Fic: Prelude in C Minor (Primeval, Abby/Connor, PG13, angst)
Title: Prelude in C Minor
Author: alyse
Recipient:
dominique012
Prompt: Prompt 2: island, darkness, tea, happy.
Pairing: Abby/Connor
Rating: PG13
Length: ~13,000 words
Warnings: Angst
Disclaimer: I do not own Primeval. Impossible Pictures do.
Author's Notes: For
dominique012 who wanted Abby/Connor; angst with a hopeful or happy ending; hurt comfort; and romance. I hope this suits.
Many thanks to
aithine for the beta.
Summary: Journeys start with a single step.
-o-
Lester's office is large and airy but it’s still too small to contain the man, especially not when Lester is in full flow. Connor can’t quite make out the words but he doesn’t need to. The cadences of Lester’s voice are familiar: the pauses and the breaths; the beats and the rhythms; the sarcastic twist and bite underneath. What Lester’s actually saying doesn’t matter.
What matters is the way that the glass walls seem to be closing in on him.
Connor concentrates on breathing, just breathing. It’s not as easy as it sounds; it’s not just Lester’s voice that’s burying him, piling the words on, one by one, until they weigh him down. There’s a gap to his right, where Danny should be sitting. Where Jenny should be sitting, or Nick, or Stephen.
Instead, there’s just an empty space. Just him, and he’s not enough for this.
Not for anything.
Abby’s on the far side of the room, a world and more away. She's staring down at the floor and her arms are folded across her chest, shutting everything out, shutting Connor out, too.
Connor doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t need to. He can close his eyes at any time and see her clearly: the way her hair has grown out a little now so that it once again falls into her face; the way she bites her lip when she’s thinking. The way she glares at him when he doesn’t.
He’s stopped looking. It’s easier that way. Everything is easier when you stop paying attention.
Maybe that’s why it takes a second for the silence to register.
Lester’s paused, mid-diatribe, and is looking at him in way that makes everything in Connor's chest just twist and tighten further. He can't breathe. He really can't breathe.
Lester's eyes are sharp and shrewd and they look right through him. Lester huffs and he puffs...
And all of Connor's walls come tumbling down.
There's a sharp screeching sound and, again, it takes a second for his brain to catch up and realise that it's the chair moving across the floor, shoved back as he stumbles to his feet.
“I'm sorry," he says and his hands are shaking. “I'm sorry," and Lester's eyes are narrowed, still looking right through him but at what when there’s nothing to see, Connor doesn't know. The only thing he does know is: “I can't do this any more."
-o-
Out in the main body of the ARC it's too bright, and Connor stops, shaking. Everything swirls and shivers around him. When he leans on the railing, all he can see are the workstations down below that Cutter wanted put in, the ones that Connor saw rebuilt after...
The detector’s there, too. Cutter's concept, Connor's execution and...
He can't do this any more. Not on his own.
-o-
It's dark when he comes back to himself, blinking and disorientated, still trying to breathe and sucking in air. It tastes of diesel in the back of his throat and his hands hurt. Long moments pass as he stares at them numbly, wondering why. There's no blood, not this time. Not yet.
He’s still shaking.
There's a vague memory tugging at him, sliding in through the gaps, and he rubs his hands together, feeling the palms prickle where he struck the doors open, door after door after door. It's a blur of white walls and blank faces that watched him and then turned away. There was no reason for anyone at the ARC to be concerned. Nothing was chasing him, after all.
Nothing but the past, and the future.
And the future...
He can't breathe. He can't...
“Connor...?"
He jumps. He can’t help it, and the feeling of his heart pounding in his chest isn’t a pleasant one, all stutter, stutter, stutter, mixed up in trying to breathe. Abby moves into the flickering light, and it glints on her hair, turning it white.
“Are you okay?"
He’s got no answer to that, and it’s such a stupid question anyway when Abby doesn’t normally ask stupid questions, just like Abby doesn’t ask questions she doesn’t want to hear the answer to. He can only look at her and Abby nods to herself, like he had said something but it was something only she could hear.
“Do you want me to drive you home?"
Her voice is calm and she takes a step closer. Connor takes a step back. He doesn’t even think about it - it just happens like things always happen. She just stops and looks at him, and that thing inside him twists and tightens and his breath catches, and...
“Don’t..."
Her eyes widen but that’s all, and the hand she’s stretched out towards him drops and hangs at her side, useless and empty.
“Okay," she says and her voice wavers slightly. “Okay," and she nods, quick and jerky movements that he watches numbly. Her eyes shine in the dark and it’s easier to look away. It’s always easier to look away. “Do you know where you want to go?"
He’s god knows how many feet underneath the earth, in a place that smells like diesel and death and he’s cold, so cold he’s shivering, tremors running through his body.
His voice wavers when he finally answers her, dredging the word up from somewhere deep inside.
“Home."
It comes out sounding like a question.
-o-
Abby drives.
Abby always drives when it’s just the two of them. There’s a twisted kind of logic in that, but thinking about it hurts.
-o-
It’s already dark when she pulls up outside their - her - flat. A whole day’s gone by while he’s been buried underground, time slipping away through his fingers like everything else. He stares down at his hands, like they’ll tell him why, but there’s no answer there.
They’re still clean. They’re still shaking.
“Connor...?" Abby twists in her seat to look at him, car keys dangling from her fingers.
His voice has slipped away, too.
“Are you okay?"
Stupid questions, stupid questions, stupid questions. Even Abby seems to realise it; she doesn’t wait long for an answer.
“Are you coming in?"
It’s another question and it stretches out between them, the silence shivering in the air as loud as any sound. Abby huffs slightly; when he hears it he closes his eyes, shutting everything out.
He’s so cold, and he curls up, the side of his head pressed against the car window and that’s cold, too, a sharp pain against his skin.
“Okay." And Abby’s voice shakes like she’s cold, too. “Connor... I need to know... I need to know what you want to do."
He gropes for it, but everything’s sunk down to the bottom where it’s still and quiet and the currents drag him down.
“Connor...?"
Abby’s voice cracks and he stares out of the window to where the street lamps glimmer, pools of light in the darkness.
“I want..." He closes his eyes but the lights still glow, ghost images on his retinas. “I want to go home."
There’s a soft sigh this time, and cool fingers brush over the back of his hand. “Okay," she whispers, as though it’s an answer. The word is as soft as a breath, and as meaningless. “Okay. I’ll..." Her fingers pause then pull away. “I’ll be right back, okay? I won’t be long.
“I promise."
When he opens his eyes again, she’s gone.
-o-
Abby keeps her word. It's one of the things he...
He leans against the window again, feeling her small car shake around him as the boot slams shut. It settles again when she climbs back into the driver's seat.
He doesn't look at her.
“So..." Her voice is high, brittle. “Where are heading?"
He doesn't have an answer for her and eventually she pulls away from the kerb anyway.
-o-
They hit the motorway; the lights from the other cars heading towards London stream past them, flashing in the night, shining into his eyes. Abby's clutching the steering wheel, her fingers tight and pale, and she stares ahead, focused on the road.
He stares out the side window, out to where it's dark and the only things flashing past are the road signs. The signs all read “The North" as though it's a concrete destination, somewhere to aim for.
Maybe it is.
He closes his eyes, feeling the humming of the engine vibrate through the car, the pitch of it rising when Abby accelerates to overtake, falling again when she slows and pulls in.
After a while, he falls sleeps.
He doesn't wake until they stop.
-o-
Over the years, Connor has realised that service stations are pretty much identikit, like they have three or four templates that more or less work, and they stick to them.
This one has a bridge, crossing over the motorway, and the café is on the other side from the car park. Cars stream past underneath them, nothing put rippling ribbons of light.
They could be anywhere: north, south, the surface of the moon.
They grab a seat by the window. The tea tastes the same as it does anywhere like this - vaguely like dishwater, weak and colourless, no matter how long they leave it to brew in the metal pots.
The pot leaks when he pours it out. They always do, but even though it's his tea it's Abby who mops it up, her face creased with irritation and tiredness.
He's not sure which he's the cause of. Maybe neither, maybe both.
Abby wipes her hands over her face, dragging her cheeks down until, for a second, she looks old underneath the harsh, fluorescent lights. “Where are we heading?" she asks him finally, and her voice is as drawn as her face. “You said home, Connor, and I don't..." She trails off, the irritation clear in her voice, and rubs at her eyes again. This time when she starts, the irritation is better hidden.
Connor hears it anyway.
“I guessed you meant your parents house, right?" It's gentle now, her tone, and he wonders how he looks, what she sees in his face to get her talking like that to him. She's always been more patient with animals when they're lost, when they're scared, or when they're hurting. “So where exactly do they live?"
He thinks of his mother, how she always looks as tired as Abby does now, how much him coming home like this will disappoint her, and something inside clenches again, so tightly that his stomach hurts. He pushes the tea away and stares back out the window, but there's nothing out there for him.
“Where are we?" he asks finally, and if his voice doesn't shake it's only because it comes out thready and quiet instead.
She looks at him for a long, still moment. “Somewhere near Liverpool, I think," she says. “Where do they live, Connor?"
“Lancashire," he says, and her expression droops as she works out the miles to go in her head. “I don’t... We don’t have to..."
He trails off as she looks at him, her gaze another weight he can’t bear. He can’t look back - it only hurts more. It’s easier to stare out of the window instead, watching her pale reflection wavering out there in the darkness. When he doesn't say anything else she starts drawing aimless lines in the wetness on the table.
His tea goes cold.
-o-
Abby has always been the practical one and she's practical now. She books them a room at the Travel Inn, one with twin beds. She doesn't ask his opinion about it, but he doesn't really have one; just like the service station, all of these rooms look the same to him. Same style of quilt, same pictures on the wall, same hairdryer and broken TV.
Abby dumps her bag on one bed, the one closest to the door, leaving him with the one by the window. Maybe it's a pointed little comment about how he's spent the journey looking anywhere but at her. Maybe it's because she thinks he'll run.
It's a small room. Abby's small, too - sometimes he forgets that - but she fills the space. She moves around him, almost on autopilot except for the sudden starts and stops when she realises how close they are.
They've been sharing a space, on and off, for almost three years but it's never been this space, and Abby's always been good at keeping distance between them. Those flustered jerks of hers tell him that the rhythm's off between them, as out of sync as the rest of his life. He's just getting in her way.
In the end, he lets her get on with it. He sits on the bed and waits for the world to stop ending.
He thinks he may have to wait a while.
-o-
It's not weird sleeping in the same space as Abby. It should be, but they have the Cretaceous to thank for that. He's used to the sound of her breathing, soft and deep when she's asleep, like she managed in those few stolen moments when she managed to damp down the fear long enough.
He's more used to the sound of her not sleeping and she's not sleeping now. But then, neither is he.
“Connor?"
Her voice comes out of the darkness, quiet and afraid, and he's used to that, too. They've spent so long being afraid recently that he's forgotten how to be anything else. But even now, even with his heart a heavy rock in his chest and exhaustion dragging him down, he can't shut out her fear any more than he can shut out his own.
He closes his eyes, but it doesn't help; all it does is make that band of pain around his forehead tighten further until bright lights flash across the inside of his closed lids, like cars streaming past. In the end, he does what he always does when Abby wants something from him. He gives in.
The room is dark but there's a strip of light coming through a gap in the curtain from the lights outside. It's enough to see her when he rolls over, to see her face, which is pale and set. Maybe it's the way that the light falls on her that highlights the shadows under her eyes, in the hollow of her delicate temple, but she looks washed out, ethereal, like she's not really there, like neither of them are.
“Are you okay?" she whispers in the dark. She looks old but she sounds young, like she sounded the first time he ever met her, back when all of this seemed like a great adventure.
He was so fucking stupid then, and he's too slow and stupid to find an answer for her now. Instead he says what he's been thinking, that constant refrain that's been running through his head for days, for weeks: “There's just the two of us now."
She doesn't say anything, but she dips her head and a shadow passes over her face. He waits but she's still silent so he closes his eyes again and rolls away from her to face the window, pulling the covers over his shoulder and up to his chin.
It's not just the cold he's keeping out.
-o-
He doesn't sleep well; he doesn't think either of them does. The shadows under Abby's eyes are even more marked in daylight, and he looks away guiltily, fiddling with the strings of his duffle rather than see them. “Thank you," he says and it comes out stilted. When she just looks at him he adds, flustered, “For packing my bag."
Something shifts in her face, under the surface, settling her expression into sparse lines. Something hard and brittle, like grief.
“It didn't take long," she says, her eyes dark and deep. She shrugs her shoulders but she doesn't look away. Not this time. “You didn't unpack after you moved back in."
-o-
His tea's gone cold again. He stares down into his cup, dreading what's coming next.
Abby stops pretending to eat her breakfast by pushing the scrambled eggs around her plate. She sighs and puts her fork down, pushing her hair back from her face. It needs a wash. He probably needs a shave, but this whole... thing is far from domestic.
“Are you ready to go?" she asks, and her eyes are still shadowed. He curls his fingers around the handle of his mug and watches her expression tighten, just a little. Just enough to let him know she realises he's stalling.
He can't think of anything to say. In the end, he nods, but Abby's not stupid and if she usually ignores the things she doesn't want to see, well, she's not ignoring this.
“Where are we going?" she pushes, and the irritation is creeping back into her voice. “Come on, Connor. I need an address."
He freezes but she's still there, across the table from him, watching. “I... I can't..."
He can't go home. He's not even sure where 'home' is any more. “Abby, I just can't. I'm sorry..." She's just staring at him blankly, like he's speaking in tongues and maybe he is. “Maybe we should just go back..." He stutters the words out, tumbling one after another, and he's so bloody pathetic he wouldn't blame her if she stranded him right here, left him in the middle of the motorway, miles from anywhere.
For a second - a split second - he thinks she might. Her face freezes. “Connor..." she says and he flinches. She sighs again as he looks anywhere but at her, his face burning with embarrassment and shame.
“Okay," she says and then she repeats it, more firmly this time. “Okay," and her chair scrapes against the floor as she gets to her feet, the sound making him flinch again. She hesitates for a moment, her lips parted as though she's about to say something, but then they clench tightly shut again, giving her a pinched look. The look in her eyes is shuttered, unreadable, but then he's no good at reading Abby's expression at the best of times.
Then she turns and walks away.
