Written in 75 minutes. Lizzie kept walking back and forth, distracting me, lol, and I wanted to get to this ending point.

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Friday, October 27, 2000

 Memphis International Airport: Baggage Claim

Emily lifted her bag from the conveyor belt, then stepped back to wait as Elizabeth searched for her own. “When was the last time you even saw your brother? Like in person? He’s never come to see you, and I don’t think you went to see him. Did you?”

“No—” Elizabeth stopped, snatched the handle of her suitcase before she missed it. “Um, right before my parents went overseas — Steven came home for like twelve seconds. You know, one last family dinner.”

“I can’t imagine not seeing either of my brothers that long. It was killing me that Jason was gone for so long,” Emily said. She scanned the paper in her hand, squinting. “Okay, Grandfather said he arranged for a car to take us to the hotel and that a rental will be waiting for us. Already parked.”

“Grandfather?”

“Oh, yeah, I know you vetoed using the corporate jet—”

“Because it’s insane to fly private when it’s like a two-hour flight, and—” Elizabeth stopped. “And if you’d agreed to the layover in Detroit, we would have saved so much money.” She furrowed her brows. “You said you were going to ask Ned where we would stay since he came through Memphis on his last tour. It’s…it’s somewhere I can pay you back, isn’t it? Like the Holiday Inn or something?”

Emily tilted her head. “Well, I was going to, but then Grandfather said the Peabody had a gorgeous lobby—historical and all that. You’re so artistic, you know, it’s perfect. You’ll love it, he said. And they have a wicked restaurant, and there’s like a spa, and it’s so close to every—don’t give me that look, Liz. Your birthday is on Tuesday. And we’re in one of the coolest cities. We’re going to have a good time after we talk to your stupid brother.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest, but Emily was already waving at the well-dressed man holding a placard looking for Emily Quartermaine. No point in arguing when Emily had her mind made up. And Memphis did seem pretty cool.

“Okay, but for your birthday, you’ll have to come to see me in London so I can spoil you,” she told Emily. “Let’s go.”

Luke’s: Bar

“I think I’ve seen you more in the last few weeks than the last few years,” Luke quipped, setting a bottle of Rolling Rock in front of Jason. “Doesn’t really seem like your scene anymore.” The club hadn’t quite reached the zenith of its Friday night crowd, in body or in volume, but there were enough people that Jason had sat himself at the end of the bar, where it curved towards the kitchen, and looked out over the rest of the club. It wasn’t much different then Jake’s, Jason thought, except Jake knew enough to leave him alone.

Luke probably knew Jason wasn’t interested in conversation, but Luke would never let something like that stop him.

“Wasn’t back then,” Jason said, finally. But since he was here and Luke didn’t look like he was going anywhere— “You know that the deal I told you about? Me and Sonny splitting things off and dealing with Sorel. That’s over. So if you have any problems—take it to Sonny.”

“That lasted about eight seconds longer than I thought I would.” Luke poured himself a whiskey. “You and Corinthos not seeing eye to eye on the whole thing anymore?”

Jason weighed his next words carefully. It would be easy to brush Luke off and leave. He’d come to the bar to distract himself, to avoid being alone with his thoughts. He didn’t owe Luke any answers.

But there’d been a time when Luke had been a confidante. When this club had been almost a second home. How many times had he and Robin grabbed a meal here? How many hours had he spent in the office, sorting out Luke’s haphazard bookkeeping?

His life had started here in some ways. He’d met Sonny here a lifetime ago, sitting outside in the parking lot without a job or any money. Sonny had offered some kindness and some cash to tide him over. Jason had appreciated the gesture, and when Sonny had given him the opportunity to work for him, he’d leapt at it. Sonny was the only person who’d treated him like a whole person after the accident. No, not just a whole person — but as his own person. Not a placeholder for the boy who’d jumped in a car with his drunk brother and had his head cracked open on a rock.

And for years, that had been the through line that kept Jason steady even as every other piece of his newly constructed reality had broken apart. His relationship with Robin, once so strong and familiar, disintegrated until they couldn’t stand each other. His brief experience as Michael’s father — even when Jason had run the business Sonny had left in his care for over a year — he knew that Sonny was out there. A guiding presence.

On a bitter winter night nearly a year ago now, the last piece of that world had been shattered and now Jason had very little left. It was only now, after months away from Port Charles, that Jason realized how small his life had become before he’d left.

“Not a good idea trying to find the answers at the bottom of a bottle,” Luke said, and Jason looked at him, blinked. Realized he’d been quiet too long — and had somehow finished nearly a third of the alcohol Luke had given him. “Runs in the family, you know. Addiction. AJ and Alan could tell you that.”

