A/N: A one-shot scene that takes place after the movie "The Ultimate Gift".

Gifted

Jason Stevens and Alexia Drummond sat on a bench looking at a sign bearing a heart and a butterfly.

Future Site of Emily's Home

"Did she talk much about dying?"

Alexia heard the question, and she forced herself to think back. It was still so fresh, so painful, that she had to skip over the recent past and work further back; back when it didn't hurt so much, back when her daughter was still alive. "I, uh, don't know. When she was first diagnosed with leukemia we didn't know anything about the disease. The more we found out, the more scared we got even though the doctors always try to present the best side of things. The people over at St. Catherine's Hospital were great."

The hospital had a children's wing built in large part by a gift from Jason's grandfather, Howard "Red" Stevens. "So we tried to stay positive, but there's always a chance..." Her voice became softer "...always some chance that things weren't going to improve. Of course when Emily went into remission we thought we had it beat and things would get back to normal. They almost did. Almost. After that I don't know; she didn't like to worry me with it so I don't know if she ever did think about it much, really."

"She did."

Alexia leaned over on Jason. "How would you know?" she asked softly.

"She told me that day I found out she was sick. She told me that she thought 'there was something basically unfair about a person dying'. Her own words. But she was sure that wherever she went after she died it was going to have lots of butterflies."

"I didn't know that. I knew she liked butterflies, but..."

"Yeah, she was sure of it. I think she thought about it a lot; that's probably why she came to my grandfather's funeral. I think back on it now and she had a pink umbrella while everyone else had black ones. She was so short she couldn't have been watching the preacher; she was watching the people that were attending. I noticed her off to one side when I showed up but I was concentrating on me."

"She knew he was the man that made the children's unit possible. When she heard that he died, she asked to go."

"She even got there before me" Jason said.

"Everyone got there before you, if you'll remember" Alexia added with a slight smile.

"True. I didn't care back then. Until I found out the truth going through those tasks from the will, I hated him. But I think Emily went because she wanted to see what one would be like. She probably spent more time worrying about what was going to happen to you than she did about where she was going."

"I think I knew that" Alexia managed to get out before burying her head in Jason shoulder as she wept softly.

Jason let it run its course before he continued. "But I suppose it wasn't all death she was thinking about. She was thinking about life, too."

"You mean the afterlife?"

"No, not that - although she probably thought about that too. No, she was thinking about your life. I had to learn the hard way how difficult it was on my grandfather when my father died. He said that a parent should never have a child precede them in death, and it's taken me all these years to finally understand that. A lot of lost years that I pushed myself away from him, blaming him for something that wasn't his fault but that he carried as his burden for the rest of his life."

Alexia sniffed and whispered "But he didn't give up hope, or he wouldn't have gone through the trouble to set things up for you. He knew you had it in you."

"Yeah, but I'm sure he had Mr. Hamilton well briefed on what to do when I failed. I would have bet against me; I didn't love money, that's for sure. Money was just a tool to have fun, and fun is what I loved. I thought fun was life. I was stupid."

Alexia hugged him tighter and whispered again. "You were just ignorant. Stupid doesn't learn, but ignorant just doesn't know yet. I'm not saying that you can go out and run that two-billion dollar empire he left you now, but I think you'll be smart about it and run it responsibly with the right team; Mr. Hamilton will see to that. You truly are gifted with good people."

"I've been gifted with a lot of things lately, but thanks for the vote of confidence. You know, she asked me if God took advanced orders for what kind of place she'd have up there and I had to tell her I didn't know much about that. But I do know that the only way to make Emily happy, really really happy, is if I marry you or something so I can take care of you."

Alexia pulled back and looked at Jason. She had been in a relationship before, with Emily's father, before he left after finding out she was pregnant. But this was different; here was someone who wanted to build not just Emily's Home together, but their life as well. "Did you just propose?"

"Well, Emily did say that it was official that I was the slowest person she had ever met, but I thought I made it pretty clear. Do I need to rephrase the question?"

The resulting kiss told him the question was just fine the way it was.

The End

A/N: Yes, I got sucked into this one. My favorite pairing was actually Theopholis Hamilton and Miss Hastings, but it wasn't really given any attention because that wasn't the story. But once the Jason character got his head pulled out of his...assets he turned out to be okay, although of course they had to paint every single last member of his family as greedy and/or spoiled to contrast his development. The character of Gus was great in a supporting role and I definitely could have done a story that involved him. After all, Jason and Alexia will probably need to find someone to pass the legacy onto...