Always and Forever

Like a tidal wave had hit her at an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet, her body found the cold, tile floor, as it someone had dumped her from it. The bleeping was gone, the worried cries for tools and suction were gone, and when her eyes fluttered open Lucy found that the blurriness was gone, too. There was a brightness surrounding her that was less of a light than it was just color.

"Lucy?" She felt a hand on her arm. Her eyes looked up to face its owner.

She had never been so happy to see anyone than she had ever been before. Without guidance from the hand, Lucy immediately gathered herself and scrambled to her feet in record time. As fast as she was up, her arms were thrown around the neck of the man that she ached to see for such a long time.

"Carter..." She cried into his shoulder while the moments passed.

"Bet you didn't think you'd see me this soon." Carter ran his hand down her hair. "I know, Lucy... Don't cry, it's okay."

Lucy waited a moment, letting options and possibilities hit her. She pulled away suddenly, smacking her hand against Carter's chest. Carter was slightly taken aback, studying her movements while he looked over the expression on her face. "You never told me how you were able to come back when you were dead!" Lucy yelled, almost accusingly.

Carter's face curled into a grin. "Yeah, I know. I said I'd tell you eventually, and..." He held out his hands in a gesture of statemently openness. "Do you really want to know?" he asked, letting his arms fall at his side.

"Yes." Lucy stated, wiping away the remains of tears and then folding her arms.

Carter nodded, then watched Lucy for a minute. "Look around you," he said finally, motioning with his arm. Lucy blinked at him for a moment, afraid of what she might find. After all, surprises seemed to be popping up everywhere lately... but she did as she was instructed. The room, or hallway rather, that she stood in, was the entry way to the trauma room that they had just taken her into. Down the hall, Lucy could see Jerry in admit talking on the phone, and the brink of the waiting area. There was a few people passing in the hall with tech equipment, and the rest were medical crew. It was a normal day at County General -- with the exception of what was happening in the trauma room.

"No one can see us... hear us..." Carter ticked his head over to the window that looked into the trauma room. He leaned his elbows on the ledge of it, looking into the room. Lucy was hesitant, but followed Carter's gaze into the room.

Inside were her colleagues, all gathered around the body of her own. One monitored, one did compression's, one held the paddles. After a moment they would shock her. Anxiously, Lucy watched the heart monitor. Unchanging as it almost always did, it stayed in v-fib.

"You're dying, Lucy." Carter said, watching as the team shocked Lucy's body.

"I know..." Lucy said, following his matter-of-fact attitude. "But they're gonna try to save me anyway..." She watched Carter's expression. "Cause they don't want to lose another friend... and there's nothing they can do about it."

"But there is something that you can do," Carter said. Lucy looked over at Carter. He looked back at her with emotion showing in his eyes. "Something for me."

What was he talking about? What did he mean? Lucy's eyes searched his with an intense inquisitively. "What could you possibly need done, Carter? There's not a lot I can do for you. We're both dead..."

Carter's expression at this point was somewhat mixed, with insecurity written everywhere, and sudden joy brimming at his eyes, he shook his head slowly. "Actually..." he said softly, "I'm not really dead."

"What?" was Lucy's immediate reaction. She threw his hands from hers. "What? What are you talking about? You told me- you told me when you first came back, you told me that you were dead!"

"I know, I know." Carter pulled her over to a row of chairs that were lined against the wall. He sat down in one, she in the adjacent. "Lucy... When I came back the first time and told you that I couldn't tell you how I got back here," Carter paused midsentence, not really sure how to continue. "It was because I didn't want to ruin things for you. Your life wasn't where it was supposed to be, you weren't in the right frame of mind to know how I came back. I didn't want to ruin what you had left."

"How would it ruin things for me?" Lucy asked, her hand shaking slightly from the fear and anxiety of knowing.

"Because..." Carter starting, his words fading out again. "I made a mistake, Lucy. I wasn't supposed to die."

"Well, that's hardly your fault, I mean-"

"No, it is. Just hear me out," he said, standing up. Lucy watched him, still sitting, not wanting to get up and follow his movements anymore. Carter paced over a few steps, only so that he could angle himself where he could see the trauma going on. "I gave up, Lucy." That was all he said for a few moments, then he went on. "When I was lying on the gurney... there was this man there. This messenger. And he gave a choice, to live or to die. And when I saw you in the room beside me... I didn't want to live anymore. I didn't want to be faced with the guilt."

"What guilt?" Lucy asked, watching him.

Carter's eyes looked back into hers. "The guilt of my mistake. Of not letting you give Paul Sobreki a psych consult to begin with." He held a hand up, knowing Lucy was ready to interject her comments. "And I know you think it's not my fault, but there were things I was supposed to do... but I gave up, instead. I was supposed to get out of that trauma room, I was supposed to correct my mistake, I was supposed to go on." Carter put a hand to his head, leaning against the ledge of the window again. Regret was showing in his face and in his appearance.

"And I was supposed to die."

