No Angel

I’m working on an angry carthartic Elizabeth story from 2006, taking place in the midst of the paternity nonsense. I cannot speak for how good it’ll be, but it feels fun to write.  It’s not going to be a long story, so it’s not being officially shuffled in, but it’s something I’m writing in my off time when I get annoyed.  There is going to amazing amounts of profanity because I cannot literally think of Elizabeth’s storylines since 2006 without wanting to hurt people.

It begins the day Elizabeth goes to tell Jason about the paternity results only to find that Carly has already delivered her version of the news, so this is the beginning.

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“Carly told me about the baby. That it’s Lucky’s…and you know…it’s for the best.”

Looking back, Elizabeth Spencer could pick this moment as the moment she was done with the world. She could literally feel a switch turn on in her brain. Five minutes ago, she would have thought the words coming out of Jason Morgan’s mouth would have devastated her, but instead…

She was pissed. Anger boiled in her veins. This entire experience—from the moment she had told Jason she was pregnant and that the baby might be his had been plagued by complete insanity. Her psychotic ex-husband knew about this situation, which meant it was a ticking time bomb. His trampy piece of shit girlfriend had told Nikolas, and God only knew how long he would keep it to himself.

And to top it all off…motherfucking Carly Corinthos had hightailed it over here with her poisonous lies.

Elizabeth arched her eyebrow and smirked. Jason frowned and tilted his head, looking her in that way she’d used to dream about.

Now she just wanted to throttle him.

“Well. Wasn’t that nice of Carly,” Elizabeth said, voice dripping with sweetness. “How helpful she was. It’s just a goddamn shame she couldn’t have bothered to find out the truth.”

She could tell the moment the meaning behind her words hit him, because his eyes widened ever so slightly, and his mouth dropped open. “Elizabeth—”

“But don’t worry,” Elizabeth cut in. “Because I don’t need a goddamn thing from you. My life is fucked up, I get it. I’m about to end my third marriage to my second husband and I’m about to have a second child by a second babydaddy. I get it.” She tossed her hair back. “I don’t need anything,” she repeated. “And I don’t want anything.”

“Wait a second—” Jason stepped forward. “Are you telling me—”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Elizabeth said. “It’s not like you should have bothered to wait until I told you the news since it’s not like Carly hasn’t lied about paternity results before.” She tapped her chin. “Oh wait, she just did that. This year.” She reached into her purse and withdrew the paternity results. “In case you doubt me.” She flung the envelope at him, but it landed between their feet when he made no move forward.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“I may be shit out of luck when it comes to men,” Elizabeth interrupted him again. “No surprises there, but you know what? I’m fucking fantastic mother, and I’m going to prove it by getting Cameron out of my disastrous marriage and I will be damned if my second child ever feels like he was unwanted—”

“This baby is not unwanted,” Jason began, his voice tight. Like he had a goddamn right to be angry.

“No, it certainly is not. I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth snarled, “that my child is such an inconvenience to you that you think would be better for a drug addict to be its father.” She looped her purse over her shoulder. “You couldn’t wait to keep Carly’s kid away from a drunk like AJ, but its fine for my kid to be raised by a pill-popping cheating son of a bitch who threw me to the ground when I tried to walk out on him—”

“Wait, this has gotten out of hand. Elizabeth, can’t we just talk about this—”

“Too little, too late. You can apologize all you want for saying it, but you said it,” she retorted. “So we both know how you really feel. I am absolutely done with you and yours, Jason Morgan. Go to hell.”

She slammed the door behind her and decided that being angry felt so fan-fucking-tastic that she was going to ride this high straight to the nearest divorce lawyer.

She was going to set the world on fire, and she wasn’t entirely sure she didn’t mean that literally.

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A Few Words Too Many

We’re about a week away from me posting the first chapter of this story (of which eleven chapters are completed and it’s over 120 pages long.)  Here’s a snippet of some fun from Chapter Three.  Elizabeth is desperately trying to avoid Ric after learning she’s pregnant, and Jason and Sonny want him out of town so he can stop harassing their people, but Sonny can’t bring himself to do it.

