Written in 70 minutes. The first scene took a ton of time, so the ending scene isn’t quite where I wanted to pause the conversation, but it’ll do.

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Saturday, October 14, 2000

Hardy House: Living Room

“Gram?”

Elizabeth closed the door behind her, then went over to the desk at the base of the stairs where her grandmother had kept important documents Elizabeth had needed over the last few years. She flipped through some report cards, medical reports, the guardianship papers—

“Hello, darling. This is a surprise.”

Elizabeth turned, her folder still in her hand and smiled at her grandmother, accepting the kiss on the cheek and the one-armed hug. “Sorry to just drop in like this. I probably should have called.”

“Oh, you never have to call.” Audrey waved a hand. “You have a key, and it looks like you’re looking for something.” She nodded at the manila folder in Elizabeth’s hand. “What can I help you with?”

“Oh, I’m just—” Elizabeth grimaced. “I’m looking for my birth certificate. I’ve never needed a copy before, but I figured it’d be with all this stuff, right?”

Audrey pursed her lips. “Well, I must have had a copy at some point since you used it for driver’s license, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. You handed me a bunch of stuff, and I didn’t really look at it.” Elizabeth set the folder on the desk and looked at the papers inside more carefully. “They didn’t send it to you when I registered for school?”

Audrey slid on her reading glasses, and began looking in the folder as well. “Well, you remember, darling, you weren’t exactly supposed to be here with us, don’t you? Not that I’m sorry you came. You know that, but we didn’t have all the paperwork settled for a few weeks. Getting the guardianship in my name—I didn’t actually talk to the school. Your father handled it.”

“Dad? How?” Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “Weren’t they in Bosnia or whatever by then?”

“Oh, well—” Audrey hesitated. “I don’t remember the timeline, so give me a second. What do you need it for? Do you need to renew your license?”

“Not yet, but that’s probably another good reason to have it. I…might need my passport.” Elizabeth set down the paperwork. “Or might not. I don’t know. I haven’t decided. I don’t understand, Gram. How could you not have my birth certificate?”

“Well, I don’t have a lot of reasons to use it.” Audrey rifled through another drawer, and pulled out a slim notebook that Elizabeth recognized as one that would fit into the leather porfolio her grandmother used for her date book. “Ah, yes, Jeff and Carolyn came back the first week of September. Just long enough to talk to a real estate agent, and put the house on the market. It was handy since he was able to fax the school what we needed, and they signed the guardianship papers. Oh, the school must have it — didn’t you get your license through that program?”

“That’s right.” Elizabeth made a face. “I failed the road test twice, and nearly flunked Driver’s Ed because of that. I forgot about it. They must have used the birth certificate Dad sent them.” She scowled. “And how come they didn’t tell me they were coming back to the states? Why didn’t they come to see us?”

“I think they went to see Steven,” Audrey said carefully, and Elizabeth sighed. “I’m sorry, dear. They’re wonderful doctors, but they’ve never been particularly present as parents, have they?”

“No. Not to me anyway. Still surprised they didn’t come to see perfect Princess Sarah.” Elizabeth closed the file. “This is so annoying. Why wouldn’t Dad just send you the copies so you could have it? I mean, you finished raising me.”

“I don’t know. He was quite insistent on handling the paperwork in person.” Audrey closed the datebook.  “It’s not a problem, dear. You can just call the offices in Colorado and send for a new copy.” Audrey tipped her head. “That ought to give you time to decide whether or not you need a passport.”

“Chloe Morgan offered me a temporary job as her assistant,” Elizabeth told her. “I’d have to travel for it—but I might not take it,” she added hastily when Audrey’s expression lit up. “I’ve got obligations here, Gram—”

“Nothing that can’t be handled. You know Bobbie would hold your position at Kelly’s. You’re like family—” Audrey paused. “Is that the obligation? Lucky?”

Elizabeth sighed and wandered over to the sofa, flopping down and pulling a pillow towards her middle. “He pointed out that we just got back together, and we’ve had a really awful year. They just figured out what Helena did to him, and now I’m just leaving? It’s selfish, Gram.”

“Selfish? Darling. You’re still young. You have every right to go and out see the world. To explore it.”

“But you gave up all that for Gramps, didn’t you?” Elizabeth asked, and her grandmother sighed, sat in the armchair. “Do you ever regret that?”

