I wrote this by request as a birthday gift for my dearest Batel. I have been in my Adele 25 feelings creating music videos of my Samtrick babies in my head. However, this is not a Samtrick story, nor is it a JaSam story. This is a Sam story. It is three chapters long, complete, and I'm posting it all at once.

Enjoy.

ONCE

Every time their car turned down that long tree-lined road toward that massive two story log home he had purchased for her, her heart skipped a beat, the skin on her arms created goosebumps, and tears welled in her eyes. He loved her. And this was their home. This was the home where they would gather their family for holidays, birthdays, and just because days. This was what she had always wanted. This was what she had dreamt of and strove to have - and accomplished despite a glaringly missing piece that turned out to be him - at her beloved lake house. She could not believe that it had actually come to pass.

She loved this man with every fiber of her being. She often thought if she was mad for feeling for him the way she did. She was an independent woman who had raised two of her children on her own; she had never needed a man. She had wanted one, of course - although her choices had been questionable - but, she had never been a woman who needed a man. She was successful, her children were beautiful and well taken care of, and she was happy... enough. Until him.

"I love you," she murmured as she turned to look at his profile. While his eyes were focused on the remaining distance ahead, he smiled at her comment; the lines of his face and dimple became visible. If she had not been strapped into her seat, she would have leaned over to kiss him. So, since he drove with his left hand so that he could keep his right hand free to hold hers, she ran her hand down his toned arm. "I hope you know that-"

"I love you too, Babe," he said as he raised her hand to his lips. Their fingers were intertwined. He took a moment to glance in her direction; he found her to be the most beautiful woman in the world. He wished that so many years had not been stolen from them. His biggest regret was how they had left one another that fateful night thirty five years earlier. Turning back to the road, he frowned slightly when he noticed a familiar car in their driveway. "Um... I thought Sam and Patrick went to that wedding today?"

"They are-" Alexis nodded before noticing her daughter's truck. A chill rushed through her body. Something was wrong; she could feel it. "Stop," she said as she released his hand and quickly unbuckled her seatbelt. "Stop the car." A sudden sense of urgency overcame her; she needed to get inside. "Julian-"

"We're right here, Alexis," Julian calmly replied. "Just let me pull into the driveway."

"Okay-"

She took a deep breath as she released the firm grip she had on the door long enough to allow him to pull up beside their daughter's vehicle. Without waiting for him to step out and walk around to open her door for her, she jumped out and made her way up the steps to the house. Her heart broke when she saw through the glass Sam sobbing alone in the living room. She turned the doorknob and entered.

"Sam?" she called out to the younger woman as she rushed toward her.

Her daughter was dressed in the beautiful blue dress they had picked out together mere days earlier; but rather than glow in the outfit as she did in everything else she wore, she was on the verge of hysterics. Taking a seat beside her, Alexis pulled her into her arms.

"Honey, what's wrong?" she asked. It had been quite some time since she had seen Sam so upset. Her usually strong daughter tucked her head under her chin and rested her head against her chest as she cried heavily. She racked her brain trying to figure out what could have happened to merit such an emotional breakdown; the possibilities that floated in her thoughts were terrifying. "Sweetheart, is Danny okay?" When she felt Sam nod, she breathed a sigh of relief in spite of the tears that welled in her eyes. She knew that her grandson was with Monica for the night; she was very good with him. "And Patrick and Emma? Are they okay?"

"It's... Jake..." was all Sam was able to get out before the wave of sobs overcame and threatened to drown her. She tightened her grip on her mother. "Mom... Jake... he's..."

"Alexis? Sam?" Julian called out as he ran through the open door and toward the women. His eyes met with Alexis'; she held onto Sam as though her life depended on it and rocked her gently. "Are you okay?" He asked. Taking a seat beside her, he looked to Alexis for some guidance. "What's going on?"

He did not want to infringe upon the moment these two women shared; Alexis had a way of getting through to her children and having them open up to her. Although it had been two years since their reunion, it had really only been a year since the younger woman had allowed him a chance to be her father. Sam and he still had quite a ways to go before he could elicit the responses her mother could. Alexis had had far longer than that to build this unbreakable relationship she had with Sam. He was jealous.

"Is she okay?" he attempted once again to figure out what might have happened."

"I don't know," Alexis mouthed to him. "Shh, shh," she soothed Sam as she pressed a kiss to the top of her head and ran a hand against her back. "Honey, take a deep breath," she urged. She gently pulled her daughter from her; she held her face in her hands. "Tell us what's wrong. What happened?"

