A/N: I really, really enjoyed writing this piece, despite how long it took between updates and how few reviews I received (yes, that's partly intended as a passive-aggressive swipe at anyone reading now who doesn't review). I went back and forth on continuing it past the intended four chapters, but my design was always to fill in the four-day gap between "Chicago Way/Life After Death" and the "three days late" anniversary I mentioned in "Full of Grace." So, really, pushing it any further just didn't seem organic. Instead, I'm planning to write a third piece that fits in with my rendering of canon as begun in "Full of Grace" and here in "Walk On," even if I get absolutely no reviews whatsoever because, well, I enjoy writing. I don't know exactly when I'll start posting, or how often I'll update, but, you know, eventually.

A million thanks to Essy for betaing and to those who did review. And happy birthday (albeit a bit late) to ILA4E!

"(Just Like) Starting Over"

The alarm goes off at six, and I reach up to whack it and realize, a second too late, that I'm doing so with the wrong hand.

"Shit!"

Luka jerks awake. "Wha'appnd," he mumbles very incoherently and in the process hits his head squarely against my chest. I yelp, again.

"Luka!"

"Oops." For reasons beyond me, he does not move his head. I briefly consider the notion that he's concussed and then realize, oh right, the Y chromosome thing.

"As good as last night was, this is not the time for an encore."

"Mmm hmm." His mouth is right in that dip where my sternum ends, right below my breasts, and I sort of shiver and try to remember why it's not the time. Oh, right. Work.

I hate work.

"Gotta get ready."

"I'm ready." Cleary.

"For work," I breathe.

"You always hit 'snooze' twice. Plenty of time."

"I told you I was going to be late." I start fumbling with buttons and he comes over to help me, still smiling.

"You didn't seem to be in any rush, yourself."

I can't stop myself from blushing. His hands linger a little longer than necessary at the bottom button and I entertain the notion of not going in to work and going back to bed, instead, before I remember we're still understaffed. But seriously, I don't think I've felt this good in…well, since our wedding night.

"Listen, I was thinking…maybe you'd want to have dinner tonight. Out, somewhere. Just us."

"You mean…like a date?"

"Not exactly." But he smiles. "I was thinking more like an anniversary."

"I think we might have already passed that by."

"I thought…maybe instead, today could be our anniversary."

He doesn't have to explain why. I get it – not wanting our anniversary to be tied in with the same day we lost someone we both cared about so much. But at the same time, it wasn't just a year after the day we got married, it was the day he came back home. It will always be bittersweet, but for me, I know that will always be the day that means something monumental in our relationship. I tell him as much, and he nods. "You're right. I just…but, no, you're right."

"We could still have dinner. A belated one."

"Yeah." He slides his thumb up my cheek, his fingers following behind. "Pick you up at eight?"

I reach up and kiss him. "It's a date."

I'm still smiling like a complete idiot by the time I get to County, and Chuny sees me. "Looks like you and Luka patched things up."

I go four shades of red and cover my face with my good hand until I can stop grinning and my cheeks return to their normal temperature. "Mmhmm."

"I'm happy for you." She motions to the computer. "Now Frank can change his background back."

Morris skids to a stop behind the desk and snatches up a couple of charts from the rack.

"Abby. Head lac and concussion in three."

He slides the chart across the desk so fast I can't catch it in time. Gates picks it up and holds it out. "Trade you for what's behind curtain number two."

"Lenny's all yours, Gates. He likes bubbles in his bath."

Mr. Wagner in three is one of those old men who calls me "dear" and not "doctor" and who makes several passes at me, despite the forty year age gap, but I do my level best to chalk it up to his concussion and pretend not to notice when his hand grazes my ass since at least he had the decency to invite me to dinner first. I very deliberately scratch my ear with my left hand and he seems to get the hint. "Have you lived in Chicago long?" He changes gears. I recognize that tone in his voice and realize it's not so much my ass that he wants contact with as another human being.

"About half my life. You?"

"I moved here with my wife, Nora, after I got out of the service. I was a war hero, you know. Two purple hearts and a silver star."

"Ah, so a little bump on the head is nothing for you, right?"

"It hurts more now that I'm getting on in years. And now that Nora's gone, I have to drag myself into the doctor's."

"She was a doctor?"

"A nurse. She was with the army." He beams.

"I was a nurse for awhile. It's a tough job."

"Oh, she was the best. She could give you a shot and you wouldn't even feel it."

"Haleh over there is the best blood draw this side of the Mason-Dixon."

"Oh yes, she's the nice lady who took my blood pressure. In my day, they couldn't even come into hospitals like these, you know."

"Mmhmm." I briefly entertain the idea of smacking him with his own chart but decide it's probably against the Hippocratic oath. Old people will never cease to amaze me with the crap that comes out of their mouths.

"Times have changed. Although you can't know much about it, can you? You're just a baby. You must be what – thirty, thirty-five?" He's redeemed for his last comment and I smile inadvertently. "My youngest girl is that age. Can you imagine? In diapers just yesterday and now she wants me to move to California so she can take care of me."

