ER/Stand Crossover




Ok, this is it... the final part - the epilogue. The only way you'll get another part is if you really want to see Christmas day.

In this fic, these things have happened
1) Most of the cast, along with most of the human race died
2) Jeanie was burned alive while closing the gates of hell
3) Kerry was raped
4) Lucy was *gang* raped
5) Doug became an alcoholic
6) Kerry killed a minimum of four people
7) One of those was her rapist, who she nailed in the back 15 times
8) Luka and Jeanie did the wild thing, with condoms
9) Carter and Randi did the wild thing, without condoms
10) Doug and Kerry got it on while drunk
11) Unprotected sex led to pregnancies
12) There were several shootings, mostly by Dr. Weaver
13) Did I mention her nervous breakdown and suicude attempts?
14) Or how Dave Malucci popped in and made everything ok?
15) Or that Dave was almost raped by a biker?
16) Oh, and Robert " The Rocket" Romano came back from the dead as a ghost and was a good guy?

Wow... this suddenly sounds like a pretty implausible story :)

here goes....

“ ER/Stand part 61”

Luka watched as the sun rose. It was the twenty fourth of December, and he felt like calling the entire holiday off. He wasn’t in the mood. It couldn’t be ignored, unfortunately. Christmas was a holiday for children, and though Taris was as upset as any of them, he wasn’t going to ruin it for her, There had been precious little else to cheer her up. He had made an effort to find her a gift, some books that he had enjoyed at her age, and a pretty necklace he knew she would like, but he hadn’t bothered for the others. They would understand how hard it was to look for gifts. He wasn’t much of a gift giver anyway. Jeanie had offered to take him shopping and he had agreed, grateful for the help. Now, he didn’t want to bother. If he could have his way, he would hide away until he stopped feeling so awful. Except, he didn’t think he would ever stop feeling awful.

It was early but he could already hear people bustling around. He knew that none of them were ready for a joyous holiday, but for some, their coping mechanism was to overcompensate. Then, also, Jeanie was his partner, not theirs. They were feeling grief, but he was feeling the loss of a woman who had been his wife in everything but name. He had wanted to make it more official, even though more official in their group amounted to handing over a ring and not much else. She had balked at that. You know I’m going to die, she had said that evening when he had brought it up, this can’t be forever. He knew it wasn’t going to be forever, but he hadn’t planned on it being as short as it was. It hurt.

Still, he couldn’t hide in his room all day. It was unfair to Taris, who was already worried and had suffered enough. It would worry everyone else too, though that concerned him less. They were trying very hard to help him and he did appreciate it, but he wasn’t ready to join in the forced festivity. It wasn’t like the rest of the adults were overwhelmed by Christmas spirit either. They were upset and grieving too. However, several of them, all of them now that he thought of it, were under the impression that the best way to make themselves feel better was to try to cheer poor depressed Luka up. After a while he just wanted to shake them all. At the same time, lingering in his room meant that Lucy would be knocking on the door by eight in the morning, holding a tray of breakfast food. Later, Carter, Dave or Doug would stop in, ostensibly to discuss something concerning babies or pregnancy. It was obvious that they were just trying to keep him occupied. Kerry was generally more subtle, with her requests for a tall person to fetch things off high shelves. At least he was serving a purpose, though he knew he wasn’t that much taller than anyone else was. Randi’s method was probably the least subtle. She would occasionally pop in and ask him if he was all right. Sometimes she told him to come to her if he wanted to talk. It was strangely comforting.

An appearance for food would stop the idle visits for a few hours and he could check on Taris. It was very early in the morning, but the whole concept of Santa Claus had Taris excited and everyone else seemed a little infected by it too. All winter, early mornings had been a rarity for all of them, but the last week had been different. Someone had been up, doing something. There had even been a shopping trip. He suspected that the morning was going to be filled with people decorating and trying to get the holiday spirit. Grabbing some food to eat, even though he wasn’t hungry, ensured that he wouldn’t be asked to decorate a tree or any nonsense like that.

There was no tree in the spacious living room, but he had heard some loud talk from Carter the night before about getting a tree. Carter was upset, but Carter was also ecstatic about having Christmas in what amounted to his childhood summer home. The younger man, back in November, has confessed to him that he and his brother had always wanted to spend a winter there, especially a Christmas. Luka didn’t begrudge him that joy and while Jeanie’s death had put a damper on the celebration, he didn’t want to stop someone else from feeling happy. Carter, to give credit where it was due, had not shoved holiday decorations down his throat. Today, of course, that was unfair to expect. As he walked down the stairs, he could already see boxes of decorations. Most were new, but a few had the look of cardboard boxes that had been in storage. Carter was already hanging fake pine boughs along the fire place mantle. No, he realized as the fresh scent of pine assailed him, it was real pine. A nice touch, something Jeanie would have appreciated.

