In every loss in every lie
In every truth that you deny
And each regret and each goodbye
Was a mistake too great to hide
And your voice was all I heard
That I get what I deserve
– New Divide, Linkin Park

---

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

 General Hospital: Break Room

Elizabeth grimaced as she stirred some sugar into her cup of coffee, then sipped it. Wincing at the awful taste, she turned to her best friend with a shake of her head. “You’re the daughter of the chief of staff. Make them buy a better coffee pot.”

“I asked Dad,” Emily Bowen-Quartermaine said with a sigh, “but he says terrible coffee builds character. Apparently, since he suffered as a resident, we all have to.”

“I remember when we were younger, splitting our packets of hot chocolate, swearing we’d never be like our parents and addicted to coffee.” Elizabeth took a seat at the table, then stifled a yawn. This was her last break until the end of her shift, which wasn’t for another two hours.

“Yeah, we were young and dumb. Coffee is how I get through the day and night.” Emily pursed her lip as she sat down. “You gonna tell me why my brother was at the hospital?”

“What?” Elizabeth frowned at her. “How did—”

“Gossip travels fast, and you know, there are plenty of people around here that love to gossip about my brother.” Emily leaned forward. “And some of them were working here seven years ago. You know…when Jason and Nikolas got into a fistfight—”

“Oh, God…” Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “So what?”

“So, a few of those nurses saw the two of you looking pretty tight, disappearing into a conference room for nearly a half-hour before walking him to the elevator, all smiles.” Emily lifted her brows. “Is there something I should know?”

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose at the strange comment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. You guys worked together during the quarantine—”

“Two telephone conversations, through your phone, and then I helped him and Carly with the vaccine.” She rolled her eyes. “Emily—what’s going on with you? Last week, you ditched three shifts, you’re still avoiding my phone calls—” She raised her brows. “And now, what, you think I’m having an affair with your brother?”

“You say my brother like you didn’t use to have the hots for him. I’m just—like I said, people have a long memory. And you know, that Christmas party was infamous.” Emily leaned forward. “And you’re not saying no.”

“Well, this is me saying no. For one thing, I’m married, and for another, he’s engaged. And also, you know better than to listen to gossip.” Elizabeth shifted uncomfortably. “Why would people—this is so stupid. He just came to ask me something. I did him a quick favor, and that’s it. And it wasn’t a half-hour—ugh, this is how all that crap got started when Lucky came home. Everyone rushing to tell him I’m some kind of tramp—”

“Well, that’s not the way I remember it,” Emily offered. “And you weren’t a tramp back then. Lucky was supposed to be dead. He’d been gone for, God…” She sighed. “More than six months. I never blamed you for moving on, Liz. Just for not telling me.”

Elizabeth frowned. There was a lot about her friend’s statement that rubbed her the wrong way. “There was nothing to tell.”

“Sure.”

“There wasn’t—and there still isn’t. It wasn’t a half-hour,” Elizabeth repeated. “And I noticed that you’re ignoring how weird you’ve been lately.” Inspired, she continued, “That’s why we were talking. We were talking about you.”

“Me?” Emily pressed her hand to her chest, then shook her head. “Why? Why?” Her voice changed, a thin line of tension laying underneath it. “What about me?”

“You’ve been dodging his calls. He’s been trying to check in with you since the quarantine lifted, and you haven’t been interested.” Elizabeth hesitated. “And you ditched meeting with him about Manny. So I guess we were comparing notes.”

“And what conclusion did you come to?” Emily asked testily.

“None. I told him the quarantine took a lot out of both of us. All of us. I mean, we were in here trying to save lives. He was out there trying to find a vaccine. It was a lot, and we’re—” She waved her hand in the air. “We’re all trying to adjust. He gets it, Em. He was just worried about you, is all. You’re the one thing we’ve always had in common.”

“Fine. Just…” Emily shrugged. “Is that the favor he wanted?”

“The favor was separate.” Elizabeth sighed. “Do me a favor — if you hear nurses gossiping again, can you just…stop it? I’m married to a cop. The last thing I need is for Lucky to be here and overhear this crap. He already hates Jason and Sonny. Jason and I aren’t as close as we used to be, but we’re friendly, and I don’t want to have that argument with Lucky.”

“I guess, but wasn’t Lucky here?”

“He was—”

Elizabeth looked up as Patrick and Robin stepped into the break room, deep into another playful fight about how they’d spend their day next off together. “Hey—I was hoping to run into you,” she said to Patrick.

“Yeah? You enjoying your last shift down here in the dregs?” Patrick wiggled his brows. “You’re all mine tomorrow.”

