Disclaimer: "They're not mine, but they're not yours either, so back off, biatches." (You can thank Andrea for that.) Or, you know, I don't own 'em. Way to burst my bubble.

The 'Brady Bunch' thing is from the movie Reality Bites. The song used is 'Hemorrhage' by Fuel.

A/N: Big thanks to Alex for the reading. Thanks, bud - play up! xx

This one's actually not a standalone or a challenge. For some reason, I've decided to branch out; I've got more to come, and I promise it will get better, both in subject and hopefully in quality. Also, I love Susan, I really do, so please don't hate me. And please review. They make my day.

Summary: Spoilers through 'Get Carter' of s10.if you've seen it, you're fine. The rest is all products of my sleep-deprived mind.

CHAPTER 1: HEMORRHAGE

"Memories are just where you laid them,

dragging the waters 'til the depths give up their dead.

What did you expect to find?
Was it something you left behind?"

*~*~*

Her day had started off badly - she'd overslept and missed the El and had immediately incurred the wrath of Weaver upon arriving half an hour late.

Monday 3, Abby Lockhart 0. This did not bode well for the rest of the day.

She's hurrying through the hall, dodging patients and staff alike, desperate to get to the lounge for a cup of coffee, when she runs smack into Susan, coming out of the ladies' room.

She looks up, prepared to apologize and make a caffeine deprivation wise-crack, when she sees the look on her friend's face.

Red eyes. Tear-stained cheeks. Smudged make-up.

"What's wrong?" she questions, worrying about what the answer will reveal. Something wrong with Little Susie? Chloe on drugs again? Something happened with Chuck? The possibilities are eerily familiar, and suddenly something comes to her mind, something so horrible she hates to say it aloud. As she opens her mouth to ask, Susan beats her to the point.

"The baby."

*~*~*

"Don't you remember anything I said, when I said,

Don't fall away and leave me to myself.

Don't fall away and leave love bleeding in my hands, in my hands again."

*~*~*

She's managed to get Susan into the Exam 1, where the blinds have been tightly shut and the door locked. She's finishing an ultrasound, and is trying to figure out how to tell her best friend that it's over.

How do you do it, she wonders. What words do you use to tell someone that despite the best laid plans, no pun intended, Mother Nature had other ideas? That some God or higher power or whatever the hell was out there simply felt it best not to see this pregnancy through?

The words are unnecessary, and she hears a sob from behind her. She turns, sees Susan's face crumble, and reaches out, catching her as she collapses in a fit of tears.

"Why?...What did I do wrong? Everything was going so well."

And all she can do is hold her friend, whispering words of what she hopes are comfort, and share in the sorrow.

*~*~*

"She cries her life is like

some movie in black and white.

Dead actors faking lines, over and over and over again she cries."

*~*~*

An hour later, they've moved to the ambulance bay, where she's waiting with Susan for Chuck to come to take her home. She always worries, but now she worries for them, knowing what awaits them there - nothing but more pain and an empty apartment, dreams of what could have been and what almost was. And she wishes more than anything that her friend didn't have to go through it.

She knows Susan is making valiant attempts to change the subject, to keep her mind anywhere but on the cramps moving through her body, the memory of finding the blood, the deafening silence of the room as Abby had run the ultrasound. They're telling jokes, terrible jokes, missing the puns, not able to concentrate on the humor, just desperate to think of something else, and entirely unable to do so.

Susan's half laughing, half crying at this point, and her words come out in a choked mixture of tears and a rueful chuckle, "You know what my guilty pleasure was when I was a teenager?"

"Sex in sheds?"

She snorts, closer to a real laugh this time, and Abby is relieved that she's able to do this. "Well, obviously. But other than that.I used to watch - and don't you ever tease me about this - reruns of The Brady Bunch. It's just.everything was so easy, you know? The problems weren't that big or life-altering, and at the end of the half-hour, everything was magically.okay again."

The tears have started again, harder this time, and they both know all attempts at ignoring reality have been futile. Abby reaches out with a tissue and wipes them away as Susan continues.

"And sometimes.I just want to know why life can't be like that, you know?"  She looks up at Abby, questioning, and Abby desperately wishes that life had been kinder to her friend, that she could somehow go back and fix all of Fate's wrongs and make it all better, that she could have prevented this somehow.