"The wedding..." Sam attempted. Her tears rolled from the corners of her eyes. She grabbed hold of her mother's wrists. "Jake-" she croaked once more.. To say the words aloud would make both her dreams of Jason's return a reality, but it would also turn her reality, the life she had built, into a nightmare. She felt as though she was suffocating under the weight of it all. "I... I can't... believe..."

"Okay, okay," Alexis soothed when she realized that the words were too much for her daughter. She gently wiped the endless tears from her face. Given her state, she knew that she would not get a coherent response from the young woman, but she could receive one from someone else. "Sam, I'm going to get you something to drink," she said with a nod. She pressed a lingering kiss to her daughter's forehead. "I'll be right back." Wiping her own tears, she locked eyes with Julian. "Take her, please," she said without question as she gently eased the young woman in his direction before moving to her feet.

Watching her disappear through the door towards the kitchen, Julian realized that this was the first time that he was tasked with or even put in the position of comforting his daughter; he did not know what to do. This was Alexis' area of expertise. Sure, he had helped to comfort his son when the man had learned that his fiancé was not only married, but surprisingly, to a woman; he found it easier to speak to Lucas on a manly level. He did not know how to comfort his tough, yet emotional daughter. So, he just held her... awkwardly, he thought.

"Just... let me know if this is weird... for you," he said. "I'm not as good about this as your mom-"

"You're fine," Sam quietly replied although she shrugged out of his embrace. Grabbing a couple of tissues from the box on the coffee table, she tabbed the corners of her eyes. "I just... I need a minute. Ok?"

He nodded. "Of course," he replied. "Take all the time you need, kiddo."

She smiled gratefully at him; she needed to walk around a bit. And if she was being honest with herself, she probably felt as uncomfortable with the close embrace as her father did. This was not the relationship they had. Breaking down as she had, she was also a bit embarrassed as he had never seen her so emotionally vulnerable. He was not like her mother; he was not the warm and fuzzy type. She was fine with that; and probably because the two of them were similar that way. Having one parent who was overprotective and highly emotional was enough for her.

"Do you mind if I run to the bathroom?" She asked suddenly feeling self-conscious. She knew this was her mother's home and by extension their new family home, but it was Julian's place too. As comfortable as she had always been at the lake house and of course in her penthouse, she was accustomed to living or spending extended time in the same residence with her mother and sisters; her father's new presence in that home was a change she would need to become used to. "It's down the hall, right?"

He rose to his feet. It was in that moment towering over her, he suddenly realized just how petite his daughter was; he was certain this might have been the very first time he had seen her without the four inch footwear she usually wore. He found it odd how little he really knew about her. Now that he lived with her mother, he looked forward to finding out more about her.

"Yeah, it's the first door on the right," he said as he gave her the precise directions. When she smiled sadly and made her way toward the short distance, he called out to her, "Hey Sam?"

She turned to face him. "Yeah?"

"This is your home too, you know," he winked. "You don't ever have to ask to do anything here. Even though I'm here, I want you to know that you're always welcome."

"Thanks, Dad," she said then turned on her heels toward the powder room.

With a grim look on her face, Alexis returned to the living room with a glass of water in one hand and her cell in the other. Noticing that Sam was missing, she cast a concerned look to Julian. Needing no words to understand what she meant to say, he replied simply, "Bathroom." Letting out a sigh, she moved toward the couch to take a seat beside him. Keeping an eye out for their daughter's reappearance, she let out a heavy breath.

"It turns out that the connection... or pull... whatever..." She ran her fingers through her hair as she shifted to face him. She was liable to ramble; this was not the time. "Julian, Jake... he's... Jason!"

He head jerked back. "I'm sorry, what?" He said almost ironically given that he had risen from the dead. But that was, of course, quite different as he had not been fatally wounded and kicked into the frigid waters of Upstate New York. How this man could have survived such a thing was nothing short of a miracle. "Are you sure?"

Except for the fact that she had lived in Port Charles for nearly three decades and had seen with her own two eyes the ways in which life and death seemed to have defied all logic, Alexis probably would not have believed this herself. But this very same incident had occurred but a couple of years ago to the man with whom she had just spoken when his own wife (now ex-wife) had returned from what had been a certain death. These things happened in their town.