Robin whacked him in the chest. “Turn it off, doofus. She’s married.”

“That’s why he flirts with me,” Elizabeth teased. “I’m safe.”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “Don’t ruin my reputation, Spencer.”

Robin snorted as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “Can’t get any worse.”

“Anyway,” Elizabeth interrupted before the two of them could continue snarking at each other. “I wasn’t able to catch Lucky before he left. How did his appointment go?”

Patrick hesitated. “I’m not sure if I should—”

“Oh, come on, she’s his wife and emergency medical contact,” Emily reminded the doctor. “What’s the big deal?”

“Nothing. I guess—I mean, he’ll probably want to be the one to tell you—and now I’ve worried you.” Patrick grimaced. “Fine. I told him that the return to work date Tony gave him before he got sick isn’t going to work anymore. He needs to get back into a full physical therapy routine, push out a return date for at least a month. We’ll need to consider surgery if he doesn’t show any improvement in physical therapy or if the MRI results haven’t improved.”

Elizabeth sighed, slumping in her chair. Surgery. Which might put him out of commission for another four or five months. “I was worried that might be the case. I knew he was in denial, but…God. That’s a lot.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not my biggest fan right now, but I have to do what’s best for him long-term. Putting him back on duty before he’s ready—it’s not doing him or his partner any favors, right?” Patrick sighed. “Sorry, Liz.”

“No, I appreciate you doing your best by him. We’ll…” She forced a smile on her face. “We’ll get through this. We’ve already gotten through the last few months. What’s another few more?”

Morgan Penthouse: Living Room

 Sam was ready to launch back into the argument as soon as Jason came home that night. She’d heard the key in the lock and got to her feet, bracing herself. No man was going to tell her what to do, especially someone who was every inch the criminal she was.

But when Jason walked in, some of Sam’s ire faded. He looked…worried. His brow was furrowed, and his jaw was clenched.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did something happen…” She folded her arms. “Something with Manny? Is that what the call was about?”

“No.” Jason shook his head. “No, there’s nothing new with Manny. I’m sorry. I—” He took a deep breath. “Look, I should have said something last week when Stan gave us the report from the adoption records, but I guess…I just wanted to make sure. Or maybe I really just wanted to be wrong…” He drew out a piece of paper that was folded into three parts.

“Wrong about what? We didn’t get anything useful from the adoption records. Not even after Stan hacked them.” She folded her arms. “All we learned was that the woman never existed–

“I—thought I recognized the name. Natasha Davis.” He met her eyes. “Alexis was born Natasha Cassadine. She changed her name after Helena killed her mother. To protect herself.”

Everything simply stopped. She heard the words, saw his mouth forming the sounds, but she had to…

No. There was no way…

Of all the women in the world…

It couldn’t be…

“What—” Her mouth felt dry as Sam forced the words. “What are you saying?”

“I didn’t—I didn’t want to—if it wasn’t true—so I did a DNA test.” He extended the paper, but Sam didn’t look at it. Didn’t reach for it.

“You thought you knew who my mother was, and you looked into it without me.” Her ears were buzzing, and Sam couldn’t quite form a coherent thought. Couldn’t even begin to process the horror of what he was actually saying.

No, better to focus on the crime. Not the results. “You ran a DNA test without me? What, did you send my spit away to one of those stupid labs—”

“I didn’t want to wait that long, so I asked a friend at the hospital to run it. No names.” He hesitated. “Sam—”

“And you’re telling me which means—”

Her knees buckled as Sam sank back onto the sofa. “Oh, God. You’re telling me,” she repeated. “Which means the results—no. No, this isn’t possible, okay? It’s just not. There’s no way in hell that Alexis Davis is my mother—” Her stomach lurched even as she said the words. The woman who had browbeaten her until she nearly died—until her daughter had died. The woman who’d lived instead of Danny.

The woman who had set Manny Ruiz free.

No way in hell could Alexis be Sam’s mother. It wasn’t—it wasn’t possible. It wasn’t fair—

She shot up and snatched the paper from Jason, ripping it open. She scanned the gibberish until she found what she was looking for — a 99.99993 percent chance that Patient A and Patient B were related through the maternal DNA.

“Who ran this?” Sam demanded. “How do you know you can trust them?”

“Elizabeth Webber. You know her—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam dredged up the brunette who’d looked after her and Danny in the hospital. “She was—” A bubble of hysteria rose in her throat. “She was really good to him in the hospital. Danny liked her. Said she sang him a lullaby.”

