Title: Promises to Keep.
Pairing: Greenlee/Ryan, Kendall/Zach, Erica/Jack.
Summary: This is an alternate version of Greenlee's return to Pine Valley after she went off the cliff on her wedding day, it will be very dark in places and David will play a part but that will all be revealed at a later date. Assume everything that happened up until Greenlee's return still happened (except David being the one that rescued her) after that it's my own version, although some of the events that happened will be weaved into my world. Also in this Greenlee returns mid November.
Rating: T.
Disclaimer: All My Children and all of it's characters are the property of ABC and do not belong to me.
Notes: I'm an All My Children fan from the UK who has had to watch it online for the past 5 years, I've also missed huge chunks due to being in the technology free zones of Ghana and Sudan but I will try and stay as true to real history as possible, if I don't manage that I'm going to use the blanket excuse of creative license.
Prologue
Curling up into a ball Greenlee wrapped her arms around her swollen stomach as the pounding in her head intensified.
"Help me, please," she cried, her voice shaking with fear.
She held her breath for a few moments but when no one came she felt the fear intensify with each contraction that gripped her, for so long she had wanted nothing more than to be a mother, to have a child to call her own. But in the million different ways she had imagined bringing her child into the world none of them played out like this. With her being chained to a hospital bed with nothing but a foetal monitor, IV line and a silent nurse for company.
"Please," Greenlee cried as she felt her stomach tighten once again.
Running her free hand in gentle circles over her stomach Greenlee tried desperately to soothe the frantic movements of the child within. "Hush Little One," she whispered. "It's going to be alright, I'm going to get us out of this."
Looking around the room her gaze fixed on the small window, no bigger than a shoebox that sat in the north side of the room and had served as her only link to the outside world. When she had first woken up she had tried to count the sunrises and sunsets so that she could keep a track of how many days she had been trapped in her own personal hell, but after 14 days she had noticed the swell of her stomach and realised that she must have lost more than those 2 weeks.
Closing her eyes she tried to remain calm as she pictured the last clear memory she had outside of the room she has woken up in. She was stood in front of a full length mirror gently running her fingers over the delicate silk of her wedding dress as she prepared to marry Ryan for the second, and hopefully final time.
For a full 754 beats of her child's heart she managed to lose herself in the happy memory until she was once again brought back to reality by the painful contracting of her uterus.
"We're going to make it out of here. I promise," Greenlee vowed to her unborn child. "And when we do your Daddy and I are going to make sure you want for nothing," she smiled as she felt her child's frantic movements relax beneath her touch as the foetal monitor set into a gentle rhythm.
Leaning heavily against the pillows she let her eyes flutter shut as the steady beating of the heart monitor hummed to her like a gentle lullaby reassuring her that despite all of the fear, pain and uncertainty something beautiful remained in the world.
"And then there's your Grandpa Jack and your Auntie Kendall and Uncle Zach who will protect you if there ever comes a time when Mommy and Daddy are not around," she cried, silent tears falling down her cheek and for the first time since she could remember the pounding in her head stopped, leaving her with nothing but the sound of her own heart beating creating a melody as it beat alongside that of her child's.
Licking her lips Greenlee opened her eyes slowly, scared that once the light hit her the almost crippling headache would return. "I've been thinking about names," she smiled, her voice calm and full of hope. "If you're a boy I'm going to call you Montgomery after your Grandpa Jack, but if that's too much then we can shorten it to Monty. Girls names are harder, I want something pretty but tough at the same time, my mother called me Greenlee after her own maiden name but I think Smythe is a bit much even for a daughter of mine, and besides Roger was never my father anyway."
Greenlee stopped talking and curled herself as far into a ball as she could as she was gripped by yet another contraction. "They're getting closer now, which means it's not going to be long before you're here with me. Till I can hold you in my arms and tell you about all of the people that love you and will protect you."
Once the contraction was over Greenlee found herself staring out the window as the daylight gave way to the bright glare of the moon, a sight that was always able to calm the frantic beating of her heart.
"Please, just hold on for a little while longer," Greenlee pleaded. "I want to meet you more than anything but not now, not like this," she stammered, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I don't want you to come into the world like this with nothing but a cold, empty room to greet you, you're Daddy Ryan should be here, waiting for you, ready to cut the cord."
Her pleas were soon lost in the frantic beeping of her own monitors as she watched the numbers recording her heart beat rise, the numbers changing for green to red as it hit 125 as the one monitoring her blood pressure flashed angrily as it fell from 130/79 to 96/40 as everything seemed to go fuzzy around the edges.
Turning onto her side she felt something warm and sticky spreading over the sheet as she reached down to see if it was yet more amniotic fluid, instead she was hit with a strong metallic smell as she pulled the sheet back to reveal a large red stain spreading out around her.
"Help me please," she shouted, using what little energy she had left to try and alert the nurse to her plight, she wasn't about to lose another baby, not when they had already made it this far together, not when she had heard her baby's heartbeat, felt it move and kick within her and watched as her stomach grew with each week that passed.
The door to the room flung open as the nurse entered followed by a tall man in a surgical mask and cap, his features undistinguishable below them, with her vision already clouding and her hearing starting to go fuzzy Greenlee felt like she was underwater, powerless to stop whatever they had planned.
"It's time," the man said, his voice almost dancing with excitement. "Don't worry, you won't remember a thing," he whispered as he moved towards the head of her bed and injected something into her IV,
Greenlee tried to pull her arm away from him but it was too late. "No," she tried to scream but her words didn't make it past her throat as her arms and legs stopped obeying her. Through the fog that was taking over her senses she could see the doctor preparing a tray of surgical equipment.
As black spots started to appear before her eyes she wanted to scream at them to stop as she tried to fight the darkness, desperate to remember every last details of her child's entry into the world but she couldn't, because her body didn't belong to her anymore it belonged to them.
So instead she settled for repeating her pleas over and over again in her mind. "Please don't take my baby, please let me remember. Please don't take my baby, please let me remember."
The final darkness took a long time to come as Greenlee watched them tear the screaming child from her womb and wrap it in a thick, white, towel the cries both haunting and soothing at the same time as she tried to reach out and touch the child that she had felt grow within her.
"It's a girl," she heard the masked doctor say as the child was placed in a bassinet below the pale glow of the moon. "Take her to the nursery while I finish up here."
"I'll never forget you," Greenlee silently vowed as she watched them wheel her child out of the room and away from her. "I promise I won't give up until I find you, Mommy will never give up, I'll never forget and I'll never stop looking," she promised her daughter as the tiny bundle was wheeled out of the room and as the blackness overtook her mind as well as her body she gave in to the darkness.
Because I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep