Unsettling Realizations
By Didi
Disclaimer: General Hospital, if I'm not mistaken, is owned by the American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. I don't own it, never imagine that I will; I've come to turns with that and so should you. No profit is being made from this little adventure and none shall be in the future. No infringement intended though we all know it's actually happening. I'll stop if you tell me to; no need to sue.
Summary: Jason finds something rather unexpected as he deals with the truth coming out and everyone reacts accordingly. Oh, and the mob wars take a rather nasty turn. (This will be an ensemble piece.)
Timeline (better read this): I think I'm going take this into early May 2007. Liz is on the verge of giving birth. Maxie somehow (I don't care how) finds out about the baby's paternity and spills the beans to the world. Lucky, distraught and destroyed, leaves Liz in search of some understanding to his life. Liz is determined to hang onto Lucky because (surprise, surprise) she really does love Lucky and wants to be with him and to make amends. Sam, even more devastated than Lucky given her now inability to conceive, finds herself unable to forgive Jason for his silence and leaves town. Meanwhile, Lulu tries her best to fix things believing she was partly at fault for the destruction left in the wake of the truth about the baby coming out.
And here's where our story begins.
Author's Note: I'm not a big fan of Sam; I find her rather irritating. Don't particularly like Liz either, probably because I find myself agreeing with the annoying Maxie Jones on that the fact that Liz isn't the holy Madonna everyone makes her out to be. But then again, I've always liked the flawed characters a great deal more than the so-call 'perfect' ones; they are the ones that make stories interesting. (Which is probably why I like Liz now as a liar then I did when she was a 'saint.') No one really wants to see a perfect world… they want excitement and danger and all that loveliness. Another gripe is the premature demise of Lorenzo and Carly. I liked them as a couple and wished it doubly so since Laura Wright took over as Carly. Ted King and Laura Wright have remarkable chemistry and no one seem to want to play with that little more. (Actually I'm just pissed that the writers completely wasted Ted King as an actor and basically destroyed his character with non-action and stupid stories. Seriously, did he really need a kid?)
Warning: I really wasn't around for the height of General Hospital in the 80's and I have really faulty memory. Any discrepancy in the background stories… I apologize.
Key: "Spoken," "Thoughts." Anyway questions?
Chapter 1 – Taking Responsibilities
Though his face remain stoic and as stone-cold as the irritating Spinelli fondly accused him of being, Jason could feel his heart sink to the pit of his stomach without a bubble. He forced himself to stand there and watched the taxi carrying Sam McCall, the woman he thought he would be spending the rest of his life with, disappear down the street; forever gone. He stood there long after the taillights had flashed one last time at it as it turned down the street, as if daring him to do something about its departure. But he didn't, he couldn't, he wouldn't. He stood there while the sun slowly set behind the buildings around him, delaying the inevitable return to the cold lonely home that had once held such promises.
In fact, he was still standing there when Lesley Lu Spencer came racing up, her big blue eyes wide with distress. "Jason?"
He was slow to react; it was difficult to think at the moment. "What is it?"
"Where's Sam?" Lulu asked, her eyes starting to search around the street, as if Sam would appear around the corner at any moment. "Jason, where's…"
"Gone," he said dully and turned around to head back to his penthouse. He wasn't up for the company and didn't particularly feel like being polite.
Lulu was stunned beyond her own comprehension and felt as if a building had collapsed on her again. (Really, with the exception of a rare few, most average Americans cannot claim to understand what that feels like.) She stood where Jason had been for the last fifteen minutes and stared down the same street, her mind racing for a moment before it came to a screeching halt at simply nothing for a moment. She was suddenly cold with guilt, regret and simply exhaustion.
Jason had almost reached the building when he noticed that the usually resilient and endearingly tenacious Lulu was not nipping at his heels as were her wont. He had resignedly accepted the fact that the Spencer women, namely Carly and Lulu, were forever going to be a constant in his life. There is just simply no getting around that inescapable fact. Returning to the young blond (Jason inwardly grimaced when he realized that he had mentally called her 'the blond one'), he studied Lulu's unhappy face for a moment. "Lulu?" She turned to look at him with eyes too old for such a youthful face; he forgets sometime that she was so very young, not even out of her teens yet. "What's the matter?"
She ducked her head, letting her hair shield her eyes from him. He gave her a moment. He was patient. When she was ready, he barely heard the softly spoken, "I'm sorry."
Confused, he asked, "For what?"
When she finally looked up it was with brimming eyes and a helpless look. Lulu looked around the half empty street and made a feeble motion, "For everything."
For whatever the reason, Jason almost felt like smiling for the first time in days. The young Spencer girl may not know it but every day she reminded him more and more of her cousin in that illogical and often times headache inducing ways. But no one can ever say that Carly wasn't big hearted and loyal to a fault… and so was Lulu; it made them ridiculously hard to walk away from. Shaking his head at her, "Come on," and motioned her toward the doors.
Hesitating for half a minute, she scuffed her feet a little and swivel about toward the building.
Jason did smile at her very teenage show of discontent (much resembling Carly in that split second) and almost missed seeing the black sedan pull around the corner. There was nothing about the car that should have screamed out "DANGER" but Jason has long learned to listen to his instincts; it's saved his life on more than one occasion now. Plus the black-tinted windows was a dead giveaway.
"Lulu," he called out as he ran toward her, seeing the car windows lowered and silver glinted in the fading light. "Get down!"
In retrospect, Jason acknowledged that he probably shouldn't have shouted her name which in turn distracted her attention. Lulu turned and froze those precious few seconds when she could have been finding cover as bullets greeted her in a deafening roar. She didn't scream until the first bullet hit her. She stopped screaming when the second one ripped through her side and grazed her lower rib before ricocheting off to lodge into the side of the building. Jason took her down at a dead run, ignoring the hot sizzling pain in his left arm where a bullet no doubt had found all too human flesh. Rolling Lulu into the side of a parked car, Jason cursed himself for not being armed.
It was a good thing several of the apartments beneath his penthouse was the residence of his men. The noise brought them forth.
Several minutes and a few dozen bullets later, Jason slowly eased himself off the strangely silent Lulu. If there's one thing Jason's learned from Carly it's that Spencer women don't suffer pain in silence. Lulu was unconscious. A quick check revealed a head wound that Jason didn't want to explore too thoroughly. At least there weren't a profound amount of blood there.
"Get the car," he ordered as Howard and Carlos rushed over to check on him while the others continue to cover their position.
Picking up Lulu as the black SUV screeched around the corner, Jason silently prayed that girl in his arms was okay. Aside from her being Carly's favorite cousin and Lucky having enough reasons at the moment to despise him, Jason genuinely liked and respected Lesley Lulu Spencer. She may be impulsive and often times irrational but she was one of the truly good souls in Port Charles and he was sorry that she got caught up in this mixed up world. "Hospital and drive fast," he said as he settled Lulu's head carefully against his shoulder, bracing her body against the bouncing of the car. She didn't wake, didn't move, didn't do anything more than lay there like a limp rag doll against his side.
Jason had a momentarily flash of a nightmare, of another young woman motionless, pale and bleeding in his arms and how in those moments both of their lives changed.
-&-&-&-
"Jason," Carly's striking blond beauty was hard to miss among the dullness of the hospital waiting room. Concern was written plainly on her pretty face as she hurried over to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, almost choking him with affection. "I heard there was a shooting outside the penthouse. Are you all right?" She had literally dropped everything when the news hit her.
Gently pushing her away, Jason nodded his head silently and glanced to one side.
Carly followed his gaze to see Lucky and Nikolas staring back expressionlessly. Brows wrinkled with confusion, Carly opened her mouth to ask a question when Luke rushed into the room, stopping short at the sight of Carly.
"What happened?" Luke demanded of Carly, ignoring Tracy who had been following too close and plowed into his back.
"I was just about to ask the same thing," Carly replied rather sourly at Luke's snapping tone but decided not to make an issue of it for the moment. She turned back to Nikolas and Lucky again. "What are you two doing here?"
The two were silent for a moment before Nikolas sighed and tilted his chin toward Jason. "Ask your friend."
Returning her gaze to Jason, Carly was about to do just that when Dr. Noah Drake walked slowly into the room, his face ravaged by exhaustion. The flu has decimated the ranks of the medical staff and Dr. Drake Sr. was working on hour thirty-six now. "Lesley Lu Spencer?"
"Father," Luke pronounced pointing to himself.
Noah smiled at that. "She looks like Laura."
"She's her baby," Luke replied with the kind of adoring fondness that only a father could ever express.