“No. But I was older than you dear. I’d already gone out seen the world before I came to Port Charles and met Steve. And we didn’t make it,” Audrey pointed gently. “We divorced and I left for Vietnam.”

“You lost all that time with Gramps. Don’t you regret it? Don’t you wish you would have stayed and figured it out?” Elizabeth pushed.

“It’s a very tricky business, dear, to think about your life in those terms. Yes, I will aways regret that your grandfatherand I didn’t have more time together. That we didn’t have children to raise together, though he did a marvelous job with your uncle Tommy, and of course, we had your father for a while. And we enjoyed our grandchildren. Yes, sometimes I do wish I’d made other choices. But then I remember that Tommy doesn’t exist if I don’t leave. My marriage to his father was unhappy. Terribly so. And my marriage after that even more so. But I am who I am because of those choices, Elizabeth. And I was stronger, I think, because I had done so much on my own. I’d gone out in the world and been responsible for myself.”

Elizabeth picked at the cuticle of her thumbnail. “You think it’s a mistake to stay here because of Lucky.”

“If you’d like my honest opinion, Elizabeth, yes. I think it’s a mistake. I worried when you and Lucky planned to go to New York, but at least you were going somewhere and doing something with your life. You were planning on art school. You got accepted, and you turned it down. Which I understood. You were hurt after the fire, and you needed to be with us, your family. But sometimes—” Audrey paused, considering her words. “Sometimes I think I ought to have pushed you out of the nest. Encouraged you to go to school anyway. To start over. Because you’ve spent the majority of this year stuck in place, don’t you think? Working at Kelly’s, or L&B, these positions that don’t have a future or allow for you to build a life for yourself. You don’t spend a great deal of time painting. And you spent months being hurt over and over again by that boy. I do not care if they call it brainwashing. I do not care if he had an excuse. That does not change the damage he did to you.”

Elizabeth lifted her gaze to her grandmother, surprised to see Audrey’s eyes shimmering with tears. “Gram.”

“You came to me as a brash, reckless, impulsive girl, and then the world tried to break you into pieces. It did shatter you. And a weaker girl might have just stayed in those pieces, but you put yourself back together, bit by bit. And you gained back that fire that I so adored about you. You were blossoming, Elizabeth. And even that fire didn’t hold you back for long. I may not have approved of the choices you made,” Audrey added, and Elizabeth smiled faintly, understanding the reference to Jason. “But you made them for you. And now you’re telling me you’ve got this opportunity, and the only reason you’ll turn it down is because someone else convinced you it’d be selfish to take it.”  She lifted her brows. “Tell me the truth. When Chloe offered you the job, you instinctively said yes, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth admitted. “But…Lucky pointed out how much time we wouldn’t spend together—” She tipped her head back, looked at the ceiling. “And he’s right. I’d barely be here, and he just went through this whole terrible thing—”

“He has a mother, a father, a sister, an aunt, a brother, and friends who care about him. He is not alone in this world, Elizabeth.”

Startled by her grandmother’s irritated tone, Elizabeth looked at her curiously. “You don’t like Lucky very much, do you?”

“I will always be grateful for the friendship and support he gave you after your attack. But, no, I don’t like him very much at all. I find him to be disrespectful, particularly to his mother who has had trauma of her own. I find him smug and arrogant. And that was before the fire.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth blinked, absorbing this information. “You never said that before.”

“I was supporting you, and for all his faults, he generally treated you relatively well.” Audrey clasped her hands in her lap. “And, of course, when he came home, I was relieved because he was, I thought, a better choice than Jason Morgan.”

“Who also treated me relatively well,” Elizabeth said, echoing her grandmother’s words.

“And was responsible for a bomb in your studio, so perhaps we don’t try our luck, dear.” But Audrey’s lips twitched in a smile, and it made Elizabeth want to smile, too. “I will support whatever choice you make, Elizabeth, but I just…I would like you to be sure it’s a choice you’re making for you. And not because you feel obligated to take care of Lucky because he stood by you. It cost him nothing, Elizabeth, to be by your side. He didn’t give up trips or job opportunities. Ask yourself — would he sacrifice his dreams for you the same way?”

