he walked up to admit, speaking to anyone who would listen to him.

He saw Abby turn to him, her eyes red rimmed and swollen. He walked over to her and placed his hand on her arm.

"I'm sorry, Abby," he said and squeezed her arm gently.

"Did you know?" She asked but there was no accusation in her tone - just curiosity.

John looked down at his feet for a second then looked back up to her, his hand sliding from her arm.

"He never actually told me... but I knew... all you had to do was look at them..." he said, his words scathing but his tone gentle.

Abby pursed her lips, pulled them between her teeth and dropped her gaze to the floor.

She scoffed slightly and John reached out to her again but she shrugged his hand away.

"I was so... stupid."

"You weren't stupid, Abby. You guys were good when you were with him," John soothed but Abby's flash of anger shocked him.

"Yeah... when I was with him. Not when we were together. I like how you put that, Carter," Abby said icily and pushed her finger into her eye as she took a deep breath.

"I didn't mean it like that."

Abby sighed and dropped her hand.

"I know. And no, I haven't seen him."

John nodded and watched her walk away. He could kill Luka sometimes.

- -

One Week Later

"Sam, come on honey, talk to me," Jocelyn urged as she sat, perched on the edge of Sam's bed.

But Sam wouldn't even look at her. She was too mortified to even look at herself in the mirror. She had been raped. She felt disgusting. Broken. Violated. Damaged.

A shell.

"Sam?"

Jocelyn leaned in front of her daughter, the first time she had been allowed in to see her for a week and saw that her daughter's face was sullen, pale and gaunt.

Sighing, Jocelyn leaned back as she realised that her daughter was not going to respond to any exterior stimuli.

"I saw Luka yesterday," she said and she smiled when she saw her daughter's eyes dip at the mention of his name.

It was more than she had gotten in the last half an hour.

"He stonewalled me too."

Sam turned slowly to her mother and looked her dead in the eye and Jocelyn shivered automatically at the coldness of her stare.

"I'm a failure," Sam muttered and then looked away from her mother again and trained her vision on the closed blinds of the private room she was in.

Jocelyn swallowed some saliva in an attempt to dampen her suddenly parched mouth before she spoke to Sam.

"You're not a failure, Sam," she chided gently.

Sam snapped her head towards her mother and shook her head.

"I lost his child," she said bluntly, loudly and Jocelyn jerked slightly when Sam lurched forward but fell back onto the bed as she winced in pain as she gripped her ribs.

"You want me to get someone to give you something?" Jocelyn asked, standing up and leaning over Sam.

Sam shook her head.

The room was once again filled with silence and Sam breathed loudly, trying to send the pain away.

"You don't know that it was his," Jocelyn managed eventually but Sam said nothing. "You didn't even know you were pregnant, Sam. Even if you did... it wouldn't have changed anything."

Sam rolled slowly onto her side so she was facing her mother and she reached her hand up to her nose and scratched it lightly. She let her hand drop slightly and began worrying her thumbnail with her teeth.

Jocelyn watched as Sam's eyes clouded over as she disappeared into another world, another life.

She didn't know what to do. Everything she said seemed to be the wrong thing. Seeing Luka the day before had been an accident. She was in the local market buying some coffee and he had been there.

He had said hello to her and that had been the extent of it.

He had looked like hell. She had been told by Doctor Carter that Luka hadn't been in to work at all that week and no one had been able to get in contact with him. She had worried, especially after the state she had seen him in. His hair was long, awry and greasy looking, his face pale, cheekbones jutting out more than was normal for a healthy individual, his cart filled with a bottle of whiskey and a loaf of bread.

It was all the proof she needed that this man was in love with her daughter. And it was tearing him apart. She had been able to see from the thirty second meeting with him in the bread aisle that he blamed himself for what had happened to Sam.

"I don't think I can see him again..." Sam murmured and tucked her tired head into the pillow.

"Why?"

Sam opened her eyes again and rubbed at her eyebrow.

"I killed his family. He shouldn't have to see me."

Jocelyn scoffed and stood up.

"That's what you've been doing this past week? Drowning yourself in self-pity? Come on, Sam! You didn't kill anyone! Steve did, that bastard is the reason you are in here!"

"If I hadn't slept with Luka, Steve would never have needed to lash out like he did!"

"So now you're defending him?" Jocelyn shrieked and thrust her hands onto her hips.

"No!"

The two almost identical women stared at each other until eventually Sam looked away and shook her head.

"I want you to leave."

"Sam... come on," Jocelyn said as she dropped her hands from her hips and attempted to reach out to Sam.

"I said leave."

Jocelyn stared at her daughter again and then shook her head and grabbed her bag from the chair before leaving the room.

- -

One week after that...

Luka stared out across the city, swinging his legs back and forward, his heels grating off the granite wall of his building. The temperature in his room had risen to a new level of high and now Luka was sitting on his window sill, his legs hanging out the window, as the midnight moon glazed Chicago in its pale rays.

The air around was hinting at spring, the fresh smell in the air, the pleasant midnight air moist and cooling but not chilling. He could smell newness in the air.

Inside his apartment, in the bedroom behind him, he could hear his phone ringing but he ignored it. Just like he'd ignored it for the past two weeks. He'd be surprised if he still had a job. But he didn't care.

He had did this to Sam.

If he hadn't insisted that they carry out there sordid affair, she would never have been in her current situation. He had promised her he would never hurt her and yet he had, more than he had ever thought possible.

The police still hadn't found Steve and Luka hoped that they did before he did. He wasn't sure he could see the man who killed his child - he just knew it was his - and almost killed Sam.

He felt guilty. He was mourning over the loss of a child he hadn't even known about but had grown to love in the two weeks since he had found out Sam had lost it. He was mourning the loss of this unborn, unknown child with the same intensity that he had mourned the loss of his entire family.

"... about Sam, call the hospital as soon as you get this... she needs you Luka."

Luka turned to the familiar voice of Elizabeth Corday playing over the answering machine and he swung his legs back into his apartment and let his feet land on the carpet of his bedroom.

He didn't know if he could see her - he had did this to her.

"She needs you Luka"

He stood for a second looking at the machine and then picked up his jacket.

That line would get him every time.

TBC