Part1, Just Lucky?


INTRODUCTION: The first of four parts. It takes place between November 2000 and November 2001.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters, NBC and Bright, Kauffman and Crane do.



Monica sat up in bed. She had been woken up by the sound of a vase hitting the floor and breaking. She glanced over at Chandler's empty bedside, and wondered if it might be him, coming back early from his convention in Atlanta. She decided to get out of bed to greet him.

The second she got off the bed on the window side, someone entered the bedroom. She turned around and tried to scream but couldn't get enough strength in her voice. The man that had entered was not Chandler at all. He was far from the kind, loving man she was engaged to. The man standing in the doorway was wearing a black ski mask, covering his face. He was about an inch taller than Chandler, and several pounds heavier, although it took only one look at his arms in his T-shirt to realize that it was almost all muscles. In his hand he held a sharp knife.

Monica gasped and drew back. The man looked displeased to find her awake, and Monica didn't dare to think of what would have happened if he'd found her asleep.

*

"Monica!" Chandler screamed, trying to make his way through the crowd of people in Joey's apartment. "Monica!"

"Who the hell are you?" a young police officer with a Texas accent asked, eyeing Chandler suspiciously.

"Where is Monica, where is she?" Chandler asked, ignoring the question. "Answer me, god damn it, where is Monica?"

Then he saw her, sitting by herself in the middle of the crowd. She was staring blankly in front of her with a blanket wrapped around her. Joey was standing right behind her, but Chandler didn't see him. He saw nothing else than her, Monica, and he elbowed his way through the crowd of police men and ambulance personal. Once he reached her he kneeled in front of her and looked up at her face.

"Oh my god Monica, are you all right?"

She slowly looked up at him, and her eyes teared when she saw it was him. Without saying a word she broke into tears and clung on to him. He held her close and rocked her back and forth. He had no idea what was going on exactly, he had returned home five minutes earlier and been told by a police officer that he couldn't enter his apartment, it was an official crime scene. There was a dead body inside, and the police were working so he couldn't go in there. Chandler's heart had almost stopped. He saw before his eyes how Monica was laying on the floor of their bedroom, murdered by some maniac. When the police officer told him nothing he had headed off to Joey's apartment to get some answers there. And when he caught sight of her he'd nearly started crying of relief.

"It's okay, Monica..." he whispered. "Easy now, everything is going to be just fine."

He could feel Monica tremble in his arms, shaking with sobs, clinging on to him like he was her last hope in the world. He slowly caressed her neck, stroke the back of her head. He looked up and noticed Joey.

"What's happened, Joe?" he asked in a whisper. "What's going on? The dead body in our apartment, who is that?" A terrible thought struck him. "It's not any of the others, is it? It's not Phoebe, Ross or Rachel, right?"

Joey shook his head.

"No, Ross and Phoebe are over at their place, they don't know what's happened. And Rachel had a blind date tonight, she hasn't come back yet. The body is..." Joey swallowed hard and closed his eyes. "The body is that of the person who wanted to... who had... who'd planned on leaving Monica in that condition... once he was through with her..."

Joey had whispered, careful not to be overheard by the sobbing Monica. But Chandler had heard him clearly, and he felt a terrible feeling, as if someone twisted his guts. He had no idea what had happened, except for someone attacking Monica, his Monica, and tried to harm and possibly kill her, but she had somehow managed to take the life of that person instead. And Chandler wanted to throw up at the thought of what would have happened if Monica had failed. Would she be crying in his arms now? Or would she be lying in intensive care at the hospital? Would she even be alive?

Chandler fought hard to keep the tears away, pulled Monica even closer and buried his face in her dark, soft hair. He would never know for sure just how close he'd come to loosing her, or if maybe he had lost her. All he knew at the moment was that she had been through a terrible trauma, but she was with him now. At this moment she was in his arms, crying desperately, and they were both safe. And they were together.

*

"Ms. Geller, try to remember as much as possible"

Chandler wanted to scream at the police officer to be quiet, to leave Monica alone, to ask her these questions later. Anyone could see Monica wasn't up for it at the moment. But Chandler knew that it was best to be questioned as soon as possible, before any memories had the chance to fade, become unclear or be repressed. But what he didn't understand was why they even needed to question her. The man that had broken into their home and tried to rape and kill her was dead. So there was no "the man who did this" to find, no suspect to look for.