Danny. He really wasn’t her brother. She’d known that, but somehow—God, somehow, seeing this test made it so crystal clear. The one person in all the world that had ever loved her… didn’t belong to her anymore. Wasn’t hers.

She wasn’t anyone’s. She hadn’t even realized until this moment she’d thought maybe her biological family could be somewhere she could belong.

But she could never be part of Alexis Davis’s family.

“And she doesn’t know anything about the test?”

Jason grimaced. “She didn’t at first, but…Sam, when I got those results, I thought—I thought maybe I shouldn’t tell you.”

“You—” Sam took a step back. “You did this without telling me, and then you were going to…what…hide it from me? What the hell—”

“Elizabeth talked me out of it. So, yeah. She knows. She won’t say anything. Not even to Emily. I trust her.”

“You trust her—” Sam crumpled the white paper in a ball, curled it into her fist. “Oh, well, that’s fine. Trust her with something you had no right to even do—”

“I know, and I’m sorry—”

“Well, it’s too fucking late for that, isn’t it?” she spat. Her skin was tingling, almost like she’d shoved a fork into a socket and gotten a jolt. Alexis Davis. Alexis fucking Davis was her mother. She’d been searching for answers, and Jason had handed them to her on a silver platter—

And had only told her at all because some nurse had convinced him.

Had she woken up in a nightmare? Her baby brother wasn’t hers. She wasn’t even really her mother’s daughter, and her father had probably adopted her to run a con.

And now she learned she’d been thrown away by Alexis Davis, the woman who’d stolen everything from her.

What a fucking joke her entire life had turned out to be.

“Sam—”

“I can’t do this right now. I can’t—I can’t even think—I can’t make this right in my head and the only reason I even—if you’d just told me what you thought, Jason, I could have—I could have had time to deal with it before we knew for sure—and maybe I wouldn’t have even wanted to know. But you forced it on me. This wasn’t your fight. This was mine, and you stole it from me.” Her eyes burned as she stared at the man she’d thought she’d known so well. “You took this from me. And you can’t ever make that okay.”

“Sam—”

“Sure, you were trying to protect me. But that’s not your job. I never asked you to do that.” She stalked past him and yanked her coat out of the closet. “I’m going to take a walk. And you’re going to sleep on the damn couch tonight.”

Cosmopolitan Hotel: Hallway

Emily stepped off the elevator, pressing a fist to her mouth as she stifled a yawn. She had hoped to go home tonight, but when the call had come—

Well, she couldn’t resist.

She knocked on the door lightly. “It’s me,” she said. The door opened, and she smiled at the man standing on the other side.

“Hey,” Sonny Corinthos said, as he pulled her inside and kissed her. “I didn’t know if you’d get my message.”

“I caught it after my shift.” She smoothed her hands down his chest, smiling at him. “I had to dodge a lot of questions today,” she teased as he led her to a table where glasses of champagne were waiting. “Elizabeth and Jason are starting to compare notes.”

Sonny frowned as he handed her a glass. “Since when do they talk?”

“I know!” Emily rolled her eyes. “I ditched a meeting with Jason about Manny Ruiz last week—I didn’t think it was a big deal, and you’d already told me that you were having him watched. But Elizabeth talked to him instead.” She bit her lip, stared down into her glass, then looked up to meet his eyes. “Should we tell them?”

“I thought we’d decided to wait,” Sonny said. “Until we knew if…if there was something worth talking about.” He leaned in, brushed his lips against hers. “You know what people are going to say.”

“I do. But Jason won’t. He knows I can make my own choices—”

“Jason will probably react the worst,” Sonny told her with a sigh. He shook his head. “You’re his little sister. And…it’s not like he doesn’t know the risks.” He winced. “And you hadn’t moved home yet, but I didn’t handle it well when he starting dating my sister.”

Emily pressed her lips together. “Maybe. But he’ll come around, and I can count on Elizabeth. Yeah, my family will hit the roof, and Carly will be a nightmare, but Jason and Elizabeth will come through for me. They always do.” She hesitated. “Then again…”

He raised a brow as he took her glass from her. “Then again?” he prompted.

“Maybe we should wait a little longer,” Emily suggested. “It’s…you’re right. This is still so new. And maybe we’ll hate each other in a few weeks.” She smiled. “Let’s just keep this between us.”

“Excellent idea.” He leaned in for another kiss, and the conversation slipped away.

Lucky & Elizabeth’s Apartment: Kitchen

Elizabeth grimaced as she lifted Cameron from his booster seat after thoroughly wiping his dinner from his cheeks and neck. His shirt was covered in the remains of his spaghetti sauce despite the napkin tucked into his collar. Her little boy was special like that.