"Daughters want to make sure their parents are okay." Oops. I still haven't returned Maggie's voicemail from last week. I make a mental note to do that at some point.

"I suppose it's time to make a change. I've been living in this city for fifty years, now, and the winters are hard on my bones. It would be nice to see the ocean."

I flash on Luka, that day, by Lake Michigan, saying we should make a fresh start someplace new, where no one knows us. And maybe Mr. Wagner's right – time for a change. I suddenly understand what Luka said about too many ghosts here, in these walls, and that's what I've been feeling since I walked in here yesterday morning, haunted. Like Greg finally brought it crashing down on me, all of what's happened here. Losing Mark Greene, who will always be, in my mind, what I hope to be as a doctor; Maggie's overdose and feeling so small in that moment, like a little girl, needing so much for my mother to just be there tomorrow because I still needed her, as screwed up as she was; Joyce and Brian, and never feeling so scared in my life that I couldn't protect myself from everything around me, even after how hard I'd worked all my life to believe I was immune; Lucy and Sandy Lopez and Gallant and even Romano – all of it, over time, building up to a sort of boiling point of grief. I smile at Mr. Wagner. "Change can be good. But before you pack your bags, let's get you fixed up."

I'm stuck in a trauma when Luka comes in, and I catch him from the corner of my eye, watching through the window, sort of smiling, the spectator for once, I guess.

"Nice catch on the splenic infarct."

I dump the plastic gown in the HAZMAT bin and for a second I feel kind of proud. "Thanks."

"It's weird."

"What is?"

"You…not being a student, anymore. Bossing residents around."

"I'm still a resident. And I don't boss people around."

"Sorry." He grins. "I meant 'teach.' And you're an attending except for, what, two weeks?"

I don't say anything, mostly because I'm still not ready to call myself that. I've been a student – admittedly on and off – for almost a decade. I feel like I still need training wheels, most days. Even days when I don't actually fuck anything up, which, okay, are getting a lot more common than the days I do, I still feel a little like a kid among the grown-ups. I've had the comfort of a safety net – someone to look over my shoulder and make sure I don't screw up too badly – for so long, not having it is still daunting.

"Abby." He takes my arm and turns me around a little, so I'm facing him. Reading me, I guess. "You're a great doctor."

I flash back on the night I kissed him, the first time. "I had a good teacher."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You – it's weird for me, too. I'm not used to being…you know…not your student."

He shrugs nonchalantly. "Well, I mean, I think you still have that schoolgirl outfit, somewhere."

"Shut up." I shove him a little, and he laughs, and it's just…it feels good, joking and flirting like this again. Being in that place where we can do that. I grab his hand and squeeze it. "Come on. I'll sign out and we can go. I'm starving."

"Me too." He sort of leers at me. "Just save room for dessert, yeah?"

I feel a little underdressed and have half a mind to complain that he ought to have warned me he was taking me somewhere expensive, but it's hard to actually complain given that the place he's picked has pecan pie so fabulous it should be considered a controlled substance . "We didn't need to go somewhere fancy," I whisper as we're heading to our table.

"I know." He manages to pull my chair out for me before the host has a chance. The host eyes Luka and it's kind of like something on the nature channel, and Luka clearly has the bigger antlers. "I wanted to. We're celebrating."

We don't say anything until our waitress comes by, as the menu is roughly the length of a novel, and she launches into some recommendations from the wine list. I nod at Luka so he knows it's fine if he wants something, but he just asks for two club sodas. I wait until she's gone before I say anything. "It's okay if you want to get a drink, Luka. I'm fine."

"You said it bothered you."

"When did I say that?"

"Uh…" He hedges a minute. "I think when you were…you know…"

"Drunk." No wonder I can't remember. "I've said a lot of stupid things when I was drunk."

"I still…we never talked about it. We should have, I guess, I should have – "

"No. It wasn't your job to read my mind. It was my fault, I just…" Ran away from the whole thing, tried to pretend I wasn't an alcoholic. Like a moron. "I should have brought it up, myself. When I was sober, I mean."

He plays with his fork a little. "Does it bother you? Honestly?"

I want to tell him no, because the last thing I want to do is put some restriction on him, force him to change his habits to accommodate my problems, but at the same time, lying to him has not gotten me anywhere in the past. "A little. I mean…you don't have to give it up. And you know, if we go out, that's fine, I just…maybe, for now at least, not in the house? Or if you just want to get something and finish it…I don't know. I don't want to ask you to do that."

"You don't have to." The waitress comes back with our sodas and asks if we're ready to order, which obviously, we're not, so I tell her we need a few more minutes. Luka raises his glass. "Cheers."

"Živeli." I mangle the word horribly, but he doesn't look like he cares.

He reaches across the table for my hand and squeezes it. "Živeli."

"I have something for you."

We're finishing up dinner and I'm trying to decide if I want to order pie to go in case Luka's version of "dessert" turns out to involve actual food or if I just want to go for it. And maybe order another slice to go, anyway. "You didn't need to."