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The numbers on the ledgers were beginning to blur together as Jason struggled to keep his focus. Three days since he’d warned Ric to get out of town, and the scum was still in his room at Kelly’s as if nothing had changed. He really thought being Sonny’s half-brother offered him protection. Sonny didn’t want him evicted because it was easier to keep an eye on him this way, but Jason just wanted to shove him in the harbor with weights on his feet. He wanted the disgusting son of a bitch to sink to the bottom struggling to breath for what he had done to Carly, to Elizabeth.

He wasn’t a man who could picture things that well, but he would never forget the hitch in Carly’s breath, the tears on her cheeks as she promised Sonny she hadn’t slept with Ric for revenge, that she honestly didn’t remember anything and that her skin felt dirty for just having been in bed with him. Carly was his best friend, for all her faults, and just for that scene alone, he wanted to dismember Ric Lansing.

But the look in Elizabeth’s eyes last Friday, as she sat on her knees, her arms wrapped around her torso as if that action alone could hold her together. She had refused to meet his eyes as he’d crouched in front of her, and pulled her to her feet. Not until the last moment, making him wish he could go against Sonny’s orders. She was wrecked, as if nothing could put her back together. She hadn’t looked that way since they’d first met and now he was powerless to do anything about it.

He closed the books and reached for his phone when it lit up. Francis. “Morgan,” he said, clenching his free hand into a fist. “Is Elizabeth okay?”

“Uh…” Elizabeth’s guard sounded hesitant. “You told me not to intervene with Lansing unless he put a hand on her, but he’s tracked her down on the Elm Street Pier, and Jason, you’re gonna wanna get down here.”

Jason was already on his feet, heading for the doors. “Is he threatening her? I’m at the warehouse, I can be there in just a few minutes.”

“He’s not…but it’s not good. And it’s going to get worse. Get here fast.”

“If he lays a finger on her, throw him in the harbor. Sonny’s orders be damned.”

This is the opening prologue to A Few Words Too Many, the rewrite of Poisonous Dreams. FWTM takes place in the spring of 2003, and I have rewritten the early LiRic relationship, because I think the show could have really gone two distinct directions that would have worked, and they chose a dumbass third option that made my Lizzie look like a jackass. So, those changes should become clear.

 

 

Song: Sand and Water (Beth Neilsen Chapman)

 Prologue

April 2003

General Hospital: Nurse’s Station

All alone I didn’t like the feeling
All alone I sat and cried

Elizabeth Webber sat on the sofa by the elevators, staring straight ahead, ignoring the ball of nausea in her stomach. Fiercely trying to block out the memory of the test results Dr. Kelly Lee had delivered twenty minutes earlier.

Somehow, it was all a dream. This entire week of terror and nightmares would be a dream.

Any moment now, she would wake up and maybe if she were truly lucky, she would wake up months and months ago. God, if she could just go back to the fall, and wait five lousy seconds for Jason to talk to her, to apologize to her. It might all be different.

Or even further back. Maybe if she had thrown Jason’s cell phone into the harbor, he wouldn’t have taken the phone call that had sent him out the night the lights went out and she’d slept with Zander.

What she wouldn’t do for the power of time travel.

All alone I had to find some meaning
In the center of the pain I felt inside

But it wasn’t a horrible dream. It was her reality. She had gone from a man who was too stubborn to say anything that really mattered to a man who used words as a weapon.

In her loneliness, in her aching need to be loved and to matter, she’d allowed Ric Lansing into her life. He was everything Jason wasn’t, she’d told herself. He told her how beautiful she was, and how happy she made him, and how much he wanted to be with her. She’d lapped it up like a stupid little girl, too needy and desperate to see the truth

Ric Lansing was everything Jason Morgan wasn’t. He was a liar, who used all the words to pump her for information about Jason and Sonny, information she wouldn’t have given even if she’d known all the answers to the questions he wanted. He was a user, who’d only sought her out after finding her talking to Jason one night at Luke’s.

