Written in 71 minutes. This is shorter than I wanted it to be, but my contacts were bothering me, and Jason and Elizabeth were being annoying — I couldn’t find the right angle, and I didn’t just want to just trash the scene. I think I like where it ended up.

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Quartermaine Estate: Foyer

At the sound of the door opening, Rocco shot up from the bottom step, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He didn’t really know what he was going to say when he saw Danny, but he’d figure it out wouldn’t he?

Jake came in first, the keys dangling from his hand as he entered and turned slightly, his two younger brothers following—Aiden, then Danny last. Danny’s hair was disheveled — not in the deliberate way he usually tried to achieve, but in the probably just ran his fingers through it style. His face seemed a little swollen, especially around the eyes, the black eye from the fight last week fading into shades of a green.

“Hey. Hi.” Rocco cleared his throat. “Um, they’re, like—” he nodded towards the double doors. “They’re in there. Your grandmother and Scout. And Drew and Willow and Brook—my dad—” He stopped, feeling uncomfortable. “Anyway. I’m…sorry. About you know.”

“My mother being dead,” Danny finished and Rocco’s cheeks heated. He dropped his eyes to the floor.

“Uh, right. That. Yeah.” He cleared his throat, shifted from one foot to the other. “I think they told your sister. I don’t know. I didn’t wanna be in there. It’s like—” He stopped, dropped back to the bottom step. “Never mind.”

Danny grimaced, then headed for the doors, pulled them open and went inside. Voices bubbled through the opening briefly before returning to the muffled tones once Danny had closed the door behind himself.

Aiden let out a deep sigh, sat next to Rocco. “Man, this sucks. I don’t know what we’re supposed to say to him, you know? I keep thinking I’ll figure it out, or like, the words will come, but they don’t.”

“I don’t really think there’s much we can say,” Jake said. “Especially…not me and Aiden. I mean, your dad still sucks,” he told Aiden, “but we’ve got our mom—” he looked at Rocco. “And you could try the whole my mom’s in a coma thing—”

“But coma isn’t dead. Yeah.” Rocco exhaled slowly. “And he’s gonna think I’m an asshole because I was thinking it was over with you, you know? Like one way or another. Die or wake up. Not this stupid in between. Just saying it outloud makes me sound like a dick. He’d slug me again, and I’d deserve it this time.”

“You deserved it the last time,” Jake said absently tugging his phone from his pocket and seeing Cameron’s text in the notification screen. “Stay out of trouble,” he told them. “I’m gonna—I gotta call someone.”

Vista Point: Observatory Deck

Elizabeth folded her arms on the guard rail, then leaned over it, focusing in Spoon Island and the turrets of Wyndemere. The light of the day was starting to fade but the gothic mansion was still clearly visible. “Am I imagining it, or are you taking those turns slower than you used to?”

“Not as reckless as I used to be.” Jason leaned against the guard rail, facing away from the island, away from where his sister had lost her life nearly twenty years earlier. “It was easier then. To let it all disappear. And if it didn’t, I’d just go faster. Take the turns with more speed. Eventually the adrenaline, the roar, it would burn away whatever was in my head.”

“And now?” Elizabeth asked, though she knew the answer.

“Now, I think about you and the boys.” Their eyes met, and one corner of his mouth curved up. “And I never went as fast as I could with you behind me.”

“I know,” she muttered and his mouth curved into a deeper smile. “I’d think we were going so fast, and then you’d prove how much you held back by leaving my grandmother’s house even faster. Drove me crazy.” She poked him lightly. “And you knew that.”

He tipped his head in acknowledgment, then sighed, some of the amusement fading from his expression. “I think about who I used to be. Reckless. Careless. With myself, with the people around me—it was easier after the accident. When it was just me.”

“When your choices didn’t have a domino effect on everyone around you,” she murmured. “I hopped a plane to Port Charles on a whim because I didn’t like the rules where I was staying. I was barely fifteen when I did that. I was Aiden and Danny’s age. Reckless. Careless.”