He watches her go, everything twisted up and tight inside him. He can't think, can't make any plans, can't do anything but think, beyond even misery, now there's just one.
He watches her go, turn the corner, disappear.
Five seconds, ten, fifteen while he's frozen, and then, then she comes back. He's too numb to even feel relieved.
She's clutching something, several somethings, and she lets go. They flutter to the table, a flurry of different colours, shining in the dim autumn light. He stares down at them, uncomprehending, as Abby sits across from him again.
“Where do you want to go?" she asks, and her voice is unusually gentle for her. “Connor?" He's still staring at the litter of leaflets spread across the table. She stirs them with her hand, bold and bright headlines yelling up at him, fun this and entertaining that and educational the other.
He finally looks up at her. He has no idea what he looks like but she gives him a smile like a wince, her eyes darting away from him before her gaze comes back.
She's scared and he doesn't understand why, not here. It's not the fear of things in the dark.
“What?"
His voice is still thin and thready and he winces to hear it, catching the tell tale end of a flinch of her own when he looks back at her. But her voice is calm when she answers him, as though it's the most normal thing in the world.
“I told Lester we were taking some time off." She shrugs but it doesn't sit on her easily. Her face is still drawn, creased with lines and underneath everything else her eyes are still scared. “So officially, we're on holiday.
“Where do you want to go?"
He just looks at her, his mind blank and his fingers still cemented to the handle of his mug. In the end, she picks one seemingly at random.
That's how they end up in Wales.
-o-
They don't make plans, not really, even though Abby's the kind of person who always makes a shopping list and tends to stick to it, not throw whatever she likes into the trolley. That's Connor, but Connor isn't doing much of anything.
The world's even more twisted up than he thought, if Abby's becoming him, someone with no common sense, all stupid impulse. Each day, wherever they're staying, she finds one of those stands with 'local information' in them and presents them to him, fanned out like a bouquet. It becomes a constant refrain: “Where do you want to go today?" He never has an answer for her - the choice dazzles him and the need to make a decision freezes him, both at the same time. So it falls to Abby - it always falls to Abby - to make the decisions for the both of them.
He knows it's not fair of him but it's not because he doesn't care. It's just that he can't care. There's nothing left of him to care. So Abby borrows his iPhone and googles Travel Inns, tracks down Tourist Information websites, asks him where they're going next.
Looks haunted when he doesn't say anything. But she keeps going, and she keeps him going as well.
“Why?" he asks her, and he can see the moment when she decides not to pretend she doesn't understand.
She looks at him for a long, steady moment and then she says, simply, “Because now there's just the two of us."
-o-
“Can I ask you something?" she asks on their way to somewhere. Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel and he waits, saying nothing until she glances at him sideways, her expression anxious. It takes a second for him to realise she's waiting for something, some acknowledgement from him that he'd heard, and then he nods.
She still hesitates, her fingers clutching at the wheel convulsively, a rhythm of flex and release that he watches silently.
“Why... why didn't you unpack?" she asks, and he should have seen this one coming but he never does, not with Abby. “I mean..." She trails off and the meaning is lost to him.
He stares out of the windscreen, watching the motorway roll back before them.
“Is it... I know I haven't been fair, Connor. I mean... I know that sometimes I... maybe I blow hot and cold, a little, and I know..."
She knows more than he does, but she trails off and her knuckles are still white on the wheel. Her voice is shivering, like she's cold and lost and alone, even with him sitting there. It should hurt more than it does.
“Is it because...?"
The miles stretch out before them, roll out behind, and he doesn't look at her, not even when he says, “Not everything is about you, Abby."
She doesn't call him on his lie, but that night, for the first time, she books them two separate rooms.
-o-
They drift back into England, heading South. He thinks of rivers, and the way they meander, taking the path of least resistance. Maybe that's what they're doing, cutting through the softest rocks and avoiding those that are too big to be moved, too hard to be worn away by their efforts.
But even with the way that they're wandering, there's a theme to the places they wash up. He's not sure whether Abby's spotted it or not, but the places they visit are old, historical. From Bronze Age copper mines to Viking settlements and everything in between. Markers of a past that he now knows is fluid and ever changing. Like the future. Like their lives.
It's like after three years of dealing with anomalies, they can't let go of visiting the past, not entirely. He's just not sure what they're looking for.
Today is Bath and the Roman Baths, and it's quiet. They aren't the only visitors but it feels like it as they wander through the rooms, both the remnants left behind and those built since.
The water is deep and green; the light bounces back from it to ripple along the terrace. Cool waves wash along the vaulted ceiling, like they're underwater, fathoms down.
Abby is silent, her expression blank, just as cool, just as mysterious as the ancient spring, and he is so far out of his depth. It's been two days and he finally says, “Sorry," the word sliding out and taking him by surprise. Maybe it's the silence that finally gets to him, or Abby's distant face.
She looks at him, her bag slung over one shoulder, and her face tilts up into the sun. Then she nods, once, like it's forgotten.
He can't forget. Not everything is that easy.
-o-
He sleeps a lot, long patches in the car where the miles rolling past lull him down into unconsciousness, or in the hotels each night, with Abby snoring softly in the other bed. Even when he's not asleep he doesn't feel awake. It's like everything is fuzzy, the world out of focus, and thinking, planning, feeling is more effort than his body is capable of.
He doesn't mind the not feeling part. It's so much better to be numb.
Even without fighting with Abby, the silences stretch between them. They're empty now, not filled with everything neither of them has ever had the nerve to say, or the things that have been said and not heard or ignored.
Everything's empty and that's better.
At least until the dreams start again.
-o-
The nightmares aren't new, and it's not like he's the only one to have them. More than once, in the Cretaceous, he'd woken to Abby twitching and whimpering softly beside him in her sleep. He'd probably woken her up more than once the same way.
This time he wakes up screaming, tangled up in his sheets, twisting and turning to get free with his heart pounding in his chest and he can't breathe, he can't breathe.
He pushes the sheets off, his hands and body slippery with fear sweat and Abby is there, holding onto him tightly even though he fights her off, panic stricken. It's no use; she's always been stronger than he is in all of the ways that matter. He gives in, shaking so hard that his teeth chatter but she still doesn't let go. Instead her fingers dig into the side of his neck, her palm resting warmly against the nape of his neck where the hairs are still prickling. She's whispering to him, a constant litany of reassurance that he doesn't hear. The sound of her voice simply washes over him and if it can't wash everything else away that's not her fault.
Not this time.
The panic finally ebbs away but it leaves all the flotsam and jetsam of his dreams behind. He's cold and Abby's warmth is the only thing anchoring him; he can't help but lean into it. Her fingers loosen, just slightly, so that they curl around his neck rather than dig into it. It's only an illusion of safety but he's reached the point where he'll take whatever he can get and he breathes her in.
There's a banging on the door, sudden and sharp in the silence, and he jerks. Abby's fingernails scratch his skin and the pain is sudden and sharp, too.
It startles the both of them; Abby's breathing fast, her face turned towards the door. It's Abby who gets up and answers it, Abby who deals with the night manager, explaining that nothing's wrong. Nothing at all is wrong.
Nothing except him.
