Author's note:

Lucky Spencer was by far my favorite character on the show, and when Jonathan Jackson left, I was very disappointed. However, when the character was recast I tried hard to accept the new actor because I loved the character so much. It didn't work. With the recast, I found I no longer recognized the character that I had fallen in love with so many years ago. I wrote this story in order to fix what I saw as the woeful destruction of a beloved character, even if the fix was only in my head.

I stopped watching the show not long after the recast, and other than the occasional report from a friend of mine who has refused to give up on bad writing, I have no idea of what has been happening on the show in the past few years. So please forgive me if I have made some wrong assumptions about the current show.

I know the show hasn't been very consistent with how old Lucky is but, according to my math, he was ten when he came to Port Charles in 1993 so he was 16 when Faison kidnapped him in 1999 and at the time of this story (2004), he is 21.

Section One

Rays of silver moonlight filtered dimly through the sheer curtain, making the white face of the clock on the wall glow eerily. Lucky Spencer watched from his bed as the second hand ticked steadily, pulling the long hand with it as it passed the 12 to read 3:00. He had woken up nearly two hours earlier in the middle of a very vivid dream and hadn't been able to get back to sleep. So, here he sat, three o'clock in the morning, trying to figure out why the dream had unsettled him so much.

By itself, the dream seemed very insignificant. In it he saw himself walking through the streets of some large city, and then meeting a man wearing a black suit. This is where he had woken up, just as the man began to talk. While the man's face seemed slightly familiar, Lucky couldn't place it, and he was beginning to suspect that the city was the source of his inability to get back to sleep, rather than the man.

The sound of a distant siren echoing quietly in the night filled Lucky with a sudden sense of urgency and, before his mind registered the fact that he'd moved, he was out the door, dressed and hurrying down the stairs.

Dawn found Lucky sitting on a bus staring out the window, trying to figure out how in the world he'd gotten there. A glance at the ticket in his hand revealed no clues, but a quick check in his wallet suggested he'd spent over a hundred dollars on the ticket. He hoped he'd have enough money to buy a ticket back from wherever he ended up, especially considering he didn't have anything in his wallet other than the cash. His license wasn't there, and neither was his bankcard. Lucky furrowed his brow in confusion, when had he done that?

"Are you all right?" a young woman in the seat next to him asked quietly. "You look a little confused."

Lucky blinked, trying to focus his eyes on her face before answering, "Just tired."

She nodded and turned her attention back to the book in her lap.

"What day is it?" Lucky asked her after a few seconds of silence.

She smiled indulgently and looked away from her book, "It's Thursday," she said. Then closed her book and turned in her seat to face him. "You know, I'm not surprised that you're tired. You caught the bus in New York on Monday and I haven't seen you close your eyes once the whole time. Do you get motion sickness or something?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, something like that." Lucky said, still trying to wrap his mind around the thought that he'd somehow lost four days.

"Well," she continued in response to his non answer, "Lucky for you we're almost to the end of the road. One more hour and we'll be free of this prison on wheels."

"Yeah, that'll be good," Lucky said with a small smile before returning to his intense scrutiny of the window.

The young woman looked at the back of his head for a second. Then, determining that he wasn't going to say anymore, she shrugged and turned back to her book once again.

TBC

P.S. For those of you who are leery of reading works in progress, don't worry, this story IS finished. I'm just waiting on a friend of mine to go through and help me weed out all the major errors before posting each section.