Once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl. She loved to play in her garden, and she grew millions of flowers behind her house. It was in her garden that she would dream of being carried off by a handsome prince. One day the girl was old enough, and her parents married her to a very powerful man. But unlike her dream prince, the man was very evil and the girl who was now a woman was sad and became acquainted with sorrow.
Elizabeth put her gun away, tucking it into the back of her jeans. Her heeled boots clicked against the ice cold pavement towards Garret who was holding the crumpled body of a man.
"Take him to Loretta, she'll know what to do with him." She said, pitifully examining the body in front of her.
"But he tried to kill you" Garret replied fiercely. He had long disagreed with Elizabeth's "hit man rehabilitation" as she put it. Every time they stopped a man from killing her, usually by knocking him out, or other various ways to subdue men trained to kill; they would have a woman Elizabeth paid to administer memory loss drugs. The drug would wipe out enough memory that the hit man, well in effect, wouldn't know what hit them. Then the woman, Loretta, would tell the man when he woke up, that she had found him at a bar and had offered him a place to sleep. The men always bought it, and would high tale it back to wherever they came from. Their bosses usually got the message and didn't resend their subpar men back.
"Well he was just following orders" Elizabeth said, pulling back her brown curls and tying them up in a lazy ponytail. Garret sighed, watching his young ward. She had seen so much as the daughter of one of the most notorious crime lords on this side of the ocean. Death. Cruelty. Revenge. Loss. Betrayal. She was only nineteen, but her eyes betrayed the depth of age that experience had endowed her with. Little Lizzie, Anthony Zacharras only daughter, had grown from a small vivacious child to a leather clad emotionally detached beauty. She had known men who wanted to love her, men who wanted to kill her, men who wanted to use her, and men who simply saw her as her father did- a pawn in the dangerous power plays of mob life.
"Well I'll have John take him. I'm driving you home." Garret handed over the limp body to his fellow body guard. Elizabeth nodded and followed Garret to the car.
As long as she could remember, Garret had always been there. He was there when her mom died, and she watched her father stand by emotionless as they lowered her small coffin into the ground. He was there to take down the fist man to make an attempt at her life. He was there when she was swept away to her first safe house, and the dozens that followed after. He was there to protect her from her father's drunken rages. He was there to wipe her tears away after her first heart break. And he was there to listen to her girl rock music afterwards. As far as she knew Garret's didn't have any life except one built around her.
She slid into the back seat. He never let her ride shotgun. She wrapped a pale blue blanket that she kept in the backseat around her shoulders.
"Why do we always have to go to the water Elizabeth?" Garret asked exhaustively, fiddling with the heat and adjusting his seat belt.
"Because" Elizabeth yawned. "I hardly ever get to see the water, we move around so much and it's always so far away from anything." A moment lapsed between as Garret started the engine.
"Wasn't the water beautiful on the pier tonight Garret?" she said sleepily.
"Oh yeah" Garret answered, "Up until that guy tried to kill you!"
"I wasn't afraid" she said softly, feeling sleep creep up on her. "I had you." Silence.
"Garret?"
"Yes dear" his Irish brogue peeked out from his New York accent when he talked, even more so when he called Elizabeth "dear" or "darling" or when he got really mad.
"Where are we goin' this time?"
"Now you know I can't tell you Liz"
"Just this once?" She yawned, her eyes closing. "Please?"
"Oh just a little town called Port Charles."