(no subject)
Title: Rain
Character/Pairing: Abby Lockhart
Prompt: Rain
Word Count: 498
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: Mild season 14
Summary: Five times Abby's been rained on.
Disclaimer: Abby and ER are not mine.
1.
Ten years old and sneaking back home. Maggie doesn’t know she’s been to visit him again. And she won’t, not after last time (the first time) if Abby can help it. She’ll just lie and tell her mother that she had softball practice. That’s if Maggie even bothers to ask where she’s been. If she even notices Abby’s been gone all afternoon. If Maggie’s even home. Just as she’s coming up the sidewalk to the house the sky darkens and cold hard rain starts to fall. Can’t play ball in the rain, Abby. Detention? Another lie, another secret. But at least it won’t get her chased through the house with a butcher knife (again).
2.
She’s thankful for the rain today. At sixteen she shouldn’t reek of cigarettes and cheap beer (but she does). The water soaking through the letterman’s jacket she’s wearing will wash away some of the smoke. The smell of wet wool might hide the rest of her activities. Howie’s good for something after all. He certainly wasn’t much use when she wanted to lose her virginity. Worst thirty seconds of her life. Still, the jacket’s nice.
3.
Standing in the ambulance bay, screaming at Maggie as they are both soaked to the bone, Abby doesn’t care any more. Can’t care. She lets her mother have it, all the hurt and fear and disappointment she’s clung to over the years. Her side of bipolarism. “I was ten years old!” She shouts, watches an older version of herself flinch. What she won’t tell Maggie is that this, today, this scares her more than what happened when she was ten. The honesty is frightening in a way that denial never was. She can’t do it any more, she runs back inside the ER, leaving her mother in the rain.
4.
She wears yellow rain boots and a matching slicker. Nearly forty but she chooses to dress for the weather as if she were a child. It’s more fun than an umbrella. She’ll never admit the secret joy she gets from it, from the boots and the chance to slosh through giant puddles on her way home from work, but that’s why she chose these garments. She feels like the girl on the side of a Morton’s salt box. It’s an escape, a childhood she was denied. Another clever disguise.
5.
She’s told him the truth. The ugliness of it all. Everything that happened while he was gone. And now she’s run. Out of their apartment, away from him. Away from his pain and his questions. She needs to breathe, she needs a drink (wants one badly). There’s no time to think as she heads towards the liquor store on the corner, and once she has her prize there won’t be a need for thought. Just numb. Only she never gets that chance. It starts to rain and the wet and the cold force her to retreat, to go back to the apartment she’s tried to flee.
Character/Pairing: Abby Lockhart
Prompt: Rain
Word Count: 498
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: Mild season 14
Summary: Five times Abby's been rained on.
Disclaimer: Abby and ER are not mine.
1.
Ten years old and sneaking back home. Maggie doesn’t know she’s been to visit him again. And she won’t, not after last time (the first time) if Abby can help it. She’ll just lie and tell her mother that she had softball practice. That’s if Maggie even bothers to ask where she’s been. If she even notices Abby’s been gone all afternoon. If Maggie’s even home. Just as she’s coming up the sidewalk to the house the sky darkens and cold hard rain starts to fall. Can’t play ball in the rain, Abby. Detention? Another lie, another secret. But at least it won’t get her chased through the house with a butcher knife (again).
2.
She’s thankful for the rain today. At sixteen she shouldn’t reek of cigarettes and cheap beer (but she does). The water soaking through the letterman’s jacket she’s wearing will wash away some of the smoke. The smell of wet wool might hide the rest of her activities. Howie’s good for something after all. He certainly wasn’t much use when she wanted to lose her virginity. Worst thirty seconds of her life. Still, the jacket’s nice.
3.
Standing in the ambulance bay, screaming at Maggie as they are both soaked to the bone, Abby doesn’t care any more. Can’t care. She lets her mother have it, all the hurt and fear and disappointment she’s clung to over the years. Her side of bipolarism. “I was ten years old!” She shouts, watches an older version of herself flinch. What she won’t tell Maggie is that this, today, this scares her more than what happened when she was ten. The honesty is frightening in a way that denial never was. She can’t do it any more, she runs back inside the ER, leaving her mother in the rain.
4.
She wears yellow rain boots and a matching slicker. Nearly forty but she chooses to dress for the weather as if she were a child. It’s more fun than an umbrella. She’ll never admit the secret joy she gets from it, from the boots and the chance to slosh through giant puddles on her way home from work, but that’s why she chose these garments. She feels like the girl on the side of a Morton’s salt box. It’s an escape, a childhood she was denied. Another clever disguise.
5.
She’s told him the truth. The ugliness of it all. Everything that happened while he was gone. And now she’s run. Out of their apartment, away from him. Away from his pain and his questions. She needs to breathe, she needs a drink (wants one badly). There’s no time to think as she heads towards the liquor store on the corner, and once she has her prize there won’t be a need for thought. Just numb. Only she never gets that chance. It starts to rain and the wet and the cold force her to retreat, to go back to the apartment she’s tried to flee.