But instead, she can only give a sad smile, her own faced etched with regrets, as she thinks about Susan and herself, what they've both lost, and when she replies, it's in a voice weighted with deep sadness, "Well.because Mr. Brady died of AIDS."

Susan nods, looking down at her lap, and begins to cry harder. Abby reaches for her friend, holds her close, lets Susan weep for the child she lost, for the life she wanted. And she disregards her own grief for the time being, putting it on a shelf with other emotions and thoughts better left untouched: her fear of being alone for the rest of her life, her lost childhood, the abortion, Carter and the way things ended between them. She'll deal with them later, perhaps; but for now, she takes solace in the knowledge that she can help Susan now; that even if she can't make the pain stop, she can help lessen it in some way. And she'll settle for this.

*~*~*

"And I watched as you turned away.

You don't remember, but I do."

*~*~*

She's sitting in a chair on the roof when she hears the door slam. She knows it's him right away, knew he'd find her the moment she saw him in the ambulance bay an hour earlier, watching her help Chuck ease Susan into his car to go home. She's both grateful and annoyed by this predictability - she finds comfort in his presence, but hates that she - they - weren't enough for him, that it took the wilds of Africa and an easy-bake family for him to be 'found.'

"Hey." He's sinking into the chair next to her, drumming his fingers on the armrest.

"Carter," she acknowledges his presence, but chooses to continue to look out over the Chicago skyline. The afternoon is sunny, breezy and cool, and she thinks to herself that it has no right to be such a beautiful day when her best friend is hurting so badly.

He clears his throat, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees him rubbing the back of his neck before hunching over, resting his elbows on his knees before speaking again.

"Losing a child.it's terrible."

She knows he's thinking of Kem, of the son that wasn't really his, the family he almost had. She finds herself growing angry at his assumption that he knows what Susan is going through, that he knows what it feels like to actually lose a child, your child. But then she remembers his brother, and that he doesn't know about her abortion, that she never told him about that day - the beginning of the end of both her marriage and her hopes for a clean slate.

So she fights back her anger, bottles it up, puts it away, to be channeled into energy for work later.

He's continuing, "It's so hard."

She means to half-agree, to give a noncommittal 'Must be,' to reveal nothing, then to get up and leave before anything can surface. But what comes out before she can stop herself is a hoarse reply altogether different from what she'd planned.

"I know."

Startled at herself, furious at her lack of control, she looks straight ahead, willing him not to press it, to have not heard her slip, to run far away, because she's not sure she can face the realities of the past. Not today.

But, of course, this is not the case, and she can feel his eyes on her.

"Abby?"

This is not how she'd wanted to tell him, and she's wary to let the conversation go any further. After all, she asks herself, what exactly has he done in the past few months to earn her trust? During his time with Kem, they'd managed to establish a civil understanding - acquaintances, perhaps - and in the months since she'd left, they've moved back towards being cautious friends. But the air surrounding them was always thick with the unsaid, and she knows it's only a matter of time before something sends it all crashing down. And she knows that she can't deal with that right now, that she's just gotten her life back on track as it is, and after all that's transpired between them, she's not yet ready to trust him with something this big.

So she shakes her head, looks down for a moment, and mutters, "Not now."

She senses his reluctance to let this go, knows he has questions and that she's just created a whole new mess for them to deal with, and nearly sighs with relief when, after a long beat, he slowly nods. Still, she's not sure if this is a good thing or not - remembers how much she hated his pushing in the past, but how it was, at the very least, a sign that he cared on some deeper level. And now that it's gone, she's both grateful and disappointed.

He stands to leave, hands jammed in the pockets of his lab coat. He pauses, turns towards her, and she has to force herself not to look up at him.

"If you ever need to talk, Abby." he trails off, obviously unsure of how to continue.

His shadow covers her, casting her in the dark, as he worriedly watches her, unsure as to why Susan's miscarriage is having such a profound effect on her, wondering what more than her friend's pain brought her up here.

And despite the overwhelming hurt and anger, she finds that she wants to tell him, to make him understand, thinks that it might help him better comprehend her insecurities and reluctance to let down her defenses. Still, she maintains that this is not the time or place in their relationship, so she nods, looks up, and gives him what she knows must be a weak smile.

"I know."

He nods, takes what he can get, and then he's gone, and she's left with silence to keep her company as she goes back to watching the sky.

*~*~*

"Don't fall away and leave me to myself.

Don't fall away and leave love bleeding in my hands, in my hands again."

**********

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