"Patrick told me that Carly ran a DNA test on this Jake Doe character and-"

"He's my husband," Sam finished her mother's sentence for her. Taking tentative steps toward the living room, she opted to sit in the chair furthest from both of her parents; any physical touch with them would surely break the levy that was working quite hard to keep her emotions at bay. She bit the inside of her cheek and felt her nose flare slightly. Tears flowed from her eyes. The words fell out of her mouth, "And he doesn't remember me."

Patrick had told her this, but it was no less disturbing and painful to hear; her daughter's heartbreak was felt in the depth of her own core. "Oh, honey," she sighed.

She wanted to move to sit beside her, but the years have taught her that when Sam needed her, she sought her out; there was a fine balance between her overwhelming desire to smother all of her girls whenever they were in pain or needed her and giving them the space they needed to sort out their feelings on their own without inserting her bias for them. Enveloping her daughter into her arms at this very moment would result in nothing more than a collapse of whatever remained to keep at bay the hysterical emotions she had had mere minutes earlier.

"He said he looks at me like a friend, Mom!" Sam continued. Leaning forward her in the seat, she rested her elbows onto her knees and hid her face in her hands. "He said he doesn't remember his life with me..." she inhaled deeply. Any restraint she had had disappeared and the tears burst from her eyes. She felt she might drown in her emotions. "Or our son... or our... family. He loves Elizabeth, Mom."

Julian made a face. "He doesn't remember you or the fact that you're married to him, but he remembers Elizabeth?"

"Julian-" Alexis shot him a look.

"No-," Sam shook her head. "He doesn't remember Elizabeth... not as Jason. He doesn't remember being Jason at all, Dad," she continued. Heavy tears rolled down her cheeks. "He only remembers this last year - his life as Jake Doe and the life he created with Elizabeth. That's all he knows."

And this was it. Releasing Julian's hand which she had not realized she had held, Alexis moved to Sam's side. Using the back of her hand to wipe the tears from Sam's cheeks, she pressed a kiss onto her forehead. "I'm so sorry you're going through this, sweetheart," she murmured. "I know this is what you've always wanted-"

"It's what I've dreamt about, Mom!" she countered. "It's... I... when he... when Jason died... and when no one was able to find his body, I still couldn't let him go," she continued. "I felt it in my heart that he was still out there somewhere... that he was hurt... but he wasn't gone. But when there was no sign of him after months and then a year, I had to let him go; I convinced myself to let go of that doubt that he was dead and to move on. But..." she locked eyes with the woman. "Mom, I knew that this wasn't the way our story was supposed to end. I told you that-"

"You did," Alexis nodded.

She was not finished. "After Franco, and everything that happened because of him in our relationship, and then having Danny be taken from us for a year, then getting him back... Mom, I knew our story wouldn't end that way. It couldn't!" She stressed. "Our love was too strong to be taken from us the way everyone thought it had been. We finally had a family, and for it to just.. just be stolen? He's my family, Mom! Mine and Danny's... and he doesn't even remember us."

Julian moved to sit on the edge of the coffee table. He took Sam's right hand into his own. "But what about Patrick, kiddo?"

Alexis cast a nervous glance in the man's direction. She too wanted an answer to that question for the fear of Sam someday returning to Jason and the violent life he led weighed heavily on her mind. This was a complicated situation. But knowing her daughter and the love she had for the man, she knew that Sam would move heaven and earth to have him back in her life. She just did not know how far Sam would be willing to go especially if there was a chance the man might never remember her again. This terrified her.

"Honey, what about the family you already have with him?" Alexis added. "You two are engaged, Danny calls him Daddy, and Emma loves you as though you were her mother."

"I don't... know," Sam finally responded after several moments of silence. "I know that the last thing I would ever want would be to hurt them because I love them with all of my..." she stopped.

She wanted to say that she loved them with all of her heart, but if that were the case, the answer would be simple. She would be able to leave her life with Jason in the past and continue to look forward to spending the rest of her life with Patrick. As much as she wanted to say that that was enough for her, the questions of what could have and should have been spun in her mind. She was nauseated.

"I just... I don't know about anything anymore," she sobbed. "I love Patrick and our life so much. It is the first time since Jason that I have felt this way, you know? He is what I have always wanted for Danny if he could not have his actual father in his life. But now... he's here... and my heart doesn't know how I can be with Patrick if I could love this other man who doesn't even remember me the way that I do."