"I know that." He smiles and reaches into his jacket for something and hands it over to me. "You said it's traditional."

It's the real estate section of the Boston Globe. I think back to Mr. Wagner, and talking about change and fresh starts, and what I'd felt earlier about County being haunted. "Boston?"

"Yeah. I mean…it's just an idea. But they have great hospitals…great schools…look at the next page, though."

I flip it open and see an ad circled, with a picture of an old colonial-style house.

"It's in Cambridge. Near Harvard, so Joe can get his sights on it early." I smile at that. "I'm not saying that house, or even that city, or even that we have to move – "

"It's beautiful." And it is – it's a tiny little picture, but I can see a porch and a yard and the bolded words in the ad referencing the newly renovated master bath. "I don't want to make a decision, right now, but…I want to at least think about it. Look into it."

"Into Boston?"

"Yeah. You're right, I mean – of all the places we could go, that's…there's the Brigham, Mass General, Tufts…" I trail off. "What?"

"You know all the hospitals there?"

"I mean…no, there are at least a dozen teaching hospitals, and more that aren't – "

"You thought about it."

I take a sip of water so I have time to compose a decent poker face. "I might have done a little research at work." I guess now isn't the right time to lay out a list of all the great schools Joe could go to – Exeter, for example, or maybe Andover or Boston Latin. It's probably also not the right time to qualify exactly what I mean by "a little."

He raises an eyebrow. "And you thought Boston?"

"I…" I play around with my napkin. "I thought of a couple of places, but yeah, Boston was sort of an obvious option. And I thought, you know, you might like to be near the ocean. Not that it's the Adriatic, but it's still…ocean."

He looks at me a few moments without saying anything and I have to wonder if he's thinking what I am, which is that it's a little freaky that we both landed on the same city. But then, knowing each other for nine years has probably contributed to a mutual thought process. I don't know that I want to finish all his sentences for him, but I guess it's nice that we are at a point where it's not a guessing game. Finally he turns a little in his seat and pulls something else out of his coat. "I have something else, too."

"Luka, you don't need – "

"I know that." He puts some emphasis on it, like it's a loving way of telling me to shut up and stop arguing against getting presents. I take the hint. "It's not an anniversary present, it's just…a present."

He hands me something about the size and shape of a wallet wrapped in tissue paper. I open it. "You got me a GPS?"

"Yeah." He's smiling. "You know, the compass is good and all, I just thought…if you ever needed a little extra help…"

And see, this right here, is what I've been wanting for so long, now – even before I told him the truth about everything, before I went to rehab, since he got in that taxi and left for Croatia, five days after we'd gotten married – Luka, my husband, the man I love more than I can even begin to explain or understand, who is corny and romantic and who says and does things straight out of John Cusack movies and has this monumental, magnificent heart, sitting here with me celebrating our anniversary belatedly and making it clear that he wants me, not just in the Biblical sense, but as the person he chooses to be with. After everything, knowing everything, with all the baggage that goes along with the both of us – it's still what he wants, still with that same smile as when I kissed him eight years ago.

It's incredible to think it's been that long, both because it seems like so long ago and because, at the same time, I do feel like I've known him longer. But it was nine years ago that I met him, and eight years ago that I made a move so idiotically uncalculated and unlike me that it ended up being the smartest thing I'd done up until then, and kissed him. And seven since we broke up and probably about that long since we started learning how to actually be friends, and about two and a half years since we made a baby together, and just the tiniest bit less than that since I fell completely and uselessly in love with him, and here we are, nine years after this whole thing started, celebrating a year that we've been married. Crazy, right? Absolutely crazy.

Well, mostly crazy that it took us that long to get our acts together.

I put down the GPS and take his hand, instead. "I don't need it."

He looks a little perplexed. "What?"

"I…it's very sweet, Luka. And…actually, really adorable. But…I don't need it. I know where you are."

He reaches his other hand out and takes my free one and holds them both tightly a few moments and I see him close his eyes a little bit, and realize that maybe even if it wasn't the reaction he'd expected, it was the one he'd needed. He nods a little.

"I've always…known, Luka. It's just…" I try to think of something that fits with the metaphor, but it's not happening, so I give up. "I love you. And after all this…everything…I know what's at stake. I know what I need to do to hang onto it. And I'm going to do that, no matter what."

He gets up from the table and I don't even have time to register that people are probably looking or that, under normal circumstances, I'd feel pretty humiliated, but he sort of half-kneels, half-crouches in front of me and takes my face in his hands and just kisses me, like he's trying to cover all nine years in one kiss, and it's romantic and emotional and sexy and ridiculous and everything he is all at once, so I just kind of melt into it and let it happen.

"I love you," he whispers into my mouth, around my lips and tongue and into my breath.

"Luka." I'm laughing a little and crying a little and smiling so much it aches.

"Mmm?" His thumbs stroke my cheeks.

"Let's get out of here."