-o-
They stop staying in Travel Inns and the like after that, where the rooms are packed in tightly and the walls are thin. Abby takes to visiting Tourist Information offices each time they stop, poring through their books, looking for bed and breakfasts or small, family run hotels off the beaten track, the ones that won't be busy at this time of year. He has no idea if she talks to the owners or not when they check in, and if she does what she says, but the next time he wakes up screaming, nobody comes.
-o-
As the days pass and he sleeps less, he no longer feels quite real. He's restless, unable to settle, and everything around him starts to feel worn, like the real world is underneath and coming through the thinner patches.
Telling himself he's being stupid doesn't help - he knows too damned well what can come through when reality cracks.
He doesn't share any of this with Abby but she can't miss his distraction, not when she has to say things three times or he wanders through places without looking at anything.
If she does notice, she doesn't say anything, but the scenery begins to change.
-o-
They hit the coast and the seagulls call overhead in the blustery autumn wind. He watches them rise and fall on the currents, always searching for something.
He doesn't feel kinship, not this time. He knows what they evolved from.
The sand crunches beneath his feet as he walks, listening to the sound of the surf as it swishes up the shore. The whole beach smells faintly of rotting seaweed, washed up by the storms, and the sky is steel grey and threatening, promising more of the same.
He stares out over the sea, close enough to the water's edge to feel the spray on his face, whipped up by the gusts that swirl over the shoreline, picking up flurries of sand and making them dance.
He's alone but for a couple walking their dogs at the other end of the beach, the two dogs - one dark and one light - chasing each other in and out of the waves. Their barks carry on the wind towards him but he doesn't smile.
He watches them for a while and then turns and heads back the way he came, superstitiously walking over the tracks he made on the way down and obliterating them.
Abby is sitting in the dunes by the car park, waiting for him, her arms folded around her knees. She waits until he reaches her and then holds out her hand for him to pull her to her feet.
Her fingers are cold and they curl around his for a moment. He lets them go and shoves his hands back into his pockets.
“Okay?" she asks and he shrugs. Maybe that's progress of sorts, that he doesn't lie to her any more, not about that.
She gives him a long, steady look, her gaze a cool weight, as cool as her fingers. “Where do you want to go today?" she asks and he shrugs again, staring out over the beach. He hears her sigh and ignores it.
“Okay," she says again but it's carried away by the wind.
-o-
The restlessness grows, day by day, but Abby tunes it out. It's weird how that acts like a sore tooth, something he has to keep poking at just to see if it still hurts, her ignoring him. Worse, her tolerating him and his moods.
But he wouldn't be him if there wasn't a point where he stopped, some line he won't cross with her. He's always been too eager to keep her happy and keep things peaceful, and it's a hard habit to break.
So they drift, each day, and if she's watching him, judging his moods, then he's watching her back.
-o-
The dreams are getting worse and with each day that his sleep slips away, so does his temper. There's no one to take it out on but Abby and Abby takes it.
That's so unlike Abby that he starts to wonder whether or not the world has changed again and he's the only one who's noticed. Abby can be kind and Abby can be patient and Abby can be calm but with him there's always been a kind of brisk and brusque almost affection, like he's a puppy and if she isn't stern enough he'll climb up onto the couch or piss on the floor.
Now she treats him like he's made of glass and he'll shatter. There's fear in her eyes sometimes when she looks at him, and it's not fear of him.
He's afraid that the world has changed and he's the only one who's noticed.
He's afraid of going to sleep.
-o-
This time when he dreams and wakes, screaming, and Abby is there, telling him it's okay, something inside him is wound so tightly that it snaps.
“It's not fucking okay," he snarls and pushes her off. This time she lets him, sitting back on her heels on the bed, her hair tousled and her eyes wide. The strap of her top has slipped from her shoulder down her arm and he stares at the bare patch of skin. She's switched the table lamp on and her freckles are smudges in the dim light, washed out.
“Okay," she says and then she flinches, a little grimace of nervousness as she pushes her hair out of her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?" and her voice is as colourless as everything else in the room.
“Do I want to talk about it?" he mocks and her eyes narrow, the first sign of temper she's shown in days. But it doesn't take long for her expression to smooth out again, go back to that pale, faintly worried mask she wears day in and day out now. “What do you want to hear, Abby? Do you want to know what I dream about night after night? Being chased, being eaten?"
His voice rises with each word but her expression doesn't change. Instead she shifts position, now sitting with her legs crossed, settling in for the long haul.
He hates her a little for that.
“Okay," she says again and he's starting to hate that word, too. “Go on."
Her voice is too gentle and he looks away, down at his hands which are clean, not covered in blood and gore, not like he'd dreamed. In his dreams everything is crystal clear, vivid and real, more real than this. The sights, the sounds, the smells even, down to the way that steam rises from fresh, hot blood and the scent of it hits the back of his throat, metallic and awful.
“Something ate my heart," he whispers and his voice shakes.
“Something...?" She moves, leaning closer to him, and he has to fight the impulse not to move back and put some space between them. “Connor?"
He looks at her then, just looks at her and sees it dawning in her eyes.
“Me?"
It's a soft breath but it rips apart everything, all of the flimsy barricades he's put up. The laugh that comes out is ugly, hurtful. “Very Freudian, right?"
She flinches and now the shame hits but worse than that is the small, vicious part of him that likes hurting her, the little voice that says how do you like it?
He looks away. This is Abby, and he's never wanted to hurt her, except for those times when he did. But this is Abby, and she's always been stronger than him. She rallies while he's still reeling. Her eyes are shocked, wide with pain, pain he's inflicted, but:
“I thought this wasn't about me."
-o-
It goes on the list of things they don't talk about. Ever.
If he was stronger, he'd be less relieved.
-o-
“I spoke to Lester."
He waits for the punchline, watching as Abby indicates and waits for the traffic to let her through.
In the end, in the face of her silence, he says, “Oh?" She darts a quick look in his direction, like that's what she's been waiting for, just a simple acknowledgement, some interest maybe.
He thinks he's hiding how he feels until she looks back again, for longer this time.
“That was the deal," she says quietly, conversationally. “We check in every day so he knows we haven't been kidnapped by foreign superpowers."
It's the first he's heard of it and he wonders how she's been making the calls. Waiting until he's asleep? Until he's in the bathroom?
He shifts in his seat and she darts him another quick look, one that comes along with a nervous little twitch of a smile.
It doesn't reach her eyes. It never does these days.
He shifts again. “And?" he asks and it's as neutral as he can get. Maybe it's not neutral enough; she sends him another look but there's no smile this time.
“He wanted to know how you were doing."
He winds the window down an inch and the air that blows into the car is damp, smelling of diesel and autumn leaves.
“And?" he asks again.
She doesn't answer for a moment, concentrating on the road as an excuse to pause, to think. Or maybe she just is that conscientious a driver and he hasn't noticed until now.
“I told him we probably wouldn't be back for a while."
He shifts again, something burning in the back of his throat, behind his eyes.
“We?"
The look she gives him this time is opaque, unreadable. “That was the deal, Connor," she says gently. “Both of us go back or neither of us do."
He winds the window up again; the fumes from the road are choking him.
“Just the two of us left, right?" The sound of the road rolling under the wheels almost drowns him out but Abby hears him, maybe because she's started listening.
She hums a little in agreement, her eyes focused on the road ahead. “More like a package deal," she says.
His eyes burn but he doesn't cry, not this time.