And she wished to God she’d known she was just a pawn in his game to get to Sonny Corinthos. His half-brother.

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die

She had ignored all the warning signs, had ignored Jason’s words of caution because she told herself he might be jealous or something else stupid and inane to explain why Jason would say these things about a man he barely knew. Jason didn’t know Ric like she did. She had never listened to Taggart, Nikolas, her grandmother or anyone else who talked about Jason like that, why should listen to these things about Ric?

It wasn’t like she could trust Jason to tell the truth. He’d let her comfort him at Sonny’s funeral. He’d told her they would try to be more, to finally capitalize on the years of feelings and emotions, and they’d be together.

She’d thought she mattered. Until Courtney. Until the lipstick on his neck,all the days he never stopped in the penthouse while she was there…and the loft he’d bought for Courtney.

So she’d told herself Ric was a good man, and that Jason hadn’t done much but lie to her for months.

Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water, and a million years gone by

And instead she’d learned the truth the hard way. She’d learned that Ric had targeted her to bother Jason, and when that hadn’t worked, he had pretended to sleep with Carly when she was drunk.

Not that Ric had admitted these things to her or even felt bad, but he’d taunted Sonny and Jason one night earlier that week at Kelly’s. Sonny had learned about Carly, had tracked Ric down in the courtyard and none of them had bothered to look inside the restaurant, where Elizabeth had been closing up for the night.

And Elizabeth had learned the hard way that she couldn’t trust herself.

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves

And now…she was pregnant. She was pregnant with Ric Lansing’s child.

She stared down at the pamphlets Kelly had handed her, after Elizabeth had broken down in tears. Not to push her one way or another, but to understand that she had options if she didn’t want the child. Adoption. Abortion.

And all Elizabeth wanted to do was crawl under the covers and stay there for the rest of her life. Anything not to make this decision.

How could she have a child? She was a waitress who lived in a broken down studio without her own bathroom, much less a kitchen. She had a degree in art, but what the hell could she do with that? Of course she couldn’t have this baby. She’d have to have an abortion. There was no other choice.

I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave

And yet, how could she blame an innocent life for the crimes of its parents? This child was half her, and despite her many failings, she still had time to pull her life together. She had options. She could get her teacher’s certification. She could go into the nursing program like her grandmother kept hinting.

Ric Lansing didn’t have to be a part of this child’s life.

And, maybe it was selfish, but if she had this child…if Elizabeth became a mother, there would finally be someone in this world who loved her.

Just the way she was.

Elm Street Pier

Her heart heavy, her body tired and her mind racing with ways to keep this pregnancy a secret from the worst choice of her life, Elizabeth blindly walked towards Kelly’s, stopping at the top of the stairs to the Elm Street Pier when she heard voices.

Familiar voices.

Hanging back around the corner, Elizabeth waited for Ric Lansing and whoever he was with to disappear so she could head to work.

“What have I told you about seeking me out in public?” Ric demanded.

“You like it better when we’re all by ourselves in bed,” a female voice purred, and the pit in Elizabeth’s stomach grew, burning. She knew that voice.

All alone I heal this heart of sorrow
All alone I raise this child

“Well…” God she knew that tone. That disgusting charming tone he used when he was flirting. When he was convincing her she was the only woman in his life. “That may be true,” Ric continued. “But things are tense right now, and if anyone sees us talking…”

“You mean the little twit,” Faith Roscoe purred. “I thought you were gonna cut her loose.”

Oh, she was going to be sick. She was going to lose it, and just start heaving for all the world to hear.

“I was,” Ric said. “But she’s amusing, and while it doesn’t seem to bother Morgan much I’m screwing his ex-bed buddy, I know Sonny can’t stand it, so she’s worth the trouble.”

Elizabeth sank to her knees, wishing she were anywhere else in the world. She’d known she’d been targeted to bother Jason, but to hear him…to hear him put it that way, God, she just wanted to set herself on fire.

