Men and Memories
By Misha

Disclaimer- I do not own any of the characters of General Hospital. They belong to the creators of General Hospital, Wendy Riche, Bob Guza, ABC Daytime, and probably a lot of other people with more money than me. I'm not making any money off this story so please don't sue me.

Author's Notes- This is a one-shot that I started ages ago and just finished. It's about Brenda's life in Rome and her thoughts on life after Port Charles. Or at least that's how it started, but it turned weird and it sort of became more about her relationship with Alcazar, but I can't really explain it. Still, I think it works.

Pairings- Brenda/Sonny, Brenda/Jax, Brenda/Alcazar, hint of Brenda/Jason.

Summery- As she builds a new life for herself, she's still haunted by the memories of the men she left behind.

Rating- PG-13

Life in Rome was different. It wasn't the life she'd had in Port Charles, but that was okay. Different was good, as long as it kept her busy and all in all she liked her life.

She had work and she had friends and there were men of course. In the life of Brenda Barrett, there were always men. Hell, even when she was "dead" there had been a man. It was just a fact of life. But there was no one man. Nobody who she would die for.

Part of it was simple, these new men couldn't measure up to the memories of the ones who'd gone before.

She thought of them often.

Of Jax and his golden good looks and how she'd cast him as her knight in shining armour. He was supposed to have been her perfect love, but love wasn't perfect and god knew neither was she.

Perhaps that was the problem. The memories of Jax stung, but she believed she was better off. She was flesh and blood and she needed more than a fairytale, because life didn't come with happily ever afters.

Besides, heroes had a tendency to have clay feet and that was what had happened with Jax. She'd made him into her perfect hero and she'd be disappointed.

Oh, well, so she wasn't meant to ride off into the sunset with Prince Charming. She'd live. She thought of Jax during the day, something little would remind her and she'd remember him.

She thought of Sonny and his darkly handsome face and how he'd been all wrong for her, yet at one point the only thing that had felt right.

If Jax had been her hero, then Sonny was the villain. Her bad boy, her dangerous love, the one who could have gotten her killed and who'd succeeded in breaking her heart more than once.

That was the funny thing, Jax never broke her heart, bruised it, tore it a bit, but never broke it. That was always Sonny's job. If Jax was supposed to have been her perfect love, then Sonny was her realest love.

There had been no fairytale, no illusion with Sonny. It had been raw and painful and deep. She had loved him with all she'd had and that had never been enough. Oh, she didn't doubt that Sonny had loved her just as deeply and as painfully as she had loved him, but it just wasn't meant to be.

Somewhere, somehow, it just wasn't enough and in the end, she had to accept that Sonny Corinthos wasn't her destiny. But he'd always hold a huge part of her heart and it really had been one Hell of a ride.

She thought of Sonny whenever it rained, the rain had always been there thing after all, and sometimes at dusk when darkness was just around the corner, the thoughts of him came uninvited.

The evenings were reserved for thoughts of what might have been. Of the lives she could have lived.

She saw the children she might have had if life had been different. Sometimes it was visions of a golden-haired son looking at her with earnest blue eyes, other times it was the image of a dark-haired little girl with soulful brown eyes and her father's dimples.

Children who would never be born. Who never existed outside of her daydreams. There would be children she knew, for both men. There were already children for SOnny, she knew, and she knew that someday there would be Jax as well.

But they would not be hers. She would probably have children of her own, but they wouldn't belong to either man. Some man as of yet unknown to her would father her child and change the image of the child she pictured forever.

Still, though the dream would never be reality, the images still lingered in her mind. Only sometimes, only in the evening when she was alone and she allowed herself to be haunted by those thoughts. By the ghosts of lives that could never be.

At night though, it wasn't what might have been that haunted her, nor was it thoughts of the two great loves of her life. No, at night she was haunted by thoughts of two other men, to her own surprise.

Men whom she had not loved, at least not as she loved Sonny or Jax, but they haunted her none the less.

Jason Morgan, the only man to ever be able to call her his wife as ironic as that was. They hadn't liked each other that much, let alone love, yet she had become fond of him during their brief marriage and she thought of him often now.

Sometimes, she even dreamed of a child with her hair and eyes the iciest blue she had ever seen.

But as much as she thought of him, there was another man who dominated her thoughts at night when she could not sleep. Luis Alcazar. She had spent four years of her life with him and while she had not loved him, she had cared for him and a part of her still did, despite everything...

He had kept her prisoner, convinced her that she was dying, tried to kill the men she loved, yet a part of her still cared for him... He had been kind to her those four years, even if she now knew those years had been one giant lie, he'd still treated her like a queen. She knew he had loved her, as much as he was capable of loving anyone, at least.

She was torn about how she felt about Luis, about the memories of her time with him. She didn't know if he had been tormentor or saviour. He saved her life, he took care of her for years and he had treated her like a queen.

Yet, for four years he had made her think she was going crazy and he had kept her from the people she loved. So she didn't know whether or not she should hate him. There was a time when she thought she did, but now she could view things in a different light.

She never dreamt of Luis' child, but maybe because that had been almost a reality... Brenda tried not to think of the baby she'd carried and lost. The baby she hadn't been sure she'd wanted when she had thought she was being ravaged with her mother's disease, but whose loss had torn her apart.

Looking back, Brenda realized it was that loss that had precipitated the beginning of the end for her and Luis. It was only six months later that he made that fateful trip to Port Charles as a bid to exorcise her demons once and for all, so that she'd finally be his.

Maybe it had been the loss of the baby that had triggered his crusade against Sonny and Jax, his bid to own her completely. Maybe, if their child had lived, then... Well, she didn't know.

Would she have ever really been happy with Luis, living as his prisoner, even with a child? Yet, in a way, she had been happy with him. For a time.

Oh, it was never the great passion she had had with Sonny, or the fairy tale romance she'd had with Jax, but it had been real and strong... But built on lies and illusion and thus destined to fail.

It was those thoughts that haunted her late at night.

The thoughts of a romance that never was and of a love that perhaps could have been great, under other circumstances. Of the lives she could have lived and the men she could have had them with.

But then, why was that surprising? She was Brenda Barrett. There had always been men and she knew that would never change.

The End