-o-
( Prelude in C Minor - Part Two )
Author: alyse
Recipient:
dominique012
Prompt: Prompt 2: island, darkness, tea, happy.
Pairing: Abby/Connor
Rating: PG13
Length: ~13,000 words
Warnings: Angst
Disclaimer: I do not own Primeval. Impossible Pictures do.
Author's Notes: For
dominique012 who wanted Abby/Connor; angst with a hopeful or happy ending; hurt comfort; and romance. I hope this suits.
Many thanks to
aithine for the beta.
Summary: Journeys start with a single step.
-o-
Lester's office is large and airy but it’s still too small to contain the man, especially not when Lester is in full flow. Connor can’t quite make out the words but he doesn’t need to. The cadences of Lester’s voice are familiar: the pauses and the breaths; the beats and the rhythms; the sarcastic twist and bite underneath. What Lester’s actually saying doesn’t matter.
What matters is the way that the glass walls seem to be closing in on him.
Connor concentrates on breathing, just breathing. It’s not as easy as it sounds; it’s not just Lester’s voice that’s burying him, piling the words on, one by one, until they weigh him down. There’s a gap to his right, where Danny should be sitting. Where Jenny should be sitting, or Nick, or Stephen.
Instead, there’s just an empty space. Just him, and he’s not enough for this.
Not for anything.
Abby’s on the far side of the room, a world and more away. She's staring down at the floor and her arms are folded across her chest, shutting everything out, shutting Connor out, too.
Connor doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t need to. He can close his eyes at any time and see her clearly: the way her hair has grown out a little now so that it once again falls into her face; the way she bites her lip when she’s thinking. The way she glares at him when he doesn’t.
He’s stopped looking. It’s easier that way. Everything is easier when you stop paying attention.
Maybe that’s why it takes a second for the silence to register.
Lester’s paused, mid-diatribe, and is looking at him in way that makes everything in Connor's chest just twist and tighten further. He can't breathe. He really can't breathe.
Lester's eyes are sharp and shrewd and they look right through him. Lester huffs and he puffs...
And all of Connor's walls come tumbling down.
There's a sharp screeching sound and, again, it takes a second for his brain to catch up and realise that it's the chair moving across the floor, shoved back as he stumbles to his feet.
“I'm sorry," he says and his hands are shaking. “I'm sorry," and Lester's eyes are narrowed, still looking right through him but at what when there’s nothing to see, Connor doesn't know. The only thing he does know is: “I can't do this any more."
-o-
Out in the main body of the ARC it's too bright, and Connor stops, shaking. Everything swirls and shivers around him. When he leans on the railing, all he can see are the workstations down below that Cutter wanted put in, the ones that Connor saw rebuilt after...
The detector’s there, too. Cutter's concept, Connor's execution and...
He can't do this any more. Not on his own.
-o-
It's dark when he comes back to himself, blinking and disorientated, still trying to breathe and sucking in air. It tastes of diesel in the back of his throat and his hands hurt. Long moments pass as he stares at them numbly, wondering why. There's no blood, not this time. Not yet.
He’s still shaking.
There's a vague memory tugging at him, sliding in through the gaps, and he rubs his hands together, feeling the palms prickle where he struck the doors open, door after door after door. It's a blur of white walls and blank faces that watched him and then turned away. There was no reason for anyone at the ARC to be concerned. Nothing was chasing him, after all.
Nothing but the past, and the future.
And the future...
He can't breathe. He can't...
“Connor...?"
He jumps. He can’t help it, and the feeling of his heart pounding in his chest isn’t a pleasant one, all stutter, stutter, stutter, mixed up in trying to breathe. Abby moves into the flickering light, and it glints on her hair, turning it white.
“Are you okay?"
He’s got no answer to that, and it’s such a stupid question anyway when Abby doesn’t normally ask stupid questions, just like Abby doesn’t ask questions she doesn’t want to hear the answer to. He can only look at her and Abby nods to herself, like he had said something but it was something only she could hear.
“Do you want me to drive you home?"
Her voice is calm and she takes a step closer. Connor takes a step back. He doesn’t even think about it - it just happens like things always happen. She just stops and looks at him, and that thing inside him twists and tightens and his breath catches, and...
“Don’t..."
Her eyes widen but that’s all, and the hand she’s stretched out towards him drops and hangs at her side, useless and empty.
“Okay," she says and her voice wavers slightly. “Okay," and she nods, quick and jerky movements that he watches numbly. Her eyes shine in the dark and it’s easier to look away. It’s always easier to look away. “Do you know where you want to go?"
He’s god knows how many feet underneath the earth, in a place that smells like diesel and death and he’s cold, so cold he’s shivering, tremors running through his body.
His voice wavers when he finally answers her, dredging the word up from somewhere deep inside.
“Home."
It comes out sounding like a question.
-o-
Abby drives.
Abby always drives when it’s just the two of them. There’s a twisted kind of logic in that, but thinking about it hurts.
-o-
It’s already dark when she pulls up outside their - her - flat. A whole day’s gone by while he’s been buried underground, time slipping away through his fingers like everything else. He stares down at his hands, like they’ll tell him why, but there’s no answer there.
They’re still clean. They’re still shaking.
“Connor...?" Abby twists in her seat to look at him, car keys dangling from her fingers.
His voice has slipped away, too.
“Are you okay?"
Stupid questions, stupid questions, stupid questions. Even Abby seems to realise it; she doesn’t wait long for an answer.
“Are you coming in?"
It’s another question and it stretches out between them, the silence shivering in the air as loud as any sound. Abby huffs slightly; when he hears it he closes his eyes, shutting everything out.
He’s so cold, and he curls up, the side of his head pressed against the car window and that’s cold, too, a sharp pain against his skin.
“Okay." And Abby’s voice shakes like she’s cold, too. “Connor... I need to know... I need to know what you want to do."
He gropes for it, but everything’s sunk down to the bottom where it’s still and quiet and the currents drag him down.
“Connor...?"
Abby’s voice cracks and he stares out of the window to where the street lamps glimmer, pools of light in the darkness.
“I want..." He closes his eyes but the lights still glow, ghost images on his retinas. “I want to go home."
There’s a soft sigh this time, and cool fingers brush over the back of his hand. “Okay," she whispers, as though it’s an answer. The word is as soft as a breath, and as meaningless. “Okay. I’ll..." Her fingers pause then pull away. “I’ll be right back, okay? I won’t be long.
“I promise."
When he opens his eyes again, she’s gone.
-o-
Abby keeps her word. It's one of the things he...
He leans against the window again, feeling her small car shake around him as the boot slams shut. It settles again when she climbs back into the driver's seat.
He doesn't look at her.
“So..." Her voice is high, brittle. “Where are heading?"
He doesn't have an answer for her and eventually she pulls away from the kerb anyway.
-o-
They hit the motorway; the lights from the other cars heading towards London stream past them, flashing in the night, shining into his eyes. Abby's clutching the steering wheel, her fingers tight and pale, and she stares ahead, focused on the road.
He stares out the side window, out to where it's dark and the only things flashing past are the road signs. The signs all read “The North" as though it's a concrete destination, somewhere to aim for.
Maybe it is.
He closes his eyes, feeling the humming of the engine vibrate through the car, the pitch of it rising when Abby accelerates to overtake, falling again when she slows and pulls in.