Flesh and bone, he’s just
Bursting towards tomorrow

“You’re lucky I’m so understanding,” Faith remarked. “If I thought you gave a damn about her, I might decide to…take preventative measures.”

Tears slid down Elizabeth’s cheeks, and she just wanted to disappear. She’d been so stupid. She should have listened to Jason. She should have known him better. She should have trusted him.

“Now, now. You can’t make any waves.” His voice lowered slightly and Elizabeth couldn’t really make out words other than “danger, Families, money.”

And his laughter fills my world and wears your smile

Their voices finally faded, and she heard footsteps indicating they were moving out further onto the pier. Even when she was sure they were gone, she remained on the ground, her arms wrapped around herself, tears sliding down her cheeks.

That was the father of her child, who talked about screwing her to annoy someone else. She hadn’t meant anything to him, not even a little.

If she could just curl up into a ball and fade into nothing, it might be for the best.

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves

She heard footsteps on the stairs, and told herself to get up, to move, but her legs were frozen, her brain sluggish. When the steps stopped in front her, she opened her eyes and saw the boots a few feet from her.

If Elizabeth possessed any energy left to be embarrassed, she might have actually burst into flames as she watched Jason Morgan crouch in front her, his eyes concerned.

She was too shattered to care.

“Elizabeth,” he said quietly. “How long have you been here?”

I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave

And oh, God…he must have heard. Oh, God. She opened her mouth to respond, to say something…anything to stop this torment. She could lie to him—she’d only just gotten here, she’d tripped and stumbled.

But she just couldn’t drag it out of herself. “Long enough,” she murmured.

All alone I came into this world

She heard Jason’s inhale of breath, and wondered what he thought of her being targeted because of him. He’d always said his enemies would use her to get to him, he probably hadn’t thought it be through sex and that she’d let them.

“I wish I could blame you,” she said softly, keeping her eyes on the ground, not meeting his gaze. “That Ric only came for me because I…because of you. But I can’t.” Her breath was shaky as she slowly exhaled. “Because you told me, and I ignored you.”

“I am so…” He stopped, and slid his hands under her elbows to help her stand. “Elizabeth—”

All alone I will someday die

“There’s nothing you can say.” Another tear slid down her cheek. “I heard most of it at Kelly’s earlier this week, but you know…he didn’t put it that way then.” She struggled to keep from sinking back to the ground. “He just told you he’d had to use Carly when you didn’t seem to give a damn about me.”

“I—” But Jason didn’t seem to know what say.

“It’s okay.” Elizabeth offered a shaky smile. “Really. I needed…” She took a deep breath, trying not to collapse under the weight of the devastation of her life, of her dreams. “I needed to hear him put it that way. To know that he’d been sleeping with other women, with Faith Roscoe. I hadn’t broken up with yet, you know. I didn’t think I could be in the same room with him, I was afraid he’d explain away his words to you and Sonny the way he always seemed to explain everything else. I was afraid I might believe him because I needed…” She pressed her lips together. “But now I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I outlived my usefulness a long time ago, and I was only kept around for amusement.”

Solid stone is just sand and water, baby

After a long moment of silence, Jason cleared his throat. “Can I—Can I give you a ride somewhere?”

No. Taking a ride from Jason Morgan when her life had shattered three years ago had been the reason she was in this mess. For her own sanity, she could not let him be her sounding board. He already thought her to be pathetic, to be desperate, if he knew she was pregnant by Ric, he’d feel sorry for her. He’d pity her.

And she would really throw herself into the harbor at that point.

“No.” When her voice was weak, she forced herself to take a deep breath. “No. Thank you for being concerned, but I think that sometimes the truth is better…” She looked at him now, for the first time, meeting those beautiful eyes that had broken her heart. “Sometimes the truth is better, even when it’s harsh. I have no illusions left.” Another tear escaped her eye, and she found her lips curving into a smile. “I never mattered at all.”

Sand and water and a million years gone by