Monica squeezed Chandler's hand hard, and composed herself. Chandler realized he'd forgotten just how strong she could be sometimes, and he admired her ability to take a deep breath and just try to remember details, not her fear or thoughts, but clear facts. She went through how she'd woken up again, but once she'd gotten to when she'd heard the man enter her bedroom she couldn't hold back the tears anymore. She started to cry again, and was unable to talk.

"I know you get this a lot, but can we please do this some other time?" Chandler asked, annoyed. "I mean, she hasn't even been checked by paramedics yet!"

One of the two officers sighed and looked up at the ceiling.

"Listen, mister..." he began, but trailed off.

"Look, there's not even any reason to question her!" Chandler said, upset. "The guy is dead, you don't need this information to track him down!"

"Excuse me, but I had no idea you had a background of police work" the other cop said.

Then Phoebe's ex-boyfriend Gary stormed in, and told the other two officers to leave, he would take it from there. The two police men mumbled some annoyed phrases and then left. Gary looked from Monica to Chandler and back on Monica again.

"I heard a rapist had been killed in self defence by a woman he tried to attack, but I didn't hear that it was you until just a minute ago..." he said, looking straight into Monica's eyes. "I thought it might be more comfortable for you to talk to someone you know."

Monica slowly nodded, and weakly smiled, even if the smile came nowhere near reaching her eyes.

"Well Gary, maybe you could help explain something to me!" Chandler said. "I mean, like you just said, the guy is dead. So what's the point in all of this?"

"We need all information we can get for the report" Gary said, sitting down on the desk. "We need as many details as possible. This man has raped five women in as many weeks, two of them were killed. We want to know as much as possible, especially we want to make completely sure that it was the same guy."

Monica nodded, understanding what he was saying, and made an effort to continue her story. She had stopped crying. She stumbled at the words, then she looked up and met Chandler's eyes. They were calm, yet worried and filled with anger towards the person that had tried to harm her. She gathered strength from his eyes and continued to give her statement to Gary.

*

Monica stayed at a hospital that night and the next, and then she returned home with Chandler. The police team had made sure every trace of the attack had been washed off, there was no telling by looking in the apartment that anything violent had occurred there just two nights earlier. Except for the fact that one of Monica's vases that used to stand by the windows was gone.

Monica felt okay being back in the apartment. She even felt relieved, it was nice to be back home again. But she realized she'd never feel good living there again when she went to bed.
As soon as Chandler had turned off the lamp on his night stand fear came over Monica. In the quiet darkness she thought she heard several noises from the living room, none of which belonged there. She glanced over at Chandler, who was barely visible to her in the darkness, and noticed that he was completely calm and relaxed. He showed no sign of fear whatsoever. The sense of danger was all in her head.

She lay back and sighed deep. The fear wouldn't let go of her. She didn't dare to glance over at the door, because she was afraid to see someone standing there. And she didn't dare to close her eyes, because she would be vulnerable if she did. She looked at Chandler again, saw that he wasn't bothered by the darkness and silence at all. And she knew that he didn't like sleeping with the lights on, he had a really hard time falling asleep in a light room. She couldn't ask him to turn the lights on, it wouldn't be fare to him. And at the same time she didn't want him to know how scared she was.

She drew herself closer to him, snuggled up to him. She put her left arm across his chest and her head between his left cheek and shoulder. She gave him a light kiss on the neck, and closed her eyes. She felt his arms linger around her and hold her close, and it made her feel safer. She was still afraid, but with Chandler's arms around her she could relax.

*

The next day Monica and Chandler sat down in the living room to continue planning their wedding. They had planned on getting married in January or February, so they could have more time to plan the ceremony. At first they had wanted to get married in October, but it had given them too little time to plan everything since Chandler had gotten a promotion that had required him to take business trips every now and then, which had interrupted their planning.

Chandler noticed when they sat down that Monica wasn't at all as enthusiastic as she usually was. Earlier she could easily have spent hours just sitting and talking about what the wedding would be like, and planning the ceremony and the reception. But today her mind was somewhere else. Chandler followed her blank stare and noticed that she was looking at where the vase had once been.

"Monica..." Chandler said. "Never mind that. I think it's better for you not to think about it so much."

"How could I not think about it?" Monica asked. "I killed a guy, Chandler!"

"Yes, but he would have done the same to you!" Chandler insisted, putting his hand on her arm. "It was self defence. I'm glad you did it."

Monica turned and glared at him.

"I mean it" Chandler said. "If you hadn't killed him he would have hurt you bad, possibly even killed you. And your life is worth way much more to me than his was."

