The Road Less Travelled
Author: Cath
Category: Abby/Carter
Spoilers: Watch to the end of series 7 and you should be covered.
Rating: A probably PG13, I'm not exactly conservative with the usage of expletives, so if you find them offensive, perhaps you ought turn back now…
Disclaimer: If I owned them would I write amazingly pathetic fictional stories about them???
Notes: This is a companion piece of sorts to Laura's 'Miles To Nowhere' part one, although you don't have to have read that to understand this one. But it probably helps.
The title is shamelessly lifted from a self-help book by M. Scott Peck. Not that I've actually read it, but it is mentioned several times in Bridget Jones' Diary, which I have read. Repeatedly in fact.
Anyway, this is the Carter POV version.
~*~ The Road Less Travelled ~*~
I don't know how we got here. Figuratively, not literally. Since I know exactly how we got to this place, this vast empty space in the middle of the Arizona desert. We got on a plane, rented a car, drove a few hundred miles, and bam, here we are. The middle of fucking nowhere, AZ.
I received the phone call from her at 8:43 last night. I remember thinking it was strange when she called my name "John" as I hadn't heard that voice on the other end of my phone in weeks, ever since my declaration of undying love. Okay, so perhaps it wasn't exactly a declaration of undying love, and it certainly wasn't the most eloquent way to tell her that I thought that maybe I was in love with her, but I hoped it got the message across. It did, and she stopped calling, and we spent less time together. How's that for a signal about her feelings?
So when I got this phone call I was immediately suspicious. Well, not at first, at first I was beyond delighted, maybe she returned some of those feelings (doubtful, but I live forever in hope…).
"I don't think we should be friends any longer, either." She then said, which completely threw me.
I made sure that I wasn't actually hallucinating. "Abby? Is that you?" I asked, I mean, I've had stranger dreams.
"Yup, who else would it be?" Well, lots of people, actually, but I stopped short of actually saying it. Then the suspicion finally came home. Was she drunk? I hoped to god that she wasn't, for her own sake. It would take months to recover from a set back like this.
"Where are you?" I asked, hoping that I was being overly paranoid about the whole situation.
"I'm in a bar, downtown." She replied. My stomach sank. How could she do this to herself? Why? However this concern didn't quite articulate itself quite the way I might have hoped. "You're in a bar? What the Hell are you doing? You're an alcoholic!" I practically yelled. As I said, the concern part didn't quite come across as I had intended.
She seemed unconcerned at my tone of voice. "Come have a drink with me, John." She slurred.
God, Abby, what have you done to yourself? I thought. How the hell could you possibly get yourself in such a fucking mess after all that you had done to get over it? I think that maybe here I was uttering a few choice expletives whilst I wasn't thinking. I only hoped she was too drunk to be offended, then cursed myself for thinking that. I looked at the caller ID and realised that I could call the operator and find out where she was. "Abby, stay where you are, I'll be there in half an hour." Then I put down the phone, and dialled the number for information.
The very helpful guy on the other end informed me that the number was for a bar named 'Gallahad's' and he gave me the address.
Twenty minutes later I was through the front door of the bar and making a quick search of the premises for Abby. She was sitting at the bar, drink in hand, several empty glasses surrounding the half-full one, looking, appropriately, quite the alcoholic, and I was surprised that the bartender hadn't questioned her intake. I think she was beyond drunk a few hours ago. I walked over to her and took the drink out of her hand, struggling with it as she tried to make me consume it myself. "Abby, please. For one thing I'm driving. Come on, let's just go home. I can get you in the shower, sober you up, put you to bed…" I grabbed her arm and tried to make her stand, but instead she laughed.
"I want to go on a trip." She declared. I pondered this for a while.
"A trip?" I asked. She was drunk, not necessarily coherent. Tell me, please, who hasn't had a 'brilliant' idea after having consumed the better part of a month's worth of alcohol?
"Yep. I want to leave everything behind and forget about it. I never did that before, I always stuck things out, knuckled down and played good little Abby. I want to be bad for once. I want to not give a shit…" She sounded quite defiant about the whole thing. In fact, if she were sober, I might agree. However alcohol can do strange things to the best of us. I tried an alternative tactic – exploiting her drunkenness and making her promise the ultimately impossible.
"And if I take you away, you promise not to have another drink?" Okay, so perhaps she wasn't entirely finished on her little diatribe.
Eventually: "I promise."
I didn't know whether to believe her or not, but anything was better than this alcoholic state to which she'd revisited. After that she willingly went home. I got her into the shower, as I promised (although I did leave her in the bathroom fully clothed), I helped her pack a few items of clothing, and then pulled back the covers and steered her towards the bed. She climbed into bed, and I rearranged the comforter over her, and wished her goodnight for the few hours sleep that she would attain whilst I was making reservations. I then went home and packed my own bag and made arrangements with my travel agent for two plane tickets (open-ended) to Phoenix, Arizona, and phoned the ER to inform them of the unforeseen circumstances that would detain both Abby and I from work for a few days. I then drove by Abby's apartment and woke her up from her deep slumber and we made our way to O'Hare for the 10 o'clock flight that I had managed to get us on.
