To Speak
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Five times Jason didn't say a word and the one time he did.
Numbers 1 and 3 are from the show and I can't claim the words. Numbers 2, 4 and 5 are my own and the timelines are purposefully vague. The final one is also my own.
Note: Five and One stories are getting really popular in some other fandoms, but not so much GH (as far as I can tell). It's pretty simple: the 5 are short little stories that aren't necessarily chronological or part of anything bigger, but all fall under one theme (Jason staying silent). Then, there is the 1 story at the end where the situation reverses (Jason saying something… you'll see when you get down there, I don't want to give it away!). It's a pretty wonderful format, I think!
--- 1 ---
The moment he'd gotten the letter in the mail, an invitation to Kristina Cassadine's funeral from Alexis, he'd known both that he had to go and that it wouldn't be easy. Alexis was a brilliant woman, but one who had lost too much to take this newest tragedy quietly. That she'd invited him was at best to force him to look at the casket of an innocent person who'd gotten caught in his crossfire. He hadn't been expecting her to attack him quite like she had, but he'd taken it quietly, unwilling to defend himself.
Afterwards, he'd gone to the docks. He'd starred at the water, not really thinking. At least, he was trying not too. Most of the time, he didn't think much about the limitations his career had presented him with. Sometimes, though, he could think of nothing but. Robin…Michael…Elizabeth…
He could hear someone coming down the steps, towards him. He hoped that it was no one he knew, no one would confirm or even deny what Alexis had said. The steps became tentative and he knew it was her, without even turning around.
"I've been looking for you." She said, quiet. Her voice held everything he didn't want to hear. "What Alexis said today…"
"She's right." He said, cutting her off. Between the storm and the love he heard in her voice, he could not bring himself to allow illusions to distort things. "Innocent people get hurt around me and Sonny," He looked down, then at her. She was beautiful and alive and everything he couldn't have. "Sometimes they die."
Elizabeth stared at him, and he couldn't help but hope that this time she would hear and realize the weight of what he warned her against. He knew, though, that she wouldn't. She hadn't lost enough because of him yet, but if she kept trying and he kept being too goddamned weak to push her away permanently, then she would and the ending would still be the same. She said the words again, and he knew that in that moment she meant them, even if he could never believe that she'd mean them for the rest of her life, "I'm willing to take that risk."
"I'm not." And wasn't that what it came down to in the end? He loved her and she loved him. When they were just Jason and Elizabeth, they were happy, but he couldn't just let that be, his job pressing in on their world until he couldn't think of anything else. "You're safer with Zander," He told her, hating the words and the boy he was pushing her towards, "He's out of this now, I never will be."
She nodded her head, as if she understood. She probably did. The whole town lived under a veil of the mob, it had to be obvious. You don't just walk away…
Something sparked in her eyes, and he almost had to look away. "Just for tonight, just for this moment," She said, her voice quiet and her words some sort of vow, "I don't want to be safe."
She slipped her hand in his and he didn't have it in him to keep protesting. He curled his fingers around hers and didn't say another word.
--- 2 ---
He liked Ned. He always had, even before he'd been sure of the strange man's name. Ned came at night to visit him in the hospital after the accident but never said a word to him. He found he minded Ned less than any of his other visitors simply for that. Then he'd gotten to know the man they called his cousin, and found Ned to be funny and accepting. He thought Jason was smart and didn't seem to mind that he wasn't who he'd been a month ago.
Once he'd gotten over the lie Ned had told about the accident, they'd settled into some strange pattern. They liked each other and that seemed to be enough. Sort of like Sonny and Robin.
He knew Ned didn't like Sonny, or what Jason obviously did for him, but the man didn't nag. Slowly, though, it became obvious to Jason that things weren't going to be easy between them and he realized he was a little sad. Ned had never looked at him with disappointment, not like the other Quartermaines, but he did now. Not because he wanted Jason Quartermaine, but because he was disappointed in the man that Jason Morgan was becoming. It was the first time in his admittedly short life that someone he respected looked at him that way.
"Have you ever stopped to wonder, Jason, if you haven't thrown off the bars of the Quartermaine cage and stepped right into a brand new one?" Ned asked, after he'd been arrested apparently too many times.