Spencer House: Living Room

“Ow—” Lucky jerked away from his mother when Laura tried to touch his chin for a better look at his eye. “Don’t, Mom. I told you, it was just something that happened outside the bar.” He avoided his brother’s knowing look and pulled out a chair at the dining table. “Can we just have dinner already?”

“Of course, but I’m allowed to ask questions when my son looks as if he’s had a fight. Think of the example you’re setting for your sister,” Laura said, gesturing at Lulu, who, at age eight, knew better than  to say anything. She just smirked at her brother, and reached for the bowl of mashed potatoes.

“Just tell her to do a better job of ducking,” Nikolas advised, passing his mother a serving dish with green beans. “And not to pick fights in the first place.”

“I didn’t pick—” Lucky made a face. “Okay, I threw the first punch. But they were an ass—a butthole,” he corrected when his mother flashed him a cold look.

“Let’s change the subject,” Laura suggested. “How is everyone doing? Emily and Elizabeth must have started classes by now—”

“Everyone is fine,” Lucky said, earning himself another look from Nikolas. “Let’s talk about something else. Lulu. How’s school?” he asked his sister, desperately.

Elm Street Pier

Elizabeth leaned back against the wooden bench, trying to pick out the stars in the sky above her through the haze of clouds rolling off the lake. The conversation with Penny that morning and with her grandmother that afternoon kept rolling around in her head. If it had just been Penny telling her to go, she’d have brushed it off. Penny was a work friend that didn’t know anything Elizabeth hadn’t decided to share.

But her grandmother? Well, that was an opinion Elizabeth did take seriously. Audrey hadn’t talked about the money or opportunities the job would bring—though both were substantial. Even a temporary paycheck from Chloe with all expense trips paid for the next six months could set Elizabeth up well enough she could pay full time when she came back, or a least spend less time waitressing.

But Audrey hadn’t talked about any of that — she’d honed right in on the problem. A job with a lot of traveling meant Elizabeth would be putting herself and her career first. And what did it say that everyone who heard about the job was immediately excited and happy for her —

Except Lucky.

She heard steps near the exit to the street, and looked toward Bannister’s Wharf as they grew closer and Jason stepped into view. He looked both ways, then saw her on the second sweep — and seemed to hesitate before coming closer.

“Uh, hey.  I didn’t think I’d see you here tonight.” His tone was the same as his steps — slow, cautious. As if she’d bite.

“What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked, angling her body so that she was facing him. “Are you—” The light from a pier fell on his face and she saw a cut on his upper cheek. “What happened? Did you get into a fight?”

Jason grimaced, touched his cheek. “I didn’t think—Emily didn’t say anything.”

“Well, Emily’s not always observant—” She got to her feet, came closer and could the bruise beginning to form. Then stopped. “You know, Lucky had some bruises this morning he didn’t want to talk about.” She bit her lip, folded her arms. “Did you run into each other or something?”

Jason’s hand fell to his side, and he grimaced. “Or something.”

“Well, that explains this morning.” Elizabeth sighed, sat back down, perching at the edge the bench, turned her attention to the horizon, where the lake and sky melted together. “What happened?”

“I don’t—I know what you want me to say.”

“The truth?” Elizabeth lifted her brows. “You and Lucky used to be friends. Why are you punching each other?”

Jason shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, squinted. “It wasn’t that serious. He punched me, I punched him, and that was the end of it. I left.”

“He punched you. He threw the first punch?” Elizabeth asked. “That’s—that can’t be right.”

Jason’s face tensed. “You don’t believe me?”

“What?” she blinked, looked at him with confusion. “No, I believe you, I just—” She dragged a hand through her hair. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. Lucky wouldn’t punch you. That’s not—it’s not his style. It…” She licked her lips. “It’s not who he was,” she said softly, then looked at him. “Am I crazy? It’s not right.”

Jason sat next to her, almost reluctantly. “He’s been through a lot this year, I guess.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes, shook her head. “Yeah, he’s been through a lot.” She sighed, then looked at him again. “I’m sorry. That he started a fight.”

“It’s—” Jason winced. “I might have…he threw the first punch, but I might have…said something first.”

“You…what are you saying, that you baited him? You wanted him to hit you?” Elizabeth asked. Her concern about Lucky disappeared. “What’s going on that you wanted to start a fight?”

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