“Mommy, Biderman.” Cameron grinned at her. “I go play?”

“Yeah, go ahead and play in your room.”

She looked up through the open arch of the kitchen to the living room as her husband slammed the door behind him. Lucky ripped his coat off, then scowled as he clearly aggravated his back. He didn’t even seem to notice as Cameron toddled past him into the bedroom. “How was physical therapy—”

“How do you think it was?” he snapped as he tossed the coat over the arm of the sofa. Lucky winced, shook his head. “Sorry. It was a crappy day, and it got worse after therapy. I still can’t do all of the exercises, and until I can, they won’t even consider putting me back on active duty.”

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. He’d been so close to going back to work before the car accident, and now… “Patrick said he didn’t give you a return date.”

“Oh, nice of him to tell you about my case like it’s any of his fucking business—” Lucky scowled. “He won’t even refill my pain prescription, so I’m supposed to suffer, I guess.” He glared at her. “And then I leave my appointment and find you smiling at a damn criminal. What the hell were you doing with Jason Morgan?”

Elizabeth frowned, her shoulders tensing. She hadn’t expected that turn in the conversation and didn’t quite understand the accusation in Lucky’s voice. Jason and Lucky had known each other for years, and while they hadn’t been friends since Lucky’s brainwashing, they’d managed to co-exist just fine. In fact, Elizabeth knew that Lucky had gone to Jason for information about Manny after her kidnapping back in October.

Remembering Emily’s strange questions about her friendship with Jason, Elizabeth didn’t know why everyone was acting like she’d been caught kissing Jason.

They’d walked to a frickin’ elevator!

Elizabeth took a deep breath and decided to treat the question like it hadn’t been launched at her like an accusation of something way more nefarious. “I didn’t see you—why didn’t you come over and say something? Jason had a question about something. I gave him some test results and walked him to the elevator. We were talking about Emily.”

“I don’t give a damn how Emily feels about him or if you used to be friends. You’re my wife, and I’m a cop. I can’t have you being friends with criminals—”

“I won’t waste my breath and talk about innocent until proven guilty because I know that’s not your point. I’m sorry, Lucky. But we’re both worried about Emily. She’s been acting strangely since the quarantine. And there’s Manny—”

“If you’re so concerned about Manny, why don’t you talk to the people who are supposed to take care of this crap? You know, the police?” Lucky charged.

“Maybe because the PCPD didn’t seem to be able to do anything the last time Manny was on a rampage,” Elizabeth shot back. Lucky’s eyes glinted with fury. “The system let him out, Lucky. Why the hell would I trust them to fix it now?”

“Oh, you trust a mobster more than your own husband?” Lucky demanded. “Doesn’t the law mean anything to you?”

“When it works. It couldn’t put Manny away. And it sure as hell didn’t get me justice with Tom Baker, did it? And Ric is still out there, practicing law no matter what he did. You can’t always trust the system. And when it comes to protecting myself and the hospital, I’m glad there’s someone that can take care of psychos like Manny.”

“I can’t fucking believe this—”

“You lived outside the law your entire life, Lucky. It wasn’t so long ago we were covering up the death of a police officer ourselves. And you haven’t always followed the rules, either.”

“Sure, throw that in my face again—it wasn’t my fault what happened to Emily—”

“I never said it was—” Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Look, it’s not like Jason and I are close. He came to the hospital with a medical question, and we talked about Emily. We saw Manny while he was there. Stop making this more than it has to be.”

She sighed when he just glared at her and said nothing. “I need to give Cameron a bath before getting him settled for bed. I’ll be back out later.”

When she’d closed the door, Lucky scowled and reached inside his pocket. He took out his bottle of pills and looked at it. He’d started the day with twenty, but now…

He tossed back two more, grimacing. He’d taken two more after his therapy session, but he really needed to be careful with what was left. If Patrick refused to write him a script, Lucky wasn’t sure what to do.

But his back was still screaming ten minutes later, so Lucky took two more pills. He’d start being careful tomorrow.

He looked around the apartment, the cramped one-bedroom that they’d been living in for the last eight months. This was hardly the life he’d wanted, the one he’d planned for himself or Elizabeth.

He hated these rooms. Hated the tiny kitchen, the lumpy sofa bed he and Elizabeth shared while Cameron slept in the bedroom all by himself. He’d never understood why the hell the kid couldn’t have slept out here, but she’d insisted, and he’d given in. He always gave in with her.

No matter what Elizabeth wanted, he gave it to her. Just like now — she was refusing to give up Jason Morgan. Like she always did.