Jason’s mouth tightened, but he rejected the opportunity to deny Luke’s words — to claim defensively, as he had so often since the accident, that those men weren’t his family. They weren’t in anyway that mattered, but it seemed petty and small to say so.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in town,” Jason said finally, because that seemed like a safe topic. “Sonny doesn’t…really have a use for me.”

Luke didn’t respond right away. Sipped his drink, leaned against the back of the bar. “You can’t be around if Sonny doesn’t need you? What about your sister’s problem?”

“I’ll see that through, but—” Jason lifted a shoulder, almost carelessly. “After that, no point in staying.”

“No point,” Luke repeated. “You know, I almost like having you around. I find your surly nature charming,” he added when Jason lifted his brows. “You and me, we made okay partners back when Corinthos left you high and dry. You’re the only one I ever trusted with the books, you know. You don’t care enough to take my money, and you’re the most honest mobster I’ve ever met. Probably why you washed out real quick when it was your turn to run things.”

Jason scowled. “I didn’t wash—”

“One thing to take the risk yourself, but once you had the kid, you got anxious and worried. And God knows Robin wasn’t gonna try too hard to talk you out of it.” Luke sipped his whiskey again. “I know what that’s like. Trying a different life because a woman makes you want to be better. I did it for Laura as long as I could, you know. Most guys have a bomb put in their limos, they take revenge. Higher body count. You cut and run.”

“I don’t need this—”

“That’s not a criticism, Morgan. It’s a compliment. You had something worth protecting. Robin was a grown woman, could make her own choices to stick around your brand of danger. You bring a kid into it, changes things. Michael couldn’t choose, couldn’t protect himself. So you did the hard thing.” Luke finished his whiskey. “I find it fascinating, I gotta tell you. I always tried to play it both ways. So did Sonny. But not you. You never could. You never liked the shades of gray required to play this game.” He set the empty glass down. “We could do the same terms we had back in the day. Same shares. I’m controlling partner, you do the books. And you drink for free.” He flipped up the bar flap and disappeared into the back office.”

Spencer House: Kitchen

Laura closed the dishwasher, switched it open, then turned to look at her son, still sitting sullenly at the table. “You know, it’d be nice if I didn’t have to guilt you into coming for dinner once in a while, Lucky.”

He sighed at the irritation in her tone, scrubbed his hands down his face, and straightened. “I’m sorry. I told you I’d be in a rotten mood if you made me come over.”

“Hm.” Laura pulled out the chair catty-corner to his, sat down and folded her arms. “Would this have to do with Elizabeth?”

He thought about denying it, but his mother could read a liar from a thousand miles away. Didn’t always do anything with the information, but you couldn’t fool her. “I just don’t understand how she could throw everything away. We just…” He picked at the edge of a napkin, unused from dinner. “We just found each other again.” He met his mother’s gaze. “If I could go back and tell her just to take the stupid job, we’d be fine.”

“Until she had to travel and was gone for weeks, or even months,” Laura pointed, and he wrinkled his nose. Couldn’t argue with that. “Lucky, I haven’t pressed you on this. I wanted to,” she added when he just shook his head, “but I kept quiet. Even after I heard about Kelly’s. I knew it was an accident, but I still hoped you’d come to me.”

“What would that fix? Can you turn back time? Stop me from being an idiot? It’s a temporary job. She’d have been back at Kelly’s by March. I could have dealt with it that long.” Lucky shoved himself to his feet, went to the fridge to root around for something to drink. “Made her happy, didn’t it? But I had to screw it up. And keep screwing it up,” he muttered. He cracked open a can of soda. Waited for his mother to impart some wisdom. “But she’s not perfect either, Mom. She made mistakes, too.”

“Really?” Laura sat back, the corner of her mouth lifted. “Which ones?”

“She—” Lucky scowled. “She twists thing. You say one thing, and all of sudden, she’s turned it and it’s something you never said. She thinks I fell in love with her because of the rape,” he told her bluntly. “And that’s not what I said.”

“What did you say?”

“I—” He stopped. Searched his memory. “I don’t know. She was talking about this job, making it seem important. More important than it is, you know. She’s gonna follow Chloe around for a few months. Travel, sure. That’s fine. But then it’s this transformational thing that’s going to fix her, going to make her who she was before the rape, when she was into this kind of crap.”