After a while, he falls sleeps.
He doesn't wake until they stop.
-o-
Over the years, Connor has realised that service stations are pretty much identikit, like they have three or four templates that more or less work, and they stick to them.
This one has a bridge, crossing over the motorway, and the café is on the other side from the car park. Cars stream past underneath them, nothing put rippling ribbons of light.
They could be anywhere: north, south, the surface of the moon.
They grab a seat by the window. The tea tastes the same as it does anywhere like this - vaguely like dishwater, weak and colourless, no matter how long they leave it to brew in the metal pots.
The pot leaks when he pours it out. They always do, but even though it's his tea it's Abby who mops it up, her face creased with irritation and tiredness.
He's not sure which he's the cause of. Maybe neither, maybe both.
Abby wipes her hands over her face, dragging her cheeks down until, for a second, she looks old underneath the harsh, fluorescent lights. “Where are we heading?" she asks him finally, and her voice is as drawn as her face. “You said home, Connor, and I don't..." She trails off, the irritation clear in her voice, and rubs at her eyes again. This time when she starts, the irritation is better hidden.
Connor hears it anyway.
“I guessed you meant your parents house, right?" It's gentle now, her tone, and he wonders how he looks, what she sees in his face to get her talking like that to him. She's always been more patient with animals when they're lost, when they're scared, or when they're hurting. “So where exactly do they live?"
He thinks of his mother, how she always looks as tired as Abby does now, how much him coming home like this will disappoint her, and something inside clenches again, so tightly that his stomach hurts. He pushes the tea away and stares back out the window, but there's nothing out there for him.
“Where are we?" he asks finally, and if his voice doesn't shake it's only because it comes out thready and quiet instead.
She looks at him for a long, still moment. “Somewhere near Liverpool, I think," she says. “Where do they live, Connor?"
“Lancashire," he says, and her expression droops as she works out the miles to go in her head. “I don’t... We don’t have to..."
He trails off as she looks at him, her gaze another weight he can’t bear. He can’t look back - it only hurts more. It’s easier to stare out of the window instead, watching her pale reflection wavering out there in the darkness. When he doesn't say anything else she starts drawing aimless lines in the wetness on the table.
His tea goes cold.
-o-
Abby has always been the practical one and she's practical now. She books them a room at the Travel Inn, one with twin beds. She doesn't ask his opinion about it, but he doesn't really have one; just like the service station, all of these rooms look the same to him. Same style of quilt, same pictures on the wall, same hairdryer and broken TV.
Abby dumps her bag on one bed, the one closest to the door, leaving him with the one by the window. Maybe it's a pointed little comment about how he's spent the journey looking anywhere but at her. Maybe it's because she thinks he'll run.
It's a small room. Abby's small, too - sometimes he forgets that - but she fills the space. She moves around him, almost on autopilot except for the sudden starts and stops when she realises how close they are.
They've been sharing a space, on and off, for almost three years but it's never been this space, and Abby's always been good at keeping distance between them. Those flustered jerks of hers tell him that the rhythm's off between them, as out of sync as the rest of his life. He's just getting in her way.
In the end, he lets her get on with it. He sits on the bed and waits for the world to stop ending.
He thinks he may have to wait a while.
-o-
It's not weird sleeping in the same space as Abby. It should be, but they have the Cretaceous to thank for that. He's used to the sound of her breathing, soft and deep when she's asleep, like she managed in those few stolen moments when she managed to damp down the fear long enough.
He's more used to the sound of her not sleeping and she's not sleeping now. But then, neither is he.
“Connor?"
Her voice comes out of the darkness, quiet and afraid, and he's used to that, too. They've spent so long being afraid recently that he's forgotten how to be anything else. But even now, even with his heart a heavy rock in his chest and exhaustion dragging him down, he can't shut out her fear any more than he can shut out his own.
He closes his eyes, but it doesn't help; all it does is make that band of pain around his forehead tighten further until bright lights flash across the inside of his closed lids, like cars streaming past. In the end, he does what he always does when Abby wants something from him. He gives in.
The room is dark but there's a strip of light coming through a gap in the curtain from the lights outside. It's enough to see her when he rolls over, to see her face, which is pale and set. Maybe it's the way that the light falls on her that highlights the shadows under her eyes, in the hollow of her delicate temple, but she looks washed out, ethereal, like she's not really there, like neither of them are.
“Are you okay?" she whispers in the dark. She looks old but she sounds young, like she sounded the first time he ever met her, back when all of this seemed like a great adventure.
He was so fucking stupid then, and he's too slow and stupid to find an answer for her now. Instead he says what he's been thinking, that constant refrain that's been running through his head for days, for weeks: “There's just the two of us now."
She doesn't say anything, but she dips her head and a shadow passes over her face. He waits but she's still silent so he closes his eyes again and rolls away from her to face the window, pulling the covers over his shoulder and up to his chin.
It's not just the cold he's keeping out.
-o-
He doesn't sleep well; he doesn't think either of them does. The shadows under Abby's eyes are even more marked in daylight, and he looks away guiltily, fiddling with the strings of his duffle rather than see them. “Thank you," he says and it comes out stilted. When she just looks at him he adds, flustered, “For packing my bag."
Something shifts in her face, under the surface, settling her expression into sparse lines. Something hard and brittle, like grief.
“It didn't take long," she says, her eyes dark and deep. She shrugs her shoulders but she doesn't look away. Not this time. “You didn't unpack after you moved back in."
-o-
His tea's gone cold again. He stares down into his cup, dreading what's coming next.
Abby stops pretending to eat her breakfast by pushing the scrambled eggs around her plate. She sighs and puts her fork down, pushing her hair back from her face. It needs a wash. He probably needs a shave, but this whole... thing is far from domestic.
“Are you ready to go?" she asks, and her eyes are still shadowed. He curls his fingers around the handle of his mug and watches her expression tighten, just a little. Just enough to let him know she realises he's stalling.
He can't think of anything to say. In the end, he nods, but Abby's not stupid and if she usually ignores the things she doesn't want to see, well, she's not ignoring this.
“Where are we going?" she pushes, and the irritation is creeping back into her voice. “Come on, Connor. I need an address."
He freezes but she's still there, across the table from him, watching. “I... I can't..."
He can't go home. He's not even sure where 'home' is any more. “Abby, I just can't. I'm sorry..." She's just staring at him blankly, like he's speaking in tongues and maybe he is. “Maybe we should just go back..." He stutters the words out, tumbling one after another, and he's so bloody pathetic he wouldn't blame her if she stranded him right here, left him in the middle of the motorway, miles from anywhere.
For a second - a split second - he thinks she might. Her face freezes. “Connor..." she says and he flinches. She sighs again as he looks anywhere but at her, his face burning with embarrassment and shame.
“Okay," she says and then she repeats it, more firmly this time. “Okay," and her chair scrapes against the floor as she gets to her feet, the sound making him flinch again. She hesitates for a moment, her lips parted as though she's about to say something, but then they clench tightly shut again, giving her a pinched look. The look in her eyes is shuttered, unreadable, but then he's no good at reading Abby's expression at the best of times.
Then she turns and walks away.
He watches her go, everything twisted up and tight inside him. He can't think, can't make any plans, can't do anything but think, beyond even misery, now there's just one.