Absently, Lucky slid another pill between his lips, not realizing it was the fifth he’d taken in the last hour. He didn’t even know it until he looked down and saw that the pills he’d started the day with had been cut by half.

He grimaced, got to his feet. “I’m going out,” he called to Elizabeth.

“Where?” she called back, but he didn’t answer. He dragged back on his coat and slammed the door behind him.

Jake’s: Bar

Sam raised her hand to signal the bartender, Coleman, that she wanted another shot. She just wanted everything to go away.

Alexis Davis was her mother.

And Danny was not her brother.

She couldn’t quite make any of that come outright. How could any of it be true? How could this be her reality? It simply…it didn’t compute. It didn’t add up.

Until she’d learned about her pregnancy, Danny had felt like the only good thing in her life. The only pure thing that kept her tethered to humanity. She knew that she wasn’t a good person. Sam would never lie to herself and think she was decent or kind. She’d stolen, she’d manipulated, she’d done terrible things for money.

And yeah, sometimes it had been to take care of Danny, but it had also been fun. Sam was a damn good con artist, and part of her was itching to get back into the game. To get back to a life she understood.

Because this life? This life didn’t make any fucking sense. Not since the day she’d targeted Jasper Jacks and that stupid hand of cards nearly three years ago. She’d not managed to close the deal with Jax, but Sonny—he’d been a terrific mark. Lonely. Rich. And the bonus of her looking just like his one true love, Brenda—

Sam thought if she’d just been able to get rid of Carly, maybe things could have been different. She could have really kept Sonny on the hook for decades.

She tossed back the tequila, feeling the alcohol burn her throat, then slammed the shot glass down. “Another!”

She didn’t let herself think about that much anymore—those few months when she’d tried to calculate her way into Sonny’s life and bank account. Sometimes Sam even

tried to convince herself she’d really been in love with Sonny, but what was the point?

She knew the truth.

Sam had seen a rich guy who looked like he might not suck in bed. Port Charles was lousy with gorgeous millionaires, and Sam had wanted a piece of it. Until her daughter. Until her baby grew in her, and Sam knew she’d needed more. Wanted more.

She’d never let a pregnancy get past the first six or seven weeks before. Had always had an abortion before the baby became real to her. Once it had…it had changed everything. Sam sighed, stared at her reflection in the grimy mirror that was built into the back of Jake’s bar.

She hadn’t liked playing that game. It had been the first con Cody had taught her — the best one for a girl like Sam to play, he’d told her. She looked like trash, and no one wanted to have a permanent connection to trash.

Of course, the first time hadn’t been a game. Sam drank another tequila and sighed, thinking of the first. Of the first boy she’d been with who’d thrown her away.

She hadn’t known then it was her own history she had repeated. Maybe that was Alexis’s story. Some good looking boy who’d promised the world when she’d been sixteen to get her into the backseat of his Chevy, only to smirk when the bill came due. Had that happened to Alexis? Had she known the shame and humiliation of looking at a boy she’d thought loved her, only to have him laugh in her face

He’d offered to pay for the abortion, and Sam had gone to her father, sure that somehow her father, who always had a game to play, would know what to do. But Cody had just told her that was a woman’s lot in life. Men had all the fun while women paid the price. Better to learn it now and make men pay. At least he’d offered to foot the bill.

Those were the games Sam was best at — making men want her enough to pay for it. She could tempt a man to leave his wife, to sell his soul, to give her anything she wanted just for a taste. She’d gotten pregnant again at eighteen. Then again at nineteen.

The fourth time, when she was twenty, after her fourth abortion, Sam decided to stop playing that game. She’d upgraded to rich men who wanted a pretty trophy wife. No more babies.

She wondered now why she’d stopped playing the game. She could have just started faking pregnancies. But she’d stopped using kids at all until she’d ended up pregnant with Sonny’s daughter. Had part of her known she’d been thrown away? Had she somehow suspected it?

“I guess you’re slummin’ it,” Lucky Spencer said he slid onto a stool, swaying slightly as he put up his hand to place an order for a beer. “What? Jason’s mini-bar isn’t fully stocked?’

Sam rolled her eyes and brought the shot glass to her lips. “Doesn’t your dad own a bar club?”

“Don’t want to see anyone,” Lucky muttered as Coleman placed the Rolling Rock in front of him.

“Well, same here.” Sam scowled at him. “So, leave me the hell alone.”

“Yeah, I will if you keep your fiancé away from my wife,” Lucky shot back. He dumped some money on the bar, then picked up his drink to stumble away towards the pool table. Sam stared after him, blinking.

What the hell was that about?

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