The flight was surprisingly on time, and so I dragged Abby, half-asleep and still somewhat intoxicated, onto the plane.
She was quiet for that first 20 minutes, just watching as Chicago diminished into a sea of fairy lights, smaller and smaller and more distant. She became completely detached from her surroundings, ignoring the cabin crewmember when she offered drinks (I ordered two bottles of mineral water) and somewhere inside of me prompted my asking if she was all right. I softly touched her hand, making sure that she wouldn't hit me for taking it too far, before clutching her hand in support as she told me that her mother had succeeded in killing herself, which had lead to this impromptu alcoholic binge. I brought her into my arms and hugged her, offering no false words of hope that everything would be okay. I didn't know that it would be, so we remained in silence until we began our descent into Phoenix.
I briefly thought of Susan Lewis as we landed, but Abby took up most of my thoughts whilst I signed my life away for the rental car, and tried to ignore her wanting to crash out in a bar.
We drove for many, many miles across arid landscapes, roads straight in front of us, seemingly never ending, the same when I look in the rearview mirror. The road into nowhere. Which is where we are now.
She sits next to me in complete silence, and I begin to think that perhaps this wasn't the way to solve the problems that have built up over the past 24 hours.
She should be back in Chicago with her boyfriend, not out here alone with me, no matter how much I might want this time together.
She sits in silence and I want to talk. I want to tell her how much she means to me, and that she shouldn't have to keep everything to herself, I'm here to help. I want to, but I can't. We're only friends, if that, after all. And I still can't think of anything else to say. A comment on the weather is unnecessary, we noted the heat the minute we landed, and there is no weather but that. I'm not sure that she wants to talk, anyway.
My brother died when I was young, but aside from that I've never had a close relative die, and so I don't know how to react. I was too young to react in any way other than anger over the fact that even whilst dead my brother commanded an audience far wider than I had ever received, but I don't think that what Abby needs right now is to hear about this. In fact, I suspect that all she really needs is to satisfy the insatiable urge for more alcohol, I know that feeling and can relate to that, but that would be inappropriate right now.
What am I doing here? Why did I agree to such a road trip with no purpose? Would other saner men than I take this road?
These questions haunt me, and so a few miles down the road I pull over and attempt to address them.
"Where to now?" I ask. The answer obvious in it's literal terms, there is only the road ahead that I can take. Abby decides to take my comment at face value.
"I thought we were just following the road."
"Ah, but where does it lead?" I wonder, and I think that we both know that we're no longer talking about geography.
"I'm not sure we'll ever know answer to that – or if I even want to."
"I know I don't." I say, thinking about this, this thing, between us. Forwards, or backwards. Onwards or retreat to where we started?
"Are you really going to leave County?" The seeming non sequitur throws me for a minute before I realize that she is actually continuing with what she was talking about, the road ahead.
"I don't know," I say with more nonchalance than I feel. "Sometimes you just have to give up and move on." Mentally I call out to her to ask me to stay, to remain there for her. But it's not worth it. And never going to happen, she made that clear enough, or did she?
"And sometimes you have to work at things, dig your heels in and put in the effort," she counters, making me believe that perhaps there is some hope for me with her, after all.
"Give me one reason why I should stay," my ego begs her to tell me that it is because she wants me to, but I know this is unlikely.
"Because I want you to." I am thrown for a minute. What does this mean?
I try to prevent myself from feeling hurt by the possible misunderstanding of her meaning. "So you can have a friend to sort out problems between you and Luka?"
"No, so I can have someone to call at midnight from a bar because my life is falling apart and I know he'll be there to stop me from ruining things completely. So we can drive all night then get stuck in awkward morning after phase." I'm unsure what to make of the fact that she has completely neglected to mention Luka at all in that sentence, but try my best not to read too much into it.
Instead, I laugh, and go along with what is possibly a joke. "Morning after phase? Don't we have to sleep together to get that?" Not that I'd mind or anything, I silently add.
"Apparently not." Damn…
"Then I think I'm missing out on the best part of the deal here," I carry on the joke, seeing it for what I think it really is, meaningless banter between two friends.
"Just drive," she nearly laughs, I can tell. And I must admit that I've missed these moments whilst we've not been friends recently.
"But we haven't decided where we're going yet." I continue to abuse our double entendre for all that it is worth.
"Does it really matter?" She questions philosophically.
Yes, I think. But I reply to the negative. "No, I don't suppose it does."
Maybe it doesn't matter if we plan where we're headed.
I've taken the road less traveled, and while it could be better, I don't mind that we don't come to any decisions.
There's a lifetime stretching ahead of us in which we can change the direction in which our lives travel.
And for now, I'm content, and that's all I need.
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