He watches her go, turn the corner, disappear.
Five seconds, ten, fifteen while he's frozen, and then, then she comes back. He's too numb to even feel relieved.
She's clutching something, several somethings, and she lets go. They flutter to the table, a flurry of different colours, shining in the dim autumn light. He stares down at them, uncomprehending, as Abby sits across from him again.
“Where do you want to go?" she asks, and her voice is unusually gentle for her. “Connor?" He's still staring at the litter of leaflets spread across the table. She stirs them with her hand, bold and bright headlines yelling up at him, fun this and entertaining that and educational the other.
He finally looks up at her. He has no idea what he looks like but she gives him a smile like a wince, her eyes darting away from him before her gaze comes back.
She's scared and he doesn't understand why, not here. It's not the fear of things in the dark.
“What?"
His voice is still thin and thready and he winces to hear it, catching the tell tale end of a flinch of her own when he looks back at her. But her voice is calm when she answers him, as though it's the most normal thing in the world.
“I told Lester we were taking some time off." She shrugs but it doesn't sit on her easily. Her face is still drawn, creased with lines and underneath everything else her eyes are still scared. “So officially, we're on holiday.
“Where do you want to go?"
He just looks at her, his mind blank and his fingers still cemented to the handle of his mug. In the end, she picks one seemingly at random.
That's how they end up in Wales.
-o-
They don't make plans, not really, even though Abby's the kind of person who always makes a shopping list and tends to stick to it, not throw whatever she likes into the trolley. That's Connor, but Connor isn't doing much of anything.
The world's even more twisted up than he thought, if Abby's becoming him, someone with no common sense, all stupid impulse. Each day, wherever they're staying, she finds one of those stands with 'local information' in them and presents them to him, fanned out like a bouquet. It becomes a constant refrain: “Where do you want to go today?" He never has an answer for her - the choice dazzles him and the need to make a decision freezes him, both at the same time. So it falls to Abby - it always falls to Abby - to make the decisions for the both of them.
He knows it's not fair of him but it's not because he doesn't care. It's just that he can't care. There's nothing left of him to care. So Abby borrows his iPhone and googles Travel Inns, tracks down Tourist Information websites, asks him where they're going next.
Looks haunted when he doesn't say anything. But she keeps going, and she keeps him going as well.
“Why?" he asks her, and he can see the moment when she decides not to pretend she doesn't understand.
She looks at him for a long, steady moment and then she says, simply, “Because now there's just the two of us."
-o-
“Can I ask you something?" she asks on their way to somewhere. Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel and he waits, saying nothing until she glances at him sideways, her expression anxious. It takes a second for him to realise she's waiting for something, some acknowledgement from him that he'd heard, and then he nods.
She still hesitates, her fingers clutching at the wheel convulsively, a rhythm of flex and release that he watches silently.
“Why... why didn't you unpack?" she asks, and he should have seen this one coming but he never does, not with Abby. “I mean..." She trails off and the meaning is lost to him.
He stares out of the windscreen, watching the motorway roll back before them.
“Is it... I know I haven't been fair, Connor. I mean... I know that sometimes I... maybe I blow hot and cold, a little, and I know..."
She knows more than he does, but she trails off and her knuckles are still white on the wheel. Her voice is shivering, like she's cold and lost and alone, even with him sitting there. It should hurt more than it does.
“Is it because...?"
The miles stretch out before them, roll out behind, and he doesn't look at her, not even when he says, “Not everything is about you, Abby."
She doesn't call him on his lie, but that night, for the first time, she books them two separate rooms.
-o-
They drift back into England, heading South. He thinks of rivers, and the way they meander, taking the path of least resistance. Maybe that's what they're doing, cutting through the softest rocks and avoiding those that are too big to be moved, too hard to be worn away by their efforts.
But even with the way that they're wandering, there's a theme to the places they wash up. He's not sure whether Abby's spotted it or not, but the places they visit are old, historical. From Bronze Age copper mines to Viking settlements and everything in between. Markers of a past that he now knows is fluid and ever changing. Like the future. Like their lives.
It's like after three years of dealing with anomalies, they can't let go of visiting the past, not entirely. He's just not sure what they're looking for.
Today is Bath and the Roman Baths, and it's quiet. They aren't the only visitors but it feels like it as they wander through the rooms, both the remnants left behind and those built since.
The water is deep and green; the light bounces back from it to ripple along the terrace. Cool waves wash along the vaulted ceiling, like they're underwater, fathoms down.
Abby is silent, her expression blank, just as cool, just as mysterious as the ancient spring, and he is so far out of his depth. It's been two days and he finally says, “Sorry," the word sliding out and taking him by surprise. Maybe it's the silence that finally gets to him, or Abby's distant face.
She looks at him, her bag slung over one shoulder, and her face tilts up into the sun. Then she nods, once, like it's forgotten.
He can't forget. Not everything is that easy.
-o-
He sleeps a lot, long patches in the car where the miles rolling past lull him down into unconsciousness, or in the hotels each night, with Abby snoring softly in the other bed. Even when he's not asleep he doesn't feel awake. It's like everything is fuzzy, the world out of focus, and thinking, planning, feeling is more effort than his body is capable of.
He doesn't mind the not feeling part. It's so much better to be numb.
Even without fighting with Abby, the silences stretch between them. They're empty now, not filled with everything neither of them has ever had the nerve to say, or the things that have been said and not heard or ignored.
Everything's empty and that's better.
At least until the dreams start again.
-o-
The nightmares aren't new, and it's not like he's the only one to have them. More than once, in the Cretaceous, he'd woken to Abby twitching and whimpering softly beside him in her sleep. He'd probably woken her up more than once the same way.
This time he wakes up screaming, tangled up in his sheets, twisting and turning to get free with his heart pounding in his chest and he can't breathe, he can't breathe.
He pushes the sheets off, his hands and body slippery with fear sweat and Abby is there, holding onto him tightly even though he fights her off, panic stricken. It's no use; she's always been stronger than he is in all of the ways that matter. He gives in, shaking so hard that his teeth chatter but she still doesn't let go. Instead her fingers dig into the side of his neck, her palm resting warmly against the nape of his neck where the hairs are still prickling. She's whispering to him, a constant litany of reassurance that he doesn't hear. The sound of her voice simply washes over him and if it can't wash everything else away that's not her fault.
Not this time.
The panic finally ebbs away but it leaves all the flotsam and jetsam of his dreams behind. He's cold and Abby's warmth is the only thing anchoring him; he can't help but lean into it. Her fingers loosen, just slightly, so that they curl around his neck rather than dig into it. It's only an illusion of safety but he's reached the point where he'll take whatever he can get and he breathes her in.
There's a banging on the door, sudden and sharp in the silence, and he jerks. Abby's fingernails scratch his skin and the pain is sudden and sharp, too.
It startles the both of them; Abby's breathing fast, her face turned towards the door. It's Abby who gets up and answers it, Abby who deals with the night manager, explaining that nothing's wrong. Nothing at all is wrong.
Nothing except him.
-o-
They stop staying in Travel Inns and the like after that, where the rooms are packed in tightly and the walls are thin. Abby takes to visiting Tourist Information offices each time they stop, poring through their books, looking for bed and breakfasts or small, family run hotels off the beaten track, the ones that won't be busy at this time of year. He has no idea if she talks to the owners or not when they check in, and if she does what she says, but the next time he wakes up screaming, nobody comes.