"Is it better," His cousin mused, without waiting for an answer, "To pick your own cage?"
He didn't say anything because he didn't have an answer.
--- 3 ---
Jason's side throbbed with fiery pain. He hadn't felt like this since the last time he'd been shot. The meeting had gone bad and with each agonizing step he took, he tried to remember that walking away meant he was lucky.
Once he got to Sonny, he could rest. He repeated this promise to himself again and again, trying desperately to make it to the penthouse that was almost home to him. Sonny would get him a doctor and he would be safe. They could work out what to do with their now-hostile enemies later, when Jason's vision didn't waver in front of his eyes and his side wasn't oozing with blood.
He opened the door without knocking. Sonny stood at the wet bar, and didn't turn to acknowledge him. It didn't seem odd to him. Nothing did right then, with his head in such a haze.
"Sonny?" He asked, his voice harsh with pain.
His friend still didn't look up, "What happened?" He paused and dragged a hand down his face. Before Jason could respond, he waved a hand, "Nevermind, um, forget the specifics, did the meeting go down tonight?"
Jason watched Sonny walk towards the couch, and he limped after the man, "No." Sonny sighed, but Jason pressed on. He wasn't sure how much longer he could hold on to consciousness and Sonny needed his report, "The meeting… went wrong."
Instead of asking how, or if Jason was alright, Sonny looked up towards the ceiling and admitted, "Well, I guess things played out exactly how they were supposed to."
Jason was spared a response, whether it would have been a plea to sit down or a further explanation on why the meeting had gone bad, he wasn't sure. A woman's voice called down from the stairs and she was wearing Sonny's shirt. "Sonny, I can't find a clean towel and I'm not about to use yours!"
Jason starred at her, and though his mind registered Carly's voice and face, his tired mind couldn't quite put it together. Carly and Sonny hated each other, Carly had married AJ, Carly said she loved Jason, Sonny wouldn't do this to him, wouldn't betray him…
He looked towards Sonny, who still wouldn't look at him. Not because he was distracted or tired, but because he'd slept with the woman Jason…
Jason looked back at Carly and saw the truth in her eyes. Suddenly, the pain in his side was nothing like the pain in his soul.
He stepped backwards, practically falling. Behind him, Carly begged, "Jason! Jason, don't go, please don't go!"
The door closed behind him, drowning out the sounds of Sonny and Carly unleashing their guilt on each other.
Later, when Sonny asked why he hadn't told him he'd been shot, Jason answered the only way he could, "When was I supposed to mention it?"
--- 4 ---
"Do you wish you were still my Daddy?"
The question was innocent. Michael, at six, had no idea what he was asking. Carly had warned him that Michael had seen an old video of himself as a baby. A video were Carly is happily playing with her baby boy and Michael lights up while he chants "Dada!" at a man who is not Sonny. Carly had explained, she told Jason, about how Jason had taken care of her and Michael and how much he loved his nephew.
Still, some concepts were too difficult to explain to a child, even one as brilliant as Michael and as usual, what he didn't understand, he asked Jason.
Jason tightened the arm he had wrapped around Michael's shoulders, but didn't look at the little boy that meant the world to him. Nor did he answer the child's question, for possibly the first time ever. What could he say –
Yes…
The first time I heard you call Sonny 'Daddy' I hated him…
If Carly could have trusted me, you would still be mine…
I can never forgive Robin, not for telling the truth, but for taking you away from me…
You are my son…
- that Michael would understand and wouldn't be a lie? He had his place in the child's life now, a place that he treasured, and he tried with everything in him not to remember the place he'd had.
Michael didn't press for an answer and Jason instead leaned down to kiss the boy's hair. The only answer he could give the boy was his silence and that was probably the most truthful one of them all.
--- 5 ---
Jason leaned back against the headboard, arms around his taped ribs. It hurt almost enough to pass out if he laid flat and hurt nearly as much when he breathed. There was little anyone could do for broken ribs, a fact that he'd been reminded of more times than he cared to count.
Concussions were nearly as annoying. Sonny had insisted on letting the doctor give him a painkiller, telling his enforcer that his job was over for the next week. To avoid a hospital and still let Jason sleep, Sonny had agreed to wake Jason up every hour. He'd dutifully done so three times after returning to Jason from the meetings downstairs that required Sonny's attention. The fourth time, he woke Jason up, asked if he needed anything and then had taken a seat by the bed.