"And she's a very lucky baby," Noah replied as he flipped open the chart in his hand. With so many doctor's out, he's been forced to cover the ER more than once now; it was there that he remembered why he became a surgeon. "The bullets were both through-and-through's, very little damage all things considering. The blood loss was considerable but she's young and healthy; it'll be a few weeks before she's back to full strength again. She's got a pretty serious concussion so I'd like to keep her here overnight for observations."
Luke frowned, "Bullets? A concussion?" his eyes immediately narrowed on Jason.
Jason didn't duck his role in this. "The concussion my fault," he had been more concerned about the bullets then about cushioning her fall.
Lucky's eyes darkened in anger, "All of this is your fault."
Carly frown at him but for the first time wasn't quick to jump to Jason's defense. She understood betrayal. And Jason understood the significance of Carly's silence; if it had been anyone but Lulu…
A quick hand to his brother's arm stopped what would have no doubt have been a tirade of bitter pain. Nikolas sighed, he loved Lucky and understood his hurt; but now wasn't the time for it. "What was Lulu doing at penthouse anyways?"
"Yes," Luke added suspiciously as he eyed Sonny Corinthos's right hand man, "What was my baby girl doing at your hideout?" He's resigned himself to the fact that Lucky's job will forever be putting him in the line of fire and against his former friends and business partners. But his little girl… that was a whole other story. While he knew he couldn't protect Lulu forever, what with her growing more and more like his beloved Laura and himself, it didn't mean he wasn't going to try until the day he died. "And how did she get caught in the middle of whatever the hell you were doing?"
Jason didn't respond.
Noah cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Mr. Morgan," he really wished he didn't have to be the one to do this, "Ms. Spencer is asking for you."
There was a long and heavy silence as all kinds of thoughts raced through half a dozen minds before Jason got up and followed Dr. Drake out the room. No one said a word; no one knew what to say.
"Caroline…" Luke warned.
"Don't," Carly held her hand up palm forward toward Luke. "I don't know anything."
Tracy gave a snort of disbelief. "Oh yes, the mobster's moll doesn't know anything about…"
Standing, Carly came right up to Luke and met him steely blue eyes to steely blue eyes. "I'm telling you that I don't know anything," she reemphasized with the kind of honestly that she knew only Lucas Lorenzo Spencer could truly understand. Carly loved Jason but Lulu was family; the youngest Spencer was the sister Carly never had growing up. There wasn't anything Carly wouldn't do for Lulu.
Luke acknowledged Carly's words for what they were; a declaration of loyalty. "Okay then." He hadn't a doubt in his mind that Carly was going to be finding out what the hell did happen.
"That's it?" Tracy demanded. "What's all you've got to say? That is your daughter laying there with a pair of bullet holes in her." When neither one of them answered and only regarded her with identical Spencer-smartass look, she threw her hands in the air and gave up. Really, there was simply no dealing with the two of them.
"Lucky?" Elizabeth was out of breath and leaning heavily against the archway to the waiting area. She had practically ran down to the fourth floor (quite a feat considering she waddled everywhere on swollen ankles these days) when she had heard of Lulu being admitted and that Lucky was downstairs. Visions of a bloodbath had danced in her head all the way down the stairs. She visually checked her estranged husband for wounds. "Are you alright?"
Lucky tensed visibly and looked away. Brown eyes that radiated tenderness played havoc on his heart and he knew without a doubt that he would simply come apart if he spoke to her; allowed her back into his life. "I need coffee," he told Nikolas and left the room without a backward glance.
"I'll come with you," Nikolas said hurrying to catch up, never once looking at Elizabeth.
Liz stood where she was, her heart crushed under the weight of Lucky's pain. She clutched the wall, praying that no one would see her shaky hands.
"Can you really blame him?" Carly asked softly; not unkindly, just honestly.
She couldn't even look up. Elizabeth knew she had been wrong; wrong about a lot of things. The biggest of which was never telling Lucky the truth, letting him believe a lie that ultimately destroyed him and his love for her more thoroughly than any addiction ever could. And though she loathed Carly, "Is he all right?"
For whatever the reason (and she wasn't about to examine it too closely), Carly felt charitable enough to answer, "Lucky's fine, physically anyways. There was a drive by at Jason's penthouse; Lulu got caught in the cross fire."
Elizabeth forced herself not to ask about him. "How's Lulu?"
"She'll recover," Carly answered abruptly, "And he's find too," then walked away. She's done her good deed for the day.
The baby kicked viciously then, letting Liz know that it heard. Rubbing her belly, Liz considered her next step… but really, she didn't know what to do next.
"He'll come around," Luke said kindly, seeing the conflict and pain in Liz's eyes.
The kindness from Lucky's father only made Liz feel lower, welling her eyes with tears that she knew were useless. "I'm not sure he will."
"You have to learn to fight for what you want, kiddo," Luke advised and looked toward where his eldest had disappeared. "Ain't no one going to just hand it to you. If you want him, don't let him get away and don't wait."
Tracy elbowed Luke in the side, knowing every well that the child Liz carried was now a Quartermaine and therefore a heir to the vast fortune that came with the name. She also remembered that her brother's ridiculous will had left a bulk of his estate to the child Elizabeth Webber Spencer now carried. "Over my dead body."
"What should I do?" Liz asked even knowing it was unfair to Luke. "How do I make him see that I love him and that I… I…" she looked down at her expanded belly and wished not for the first time that the baby inside truly was Lucky's.
"That baby," Luke said wisely for someone who fully acknowledged the fact that he was no great father himself, "Will be Lucky's if you and him want it to be. Doesn't matter that Morgan is also a part of its life, that's your child and you decide who gets to be an influence in their life."
It took a moment for the words and their meaning to make its way through Elizabeth's overly stressed head but she finally got it. Nodding her head, Liz gave her father-in-law a smile of thanks and left, knowing her presence wouldn't help Lucky at the moment and Lucky needed peace for his sister's sake.
"Why did you do that?" Tracy screeched as she whacked Luke hard across the forearm.
Luke raised a bushy brow at her. "What's the matter, Spanky? Did you want Jason to produce the next Quartermaine heir?"
Amazed, Tracy was flabbergasted for a moment.
"Remember," Luke pointed out, "AJ's boy Michael is Michael Corinthos and not Michael Quartermaine."
Closing her mouth because she did realize that it was rather unsightly, Tracy was quite impressed by her husband. "Why Luke…"
"Don't get me wrong," Luke interrupted before she got any ideas, "I still get something out of it: a grandkid. This isn't me being altruistic."
Tracy merely grinned at him.
-&-&-&-
Jason hated hospitals. It was the one place in the world he truly disliked. The white walls, the starchy hospital gowns, the smell of disinfectants in the air; it all reminded him of unpleasant things. Closing the door softly, he stood at the foot of the bed for a moment, just staring.
Lulu was just barely visible among the white sheets and plastic tubes. Her translucent skin made even paler by the shortage of blood in her system. Her blond hair, soft and curled, laid like a halo around her lightly freckled face. Her eyes fluttered open when the door shut. It took her a moment to focus but when she recognized him she smiled. "Hey."
He didn't say anything, just pulled a chair close and sat by her side. When she just stared at him rather hazily, he asked, "You wanted to see me?"
Blinking, "I think…." She blinked again, "I think they gave me drugs before they stapled me back together again," smiling vaguely. "I guess that's a good thing."
Nodding, because he didn't know what else to do, "I'm going to arrange for…"
"Are you okay?" she asked suddenly, blinking rapidly to shave off her exhaustive need to sleep.
Glancing briefly at the sleeve of his jacket, he nodded. "I'm fine."
Lulu's eyes followed his gaze to the bloody hole on his left arm. "Oh my god! You've been shot!" then winced when the sound of her own raising voice hurt her brain. "Ow…"
Moving around her oxygen tube, Jason helped Lulu turn to her side as waves of nausea had the room spinning. "Doctor said you have a bad concussion."
"Thanks for the news flash," Lulu replied when she could finally speak without wanting to gag. Laying back, she allowed Jason to adjust the blanket around her first before demanding, "Let me see."
"What?"
"Your arm," as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Let me see."
He frowned at her, finding this rather ridiculous. "Lulu, you don't need to…"
"I want to see it," she said reaching over to tug on this other arm, "Let me see, let me see." She tugged hard enough to dislodge her oxygen tub again.
"Stop that," he gently took her by the arm and pushed her back into bed, reattaching the nose tub again (he's not sure why they didn't have her a mask). Because Lulu was wearing the same kind of mulish look on her face Carly gets when she was determined to have her way, he peeled back the jacket and showed her the thick white bandage on his arm where Monica had lovingly bound his wound. His mother had tisked at him the entire time and begged him to be more careful but she hadn't asked him for anything else; no judgment, no recriminations.
Lulu nodded when she was satisfied and leaned back in her bed. "When I asked if you were fine, I wasn't asking if you had been shot."
Though Jason found this to be a little strange considering the girl was sitting there with two bullet holes, he didn't say anything. He's long since learned to keep his thoughts to himself. It's less painful that way.
"How are you doing?" Lulu asked again, her earnest eyes boring holes at him. When Jason merely stared back at her expressionlessly, Lulu sighed and felt stupid. "Okay, dumb question but I had to ask, didn't I?"
A tiny stab of a headache began at the back of his head; it happens so often now that he was almost use to it. "Lulu, I have no idea what you're talking about."
She was about to let loose a sarcastic remark when she turned and looked at him. He wore the same expressionless look. "Okay, maybe he doesn't know." She reached up, winced when the IV in her arm pricked her again and scratched her head. Jason was quick to grab her arm, yet again, and forced it down to her side. Deciding the men were dense, Jason was not normal and wishing she had stayed in bed that morning, Lulu sighed. "How are you doing in regards to Sam leaving?" Though there was little change to his hardened expression, Jason's eyes revealed a great deal more to Lulu than he would ever know. She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze; letting him know without words how sorry she was.
Jason stared down at the soft little pale hand in his. He could name on one hand with fingers to spare people that he allowed to touch him. It was a short list that hasn't varied much over the years and briefly wondered how Luke Spencer's daughter managed to make that list; and yet, there it was. Curling his finger around hers, he gave himself a moment to allow her to comfort him and grieved for what he has lost. Keeping her injuries - the ones that were no doubt due to his presence - firmly in mind, Jason tucked her arm back under the blanket and said sternly, "You should rest."
She smiled sadly at him, not the least affected by his manners. "I should have said something sooner. If the truth had come out sooner, maybe Sam would still be around, maybe my brother wouldn't be so hurt, maybe…"
"Stop." Shaking his head at her, there were too many maybes there. "It wasn't your place."
"But I knew," she pointed out for the umpteenth time. "I knew and I chose to say quiet."
"We chose to stay quiet; all of us."
"But…"
"You shouldn't have been burden with something like that," Jason admitted rather painfully. He understood that. Forcing Lulu to stay quiet had cost them all a great deal, especially her. It was never easy to betray someone you love and Lulu loved her brother like nothing else in the world. "It was wrong for me to have asked that of you."
Lulu made a face at him. "You didn't exactly put a gun to my head… though you're probably one of the few people that could," she mused randomly. "Look, I know what I did," the look she gave him that reminded him that she saw too much of the world, "I know that actions have consequences and I'm willing to take responsibility for my own. You don't have to make this okay for me."
"I'm not."
"Yeah, you are," she gave him a look that chided him for playing her off. "But I guess you can't help it," she conceded with a sleepy sigh. "Carly must really love that about you."
"Carly and I are friends," Jason said automatically out of sheer habit then added, "We have a mutually beneficial relationship," because she was Lulu.
"The bad good guy or good bad guy… or whatever," Lulu gave a gentle snort of laughter. "Really, it's perfect," she murmured just before she drifted off to sleep.
Jason sat there and frowned at her. He wasn't exactly sure what to make of the whole conversation, and he was pretty certain he was going to get another headache trying, so he let it go… as he would if he were talking to Carly. Really, the resemblance was becoming too hard to ignore and it was becoming quite irritating. He wasn't exactly sure he wanted another drama-inducing Carly in his life. Though to be honest, none of the drama Lulu's created so far has actually been from her… it's been from him. It was his secret that caused the rift in Lulu's life, it was his insistence that she stay quiet that caused her anguish, it was his inability to let go of his child completely as he said he would that pushed Lulu to protect her brother. The drama in the young Spencer's life wasn't her doing, it was his. And now he was going to have to make sure she doesn't suffer for it; it was only right.
He was going to take responsibilities for his own actions.
But first… he's got to keep Lulu alive. Whoever shot at them must know by now who she was and that meant trouble.
Leaving the room, Jason pulled his phone out and hit speed dial. "It's me. We have a problem…"
To be continue….
My first venture into the world of Soaps! Hope it's a good one.