“But there were always people those choices affected,” Jason continued. “My parents. Emily. My grandparents. Just because I didn’t care about them—”

“Didn’t mean there wasn’t a ripple effect.”

“Sam was like that,” Jason said, and she tilted her head, watching him. “Maybe it’s part of the reason I thought we fit together. She was impulsive, hot-tempered, and didn’t trust anyone. I don’t think she ever really grew out of that. Or stopped thinking of herself as the center of the universe. What she wanted and needed always came first. Always,” he repeated, a little more quietly, more to himself.

“It’s a hard balance,” Elizabeth said slowly, “to learn when it’s okay to put yourself first and when you should come second. You get told over and over again that relationships are compromised, and you start to tell yourself that if the person you love is happy, then it’s worth it. You never stop to ask yourself — why is it always about them? Why am I always the one making the sacrifice?” She bit her lip, traced her fingertip along a strip of paint peeling from the guard rail. “You let Sam — and me — have our way with the boys. You never pushed me back with me, even when you should have. And it took so much for you to push with Sam.”

“She wanted to be a mother so much, and I thought it was my fault she couldn’t. And then it was my fault that I made her pregnancy a miserable experience. My fault Danny was kidnapped.” Jason sighed. “And then, it felt like my fault that he was acting out. It was my fault,” he added when Elizabeth made a face. “But she knew who I was when we met. She always knew. And she made the choice anyway.” He tipped his face up slightly, looking at the clouds, at the sky fading from blue to purples and pinks of twilight. “I don’t know how to help Danny through this when the way I feel about his mother is so complicated. When he knows how bitter it was by the end.”

“I know all the things we said to each other the other night,” she said after a long moment. “And that we have a lot baggage between us. Especially when it comes to Sam. But I don’t want you to ever feel like I can’t handle the fact that you loved Sam. That you’re grieving this, too. No matter how angry you were—how angry I was with her—I don’t want us to pretend that the past didn’t happen. It’s not just the sweet memories I have of racing up these hills with you, screaming until I could barely speak — it’s the angry ones, too. The way we hurt each other. And we did hurt each other, Jason. Immensely. And repeatedly.”

“I know.” He sighed, then turned slightly so that he was facing her. “I wish we hadn’t.”

“I could wish I’d made better choices, but it’s that ripple effect all over again, isn’t it? If I’d trusted you more all those years ago when Lucky was starting those fights, would I have gone away with you? Would we have made it then? Where does that leave Cameron? He doesn’t exist if I don’t make that terrible choice with Zander,” she said. “I can’t imagine a world without him. The person I became because I was a mother — because you and I found each other and created Jake — and my sweet Aiden — if I don’t make the terrible choice to try one more time with Lucky—and yes, if you and Sam don’t break my heart and get married — we don’t have Danny.” She reached out, touched the leather jacket he wore, sliding her finger down the teeth of the zipper. “Danny, the angry boy who shoves kids into lockers to protect my son. Who helped Aiden feel safe. None of that happens if you and I don’t make terrible choices to love other people.”

“I don’t know how you do that,” Jason said, with a slight shake of his head. “To find the good in everything. In everyone.” He brought her hand to his lips. “But you’re right. I don’t want to live in a world where the boys aren’t exactly who they are.”

“A long time ago, I was a very young woman, too terrified to walk away from the life I thought I always wanted — I thought that the only way to love someone was to fix them, to take care of them, to be needed. I don’t know if we would have made it, Jason,” she told him softly. “Because you weren’t ready to trust that someone could love you. Could accept who you were, inside and out. I don’t want to think of all the years we’ve spent apart as time that’s been wasted. That’s too sad, too easy. I’d rather think of it as a journey, and it’ll be a long time before we reach the end. This is just another chapter, and it’s one we’ll start together.”

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