Love in a Time of Fear

A/N: The conversation that opens this story aired on the show on 11-13-2009, so obviously it's not mine, nor are the characters, except where I may invent original ones. You will be pleased to learn that I have completed a first draft of the whole story, which is 9 chapters long, and I plan to edit and post every few days until it is done (feedback would probably increase my motivation to work faster, hint, hint. hehe). Happy birthday to my gal Andy (leepinlizzards), and thanks to her for providing the prompt, which I shortened to include only those parts that are most related to the story. Enjoy!

Prompt: To me, "FEARLESS" is not the absence of fear. It's not being completely unafraid. To me, FEARLESS is having fears. FEARLESS is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, FEARLESS is living in spite of those things that scare you to death... FEARLESS is getting back up and fighting for what you want over and over again… even though every time you've tried before, you've lost. It's FEARLESS to have faith that someday things will change… I think loving someone despite what people think is FEARLESS… But no matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it. You have to believe in love stories and prince charmings and happily ever after... Because I think love is FEARLESS. ~~ Taylor Swift

Part 1

"I – I'm – I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna be able to make it." Jason's voice was apologetic.

Elizabeth didn't even try to keep the hurt and disappointment out of her voice. "But you said you'd be here."

"I – I know– I know, but there's a situation and I can't put you and the kids at risk right now and I just –" Elizabeth hung up without letting him finish the sentence. She just couldn't listen to him say yet again that it was too dangerous for her to be around him. How many times? she wondered. How many more times am I gonna let him do this to me? When am I gonna stop believing him when he promises that we'll be together?

She thought back over all the years she had known him – all the broken promises and the mistakes and the misunderstandings. So much of it had been her own fault, because she had been afraid – first of her overwhelming feelings for him, and later of the risks associated with his life choices.

Now, she was just tired. Tired of it all – the hopes, the dreams, the crushing disappointments. How did I get here? she wondered.

Maybe it all started way back when she was a teenager – on that awful Valentine's Day in the park that had changed who she was. She remembered who she had been before that – impulsive, brash, willing to go after what she wanted, consequences be damned. But she hadn't known just how terrible consequences could be – not until that horrible Valentine's Day.

But no, that couldn't have been it, because she had allowed love to enter her life – sure, it had been puppy love, a first love not meant to last, but that was still love. Wasn't it? It had certainly felt real at the time. She smiled nostalgically as she recalled how optimistic she and Lucky had been – how excited about their shared future – him as a musician, her as an artist. And neither of them had imagined how it could all come crashing down. Sometimes even now she wondered what had happened to those two bright-eyed kids who had expected so much, but she supposed even the most determined idealist sometimes had to take off the rose-colored glasses.

Maybe it had all changed when Lucky "died." She later learned, of course, that it wasn't real – that it was all an illusion created by Helena. For what purpose, she still didn't really know. Nevertheless, that, too, had felt real at the time, and she supposed that, in the end, that was all that mattered. She could never go back to the person she had been back when she was young and in love for the very first time, before tragedy had ripped it all away from her.

But even then, she hadn't let fear completely rule her life. Otherwise, how would she ever have gotten on the back of Jason's motorcycle and seen the wind? How would she ever have pulled him to safety, leaving only his blood in the snow as a reminder of the shots that had nearly killed him, and then nursed him back to health? How would she have lied to everyone she knew to keep him safe until he was strong enough to protect himself again?

Looking back now, she finally found the moment she had been looking for – the moment when fear trumped love in her life. It seemed strange that the happy news that Lucky was alive had, paradoxically, led her down a road of fear and sadness for all the years since then. Strange, but in an odd way, completely understandable with the perspective of hindsight. Losing Lucky had been a nightmare from which she had felt she would never wake up, and she had been terrified to go through it again. She had feared that Jason wouldn't be there again to help her climb out of it, and she had been uncertain of her ability to do it by herself.

And she had wanted desperately to go back to the time before she had ever had to live through such pain. So she had clung to a relationship that had died with Lucky. She hadn't understood that they had both changed too much – that unlike the man, the relationship could never be resurrected, no matter how much she wanted to or how hard they tried.

She could see now that nearly every major decision she had made since then had been ruled by fear – when she slept with Zander, when she moved out of Jason's penthouse, when she married Lucky and Ric, when she gave up art and became a nurse – all of it could be traced back to fear.

Well, except for her children – when she found out she was pregnant the first time and decided to welcome Cameron into her life – that time, she had been ruled by love. And, she realized suddenly, that was the first thing in a long time that turned out well.

The second pregnancy hadn't started out well, in the sense that she had been so busy worrying about Jason and Sam, and about Lucky, that she had let her fear of hurting them keep her from telling the truth. Ironically, it was only even greater fear that led her to be honest – first, when Jason was shot again (even if he didn't hear her), and second, when she had thought that she and Jason and their unborn child were about to die.

And where had all that fear gotten her? To a place where she didn't recognize who she had become, one where she was, by her actions, teaching her children that love wasn't worth any risk and that safety was to be maintained at any cost.

But did she believe that? Safety is an illusion anyway, so why on earth would anyone sacrifice everything that is real in life, everything that matters, in order to maintain an illusion?

That thought echoed in her head for several long moments, and then Elizabeth Webber nodded briskly once and picked up the phone.