He shook off the thought and headed for the kitchen. Carter gestured to him in a companionable way but didn’t say anything. It was a little early and Luka suspected that he didn’t look full of holiday cheer, which would put Carter off anyway. He certainly had no intention of helping with decorating.

The kitchen was bustling, which didn’t surprise him. The whole place had smelled like a bakery the last few days. Kerry and Lucy were both at one of the counters, rolling out dough. Dave was at the table eating homefries. There was a decent stack of sweet potatoes sitting in the sink, no doubt waiting for Dave to wash them. There was a good supply of potatoes in the pantry, which was lucky because otherwise there was absolutely no fresh food to eat. Kerry and Dave were both fairly good cooks and Lucy and Randi weren’t bad either, but everything generally tasted like it came out of a can. He went to the coffee maker and poured a cup.

“ My mom always made apple pie for Christmas.” Lucy said. She set the dough into a pie plate and started crimping the edges into pretty scallops. She acknowledged Luka with a nod of her head. She managed to not look surprised to see him, but he could tell that she was. “ Luka, you’re up early. Do you want some breakfast?”

“ No thank you.” He wasn’t ready to take that kind of risk. Lucy wasn’t that good of a cook. He went over to the toaster and put some bread in. He would throw it out as soon as he was in his room, but it looked good.

“ Are you sure?” Kerry asked, her eyes twinkling. “ Lucy has mastered adding water to pancake mix.” At that, Dave snorted in laughter.

“ Bite me.” Lucy said pleasantly to them. “ See if I make you two breakfast ever again.” She turned to Luka. “ I’ll have you know, my pancakes are light and fluffy and unlike Dr. Weaver’s, they aren’t precursors of horror.”

“ I hardly think announcing that I was going to have a child qualifies as horror.” Kerry retorted.

Lucy rolled her eyes. “ As if everyone who ever worked at Cook County didn’t roll over in their graves at that little announcement. As it is, if you two were high school kids, it’d be a bad after school special.”

“ We were drunk.” Kerry said easily. “ I make no apologies for that. But at no point did I get thrown off the cheerleading squad, and Doug didn’t lose his football scholarship. Oh, and we didn’t get married, and our parents didn’t get really angry.”

“ What’s disturbing,” Dave said with a laugh, “ is that you know the plot to the average after school special.”

There were chuckles all around. Luka ignored it, partly because he didn’t quite get what was so funny, and because he wasn’t in the mood. Instead, he looked around at all the fixings and considered what the rest of the day and the next would bring. “ What are you planning for Christmas dinner?”

“ Canned ham in the worst case scenario,” Kerry said, “ but evidently Doug and Dave and Lucy are going hunting. So plan on canned ham.”

“ Thanks for the faith.” Dave snorted. It was a good natured snort. It wasn’t like that sort of comment hadn’t been made before. They weren’t hunters. Randi, on one occasion, had nailed a rabbit with a shotgun. Aside from leaving a bloody smear in the snow, it hadn’t accomplished much. There had been a few attempts but he thought it was pretty likely that they would be dining on canned ham. He didn’t care, really. He never felt hungry. Admittedly, fresh meat would be nice, but he wasn’t craving it. He didn’t even want the toast.

“ Luka, “ Lucy said suddenly, “ is there something you would like for Christmas dinner? We’re going pretty traditional but if there’s something you’d like….” Her voice trailed off.

Luka considered. He knew he was being a downer, and everyone was pretty down despite the holiday. Christmas in Croatia was nothing like Christmas in the U.S. He wasn’t religious, but compared to his companions, he was a priest. He doubted any of them would understand that it was a deeply religious holiday in Croatia. What his companions seemed to focus on was Santa Claus and coming up with devious ways to hide gifts. Even Jeanie had been infected by it. He almost winced thinking of Jeanie. “ I don’t have anything in mind. Jeanie told Taris that she would make something called sweet potato pie.” It sounded disgusting, but he didn’t want the little girl disappointed.

“ I can make that,” Kerry said quickly. A somber pall fell over the room. Well, Luka thought as he buttered the toast he didn’t want, my work here is done. Now everyone feels bad. He refilled his cup of coffee and stalked out. Carter waved at him as he passed through the living room, but he tried to ignore it.

“ Luka, I was going to take Taris with me when Randi and I go looking for a tree.” Carter looked almost boyish as he spoke. “ I wanted to make sure that it was OK with you. We’re going in a completely different direction than the hunting party, and I have orange safety vests. Are you OK with that?”

“ If she wants to, sure.” Luka didn’t doubt that the girl would like such a trip. While he wasn’t always taken with Carter’s responsible side, he knew that Randi would keep a close eye on her. He quickly took the stairs back up to his room, pausing only a moment to look at the closed door to what was once Jeanie’s room. She hadn’t slept in the room much, but she had told him that it was nice to have a place where she could be by herself. At some point, he had to pack up all of her things, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. Her lotion and hair things were still in his bathroom. Even her bathrobe was there, hanging on the hook behind the door.

My room isn’t my room, he realized as he walked in, it’s our room. Maybe that’s part of the problem. Intellectually, he knew that wasn’t it. He had felt as rotten, worse really, when his wife and children had been killed and he had been left without even photos of them to look at. With Jeanie, at least he had some Polaroids of her. On their trip to Colorado, Carter and Randi had picked up numerous instant photo cameras and snapped at anything that moved. They had good-naturedly distributed the pictures around. It had been more of a playful diversion than anything else, though Carter often suggested that it was a pictorial history of their journey. Luka thought that was a little too grand of a title for what amounted to a lot of pictures of people putting up tents. Still, as time had passed, the picture taking had grown extensive. He had even considered putting together an album for Randi and Carter for their baby. That was the sort of thoughtful, meaningful gift that he thought was appropriate for Christmas. He didn’t begrudge his companions their materialism, but with all the stores being open, it wasn’t like it took a lot of effort to find a nice gift. Gift giving had become fairly common as just something to do, anyway. Someone would go into town and return with a game, or a pretty bauble and hand it over to someone else with a simple “ I thought you’d like this.” It defeated the point of Santa Claus pretty effectively.

It was nice to have pictures though. He hadn’t pulled them out. He had forgotten about them, that was the truth. Whenever someone went into a frenzy of picture taking, Jeanie would gather the pictures and stow them away in the nightstand. Maybe I should look through them, he thought. It won’t make me feel better but Taris might like some of the pictures.

He went to the nightstand, but much to his surprise, the drawer was empty. He went to the other stand, but it was filled with his personal items. Where did they go, he thought worriedly, and why would she have moved them? He made himself stay calm despite the sudden rush of anxiety he felt. They have to be here somewhere, he decided. With that, he began to methodically ransack the room. It was very important that he find those pictures, even though he didn’t know why.

“ Luka?”

He looked up from under the bed where he was searching. “ Taris? What is it?” Taris was standing in the doorway, looking a bit subdued despite the almost riotous green and red Christmas ensemble she was wearing. Taris shared Randi’s affection for color and style and Luka had no doubt that he was looking at some patented Randiwear. It was cute, he decided, if the point was to make Taris like a Keebler Elf. The jaunty red Santa cap set off the bright green shirt and plaid skirt just right. It was, in reality, an adorable outfit. I should find one of the cameras and get a picture, he thought sadly. Make some sort of effort to handle the holiday. Taris needs to have some fun too.

“ John asked me to go look for a tree with him and Randi. He said to make sure it was OK with you. Is it OK?” She wanted to go, that was clear.

“ That’s fine. You have to listen to Carter and Randi though, and do exactly what they tell you.” Taris had a tendency not to mind very well with some people. Randi, Carter, Lucy and Dave all indulged her, out of misguided sympathy. Doug was strict in a gentle way, which didn’t surprise Luka when he took into account that Doug was a pediatrician. Kerry was also strict, in a curmudgonely way. She was the only one other than Jeanie that insisted on schooling the child, which had been a godsend over the last few days as it had given the girl something to do. Of course, Taris had already figured out how to manipulate Kerry, and Luka had no doubt that Taris would spend the day lingering near the kitchen while Kerry loudly suggested not spoiling her dinner, and then slipped her baked treats when no one was watching. It worried him a bit, since eventually they would reach Boulder and Taris would need to have some manners. Never mind that, he told himself, I can worry about it after Christmas. “ Taris, do you remember all the pictures that Jeanie had here?”

She nodded, smiling as though there was some great secret involved. “ They’re all in Jeanie’s room. She was making you a Christmas present. We should get her presents so we can put them under the tree tonight.” She paused, her expression almost adult. “ It would make Jeanie sad if we didn’t. She was working real hard.”

He considered that for a moment. Jeanie had made several comments about Christmas and she had been rather secretive. Maybe that’s not a bad idea, he decided, it wasn’t right to just lock up all of her things in her room. “ We could go take a look.”