-o-
As the days pass and he sleeps less, he no longer feels quite real. He's restless, unable to settle, and everything around him starts to feel worn, like the real world is underneath and coming through the thinner patches.
Telling himself he's being stupid doesn't help - he knows too damned well what can come through when reality cracks.
He doesn't share any of this with Abby but she can't miss his distraction, not when she has to say things three times or he wanders through places without looking at anything.
If she does notice, she doesn't say anything, but the scenery begins to change.
-o-
They hit the coast and the seagulls call overhead in the blustery autumn wind. He watches them rise and fall on the currents, always searching for something.
He doesn't feel kinship, not this time. He knows what they evolved from.
The sand crunches beneath his feet as he walks, listening to the sound of the surf as it swishes up the shore. The whole beach smells faintly of rotting seaweed, washed up by the storms, and the sky is steel grey and threatening, promising more of the same.
He stares out over the sea, close enough to the water's edge to feel the spray on his face, whipped up by the gusts that swirl over the shoreline, picking up flurries of sand and making them dance.
He's alone but for a couple walking their dogs at the other end of the beach, the two dogs - one dark and one light - chasing each other in and out of the waves. Their barks carry on the wind towards him but he doesn't smile.
He watches them for a while and then turns and heads back the way he came, superstitiously walking over the tracks he made on the way down and obliterating them.
Abby is sitting in the dunes by the car park, waiting for him, her arms folded around her knees. She waits until he reaches her and then holds out her hand for him to pull her to her feet.
Her fingers are cold and they curl around his for a moment. He lets them go and shoves his hands back into his pockets.
“Okay?" she asks and he shrugs. Maybe that's progress of sorts, that he doesn't lie to her any more, not about that.
She gives him a long, steady look, her gaze a cool weight, as cool as her fingers. “Where do you want to go today?" she asks and he shrugs again, staring out over the beach. He hears her sigh and ignores it.
“Okay," she says again but it's carried away by the wind.
-o-
The restlessness grows, day by day, but Abby tunes it out. It's weird how that acts like a sore tooth, something he has to keep poking at just to see if it still hurts, her ignoring him. Worse, her tolerating him and his moods.
But he wouldn't be him if there wasn't a point where he stopped, some line he won't cross with her. He's always been too eager to keep her happy and keep things peaceful, and it's a hard habit to break.
So they drift, each day, and if she's watching him, judging his moods, then he's watching her back.
-o-
The dreams are getting worse and with each day that his sleep slips away, so does his temper. There's no one to take it out on but Abby and Abby takes it.
That's so unlike Abby that he starts to wonder whether or not the world has changed again and he's the only one who's noticed. Abby can be kind and Abby can be patient and Abby can be calm but with him there's always been a kind of brisk and brusque almost affection, like he's a puppy and if she isn't stern enough he'll climb up onto the couch or piss on the floor.
Now she treats him like he's made of glass and he'll shatter. There's fear in her eyes sometimes when she looks at him, and it's not fear of him.
He's afraid that the world has changed and he's the only one who's noticed.
He's afraid of going to sleep.
-o-
This time when he dreams and wakes, screaming, and Abby is there, telling him it's okay, something inside him is wound so tightly that it snaps.
“It's not fucking okay," he snarls and pushes her off. This time she lets him, sitting back on her heels on the bed, her hair tousled and her eyes wide. The strap of her top has slipped from her shoulder down her arm and he stares at the bare patch of skin. She's switched the table lamp on and her freckles are smudges in the dim light, washed out.
“Okay," she says and then she flinches, a little grimace of nervousness as she pushes her hair out of her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?" and her voice is as colourless as everything else in the room.
“Do I want to talk about it?" he mocks and her eyes narrow, the first sign of temper she's shown in days. But it doesn't take long for her expression to smooth out again, go back to that pale, faintly worried mask she wears day in and day out now. “What do you want to hear, Abby? Do you want to know what I dream about night after night? Being chased, being eaten?"
His voice rises with each word but her expression doesn't change. Instead she shifts position, now sitting with her legs crossed, settling in for the long haul.
He hates her a little for that.
“Okay," she says again and he's starting to hate that word, too. “Go on."
Her voice is too gentle and he looks away, down at his hands which are clean, not covered in blood and gore, not like he'd dreamed. In his dreams everything is crystal clear, vivid and real, more real than this. The sights, the sounds, the smells even, down to the way that steam rises from fresh, hot blood and the scent of it hits the back of his throat, metallic and awful.
“Something ate my heart," he whispers and his voice shakes.
“Something...?" She moves, leaning closer to him, and he has to fight the impulse not to move back and put some space between them. “Connor?"
He looks at her then, just looks at her and sees it dawning in her eyes.
“Me?"
It's a soft breath but it rips apart everything, all of the flimsy barricades he's put up. The laugh that comes out is ugly, hurtful. “Very Freudian, right?"
She flinches and now the shame hits but worse than that is the small, vicious part of him that likes hurting her, the little voice that says how do you like it?
He looks away. This is Abby, and he's never wanted to hurt her, except for those times when he did. But this is Abby, and she's always been stronger than him. She rallies while he's still reeling. Her eyes are shocked, wide with pain, pain he's inflicted, but:
“I thought this wasn't about me."
-o-
It goes on the list of things they don't talk about. Ever.
If he was stronger, he'd be less relieved.
-o-
“I spoke to Lester."
He waits for the punchline, watching as Abby indicates and waits for the traffic to let her through.
In the end, in the face of her silence, he says, “Oh?" She darts a quick look in his direction, like that's what she's been waiting for, just a simple acknowledgement, some interest maybe.
He thinks he's hiding how he feels until she looks back again, for longer this time.
“That was the deal," she says quietly, conversationally. “We check in every day so he knows we haven't been kidnapped by foreign superpowers."
It's the first he's heard of it and he wonders how she's been making the calls. Waiting until he's asleep? Until he's in the bathroom?
He shifts in his seat and she darts him another quick look, one that comes along with a nervous little twitch of a smile.
It doesn't reach her eyes. It never does these days.
He shifts again. “And?" he asks and it's as neutral as he can get. Maybe it's not neutral enough; she sends him another look but there's no smile this time.
“He wanted to know how you were doing."
He winds the window down an inch and the air that blows into the car is damp, smelling of diesel and autumn leaves.
“And?" he asks again.
She doesn't answer for a moment, concentrating on the road as an excuse to pause, to think. Or maybe she just is that conscientious a driver and he hasn't noticed until now.
“I told him we probably wouldn't be back for a while."
He shifts again, something burning in the back of his throat, behind his eyes.
“We?"
The look she gives him this time is opaque, unreadable. “That was the deal, Connor," she says gently. “Both of us go back or neither of us do."
He winds the window up again; the fumes from the road are choking him.
“Just the two of us left, right?" The sound of the road rolling under the wheels almost drowns him out but Abby hears him, maybe because she's started listening.
She hums a little in agreement, her eyes focused on the road ahead. “More like a package deal," she says.
His eyes burn but he doesn't cry, not this time.
-o-
( Prelude in C Minor - Part Two )