“When you didn’t like her,” Laura finished, and Lucky looked at her sharply. “Your father told me that. When I came home from North Carolina, when he was telling me you’d fallen in love for the first time. You thought she was annoying, that her crush on you was a little embarrassing. But it was different now. Now, she was the center of your world,” Laura continued, her voice soft, and Lucky looked down, staring hard at the linoleum. “Before, when she was interested in fashion. In how she looked. When she was silly and vapid.”

“I never…” Lucky exhaled slowly. Sat down in his chair. “I never used those words. If Dad said that, it was how he saw her. He met her, too. He could see—and yeah, I knew she liked me. But I didn’t think about her like that. You meet her and she’s cute and all, but her attitude — it was nasty, Mom. And she was always out to get Sarah, always trying to make herself look better. She pulled some rotten stunts—”

“And then she was raped,” Laura cut in, and Lucky closed his mouth. “And then she was good enough for you to fall in love with.”

He swallowed hard, his throat tight, almost impossible to breathe. “That’s not how it happened. It’s not.” It couldn’t. “I loved her.”

“I’m sure you did, Lucky. And I know she loved you, Lucky. But neither of you are who you’re going to be yet. You’re both so young, even now. And especially then. Before the fire. You’d been through something so terrible, the both of you. Her attack, and the way our family fell apart, Lucky. You found comfort and trust and love in each other. In who you both were at the time. But, honey, can you look at me?”

He force himself to meet his mother’s gaze. “You set very high standards for the people you love. So high that it’s almost impossible to maintain them forever. Your father? You thought he hung the moon. And when you found out he was a flesh and blood human—”

“I don’t want to talk about this—”

“When you realized your father wasn’t perfect, you cut him out. You forced him — and me — to relieve a terrible, buried piece of our past that we had no interest in digging back up,” Laura said. “It was not up to you to force either us to relive. Or to judge how we handled it.”

“Or didn’t handle it,” Lucky muttered. “Fine. Whatever. I’m an asshole—”

“Sometimes, yes, you are.” Laura sighed. “You can be very kind, Lucky. Extraordinarily so. And I’ve loved you every day of your life. You’re loyal and brave and sweet. But you demand perfection from people in your life. Not just perfection, but your idea of perfection. When you found out that I’d had a child during the time I was kidnapped, and that I’d left him to save my own life, and then learned what your father had done to me, what I had forgiven him for, you walked away from me, Lucky. You cut me out. And you decided I was worthless for my choices.”

“Mom—”

“You demand perfection,” Laura repeated, “and when you don’t get it, you are cruel. Unkind. And determined to cut a person down to the marrow. You did that to me,” she said. “To your father, to Nikolas. And you did it to Elizabeth. Because if the conversation you had with her is anything like what you’ve said to me, I’m sorry to tell you — you fell in love with her because she was raped and damaged and you liked that version of her better.”

Almadura Apartments: Street Entrance

The beige block building rose up from the sidewalk, stretching six or seven stories tall, surrounded by a few trees and some greenery that still held some color. Nearly every tree and bush in New York had already lost most of its leaves, but further south — summer was still fighting to keep hold.

The entrance of the building was lit by a dim bulb and a list of names, each accompanied by a buzzer. Elizabeth squinted, searching for the number.

“Well?”

“Hold on, hold on—I thought it was number 15 but that says Corwin—” She frowned. “I don’t see Webber anywhere. Do you?” she asked Emily.

“Let me look—” But a moment later, Emily shook her head, mystified. “No, I don’t. That’s weird. Do you think it’s a mistake?”

“Maybe. Maybe he never updated it. The way he always made it seem, he was so busy. Too busy to call me back, obviously. I’m almost positive it was 15.” She pressed the buzzer, then waited.

A moment later, a voice came through a speaker at the bottom of the panel, tinny and nearly impossible to hear. “Hello?”

“Hello? We’re looking for Steven Webber. He’s supposed to be at this address—” But that wasn’t her voice.

“Webber? Oh, the jackass who lived here before me. He never changed his fricking address. You tell him I’m not forwarding one more damned piece of mail—”

“Wait, wait — how long have you lived here?” Elizabeth asked, leaning in.

“Three months. And no, I don’t know where to find him. If I did, I’d visit and kick his ass. You know he left two busted doors and the landlord still hasn’t fixed them. Go away.”

The voice clicked off and Elizabeth stared at the panel for another moment, trying to reassemble her scattered thoughts. Steven had moved? And never told her? She swallowed hard, blinked back tears.

“I guess we need to go back to the hotel,” Elizabeth said. “We—I’ll call Sarah—”

“Oh, to hell with that. What hospital does he work at? We’re going to get that asshole to talk to us tonight one way or another.”

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