Monica smiled slightly.

"You know..." she said, looking thoughtful. "The worst part is that I don't even know what's worse. Thinking about the fact that I killed someone, thinking of what would have happened if I hadn't, or thinking of what would have happened if he hadn't knocked the vase in the floor and woken me up."

"Monica, don't THINK about this!" Chandler moaned. "It's not gonna do you any good."

"How can you expect me to just repress it all?" Monica asked, accusingly.

"That's not what I'm asking you to do. I'm not idiot, Monica! I know you'll never be able to completely forget about this. But constantly thinking about it isn't going to do you any good, actually it will do you the exact opposite of good."

Monica said nothing. She looked down on her hands, slowly twisting the engagement ring on her left ring finger. Chandler eyed her for a second, and then started looking through the notepad where she wrote down what they had decided for the wedding in. Not that he was very interested in it at the moment, but he had nothing else to do.

"Okay, should we continue with this?" he heard Monica say, with very little enthusiasm.

"No" he said. "I don't think you're really up to this. Maybe we should... put the planning off for a bit. I mean, it's only November, we still have about two months to plan everything in, and it's not gonna take us that long. Ross and Emily planned their wedding in less than a month."

"Well Ross and Emily's wedding was a disaster" Monica pointed out. She added with a small smile "And if you say 'I take thee Kathy' at ours, then you're gonna be sorry."

Chandler smiled slightly. The joke wasn't very funny, but it was nice to hear that she made an attempt to joke. He was afraid she would change from this experience.

*

Chandler woke up in the middle of the night. It was mid December, and a Saturday night. He wondered what had woken him up. And then he heard the unmistakable sound of Monica crying. He rolled over to her and put and arm around her waist.

"Hey..." he whispered. "How are ya'? You okay?"

He knew it was a stupid thing to ask, of course she wasn't okay, but he wanted to give her a minute to compose herself if that's what she wanted to do. Monica just shook her head and took a deep, trembling breath.

"No, I'm not okay" she whispered.

Chandler pulled her close and kissed the top of her head.

"It's okay, babe..." he whispered soothingly. "It's all okay. Did you have a bad dream?"

"I never fell asleep."

"What are you sad about?"

Monica was quiet for a few seconds. She had tried her best not to let it show how the incident the previous month had affected her. She had pretended like everything was okay, played her old role to please Chandler and her friends. And Chandler had fallen for the act, not because she was so convincing, but probably because he wanted everything to be as before. It had been easier for him to just let her convince him that she was doing okay. Therefor it didn't surprise her that he asked her what she was sad about. He probably had a slight suspicion that it was the memory of the attack, but not enough to immediately assume that that was her reason for crying.

"It's nothing" she whispered between the sobs.

"Don't tell me nothing, I can tell my sweetie is sad!" Chandler said, sounding worried and soothing all at once.

"Really, it's no big deal, Chandler!"

"It's the incident, isn't it?" Chandler guessed after some silence. "You're thinking of when that guy attacked you, and you're scared, aren't you?"

"Yes" Monica said in a squeaky voice.

"Oh honey..."

Chandler pulled her even closer and kissed her on the back of her head. She turned her head to look at him, and didn't see what she had expected. She had expected him to be sad and possibly annoyed, but the Chandler she saw was looking sad, worried and caring. And she also saw that it was no surprise to him that she was crying.

"I love you, Mon" he said.

Monica turned around in his arms so she was facing him. She put her arms around him, and they both held each other tight. Monica let go of her self control and cried in his arms. It felt good to do that, felt good to let all of her pain, fear and agony out, having his arms around her and his total wordless support. Just holding him comforted her, and she knew she could cry for as long as she needed, he would hold her and rock her slowly for as long as she needed him to.

"I love you too..." she whispered when she was done crying.

Chandler felt her relax, and soon fall asleep. He had more trouble going to sleep himself. He had lied to himself when he'd pretended that she was getting over the attack quite well. He had lied to himself, and also to her. He hadn't showed her the support that she deserved and needed, but that was all going to change now. He wanted to be there for her, every step of the way. He promised himself to show her patience and to let her know that he was there for her in the better days and the downright awful days. Just like he would promise her in his wedding vows. Hopefully they would be able to make something good out of this whole thing. Hopefully they'd grow to appreciate each other more, and their love would be stronger.



Please review!! And please read the other three parts as well, even though most things happen in part4. That part probably won't make sense if you haven't read the three first parts. :)!