“ All right!” Taris raced out the door. Luka followed her. He hadn’t meant to go take a look right then, but he supposed it had to be done sometime and the more he thought about it, the less likely he was to do it. Taris waited patiently as he tried the door but much to his surprise the door was locked. “ Jeanie locked the door so we wouldn’t snoop.”

And that meant that the key was still with Jeanie, and far beyond his reach. He shuddered at the thought of even trying to retrieve it. “ I think we’ll have to break the door down.”

Taris eyed the door with annoyance. “ Just a minute.” She ran off towards the stairs. He doubted she had a plan that would work but he decided to wait for her. It gave him a few minutes to consider the least damaging way to take the door down. The door swung in, which meant that he didn’t have access to the hinges. He supposed that he could simply kick the door in, but it was a heavy oak door, not likely to collapse. It would take more than one person hammering at it, that was for certain.

Taris came back up the stairs. In one hand she had a credit card, in the other, a cinnamon roll that was obviously still warm. “ Watch this!” She slid the gold card into the small space between the door and the door jam. After a moment of jimmying, the lock audibly popped. Taris turned back to him. “ Isn’t that cool?”

“ Who showed you how to do that?” He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or irritated. Lock picking wasn’t exactly a little girl’s game.

“ Kerry did.” She held out the card and sure enough, it was an American Express card with the name Kerry Weaver embossed on it. It clearly had wear marks along the edges to show that it hadn’t been the first time someone had used it to jimmy a door. “ She said that Visa cards didn’t work as well as American Express.”

“ Well, wasn’t that nice of her.” Luka made a note to himself to have a talk with Kerry. He opened the door, and stepped into the room, feeling more than a little like an invader. Everything in the room reminded him of Jeanie. Her backpack, the one that she had picked up back in Chicago, was leaning in the corner. There were two paperback books on the nightstand, in teepee formation when she had simply turned them over to mark the page rather than find a bookmark. It always made him angry and he always found a bookmark for her, but now he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was very neat otherwise, just like she had been, and he could smell her scent throughout the room. This is why you haven’t gone in here, he reminded himself. It was overpowering.

“ She hid the presents in her closet.” Taris said excitedly. “ Well, they weren’t really hidden ‘cause she already wrapped them.” Sure enough, there was a large stack of gaily wrapped gifts, all done up with bows and ribbons. It made him ashamed of how he had put Taris’s gifts in a Christmas bag and simply covered them with tissue paper. Taris picked one off the top and handed it to him. “ Jeanie worked really hard on this. She was going to make you open it on Christmas Eve and open her other present on Christmas day.” She looked him over, as if expecting him to rip off the wrapping in a frenzy. After a moment though, her excitement faded. “ I’m going to go get dressed. Randi said that we were going soon.”

The girl trotted out of the room, leaving him holding the gift. Despite everything, he started to unwrap it. The last thing he wanted to do was set the gift under the tree and wait until tomorrow to open it under the eyes of his companions. Whatever it was, he sensed it was special and he didn’t want to share it. It was selfish, but he didn’t care.

The wrapping paper fell away, and he found himself holding a leather bound photo album. He hesitated, and then opened it. The first page was a handwritten letter.

“ Dear Luka,” he read out loud, “ I made this for you. I know that our time together won’t be as long as both of us would like. I wanted to make you something that you could have, after I died, so you could remember everything that happened. Not just the fun things, but everything. I know it will be hard for you, but the last thing I want is for you to be in pain every time you think of me. When you’re sad or down, I want you to open this and remember that we were in love and that all I ever wanted for you was for you to be happy. I love you. Never forget that, but don’t spend the rest of your life miserable because I wasn’t there to share it. You will always be in my heart and I will always be with you.” He finished it, and it was as if Jeanie was there in the room with him. He could feel her presence all around him. He started turning the pages. The Poloraids were there, in order of their journey, along with a sundry of things he’d not known that she had. There were postcards from Chicago, and an exquisite lace doily that he was sure had come from Carter’s family mansion. As he flipped the pages, he realized there were postcards or flyers from every place they had stopped. He recognized the motel they had gotten together at, from the pictures and postcards, and the flattened empty pack of cigarettes that they had smoked together. Every page seemed to feel like a blow, and he could remember each moment as clearly as when it happened. There was Jeanie posing by a Ferrari that she had been fooling around with, a smile on her face. There she was holding a sleeping bag and looking irritated. That was just after they left Chicago. His hand traced over one of the many captions in her fine handwriting. “ This is a beautiful gift, Jeanie, “ he whispered.

He rose to his feet, and gathered up the other gifts. He would put them under the tree when Carter and Randi returned. But first, he decided, I need to do a little shopping. Christmas was coming in less than twenty-four hours, and he suddenly felt like bringing the holiday on.



Part 62
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