Jason dozed, but found it hard to sleep when his breathing was so shallow. In order to sleep, he needed to let his breathing go even, but that was like letting someone punch him in the chest (again) and drifting off peacefully at the same time. Easier with drugs, but now that they were wearing off, it took a bit more time.
"You did good." Sonny whispered. Jason knew instantly that Sonny thought he was asleep and was telling him that the way he told Lily and Stone things.
"You always do. You're so fucking smart. Why'd you pick this?" Sonny asked, a little angry and a little sad. He'd asked Jason this directly before and had wanted an answer then. Jason gave him different ones, varying his reason between the Quartermaines and how Sonny treated him and freedom. This time, Sonny didn't expect and answer and kept on going.
"You always say you chose this and I always say that the brain damage doesn't make you less of a person, but it did make you a kid. Sometimes I wonder if you'd have chosen this life if you'd of been an adult when I offered you the job." Sonny admitted, something new from him. "You'd have been established and you wouldn't have needed me to get away from Jason Quartermaine. I know you would have, with or with out me."
"If you'd of gotten that chance, would you have chosen to be an enforcer for a mobster?" Sonny asked. "I don't think so."
Jason listened quietly to Sonny ramble on for a while longer, the man's voice and Jason's consciousness eventually drifting off. He never let Sonny know he'd been awake.
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--- 1 ---
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"How dare you?" Elizabeth whispered, her eyes blazing and her breathing harsh. They'd become friends again, and of course the same problem had come up. They loved each other, they wanted each other, she couldn't let him go, and he couldn't give her up.
He curled his lip up, more animated than she'd seen him in a long time. "How dare I? How dare I what, Elizabeth? Refuse to hold your dead body in my arms? Refuse to let you pick me when it means you're picking death too?"
"How dare you stand there and talk about freedom and making your own choices and letting people just be? How dare you tell me you love me and then tell me you don't love me enough to be with me?" She said, sobbing through the words. He didn't think it was because she was sad, but because she was so raging angry at him that she'd been reduced to tears.
He looked away, "I love you enough to let you live instead of keeping you with me to die."
"Do you hear yourself? What if Alan Quartermaine put you away in some institution, loving you enough to let you hate him instead of letting you die at Sonny's word?" Jason clenched his teeth at the mere thought, a wisp of his hatred for someone else controlling him rising up and making him angrier still, "You'd have broken out and come back and done whatever was necessary to live the life you chose. Now you're going to stand here the biggest hypocrite there ever was and tell me I'm not good enough to make the same choice?" She threw her hands up and looked as though she wanted to scream the truth at him.
"What about you then?" He countered. "You say I'm a hypocrite? You wanted to die right alongside Lucky, but you'd put me through that when the chances something would happen to you are a hundred times higher?"
She reared back as if he'd slapped her. "So what," She asked, her voice barely controlled. "You're a coward and I'm selfish, then? You're afraid to lose me and afraid of living with the guilt of being the one who survived and I'm too much of a selfish bitch to walk away and let you live some little half-life?"
He wanted to look away, but Elizabeth wouldn't let him. She grabbed his face in her hands, "That's what it is. I can tell you all about living with that kind of guilt." She told him, and his mind went to Lucky. "Not Lucky. You. If I'd of gone with you that day in the park, would you have come back to this as easily? If you die because of the mob, I'll have to live with knowing I might have kept you away."
He shook his head, a little stunned. "How could you think that?"
"You make your own choices, I get it." Elizabeth said, letting her hands fall to her sides. "Why can't I do the same? Everyone dies someday, Jason. I'd rather die tomorrow and be able to spend tonight with you than live eighty years without you."
He closed his eyes, "Yeah." He said, unsure if he was agreeing or just acknowledging that he believed her.
"Why can't I be with you?"
"I'll get you killed."
"I don't care."
He opened his eyes and looked at her. He'd seen the commitment and understanding in her eyes before, but had never let himself trust it. What could he say to keep her away now? There was nothing left and if he tried to push her away again, he would have no honor. In the end, he had no choice, but really, it had never been his choice to start with.
"Stay." He whispered, "Be with me."
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