Carter immediately stopped rubbing his forehead. He looked back over to Lucy, still sitting down. He felt horrible right then, absolutely drenched in regret and guilt, more so than he had ever been before. Carter didn't say anything as he crossed over to where Lucy was sitting and knelt down in front of her. He studied her expression, unblinking, as she seemed to tremble more and more. But he had to tell her. He had to let her know. "Yes, Lucy," was all that he could manage as tears swelled up in his eyes.

"I knew... I think I just didn't put it together. When I was shot, I didn't feel a thing." She wiped her eyes. "There wasn't any pain. And I didn't even feel myself hit the floor..." Lucy ran a hand through her hair, which was still blood drenched like it had been when she was in the trauma room. "And then I heard your voice all around me, and I knew I wasn't supposed to be here. It didn't feel real enough..." Lucy's voice faded away, unsure of whether or not she made any sense at all.

"I'm so sorry..." Carter said, grasping her hands in his. "I'm so sorry, Lucy. I shouldn't have left, but things just got screwed up, just for a split second!... and it ended up screwing everything else up..." Frustration shone in Carter's voice as he trembled with the truth.

"It's alright Carter. You've fixed it." Lucy let a smile show through the ever-threatening tears. "But I don't understand one thing..." she asked, letting an uneasy hand rub her neck. "What did the shadow mean?"

Carter repositioned himself, gaining more comfort as he knelt uneasily. "The shadow was the past. It was the starting point where things went wrong. The shadow that you saw," Carter paused again, trying not to show any biased emotion, "was mine. On the floor, right after the stabbing." He scratched the side of his cheek, looking away for a moment while gathering his thoughts.

"I have to go back, Lucy. The shadows... I need to make them real. I need to fix what happened. I'm... I'm going back." Carter placed a hand on the side of Lucy's neck. "Don't be mad at me. Whatever you do, just don't be mad at me."

"You're-... you're going back?" Lucy asked, sitting nervously. "But I just got here, and I- please don't leave me..."

Carter smiled, pulling Lucy into a hug. "I have to Lucy... you did everything you were supposed to. You set up the plan for me to go back."

The plan? What now? Lucy let tears fall on to his shoulder. "Don't. Please."

"You did everything right, Lucy. And I'm going to go back. But I promise you, I'll see you very, very soon." He soothed her blonde hair.

Lucy waited. Finally, she understood what had happened. She didn't really understand the technicalities, and she didn't understand death, but she accepted the fact that she was dead. "I'll come and visit you." Lucy said into the side of his neck as she stood against his 'body'.

Carter smiled, letting a tear spill out on to her hair. "You can't, Lucy. You have to go home." Lucy closed her eyes, emotionally wincing. "You can watch me. Please, please watch me," he said, smiling. "This world wasn't meant for you, anyway, Lucy. Not someone as beautiful as you."

Lucy pulled away slowly, still holding Carter close. Her eyes shown, and now everything made sense. "That's what you said to me when I first came to your grave."

"And I'm saying it again," Carter said. He waited only for a moment, letting the silence fade in as his lips met hers, and even though both of them knew the moment would not last, they each relished it with as much passion as the moment could sustain.

When they pulled away, Carter had a huge grin on his face. "Lucy, look down," he said, letting her go for a moment so that she could see what he did.

Upon looking down, Lucy gasped in slowly. Her bloody, stained clothes were gone. In their place was a silver evening gown that glimmered with its radiance. As her eyes drifted up, Lucy noticed that the pink scars from the stabbing were gone, replaced by skin as smooth as if they had never even been and her hair was blonde, not bloody.

Tears fell from her eyes as she smiled at Carter. "Thank you." Now, Lucy had realized how Carter could come back. He had come back to take her home.

Carter smiled, pulling her closer one last time, and whispering into her ear, "Close your eyes, Lucy."

She looked at him one last time, knowing it would be the last time she would see him for a very long time. Lucy shut her eyes, and upon doing so, she felt his hands slide from hers. "Goodbye, Carter," she whispered, the mysterious wind filling the room again, running past her hair and making it back, over her shoulders.

When the wind had died down, she opened her eyes slowly. Carter was gone, and the hospital room had changed. Red hearts decked the hallway, equipment that had been there was now gone, and a calendar on the wall declared the month to be February.

Lucy walked over slowly to the window of the trauma room, where only moments ago her body had been lying. Now, in its place, was a completely different scene. Deb Chen, Abby Lockhart, and Peter Benton were huddled around the figure of a man. Only this time, it wasn't the shadow of John Carter. It was him. He was alive.

Lucy took a deep, emotional breath as she watched the group in the room. Though it was chaos in there, Lucy's heart was at peace, and she knew that everything was as it should be. Lucy let the breath out in a sigh. "See ya, Carter. I'm going home." she whispered, letting her hand slide off of the window sill.

Lucy took one last look at the place that had given her so many memories. It was the place that had reminded her who she was, with the man that let her find it out. As she turned down the hall of the ER, her dress swishing its glimmering shine, she watched people scurry about her, not noticing her, even though she hadn't been expecting them to be able to see her.

And as she turned and walked through the doors of the ambulance bay, Lucy Knight disappeared into the wind.